Dave Rubin - The Current Political Climate, 2020 Election, and Building A Successful Talk Show

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What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Dave Rubin from the Rubin Report. Dave Rubin is an American political commentator, comedian, YouTube personality and talk show host. He is the creator and host of the Rubin Report, a political talk show on Blaze TV and YouTube. Throughout this conversation, we talk about not only what's going on right now in this political climate, but we touch on his thoughts and what he thinks should happen. So that being said, if you enjoy this episode, please, please share it with a friend. The Rubin Report is a show that I've been watching for quite some time now and it was such a pleasure to have Dave on the show. So that being said, make sure you subscribe and let's get into the show.

All right, what is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Dave Rubin from the Rubin Report here with us. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Dave.

It's good to be with you. I realize at 43, where do I fall on the Rise of the Young scale? I'm like almost boomer now. I think.

I love it. It's actually, it's interesting because when I first came up with the show name, it's not only about the youth, but it's about the young entrepreneurs that are listening. And when I sat down with Larry King, right, we talked about the age gap, having a 67 year age gap between myself and him. But it's more so to bring different insights, whether that's politics or business, and just stories to the youth. So I love your show and I definitely, I'm inspired by everything you've built. But really the first question I want to ask you, Dave, is with everything happening now, you have such a deep understanding of politics and where things are going, what's happening. And I want to ask you, how do you describe the current political climate during this time?

Well, it's a mess, to put it mildly. You know, what's happening right now between the riots, the protests, the way the media is covering it, I mean, just absolutely everything happening right now is all of the stuff that myself and I'd say about 20 or 30 other people online have been talking about for about four years. And some suddenly it's all kind of burst forth, these ideas that we just put out there where it's just sort of like an accepted idea that America suffers from systemic racism, meaning that there is racism built into the system. The implication being that racism is in law that stops people from doing certain things. That notion is thought of as true to the average American, but it is completely untrue. We have individual rights in America, meaning that there are no laws that stop you from doing anything, whether you're a male or a female or gay or straight or black or white or whatever it might be, or however you identify in terms of your gender or anything else. Now, we have had some problems with that over the years, right? We had slavery and then we freed the slaves. And then eventually black people could vote. This is a beautiful arc of history. Women couldn't vote then. Women could vote. Gay people couldn't get married. Now they can get married. We've always bent the arc of justice towards more freedom and liberty. That's a beautiful thing. But unfortunately, the way the media pushes every story that somehow we're this evil, racist, you know, patriarchal, authoritarian system. People believe it and it ain't true. So for you and your audience, like, if you want to affect young entrepreneurs and people to go out there and build a great product or have a great idea and get out there, man, there is nothing stopping you in the United States but yourself. If you work hard and you've got a good idea, you can absolutely do it. And you're the only one that can stop yourself. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy. I guarantee you it's going to be hard. I'm running several businesses right now. Trust me, it ain't easy. And you will have failures right on the cusp of success. You know those moments when you where you're like, oh, tomorrow's the day we get the big deal. It's all. And then something happens that you didn't expect. And then you reevaluate and you figure out how to be. Hopefully what I try to do is be a slim trim business so I can move with the times. You have incredible opportunity in the United States. And if you've got an idea and you're willing to work hard, you can make it happen, and you can make it happen in a much better way than pretty much anywhere in the world.

Absolutely. And just speaking on starting a business and entrepreneurship, I'd love for you to dive into when you started your first company and what that prod and that what that journey was like, because you have such a presence now and such a voice. So when did you get into entrepreneurship and what did that look like in your life?

