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The Rubin Report
Dave Rubin Invited by Biden School for Tense Discussion on the Future of Media & Journalism
01:01:08
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- [00:08]
Dave Rubin
Without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to David and Tara to talk about free speech and big ideas.
- [00:20]
Tara Palmeri
So where do we start? What made you decide to go into the new media space? Dave?
- [00:25]
Dave Rubin
Wow. You know, it's funny. I'm going to turn 49 next month, which doesn't seem that old to me. But when I show up at college campuses, I suddenly realize I'm not a teenager or in my 20s anymore. And you know, I grew up in the way that I'm sure many of you who are roughly my age grew up. You had, we had normal cable television and three channels, cbs, abc, NBC, and we had Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. And you kind of watched the Same news at 6:30 and all of those things. And the Overton window was kind of narrow, but we all sort of believed roughly the same things. Then of course, cable news comes along, the Internet comes along, and true crime. Yeah, all of it. Yeah, it all came and I started realizing, boy, you know, I'm watching all of these shows. I was always interested in politics. I studied poli sci in college and I was watching cnn and I would watch msnbc and I watch all these things. I thought, man, everything is making everyone dumber. Like, it just struck me that nothing was elevating the conversation. It seemed hyper controlled. There was nothing sort of clever. It was also a time when online stuff, when I started the Show Back in 2013, when everything was getting shorter also. So it was the time of Snapchat and Vine and a lot of things where suddenly we were doing six second videos, 10 second things. And I started realizing, boy, there are so many important things that we need to talk about. I just want to interview people. I want to sit down with someone and look them in the eye and have a conversation for an hour and maybe I'll agree and maybe I won't agree and that'll be just fine. And really it was at the beginning of that, it was just kind of me and Rogan doing it. Now basically everybody has a podcast. I'm pretty sure there are more podcasts than people at this point.
- [02:16]
Tara Palmeri
That's a fact, I believe.
- [02:19]
Dave Rubin
But we needed this sort of revolution to happen. I mean, you can look at this last election, it was clearly driven by so much of what's happening online. We needed to widen the conversations. We needed to widen that Overton window I was talking about. So really it was, I started the show really just because it was what I just felt. Let me do something that I want to watch and I want to Watch something that's a little more thoughtful, a little more interesting. And the fact that everyone's walking around with the phone in their pocket and would be able to access it. So it all. It was like the technology and the ideas kind of all came together at once.
- [02:51]
Tara Palmeri
The great thing about what we do now is there are no, like, bigger personalities. There are no dealings with the politics. Like, you are the politics of your company. I am the politics of my company. I report what I get. I don't ask anyone about it. No producers go in my ear and tell me what to say. They don't rewrite my copy. I don't have to go to an editor and say, this is what I'm writing today. I do what I want. And I've got to say, it's only been six weeks, and it's been amazing. It really has. And now that I'm on the other side, I'm exhausted, but it's like a thrilling type of exhaustion.
- [03:23]
Dave Rubin
Wow. You are six weeks in. The things that I could teach the wars that I have survived. Well, you know, one. One interesting distinction that Tara and I have is that Tara is an actual journalist. And, you know, a lot of people think I'm a journalist, or they'll write about me and say I'm a journalist. And I have never said that I am a journalist. I tell people what I believe. You can call me a whatever, whatever that you can call me an asshole. You can call me a commentator, you can call me whatever you want. But I tell people what I believe. And that's what I'm doing with my daily news show. And when I interview people, I try to basically extract the most truthful information through whoever I happen to be interviewing. But we spent a few minutes discussing what we wanted to talk about here tonight. And one of the things that I'm most interested in at the moment is as the podcast space and YouTube and rumble and all these places that you guys all get your news now. Now, as they're ascendant and clearly, clearly ascendant again, I think you can really connect the results of the last election to what has happened to the media. So as this side of it is kind of ascendant, and the mainstream media, cable news, is descendant. I mean, their numbers are just unbelievably terrible. And whatever numbers we do see from them are largely artificial anyway. I think there's an interesting moment now where it puts more responsibility on people like us and people that are independent to do. Do better journalism, to tell the truth better, because, you know, we're all going off into our little, you know, corridors of information. If I was to look at literally every one of your X feeds, it would probably look like we all live on a different planet. And the question is, how long can a society of about 350 million people, which is what we have here in America, how long can we function properly when our information is so catered to us on top of the fact that the algorithms are obviously very out of control? And we're just beginning to unfurl some of that, thanks to Elon. So we're really at a super interesting place right now with a completely new way of getting information, sharing information, and what that will do with our relationship to the truth. So that's something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
- [05:34]
Tara Palmeri
Absolutely. I mean, the Internet is basically a world full of red meat and blue meat, essentially. And the question is, like, where is the actual center? Where is the meat? Like, where's the truth in it all? And that is the. The space where I want to exist. Where that is my goal every single day is to get to the closest version of the truth. But I also, you know, it's very difficult because you have guests on, right? You have people on your show. You have to hold them to account. You have sources. And investigative journalism, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of resources, and it's hard to do that as an independent journalist, as I've seen. But I will say I there. It's a lot easier when you don't have as many voices sort of weighing in. You can really rely on your gut and you can go where you know the story is going, where you feel the story is going, not necessarily how someone thinks it's going to sell. But you're right. I mean, listen, it is. It's scary out there, the way that everything is twisted and you know. You know, if you. If you work on something for months and months and months and you publish it and no one clicks on it, did it ever happen? You know what I mean? So in some ways I understand, like, the packaging and I get it. I worked at the New York Post. It was all about packaging and headlines and. And getting people to click and look. And there is something to be said about it. It's just like it has become, you know, so divisive sometimes when you look at the. When you're on any of these apps and you're scrolling through my. My suggestion would be that people from opposite sides just sit down and like, and really talk openly and honestly and it doesn't really happen that frequently.
