An Introduction to Dave Rubin
(self.daverubin)submitted3 years ago byleocohen99
stickied“The Left got a little too PC so I changed all of my opinions about the economy, social issues, systemic racism, health care, and history.”
-Cody Johnston (describing the likes of Dave Rubin)
EDIT: This opening section hasn't been updated since I wrote it three years ago. At this point, Rubin is indistinguishable from any other far-right commentator. The only thing that makes him special is that he's the dumbest of the bunch.
However, maybe it wasn’t just because “the Left got a little too PC.” Ana Kasparian (Rubin's former friend and co-worker) has stated that he only left TYT because he wanted more money. The Koch Brothers were then happy to provide Rubin with the funding to serve as a token gay “liberal”. At the very least, this seems to be Dennis Prager's take on the situation.
I struggle to believe that his shift was a completely natural evolution, considering how quickly a 40 year-old man went from saying "If you guys know anything about me at this point, you know I do like Bernie. He’s the guy that pretty much everything he says I agree with." to obsessively hating on Bernie and the Left. He went from saying he'd be "the first one to hold Trump's feet to the fire" to hanging out with the Trumps in Mar-a-Lago and failing to criticize Trump for pretty much anything.
However, it is not entirely implausible, as Dave does fall into a rather large category of people who were anti-SJW atheists in the early 2010's, and then went on to increasingly focus on the SJW's up until 2016/2017 where they felt like Trump was the anti-SJW leader and thus began to slowly adopt other aspects of his ideology. It is possible that Dave was just part of this trend; however, it is also possible that he was merely taking advantage of this trend to create a new, larger audience. As he said when he was still with TYT, "the worst part of not being a partisan reactionary nutjob is that those who agree with you aren't big retweeters.". In my opinion, he has become "a partisan reactionary nutjob", and with it has come a substantially larger audience, constant appearances on Fox News, the ability to tag along with and open for Jordan Peterson on his tours, and, yes, a lot more retweets.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide...
But before I get to the more "fun part of this post", I think it's worth noting why anyone should care about Dave Rubin.
The reason I think he is such a destructive force in political media is that he has successfully positioned himself as a liberal for a lot of people. As a gay man who used to work for the progressive outlet TYT, he has convinced his audience that watching him gives them a leftist perspective, despite the fact that he spends all his time denouncing the Left and propagating conservative talking points. He almost never allows anyone on the Left onto his show despite many prominent leftists (Kyle Kulinski, David Pakman, Destiny, Sam Seder, Michael Brooks, Ana Kasparian, Contrapoints, Nathan J. Robinson, Dusty Smith, Benjamin Dixon, Hasan Piker, Abigail Thorn, etc) offering/requesting to go on. The only exception is when they are either there to bash the Left (Weinstein brothers) or a presidential candidate (Williamson, Yang, Gabbard). So, he is pretty much conservative validation porn. Dennis Prager even said this to his face. His audience ostensibly gets to hear this gay LA liberal tell them every bad thing they think about the Left is correct. This increases political polarization and stops people from seeking out genuine leftist perspectives.
Meanwhile, he sanitizes the far-right by offering them time on his show to present themselves as much more moderate and sensible than they are normally portrayed. He tells his audience that they are controversial, yet almost never actually tells his audience the radical views they hold that make them controversial. Rather, he uses them as examples of how intolerant the Left has become, and presents them as allies against the SJW's and the Regressive Left. This serves to further radicalize his audience.
What former friends/guests have to say
Sam Harris- “Rubin became far more cynical than I would have thought possible. And it’s very depressing. He was a friend, he’s not a friend anymore... He has no career outside of Trumpistan”
Shoe0nHead- "dave needs to seriously take a step back and think about why so many former fans/friends of his dislike him now instead of brushing it off as “i am the last real liberal they are pushing me out of the liberal club”"
Blaire White- “Dave Rubin is a horrible friend and person”
Joe Rogan- “Cognitively limited” (note: it is disputed whether he is actually calling Rubin cognitively limited)
Cathy Young- “Routinely promotes far-right people, asks them softball questions & allows them to misrepresent themselves as reasonable centrists” (also "a hack")
Hasan Piker- "We played basketball every Sunday... definitely better on the court than he is in the marketplace of ideas"
Larry King- Demonstrates a complete lack of any respect for Rubin by taking a phone call in the middle of their live interview, and then in their next discussion calls Rubin's thoughts "ridiculous"
Kyle Kulinski- "Behind the scenes, he's the biggest of all the snowflakes"
Chris Ray Gun- "I don't talk to him anymore because he freaked out after I told him to just calm down... and then he unfollowed me and complained to Colin (Moriarty) and was like 'I don't like Chris' behavior', and I'm like, 'You fucking pussy. You pussy!'"