You know, it's kind of funny because, you know, I'm mostly known for talking online and interviewing people and that kind of stuff, but actually, in many ways, I'm most proud of the businesses that I've grown because they're an extension of the ideas that I talk about on the show. So when I talk about limited government and I talk about low taxes and competition and the free market, all of those things, those are all concepts that were solidified in my mind because I was running a business. And I can see actually how they work. When I pay less in taxes, I can hire more people, I can give better bonuses. And guess what happens then my guys in turn, want to work harder for me because they're being treated better. I pay 100% of all my employees health insurance. It's not because I'm Jesus. It's because I thought, whoa, if I pay these guys well, which I pay all my guys well, and then I take care of their benefits, they'll have a vested interest in doing better work. And by them doing better work, guess what? I'll do better work and our bottom line will be better. And there are win win situations in the world, and that's how you accomplish them. But as for how I did this, you know, it's funny. I never thought I was going to be a businessman. I didn't really like business classes in high school or college. I was never a math guy. I'm a with language and social sciences and that kind of stuff. But over the years, as I started doing my thing on YouTube and I was originally on the Young Turks and everything else, when we went independent, Patreon was the only game in town. And Patreon's a crowdfunding site, so if you've got some fans, they can throw you some money every month and you can hopefully build a business. That was our first foray into going independent. And then at the time, I was renting a studio for a while. And then I thought, well, I'm not fully independent because I'm still renting a studio from somebody. And I'M still crowdfunding on Patreon, and I don't own Patreon. Patreon could give me the boot at some point. So eventually I saved up enough money and I took out a couple loans and I bought a house. And right now I'm in my garage. This is my garage. We've built a television quality studio. One of the bedrooms right there is the control room. One of the other bedrooms is the green room. And we used to actually do interviews in person, which hopefully we'll start doing again soon. And then after that, I thought, well, okay, now I own my product, I'm in my house, I'm shooting my show, but I still don't own the monetization part, meaning I'm going through Patreon. So I thought, all right, let's start something else. So then I started a company that eventually became Locals.com, which is my tech company now. And we started figuring out, hey, I don't need Patreon. I'll build a payment. We'll do the payment processing on my site on rubinreport.com people can subscribe directly there. And that's how we're going to build it. So right now I am probably the closest thing to complete independence that you can possibly be if you're going to be a public person in the digital video world. Meaning, yeah, I put my stuff on YouTube, we do the podcast. Obviously, I use Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff. Now, I don't own that stuff when it's there, but we put all of my stuff on locals, which I do own. And anyone listening to this, if you're a creator of any kind, politics, gamer, sports, unboxer, knitter, whatever the freak you are, go to locals.com and create an account. Because you'll own the audio, you'll own the video, you own the monetization. We're just giving you the tools to run a business. So I am pretty damn close. When they talk about un cancelable, love it. You know, the chances that I fire myself are pretty slim. So, yeah, I'm un cancelable in that way.

I love that. I want to talk about how over the last decade, just broadcasting has changed so much and you've adapted so well to all the changes. Where do you see it going long term with podcasting and YouTube broadcasting? Because you're someone that's on top of their game and you have a very unique insight because you, you know, like you just said, have become independent and you've also been a part of a network, right? So where do you see the future of podcasting and broadcasting going?

Yeah, well, networks will not exist as networks. The idea that you need a CNN to sort of categorize who all these people are and watch it in some sort of linear fashion. 6 o', clock, 7 o', clock, 8 o', clock, et cetera, et cetera, every day. You know, it partly explains why the world is such a mess right now. They need to keep you watching all the time. So you watch those commercials, they need to stretch out stories and keep you outraged and all that. We do one or two interviews a week here, and then I do some live streams and some other stuff. And people often say to me, dave, why don't you do more shows? Why don't you do a daily interview show? And it's like, if you give me an hour of your week. Well, I'm going to go out on the assumption and think you probably listen to a couple other podcasts. Maybe you listen to your podcast, Maybe you listen to Rogan or Sam Harris or whoever it might be. And then you probably also, I hope you have some other hobbies. Maybe you play basketball or you play video games or you watch tv, whatever it is. Like, we got to live full lives. And I think what's happened is everyone thought we have to just be obsessed with all of this content all the time. And what I'd rather do is make something that is of high quality, right like this. What you're seeing right now, I could be on broadcast. I could be on HBO tomorrow. If they called me tomorrow, we could be on HBO right here. So it's not that we cut costs. We had to spend a lot of money to make it look the way it looks. But I think that ultimately what will happen is networks will crumble. So you will create your own network. That's one of the things we're doing with Locals is I can choose who I want to associate with in my network, then they can create whatever they want. So right now we've got guys like Scott Adams on there and Bridget Fedezee and Michael Malice. They're all in my network. And when you're in the Locals app, which just came out this week, you can jump between communities, and they're in my network. What that means is I've sort of said, hey, these are voices that I think are interesting and maybe you want to be part of. You don't need the giant network overhead. And on top of everything else, you know, with coronavirus, it's like, think about CNN Right now, they've Got massive studios in New York and D.C. wherever it is that they've put millions and millions and millions of dollars into. They're completely empty right now. They've got their guys all working from home. Think how much money they're saving. Now. That's kind of scary if you're a lighting guy that's on set and you're in the union and all that stuff. So I have sympathy with the people losing their jobs. But industries change, right? The coal industry has changed. The Industrial revolution changed things. The newspaper industry changes. And I think if you're slim and trim and smart, there will be nothing that can stop you. So I think what you're doing, what I'm doing, this just kind of independent guy that's got something to say, guy or gal, you got something to say and you do it effectively and you know how to communicate, you can figure out how to succeed.