- [07:25]
Dave Rubin
It's true. Well, it's tricky. I think there's a little bit of an asymmetry there because for years, you know, for those of you that are a bit familiar with my own political evolution, I was a lefty, I was a progressive. I worked for the Young Turks Network, very far left network, for years, started waking up when really before it was called Wokeness. But what we now all know as Wokeness. I was waking up to what identity politics was and what was happening to the Democrat Party. And the people that I thought were liberal were really kind of acting the most illiberally. And I started interviewing people. I tried originally to interview people from all over the political map. And to your point, what I found very quickly was I could sit down, even though I was definitely on the more liberal side of things. I could sit down with people on the right that I was told were racist and Republicans only care about war, all these crazy notions, they hate women, hate gays, all this stuff. And I could suddenly sit down with Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager or Larry Elder or Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk, all of these people that were thought of as really hardcore, right? And what I found was they were always willing to sit there and smile and have a conversation as long as I was. And if I treated them with respect, they would treat me with respect. Not all of them, most of, I would say most of them, not everybody. And some of it has shifted. I mean, that was, you know, that was about 10 years ago. But what happened unfortunately was it became the more I started talking to some of those guys, even though I had disagreements with them, the death penalty on abortion, on a series of issues, the less the so called liberals were willing to talk to me, even though in many ways I had a lot more in common with them. And that's directly connected to, I think, the sort of hysteria around free speech, around all of the issues that I think we now have seen sort of burst forth in college campuses. And so that has become a problem. It's getting harder and harder, I think, to talk to people across the aisle, because in many cases it's your own people who will come after you. It's a very delicate balance. I hope we can get to it. I would. I had Ro Khanna, Democrat from you know, Silicon Valley, Cali last week on my show, Congressman, and he is the first Democrat I've had on basically in four years. And that's not for lack of trying. Actually, the last Democrat I had on him I had on before him was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. When he was running as a Democrat. And I said to him, I said to him, listen, by the end of this thing, I don't know if you're going to be a Republican, but I know you won't be a Democrat. And if you watch that video, you can see his eyes light up. And this is somebody who now is in, you know, in the administration. Somebody like Tulsi Gabbard was the previous Democrat. Before that, she's no longer a Democrat. So there is a bit of an imbalance between which side will talk to who.
- [10:08]
Tara Palmeri
It's changing, though.
- [10:09]
Dave Rubin
I hope so.
- [10:10]
Tara Palmeri
No, no, no, I'm telling you, it's changing.
- [10:12]
Unknown
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- [10:48]
Dave Rubin
Stay informed.
- [10:49]
Tara Palmeri
Okay, so you are right that the right was super willing to talk when they were the anti establishment. Okay? Charlie Kirk used to call me. He wanted to, you know, be in my column. He wanted me to write about his books. All of them. They were the anti establishment. They were ignored. They were retro, you know, and the establishment was. The mainstream media was the Democrats, right? But things have shifted now. You got, like I say this in the collective, you guys, but the Pod Bros, the maga, right, they're the establishment now. They have access to the White House. Jack Posowiec has better access to the White House than I do. I said it, okay? This group, and frankly, the Republican Party right now, they don't want to anger President Trump. And so they are less likely to go on podcasts. I know this because I had a podcast during the Biden administration and I had a podcast during the Trump years. During the Biden years, I could get any Republican on my show to get on there and they'll say they'll talk their book and I'll drill into them. But now that Trump's in power, people are afraid to go on shows and say the wrong things. Okay? And if you push them on what's going on. They're less interested. Now, Democrats are very happy to go on my show. And I'll tell you, in the last administration, it was not easy to book Democrats. It was really hard. Now they're like knocking down my door and I'm like, listen, I'm kind of less interested in talking to Democrats. I'm frankly more interested in talking to people from the right right now. Because having a conversation with them is frank. Is more interesting. They're the ones who have to take the hard questions because they're the ones in power. They're the people that we need to be hearing from. And I don't see them on TV as frequently anymore. I don't see them trying to do that. I mean, I just launched my podcast last week. You guys should all subscribe. The Tara Palmeri show. It was the Somebody's Gotta Win show before. But, you know, my first few guests were two Democrats. It was David Carville and, sorry, James Carville and David Hogg.