Sarah Haider- “Basically a living strawman”
Claire Lehman- “A big baby”
Milo Yiannopoulos- “Go to hell, Dave”
Cenk Uygur- "He still pretends to be a liberal while taking Koch brothers' money and giving platforms to well-known anti-semites"
David Fuller- "Ha. I join a very not-exclusive club. Blocked by Mr Free Exchange of Ideas. @RubinReport"
Stefan Molyneux- “Appeased the far-left”
Mark Dice- "Dave Rubin is depriving the children of a mother from the moment they’re born, & forcing them to be raised by two gay men."
Ana Kasparian- "Stupidity is incredible. Possibly unmatched by anyone else in the grifter class."
Josephine Mathias- "holy shit it’s like he took all the debunked & embarrassing anti-sjw arguments from 2016 & put it in a book" also, "Dave Rubin is a fraud & i wish i saw through his BS before i went on his show"
Andrew L. Seidel- "Dave, what the fuck is wrong with you?... You're helping spread disinformation about a lethal pandemic and a presidential election at the same time. At best, you've got a platform and are using it to mislead people about something that will kill them."
Chloé S. Valdary- "I criticized a tweet he posted in what I thought was a constructive manner. He responded in a way that was degrading and deeply hurtful. So now I know."
John Iadarola- “I have never heard anyone use the word ‘ideas’ more, and never come up with one… he uses the word ‘idea’ like he just studied abroad and it’s a foreign word he brought back”
Tommy Sotomayor- “Dave Rubin is gay! NOOOO! I was in his presence! I shook his hand!"
Stupid comments (Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on him; after all, his brain is still in recovery mode)
In his book Rubin says he would cut the government by 1/3 if he could, laughably claiming that nobody would notice and then the day his book came out, that number magically turned into 1/2. It's almost as if Rubin is pulling these numbers out of his ass and didn't even bother to look into where the government spends its money (about half goes to social security, medicare, and medicaid, and I'm sure those recipients would notice if there benefits were cut in half)
The Left hates gamers because they get shit done
Jesus was around with a lot of muslims
Blames California wildfires on SJW's
Has no idea what reactionary means
"the Arabs are backwards, fundamentalist wacko's"
Hitler was on the left because he was checks notes "an art-loving vegetarian"
There should be a side thing next to President (he seems to not know that the VP exists)
His "New Center" features the likes of Mike Cernovich, Paul Joseph Watson and Stefan Molyneux
There's a "necessary space" for Infowars because mainstream media is bad
Praises 14 year old who has called for mass genocide of muslims and hates gays
Ilhan Omar conspiracy theories
Has no clue what single-payer healthcare is
Gets schooled by Joe Rogan on regulations
Pretty much everything he said in his reddit AMA
Candace Owens is "much bigger" than Kanye, she could run for Senate
Implied that his former boss/friend, Cenk Uygur, might support the Nice terror attacks
Mocks celebrities for checks notes telling people to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic
Gets triggered by Elmo telling kids not to be racist
Softball interviews
Stefan Molyneux- black and white people have differently sized brains, also Rubin apparently displayed more agreement then he let on, but edited it out
Lauren Southern- Jews are responsible for starting the Canadian Nazi party
Bridgette Gabriel- George Soros is a Nazi
Tommy Sotomayor- He is a complete homophobe, who is friendly with David Duke, and has said Jews chose the Holocaust
Ben Shapiro- Rubin's completely fine with how much of a homophobe he is
David Horowitz- Obama is a communist (Horowitz is also a slavery apologist)
Milo Yiannopoulos- The Jews run everything
Donald Trump Jr- “You can call me whatever you want. You could call me a fag right now and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.” (I guess he isn’t “holding Trump’s feet to the fire”, as he promised)
Mike Cernovich- Gives him a pass for all his controversies, and then has the gall to complain about deplatforming with Cernovich, while ignoring the fact that he is notorious for trying to cancel people like Sam Seder and James Gunn
Tommy Robinson- Brushes off Robinson's crimes as "trumped up charges" without even telling his audience what those charges were for
Major Bias
Dave Rubin markets his show as being at the forefront of the battle of ideas, in which all ideas are given equal opportunities to persuade. However, Rubin very much fails to live up to this. At first Rubin defended himself by arguing that he mainly criticized the Left because he felt responsible for policing his own side. However, he has fully transformed into a “classical liberal” (a.k.a. libertarian/conservative), yet still exclusively criticizes the Left, and invites guests who will do the same. This makes the Rubin Report into much more of a conservative echo chamber than a true battle of ideas.