Love that. I sort of change gears here a little bit because I think someone, you know, I'm 19 years old and I have a lot of 18 to 25 year olds that listen, we respect your opinion. As someone that has such a high quality voice in the political atmosphere, how do you think Trump is handling this situation?

So by this situation you mean the protests and the riots?

Yes, everything.

Well, look, I mean, here's the uncomfortable truth that nobody wants to talk about. Minnesota, where George Floyd, Minneapolis, specifically, where George Floyd was killed, has a Democratic mayor, a Democratic city council. The entire state is Democrats. Ferguson, last time one of these big riot situations happened, it's run by Democrats. Atlanta's run by Democrats. Chicago, where they had something like 90 shootings this weekend. But nobody talks about it, unfortunately, because it's usually black on black crime, it's a Democratic mayor. So the idea that we're blaming or not we, but the idea that the mainstream is blaming Trump for all of this. Before Corona, before the riots, black unemployment was at an all time low. Trump talked about that in his State of the Union and the Congressional Black Caucus. And the Democrats sat there silently. They didn't applaud that because unfortunately, everything has become so partisan. I don't think Trump is racist. I don't think Trump is homophobic. I think Trump's a kind of flawed guy who's a capitalist, who loves America, who has a funny way of speaking and he's orange and has crazy hair. But I think he wants to live in a free country that's free for all people. The idea that this whole thing has been turned on him as if Trump imported racism somehow, it's like, you'd have to show me the evidence. You'd have to say, all right, well, who was president before Trump? Well, okay, Obama was president. So show me the evidence that things were so much better for black people during Obama, and suddenly they've got so much worse under Trump. And of course, that evidence doesn't exist. So how do I think Trump is doing? I basically think he's doing fine. And I would say even beyond that. Well, I'll even say more than that. I think he's doing better than fine. You know, I wish he was a slightly better communicator when it comes to, like, let's all tone down the rhetoric. He's not good at that for sure. Right. He always ratchet. Ratchet. It ratchets the whole thing up as they do as well. So then it becomes this, like, endless cycle. But I think he's done a pretty good job. And look, at the end of the day, if November rolls around and the choice is between Trump, who will represent law and order, and the Democrats, who basically are saying, we're defunding the police, we're gonna bow in front of protesters, we're gonna wash their feet, we're gonna take guns away. Well, he's gonna win in a freaking landslide.

Yeah. Yeah. How do you believe this is gonna affect voter turnout later this year?

I mean, look, you could look, just look at the little things right now. Not the little things. Just look at some of the sort of key issues that we're thinking about at the level beneath racism. Like, it seems like everything's about racism right now, but there's a lot of issues right beneath that. Guns.

Right now.