- [12:59]
Dave Rubin
They're going to morph into one person.
- [13:01]
Tara Palmeri
They will become one person. It's like a Benjamin Button situation. Yeah. And they duked it out and it was a great debate. Right. And then I had Laura Loomer on my show, which people were very, like, angry about that. I had her on the show, but I had to constantly remind them she has the president's ear. She convinced him to fire his national security apparatus, including his national security advisor. So I think she is definitely someone worthy of an interview, even if she is a conspiracy theorist. But for me, I'm like, I keep telling my team, we need to get more Republicans on the show. We need to get more Republicans on the show. And like I said last time I could get Trump's closest aides, they all came on. His deputy campaign adviser, now deputy chief of staff, was on my show. I got his pollster on my show. I got, I mean, literally any Republican on my show now that Trump's in power. No, they're the establishment.
- [13:57]
Dave Rubin
That's interesting. So it's interesting. Cuz I didn't know that. And we're having sort of an opposite problem there. So that, that actually speaks to something that I think is quite good.
- [14:04]
Tara Palmeri
That's why Ro Khanna's on your show. Yeah, that's why he's on.
- [14:07]
Dave Rubin
Well, it was, you know, I've debated him before and I think he's come off looking not particularly good in the debates. You know, he, in this last week when I had him on, I asked him about affirmative action. At colleges. And he basically. Which the Supreme Court of course reversed about two years ago, and he's still for it. And I was asking him if he thinks he happens to be Indian American, if he thinks his own children should be discriminated against in admissions. And he in a very sort of mealy mouth way, basically said yes. And I thought that was rather extraordinary. But I give the guy. So the point of that is I don't think he came off looking great. But I give anyone credit that is willing to go up against someone that is at odds with them ideologically. You know, interestingly, to your point also, is that part of the. One of the memes that came out of the last election was that the right has this ecosystem online right now, right? So there's Rogan and there's me and Shapiro and whoever else is, and Tucker and whoever else is out there. And the right has this ecosystem and the left sort of doesn't. And what happened there. And it's like, man, you guys had everybody.
- [15:14]
Tara Palmeri
That's the thing.
- [15:15]
Dave Rubin
You guys had Rogan. Rogan is a pot smoking, mushroom eating, MMA fighting. Like, the guy is definitely not a traditional conservative by any stretch. But the hysteria, I think particularly around Covid and a few other things, and the inability for people to speak freely and honestly about things, it basically drove all of these people who would, I think in normal times be moderate, to a little bit left. It all drove them to the, if you want to call it the right wing ecosystem or something like that.
- [15:47]
Tara Palmeri
I think that the conservatives had to create an ecosystem, if you want to call it that.
- [15:52]
Dave Rubin
Oh, had we had to.
- [15:53]
Tara Palmeri
I mean, yeah, they had to do this many, many years ago because they just weren't represented in the mainstream media. And frankly, you know, as a reporter, I mean, up until now, Republicans were always like more than happy to sit for interviews. They just wanted to be out there. They liked sparring, like they were just happy to have. And even like off the record, on background, I found them to be much less touchy and less, much less pushy. Whereas, like, especially like Democratic administrations, you would get the nastiest phone calls from the press secretaries or the deputy press secretaries. Like, I didn't like that word you used. I would never get a call like that from a Republican. They'd just be happy to be covered because they felt like they had this grip on the Democratic part, I mean, on the mainstream media, like as if the mainstream media was an extension of them. And I think right now Democrats are sitting on their heels and they're like Whoa. The world has changed so much. And they've been told from a upon high. Ken Martin, the DNC chair, get out there, get your gloves on, start fighting the right. Like, start getting out there and creating content. The problem is their content doesn't, like, feel great. But I will say this, and don't take this the wrong way, and this doesn't reflect you, but I'm starting to think that it's really hard to defend an administration. Like, it's really hard to be a part of the establishment. And I think that the right wing's content is starting to get lamer because they are no longer anti establishment, they are alt establishment or whatever. But so it's like, how can Joe Rogan be cool if he's gonna be up there being like, yeah, that was a good idea by Trump. Nobody wants to hear that all day long.
- [17:33]
Dave Rubin
Right. So that's.
- [17:33]
Tara Palmeri
People want like a little bit of flavor. They want some rage.
- [17:37]
Dave Rubin
Sure. So there's a distinction, I think, between like, sort of what's cool and then what's true. Right.
- [17:42]
Tara Palmeri
Provocative though, right?
- [17:43]
Dave Rubin
Sure. So what's cool? Yeah. Like, if you just think about COVID when people started waking up and started questioning that masks don't work or that we were promised, if you get the vaccine, you won't get nor transmit Covid, which was pushed across everything. We don't have to go into all the litany of lies or confusions. Let's say that we were pushed by politicians and media and everything else, including.
- [18:06]
Tara Palmeri
The Trump administration, who told us to work.