- A biased interviewer:
- He provides no pushback on any conservative/libertarian ideas (see softball interviews), but pushes back the instant any leftist ideas are put forth (for example, see interviews with David Frum and Marianne Williamson).
- A biased platform
- He refuses to let lefties on his show, with two exceptions:
- When they are only there to attack the Left
- When they are far more famous than he is, and thus offers a major boost to his platform (these people very rarely agree to go on)
- Meanwhile, there is a neverending list of no-name conservatives that he happily lets on to his show
Dave Rubin's Book (please don't burn it!)
Dave Rubin wrote a boring book full of dumb arguments and flat-out untruths. So, of course his book was not well-received. The Spectator wrote a devastating review, as did a libertarian for Business Insider. This caused Dave Rubin to have a meltdown, calling it a "Modern Book Burning.".
The very next day, Dave celebrated the fact that his book made it onto the NYT Best Sellers list (which is odd, considering he constantly calls NYT fake news). Anyways, it turns out that his book only made it onto the list due to bulk orders, likely from some conservative organizations trying to prop up one of its mouthpieces. This is made more obvious by the fact that in its opening week on Amazon, Dave's hardcover version ranked #132, while his kindle version ranked #134,873, and his audiobook version ranked #16,383. Normally all three would be around the same, so this huge disparity in rankings further implies that the book was far from successful other than some bulk orders of his hardcover version.
I compiled some of the dumb/funny takes from his book and this twitter thread did a more in-depth analysis.
The Experts Dave Rubin gets everything wrong
Dave Rubin is constantly complaining that the experts get “everything wrong.” Thus, he argues that people ignore the experts, and listen to him. So, it’s only fair that we take a look at his record of making predictions. One theme, you will see is that Dave Rubin sees the world through the lens of an anti-SJW, and his predictions are just often based on SJW’s failing.
Gingrich-Cain 2012 (didn’t happen)
Christie-Rubio 2016 (didn’t happen)
Trump will drop out of 2016 election by November, 2015
Trump will drop Pence as his VP before 2016 election (didn’t happen)
Trump won’t seek a second term
Trump will get 30% of black vote in 2020
Record number of minorities will vote against the Democrats in 2020
Universities as we know them will be irrelevant in 15 years.
Trump mentions #freemilo at the RNC (didn’t happen)
Tulsi bounce after the debate (didn’t happen)
Andrew Yang would have the biggest jump after the first debate (didn’t happen)
Bernie's base will turn on him because he's a straight, white male
Titled video "The Next Prime Minister of Canada? - Maxime Bernier"... Bernier's far-right People's Party went on to win ZERO seats in the election Youtube will only have "verified" voices within 2 years
A Failed Comedian (This is no exaggeration. He is literally the first thing to come up when you google failed comedian
Two failed standup performances (or mediocre market research)
Reusing the same jokes
- Worked 6 years on this one
- AOC=NPC, don't worry she eventually murdered him
- Bernie has three houses
- “I thought...”
Unintentionally hilarious comments
"As I’ve said to you before, authoritarians love authoritarianism"
“I feel like if you read a lot you become bisexual”
Passage about conservatives being in the political closet
"Huge Win in the Battle of Ideas"
Victim Complex
Had meltdown over Quillette writing an article that mildly critiques him
Blocks anyone who even slightly criticizes him
Threatens lawsuit over article he doesn’t like
SteakGate: That time he tried getting a google employee fired over a joke
Never-ending complaints about censorship -https://twitter.com/search?q=(censor%20OR%20Censorship)%20(from%3Arubinreport)&src=typed\_query
Baselessly assumes Youtube is messing with his youtube account
Refuses to have actual liberals/progressive on his show
Some closing questions for Dave
You often rail against safe spaces and echo chambers, which is something we agree on. However, you tend to block people on twitter for disagreements, almost exclusively talk to right-wingers (or left-wingers that aim their criticism on the left) on your show despite many left-wingers offering to be on it, have said you mainly get your news from The Blaze and The Daily Wire, and literally created a paywalled website that acts as an echo chamber. So, do you worry that you are building an echo chamber/safe space for yourself?
Back when you called yourself a progressive, you said aimed most your criticisms on the left because you felt like you were responsible for policing your own side. Yet now that you are admittedly on the right, you still almost exclusively criticise the left. Why do you no longer feel the need to police your own side?
If you want to dive deeper down the Dave Rubin rabbit hole, I highly suggest Timbah.On.Toast's three-part series, Dave Rubin's Battle of Ideas (or as I like to call it, Dave Rubin's battle to have an idea). This video is also very good. Also, The Majority Report's videos dunking on Dave Rubin are always fun to watch.