People are buying guns in crazy numbers. Right now. I'm here in Los Angeles where everyone is a blue state, anti gun liberal, progressive. I have friends that just bought guns this weekend. I'm talking to a couple gun dealers. I'm hearing people that never thought that they would be considering this suddenly buying guns. So the point is that plays well to Trump. If you look at coronavirus. Well, Trump was trying to shut down travel from China early on. I think Borders plays well right now. I think people understand that. Unfortunately, I don't know what the left stands for anymore other than sort of destroying the system. I don't know where the good Democrats want. I don't like to make everything about left versus right. But I think what's happening basically is if you think that the experiment of America is a pretty decent experiment, if you think we've created something decent here that has existed for over 200 years and given so many people opportunity, and even, you know, everyone still wants to get into America. Nobody's leaving. We don't. Trump would. Trump ain't stopping anybody from leaving. But these people that'll tell you it's an evil, racist, patriarchal, genocidal, oppressive state. They don't go anywhere. Right. So it's like, you know, they don't really mean it. They're not really serious actors. And if you want that experiment to continue, I mean, it's crazy for me to say, as a guy that did not vote for Trump the first time around, I voted for Gary Johnson, the libertarian. But if the choice is Trump or chaos, well, you obviously have to vote Trump.

Yep. I want to change gears to your book, Don't Burn this book.

Yeah.

Recently published it. What does the book mean to you and why did you write it?

Well, what it means to me is I want people to fight for what they believe in. So it's like, I don't know, all your political beliefs, obviously, but if you have a couple positions or many positions that are completely the reverse of mine, but you've come to them through thinking and through facts and reasoning and logic, well, then that's a beautiful thing. Let's argue them out. Right. And I'm sure if we sat here long enough, we could probably find a couple things that we have some disagreement on, and then. That's great. When I wrote the book, the reason I wrote the book was because people have stopped thinking about things. They just get handed information. America's racist. Well, what are you gonna do if America's racist and oppressive? You have a right to suddenly. And Nazis are in charge. Well, suddenly you can burn down buildings, and we're seeing the fruits of that in many ways. It's funny, because I finished writing this book back in July of 2019. We're in June of 2020. So I finished writing this thing in 11 months ago. And then you edit it for a while. The publishing process takes a long time. But I haven't touched the book itself since. Since November is when we finished the editing. But the things that I talk about in the book, I talk about policing. I talk about the myth of systemic racism, the myth of the gender pay gap. All these. These are things that we're talking about right now. States rights. Suddenly everyone's talking about states rights. If you live in a blue state where they're putting you under crazy lockdown and they're talking about taking away the police, you might want to move to a red state, then I Feel bad for the red state people because then they import all of these blue state people who then wreck their states too. But I wrote it because I genuinely want people to think for themselves. You don't have to agree with me on everything, but if you get there, if you get there in an honest way, well, then that's how a pluralistic society can flourish.

Yep. So I saw that you've been sitting down with some very interesting people recently, one of them being an ex police officer. I'd love for you to touch on what you learned from these recent conversations with the people that you've been having on your show.

Yeah. Well, first off, I mean, again, systemic racism, the way it's being sold to us, the meme of that is not true. There is no racism in the system. Are there individually racist people? Of course. Are you going to come across bigots in real life? Of course. Are you going to come across some people that hate gay people or hate black people or hate Jews? Of course this is real. It's part of the human condition. And the best thing that you can do is try to show those people why the error of their ways. That's all you can do. And then really what a society can do is just give people equal rights, which is what the United States has done. I mean, a simple number that's an important one to know, is that in 2019, there were nine unarmed black people shot by police. Nine. There were 19 unarmed white people. So the idea that police are running around mowing down unarmed people is crazy. Now, that again, doesn't mean that everything the police do is absolutely proper. And they're also in an extremely tough situation all the time and all sorts of stuff. But I think what we need to learn right now, and the only way you'll learn it, is by having some of these conversations. Don't just believe stuff because the mainstream media hands it to you. And even beyond that, a lot of these guys in the mainstream media, it's like you guys are all cheering on the violence. Even a week ago. It's like they're sort of cheering it on. Like violence against buildings isn't violence. That's a big one we're hearing now. If it's not against people, it's not violence. Well, I'm pretty sure if they burn down your house, you might consider it violent. But then suddenly, when the protesters were at CNN trying to, like, smash through the doors of cnn, their tune suddenly changed. And I always find that funny because it's like all these Hollywood celebrities like Seth Rogen and Steve Carell and these clowns that are bailing out protesters. It's like, dude, you think they're not gonna come for your mansion in the Hollywood Hills one day? You're still gonna be old, rich white guys no matter what you do. So all you're doing is fueling the flame.