- [18:08]
Dave Rubin
Sure, everybody. It was across. They did warp speed, of course, so it was across the board. But suddenly you could go on shows and talk about these subversive things. Right. You could talk about the fact that maybe you weren't vaxxed, or that it didn't make sense about masks or this or that or the other thing. And Covid's just an easy example of it. But there's many examples of this, very fine people on both sides, which the entire machine told us. Donald Trump said after Charlottesville, and the next sentence out of his mouth was, no, I'm not talking about the white supremacists or the neo Nazis. And they ran with that for years. We can do many examples. So you could go on these shows and talk about these things. And you're right, it felt subversive because it was like, oh, that's the reverse of what CNN or MSNBC or ABC is doing.
- [18:49]
Tara Palmeri
It was what everyone was thinking and.
- [18:51]
Dave Rubin
It was what everyone was thinking. So now that what has flipped now and it is a challenge, I would say is that it's not necessarily cool to be to cool. If cool is what you're going for. It's not necessarily cool to be like, oh, the administration is redoing trade deals. That's pretty good. Good. No, like it's not the coolest thing. But I have no problem defending most of what I would say the administration is doing because I think it's the right thing to do. It may not be the cool thing to do, but I think it's okay.
- [19:17]
Tara Palmeri
Getting. Having a bunch of right leaning influencers showing up at the White House taking Epstein binders that say classified on them and when you open them up, I know this because I covered, I've covered this. They were literal props, these right leaning influencers on the, you know, on the White House steps holding onto binders that say classified Epstein. They were Virginia Giuffre's court documents. They are public for everyone to see. There was nothing in there that was classified. And they looked to me like props. If, if the Biden administration did that, I mean they did do, they did meet with influencers on the left, I'm not gonna lie. But that just seemed so staged. And if it was just like, how do you have any credibility at that point? You can't carry water for the administration, any administration.
- [20:09]
Dave Rubin
Well, I don't know if you're asking me or those people. I mean, I. No, optically it was terrible. I mean it looked ridiculous. They were standing there smiling outside of the White House and it was like, well, what is in these documents? And even if there was some smoking gun in there, it's a pretty horrible thing that they're covering. So the idea of these people standing up there and smiling is kind of ridiculous. But look like any administration, they're going to have some wins and some losses and some are going to hit and some aren't.
- [20:31]
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- [21:10]
Tara Palmeri
I don't think it's a win or. I'm not talking about the Trump administration. Win or loss. Like, I have a lot of thoughts on the Epstein thing, which are totally separate. I just think it's the whole idea of that media ecosystem. How do they live in a world where, like, they are getting invited to the White House for their separate media briefing? Which. Listen, I think that the White House briefing room needs to be blown up completely. Should, like, turn into a stadium or something, and people should be. You should have representatives from the Rubin Report there. You have a bigger audience than the cable shows.
- [21:42]
Dave Rubin
Like you said, you've been invited. I just haven't made it.
- [21:44]
Tara Palmeri
Exactly. And I, frankly, as a reporter. Well, first of all, I'm not even gonna go there right now because I've had enough headaches. But as a reporter, I found it to be not that useful to be in the White House briefing room asking questions because it was highly performative. As an investigative reporter, I would be on the outside calling people who have information, who are actually willing to talk and give me information. But inside the White House, it's a moment for the people who are being filmed to ask a question seem tough, joust with the press secretary, and maybe get it into their news package. Right. If you have a really big scoop, you're not gonna announce in the middle of the press office, like, can you please comment on this amazing scoop I'm about to break later? No. You go into the White House press secretary's office and you drop it on them like a bomb, or you call them later. It's just not how it works. So this whole, like, fight for the I need to be in the press briefing room. It's really about performative. It's performative. It's about optics. But I do think that, like, it's time to, like, we need to change how it works. Podcasts are huge. This is bigger than regular, you know, the media. I don't even like to call it new media because it's not new media anymore. It's old media. And I just think that this whole idea of, like, okay, we're have two different briefings. Like, this is the good people briefing, and this is the bad people briefing.
- [23:01]
Dave Rubin
Are they having two literal. Two different briefings?
- [23:04]
Tara Palmeri
They have, yeah. And Sean Spicer sat at the front row of one of them, which was kind of trippy.
- [23:11]
Dave Rubin
That's a strange hero's arc, I guess, for him.
- [23:13]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah. And his question to Caroline Levitt was or leave it, love it was. How can you let these other reporters in your briefing room? Like, how can. It was something along those lines, like, how can you take questions from the mainstream media?
- [23:27]
Dave Rubin
Well, I guess really what you're getting down to is we're in an incredible transition phase right now. Again, it gets to watching an old machine that is sort of at its end. It really is. I mean, the only time that I ever really watch any mainstream media is when I'm on the plane. And it's usually I can barely deal with it for more than a minute, but sometimes, you know, somebody's TV will be on next to you and, you know, your eye just kind of goes there the whole time. You don't even have to have the audio, but just reading the Chirons on the bottom, you just realize how nonsensical it all is. And there's a machine that I think is basically dying. It's sort of like a dinosaur slowly, you know, sinking into the La Brea Tar Pits. And then you have these new media or whatever phrase we want to use, people jumping over them. But some of them will end up being as swampy as those guys, for sure.
- [24:15]
Tara Palmeri
Most of them already are by this chance.
- [24:17]
Dave Rubin
Absolutely. And again, that partly also is why I've been invited several times, including last week, and I haven't gone. And again, why I don't consider myself a journalist. I would rather have a little distance with all of these things. I think one of the challenges for sure, that I've come up against is that when you interview all of these people all the time and you break bread with them and you go out with them and you meet their kids or my show. I've been running my show out of my house for 10 years. I was doing it, or 15 years almost, way before everyone at Home Studios. And these people would come in and they'd play with my dog and all these things, and then suddenly, two weeks later, I'd see them saying something completely insane. And there'd be a little part of me like, ah, you know, I kind of. I like them. I don't want to go and just wreck them. So I think it starts creating all of these competing interests.
- [24:59]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, totally.
- [25:00]
Dave Rubin
And that's partly why they call it the swamp. It's why they call it the swamp.
- [25:05]
Tara Palmeri
The sponsorships, the advertising, a lot of it comes from public affairs firms. They're all connected. It is a swamp. And the kids go to the same schools and the sourcing and. And yeah, I mean, the salon, like, I mean, I used to always write about the Cafe Milano scene and how really everybody there, even though they were from different parties, they were all the same. You know, that's, that's the thing about Washington. It was like everybody. I also don't live in Washington and, and I find that it's better for my reporting in a weird way. I drop in and then I leave and people don't even know that I live in New York because. But the truth is like, I don't. It's better. I don't want to have to think about. I don't want my friendship circles to revolve around my work. I don't want to feel in any way encumbered by it. I'd rather, you know, I'd rather do my work and drop in, take my source meetings. And frankly, I will tell you this, a really good source never wants to be seen with you. They don't want to see you at lunch. They don't want to see you anywhere. Because if they're really going to tell you something, it's like they're going to call you, they're going to go on signal, you know, it's going to be something like that. So I do think that it's worth it to go there and meet people and do that. And I'll go to events, don't get me wrong. I mean, I'll go there to network and to get people's cards. But I think if you are truly a swamp creature, it's hard to not, not like, be one, right?
- [26:31]
Dave Rubin
No, it's very hard. Look, I mean, you could see the media now running cover for so many things that it was complicit in. That's part of what the swamp is. I mean, one of them. I suppose it's slightly uncomfortable to talk about here if. But if you were to look at the media's coverage, or I would say lack thereof, of the former president's mental state for at least four years while he was president, and really before that, they ran cover for it and pretended it wasn't happening. And again, that drove all of these people who were awake, who could see what was going on, that drove them to shows like mine where we were showing these clips. So, you know, CNN would say these are. They're showing cheap fakes or deep fakes of the president, you know, and then we'd show the entire thing and then people would share that and then that disconnect would get wider and wider. And I think now you see somebody like Jake Tapper, who was completely part Of. And Jen Psaki just in the last two or three days said she never saw the President have any sort of mental problem until the night of the debate. And it's like, that simply cannot be true. And now Jake's writing a book about it and she's got a show on msnbc. And that's kind of how the swamp recalibrates in a. Yeah, I mean, they.
- [27:46]
Tara Palmeri
Know they have to do some sort of atonement. And I think, I think it's not so much this whole idea of like the former president's mental state. It was more about the age thing. No one was allowed to talk about how old the former president was. And it was just like that. And it was uncomfortable, it was impolite, it was not polite society. And that trickled down from the top, you know, the top editors, because editors in chief and the bureau chief's down. And if you brought it up, it was like, you're right, you were like a right wing dweller. You know, you were in the troll. And it really should have been a question that came up frequently, especially when just you could listen. You're never going to know from the doctor's reports exactly what type of condition a person truly is in. But when a person is 80 years old, and this is not to be an ageist either, you have the right to ask questions about them in the same way, like, President Trump is getting older, and as he gets older, I hope that they do the same thing to him too. But yeah, there was, it was just, it was impolite. And if you asked about it, and also the White House was extremely aggressive. If you went there, they would punish you. They would like, they had an extremely sophisticated communications apparatus because they knew how to control the town. And here's the other thing that happens when you're in a White House press. I used to be an ABC White House correspondent. I was the one at Politico as well, and even at PUC and Covering Playbook, which is like the pretty big newsletter in Washington, they know how to isolate you within the press corps and they know how to make your life very difficult and how to cut off your access. And because there was such limited access already to Joe Biden, they could really, really control the story by keeping all of the reporters away from the President. And so that was a really, that was, that was a way to control the story, too. And then also isolating that reporter from stories from. I mean, the way that they controlled the press was like, it was incredible.