Interesting. Disregarding everything on the Rubin reports, I've sort of fallen in love with the interview itself. And that's what I talked with Larry King about. I was like, you know what makes a great interview? I absolutely love your interviews and your interview style. So I want to ask you, what have you learned about interviewing and what do you think creates a great interview?

Yeah, well, you probably know Larry's a buddy of mine and sort of my bonus grandfather and a mentor in many ways. And, you know, I think Larry, I've asked him some version of that question. I've asked him it privately many times. You know, we've had dinners discussing that. And I've asked him it publicly a couple times on my show. And Larry's sort of knee jerk response is always, you know, it's sort of that you have to be curious. That's like the easy one. But the best answer he gave me that I think really does work for me is that he said, you know, Dave, when you take peak Larry King, when you take 1995, Larry King, CNN on every night, getting the A list, people, every night, the show was called Larry King Tonight. He said, my ego was already stroked. My name is in the title of the show. And as you know, my name is in the title of this show, the Rubin Report. So I don't sit down with someone thinking that I need to outsmart them or I need to show them up or anything like that. I genuinely, I've treated every guest that I've ever had on exactly the same way, which is that I want to learn a little bit more about how you think that really is it. Now, within that, sometimes you're going to have interviews that are better, sometimes you have interviews that are worse. Sometimes you got to poke somebody a little bit more, prod them a little bit more. Sometimes somebody is just babbling on and you're going, wait a minute, I don't think this person even knows what they're talking about. But in a way, you can learn from that, too. So, you know, it's funny, some people will say, well, Dave, you're not combative enough. And it's like, you know, that that may be, there may be some legitimacy to that in certain situations. Maybe I Could be more combative. And I think, by the way, sometimes I am. I mean, I've debated Ben Shapiro on gay marriage. I've debated the death penalty with Dennis Prager. I've dated legalization of drugs with Michael Malice. I mean, I do get into these ideas with some people, but that's not to say I'm a perfect interviewer. But I think basically, you got to be curious. You got to want to learn, and you got to know. It's not even you got to know. I would say you got to sort of be awake enough that if a conversation seems to be going in a certain way, that you don't have to bring it back to some place that you wanted to get it to at the beginning if it's going somewhere. And that's interesting. Keep going.

Love that. With everything happening right now, how have you adapted with your business? Because I know that you talked about, you have an independent studio, you're at your house. So how have you transitioned to more, you know, over zoom interviews? And how have you learned from that?

Yeah, it's been interesting. I mean, the first thing we did, right when all hell was breaking loose with the lockdowns, we realized that we had to secure our Internet no matter what. Because, you know, we have Spectrum here, but Spectrum in la, I'm sure wherever anyone is, Spectrum's not that great. So we had, you know, a satellite put on the roof. And I pay for 800 freaking dollars a month for Internet right now because it's a direct link with upload download. Because I thought, all right, I'm ahead of the game. Everyone's doing CNN shows out of their kitchen. Well, I've got a studio, but I have to make sure that the Internet works properly. So that was like the first thing we did. We moved my director, who normally directs from my house, from the control room. He now directs remotely. We're working on getting him back in studio. My associate producer is here today, actually. We've just started bringing him back this week. We had to get all my guys to work remote and my assistant to work remote and everybody else. I think we did a really great job of it. My guys worked incredibly hard. I sent everybody a big box of Omaha steaks as a thanks for their hard work. But I would say on top of that, we've seen some of the rewards of continued good work. May was our best month ever on YouTube on virtually every metric from views to monetization. So that's great. And we'll continue to be slim and trim. And by the way, I've also learned some things in the course of this, which is that although I would always prefer to do an interview in person with somebody and sit right across from them, that there's something to be said for this. The ability to just do an interview on the fly and not wait till somebody's in town and do it on Skype and the rest of it. And we'll continue to adjust our business accordingly. We have no debt. My business has zero debt. We're completely in the black. And you know, I don't overspend on anything. But if my guys say, hey Dave, we need this piece of equipment, we can make the audio better, we can do this with the lights, it's like, yeah, let's do it. Let's always make the product better.