- [29:55]
Dave Rubin
I mean, and by the way, what We've barely touched on there. I mean then there was, especially as it relates to Covid was then the big tech element of it it where we now know. I mean there have been dozens of reports on this. Jim Jordan released a huge report on this. The government was colluding with big tech for sure, 100% with YouTube, with Facebook, with former X Twitter to silence people based on free speech. Jim Jordan showed me the documents. I had a tweet that came out in the summer of I think it was 2021 saying that mandates were coming and the vaccines were not working as promised. I was suspended from Twitter and Jim Jordan showed me that there were communications going back and forth with the administration. Psaki admitted that when she was press secretary that I think what did she say? We have backdoor communications with the big tech company, something to that effect. So what all of that did to connect it to what we're talking about here with new media, what all of that did was it just drove all of you guys to find other people that were having decent conversations about things. One of the reasons that I didn't go crazy during COVID and I was never demanding that my employees be vaxxed or masked or whatever. And after two weeks I'm very proud of my Covid record because they said two weeks to slow the spread. And on day 15 I was like, I'm done with this. I knew something was wrong. But one of the real reasons that I didn't go crazy was the first guy that I put on my show to discuss Covid was a little known Stanford professor known as Jay Bhattacharya and he's now the head of nih. And he just kept saying calm down and we have to see where this all pans out. But he was the type of person that couldn't get on mainstream media at all. They were putting on a lot of people that were often lobbyists and connected to Pfizer and everything else. And then you'd watch Meet the Press and they'd cut to, you know, Chuck Todd would throw to commercial and then they would show you the brought to you by Pfizer. And it was like people started waking up. And that kind of leads us us to this new, this new horizon that we're in right now.
- [31:52]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I think at this point the institutions have lost all credibility and people are looking towards human beings who are, you know, that can draw an audience that have trust, that have credibility, that have a community based on trust.
- [32:10]
Unknown
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- [32:52]
Dave Rubin
That's get b a r e bars dot com.
- [32:57]
Tara Palmeri
There's just so much, like, mystery behind how news is actually, like, derived and where it comes from. And I think it's caused a lot of distrust and like. And like you said, the institutions have done nothing to help themselves. But maybe this is a way to build it back up.
- [33:12]
Dave Rubin
Well, the other part of that, of course, is that people have just become smarter. I mean, you know, it seems like we're in a time where everyone's getting dumber. And that's probably true to some extent, but people that pay attention to the news, I think have become much more savvy. So if you look at any New York Times, literally take the New York Times from today. I didn't look at it, but I'm sure that I'm right about this. If you look at the COVID stories on the New York Times, there will be multiple anonymously sourced articles. Multiple. And if you watch cnn, there is no doubt that Dana Bash today said a source on Capitol Hill told me these are often completely fictitious, made up people.
- [33:45]
Tara Palmeri
I don't think that.
- [33:46]
Dave Rubin
Oh, I. Absolutely. Well, that would be interesting to know.
- [33:48]
Tara Palmeri
No, because I know Dana and I. That's not true. Like, I know that she would not make up a source.
- [33:53]
Dave Rubin
I'm not a big fan of Dana Bash. All right, so forget.
- [33:56]
Tara Palmeri
You may not like her, but I know her and she would not make up.
- [34:00]
Dave Rubin
All right, so forget Dana Bash then. No, no, no.
- [34:02]
Tara Palmeri
I don't think you can say that about these journalists. Like, I know these people. I have been in scrums.
- [34:06]
Dave Rubin
I don't consider. I don't consider Dana Bash a journalist. She's a Democrat activist who works at cnn.
- [34:11]
Tara Palmeri
You can have your opinions about where you think she leans, but if you say to me she's making something up, like, I will. I will stand My ground and say no to that. Because I see these people in those scrums. I see them talking to the same people that I talk to. I know they know them. I see their phones. I know who they're talking to.
- [34:31]
Dave Rubin
Yeah, I don't want to get lost in that.
- [34:33]
Tara Palmeri
I mean, she literally made a story about me, but it doesn't mean it's not a source.
- [34:37]
Dave Rubin
Yeah. All right.
- [34:38]
Tara Palmeri
Okay.
- [34:38]
Dave Rubin
I think. Let's put it this way. Let's punt the Dana Bash thing. Let's put it this way. Anonymous sources for any of you that are going to school here at the University of Delaware, I'm fairly certain for your political science class or your history class, you wouldn't be allowed to say, oh, a source at the commissary told me so. We have asked so little out of these people. And the thing is, I can accept anonymous sourcing at some level. Of course, you need whistleblowers. You need people that can expose the truth. Of course, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any be, but at some point when the institutions that clearly you believe, and I think most people here believe, have failed us so terribly, at some point when they failed, I did.
- [35:19]
Tara Palmeri
Not believe in the institution. I believe in the people. I know these people. Now, do I believe as a.
- [35:25]
Dave Rubin
Well, the people are the things that make the institution.
- [35:27]
Tara Palmeri
There are. Institution is just a building within an institution, but they are not the full institution themselves.
- [35:33]
Dave Rubin
I mean, well, sure, some people are worse than others, of course, and often.
- [35:37]
Tara Palmeri
Individual people who are trying to do the right thing, they get the stain of the institution on them. And that's a fact. And you worked at the Turk. You said when you worked at Young Turks, you weren't happy about it. Am I supposed to think forever? Oh, can't believe anything he says, you know?