Love that. So you've had many businesses throughout your journey. What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur starting their business today?

Man, just do it first. Just do it. That's number one. There's a great book that I've got right there by a guy who's got a couple bucks, Peter Thiel. Zero to one.

Yeah.

I mean the idea, the basic idea of the book is that the Bill Gates of tomorrow is not going to build Microsoft. Meaning if you want to change an industry, you got to think about it in an entirely new way. That's how you go to 0 to 1 as opposed to just making a product that's sort of similar or slightly better than some other existing product. You got to rethink the world, really rethink it. I think that's what I'm trying to do with locals. Get us off the addiction of big tech and think about social media in a whole new way. I view that as a zero to one proposition. But for a young person, if you've got an idea, it doesn't matter if you're 15 and you're watching this, if you've got a good idea, start doing something with it. Whether that means talk to your folks about getting a couple bucks so you can build a prototype or start promoting it, or figure out a way to get on Shark Tank or contact Mark Cuban, whose email address is public. I think like, figure out a way, if you believe in it and you're passionate about it, to just keep going. And if you really believe in it, don't let anything stop you. I have had all the failures and the screw ups and the times where we quit jobs and left health insurance and when we left Patreon originally, me, my director and my producer, we all quit our jobs no health insurance. And the morning or the night before we launched Patreon, I said, listen, I may have really screwed us here. We may be really screwed in the morning. And guess what? We launched on Patreon and within a half hour I knew that we were golden. And we've been good every time since. So just be ready to fight and go and no one's gonna give you anything and learn from people. Try to find somebody who can maybe be a bit of a mentor in the midst of all of it and just keep going and going and going. That's it. It sounds cliche, but that's all you can do.

Love that. Last question before we wrap up here, Dave, just regarding your show, the Rubin reports and politics, is there any key interview that you'd like to have on your show that you haven't had yet? More so a dream interview. And why?

Well, you know, the guy that I want on the show more than anybody else still is Bill Maher. And I was actually supposed to be on Bill Maher's show last week and then they canceled us at the last second. But hopefully that'll happen. But the reason I want Bill Maher on is because, as you know, one of the things that I talk about all the time is that leftism, modern leftism, meaning the democratic socialism, the Bernie Sanders AOC big government thing, has nothing to do with liberalism, with true liberalism. And I would say that Bill Maher is basically the last liberal that we've got. And the analogy I always use, I don't know if you're a Star wars guy, but I basically think that the Progressives Executed Order 66 on the Liberals and they just, they killed most of the Jedi and there's a couple of them scattered throughout the galaxy. That's kind of where we're at right now. Now, Bill and I, even though I think we're both old school liberals, you know, he really hates Trump. I think he still likes a lot of big government programs that don't make sense to me. But he's really good on free speech and I think his general intuition is correct. So I would love to have that conversation because maybe it's a little bit of the changing of the guards, like I'm slightly a newer version of what he's doing. I don't begrudge him any of that. And I don't even mean that to sound, I don't mean that to sound cocky or anything else, but I think we would have a seriously great conversation about important issues where we agree and where we disagree. So I hope it'll happen at some point.

I love that. I appreciate you for saying that. I look forward to seeing that show happen one day. But before we wrap up, Dave, I want to say thank you so much for coming on this show. And where is the best place for the listeners today to get your book and to learn more about everything you have going on?

Yeah, you can go to don't burn this book.com and for everything Rubin Report related, you can go to rubinreport.com which is. Rubinreport.com is the first product of locals.com and if you go to locals.com you can sign up. We will build you a community where you own everything from the content to the user data. You set your rules, we're just giving you the keys. What you do with it, it's up to you. Love that.

Thanks so much, Dave.

All right. Thanks.

Monarch. Legacy of Monsters An Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it. On November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

Oh, my God.

Go, go, go.

Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV.

Plus.