- [35:51]
Dave Rubin
No, but again, I'm punting Dana Bash. Dana Bash, it seems fairly obvious to me, is a Democrat, like Jake Tapper is a Democrat, like Wolf Blitzer is a Democrat. I mean, there's nobody on CNN that's not a Democrat except for Scott Jennings, which is why he goes on every show. He's not a journalist. But I don't think he. But I don't think he's purporting to be a journalist. The difference is Dana's purporting to be.
- [36:13]
Tara Palmeri
A journalist, but he. Jake is also saying, hey, I make. I'm making. I'm doing reporting. I'm calling people. I just got the flag, though. Scott is. Scott is a pundit. Scott says inflammatory things on TV to.
- [36:27]
Dave Rubin
Well, I don't know if they're inflammatory. He says. He says true things to people that seem unable to debate him.
- [36:32]
Tara Palmeri
Great faces, though. You got to. You got to give it to him for that.
- [36:34]
Dave Rubin
Oh, I think he's doing great. I mean, they put him up against people that don't know how to debate, and he just says some pretty obvious stuff, and it's fantastic.
- [36:42]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, we have to do Q and A, right? Okay, guys. Anyone have any questions?
- [36:49]
Dave Rubin
What are your thoughts on Dana Bash? Everybody let us know.
- [36:51]
Tara Palmeri
No bashing right now. Good evening.
- [36:53]
Unknown
Thank you for joining us and for a spirited conversation. As someone who was works in communications, it's often the times when the interview is over that you hear the real truth, that people are willing to divulge information about what you were discussing that they might not have said on camera. Do you find that to still be true in your work? And if so, are there lessons that you can share with the students here about how to handle those pieces, keep.
- [37:25]
Tara Palmeri
The cameras rolling and always keep rolling? No, but that's really true. And that's. It kind of goes back to the whole idea of anonymous sources because it's true. What people often say publicly is the farthest thing from the truth. And that's what really bothers me. And that's part of the reason why I do rely on anonymous sources, because I fear that if we take everything that people say on the record, especially politicians, come on, we're lost. And I wish everyone had the guts and the courage to be honest and to speak truly on the record, but they don't. And sometimes you need information, and the only way you're gonna get it is from someone who is on background or off the record giving you a tip to follow something. And I can't. Like, I can't tell someone who's, you know, working in an agency where there's some sort of corruption going on to, like, okay, you have to speak out as a whistleblower and quit your job. They've got, you know, three kids, single mom. You know, it's just like. But then they're just cowards. Cowards, Usually politicians that just won't say what they really think on the record. They rather just say their talking points and. And project whoever they are. And. And for that, I think we need to be tougher on those people. I think we should keep rolling. I think, you know, you don't want to stop that conversation from happening. And those people, they should be pressed on the record. And that would be my advice for that.
- [38:51]
Dave Rubin
I would say as an interviewer, I mean, my general philosophy is you catch more flies with honey. So if, you know, if you want to, if there's something that somebody says, you know, off camera that they won't say on camera, or you see a real disconnect between their public and private parts of themselves, or you just know there's some topic they don't want you to touch or something. I mean, I find if you, if you actually start letting them speak and you just kind of massage the conversation in a pleasant way without attacking them, that eventually you might just get there. You kind of won't always get there. But I can tell you some of the best moments of my show over the last 15 years have been when I've had someone on who I was a little suspect of what they thought or I didn't really think they knew what they were saying. Or maybe there was that public, private chasm, let's say, and you can kind of slowly watch them wrap the ropes, rope around their neck and then you have to hope that your audience is wise enough to catch it. And I will tell you that in a time of X where everything gets clipped and shared, like if they screw up something, if there's some daylight there between, you know, what they're thinking and what they're saying, people do catch on to it. So I don't, I don't know that there's a perfect methodology there, but I think that's probably the best way to do it.
- [40:01]
Tara Palmeri
I agree with you on that. There is a. Each person that you interview should be handled differently. Some people, if you give them enough rope, they will hang themselves.
- [40:11]
Unknown
So with belief, I think authenticity is really important as well as non commitment, being open to changing your mind. And you all are building in some ways a brand as an influencer, if those values are important to you, how do you go about maintaining your authenticity and being uncommitted while sort of of have building a fan base? And how do you instill those values in your fans so that they become sort of engaged Americans, not just engaged to your show?
- [40:47]
Dave Rubin
So that's a great question. I mean, as I said before, I don't consider myself a journalist. I tell people what I think and I think that, that now what I've learned after cultivating an audience for so many years is that that is now shown back to me by my audience audience. If you look at my comment section, for example, it's really thoughtful. There are trolls in there for sure and there's fighting and all that stuff. But relative to what goes on in the political space. I think because I've cultivated and nurtured an audience that is willing to agree to disagree. And. And actually, my audience. And I'm very proud of this. Most people in our space aren't proud of this. My audience skews a little bit older and a little bit more female than most political political shows because politics is very young and very male. Mine happens to be a little more the other way, and I love that for whatever reason that that presented itself. So I think if you are authentic, your audience will be authentic back to you, and they will spread it to other people looking for that. You know, we. There's a million. I don't need to throw any. Anybody under the bus here, but There's a million YouTubers or podcasters or whatever that are just literally waking up every day, like, what is the story that I can burn everything down with? And whatever. And by the way, we're all subjected to some of that. The YouTube algorithm. You have to play a certain game or your views. You know, I have 3 million subscribers on YouTube. I still have to play a stupid game with titles and thumbnails and things, because otherwise your videos just don't get out there. So there's no. There's no perfect way to do this if you want to. If you want to be seen, actually. But I think the best thing that you can do, I mean, the question I get more than anything else is basically from people about your age. Like, I want to do what you do. And it's like. Like, just start doing it. Just start doing it. And if you have something in you, there's something in you that is unique to you. And if you do that honestly and forthrightly and. And 1. And don't pay attention to the numbers, but two weeks from now, you'll do one video, it'll have 50 views, and then maybe the next one has 100, then the next one's got 30, but then something's gonna have 2000. And then it starts snowballing, and then the audience will expect a certain something from you. So I think it starts. It actually starts becoming a very symbiotic relationship with you and your audience. And that's why I'm. So. When I meet my audience, when I meet people out and about, when people say hi to me, I'm not afraid that they're like crazy lunatics, like, always, almost without fail, I'm like, oh, these people would be my friends in real life. And some of them have become my friends. So I think it's just, be who you are, put it out there and let the chips fall where they may.
- [43:12]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I mean, I'm still new to the fan base world because I've mainly been writing. And yeah, I have a podcast, but I haven't really been thinking about, like, nurturing an audience. But now that I do have a YouTube page and I'm out on my own as an independent journalist, I do have to have followers. Like, I have to have people who are like, I want to go to you, Tara Palmieri, over a number of other people, maybe even the New York Times or various other places. And I think it's really important, and you've done this too, in your career and your life in is to evolve, to accept responsibility when you get something wrong. You know, Alex Thompson, he's a journalist from Axios. He accepted an award at the White House Correspondents Dinner. And he actually said, like, you know, the best thing that we can do as journalists is to admit when we are wrong. And I think, like, that was really profound. And I think, like, having that authenticity, that vulnerability too, and honesty and explain, like, you know what? I thought this was the right thing at the time. Maybe my sources were wrong or I interpreted it the wrong way, or it evolved. And just being open with people, I think if they understand, like, you're a human being, like they are, and you're just trying to do the best version of your job that you can do for them, I think that there's a way to do it. Now, I'm still new to this. Maybe people are less forgiving than that. I seem to have, you know, some followers that like my work. I think they kind of. I think they appreciate that. I try to get people on from both sides of the aisle, and then I'm not really kind of interested in talking to people that have the same ideas that I do or the same thoughts that I do. And I don't know, we'll see how it works out. If it doesn't work out, I guess I'll do something else with my life.
- [44:56]
Unknown
In the attention economy, do you see any room or hope for moderation? Or do you feel like it's the type of ecosystem that drives us further apart?
- [45:05]
Dave Rubin
This is tricky. I mean, I think that's been a little bit of the subtext of what we've been talking about up here. It's really tricky. I mean, I can tell you that obviously, like, one thing that's very obvious. If you go out there and you just throw bombs at everybody and you're trying to destroy everybody and, you know, conservative destroys libtard. And you put it all in capitals, like, of course they're gonna click on that. Like there's so many. All the pressures with the algorithm and everything else are designed to separate us and make us angrier and all of those things. And I don't even know that that's like an inherently coordinated assault. I think it's actually mapping behaviors that we all have in our own life. And now the algorithm is just showing us a part of ourselves that we didn't necessarily see before. I would say part of the problem also is that there's a. And this has been a big discussion online over the last of years, couple, couple weeks. Jordan Peterson brought it up a couple weeks ago on Joe Rogan's show. You know, anonymity online has created some problems too, because again, I'm for anonymous sources. I'm for, with, with good reason. And everyone. You can have burner accounts and all of those things. But what happens is we have a huge amount of people, especially young people, that are gaming the system, that are creating multiple accounts, that the second you tweet something, if you tweet something sort of benign or thoughtful, immediately get in there and say horrible things on top of the countries, the foreign countries that are doing it, the bots that are doing and all these things. So the conversation has just become so dysregulating. So one of the things I've really been trying to figure out, I talk to my, my team about this all the time lately, is I know if I get into a little spat with someone on Twitter, my audience, as I mentioned a moment ago, my audience isn't that ready to just like burn the world down and fight with everybody and everything else. They kind of want to think it through. But if I'm arguing with somebody that is in more of that space, there's no win there. This thing is just going to burn down everybody and it's going to turn off all of my people too. So I don't know exactly how you arbitrage those things again. I do think over time there is something. I mean this sort of literally and spiritually, I suppose. I think there is something in humans that orient us towards the truth over time. And we may just be in a time as these institutions crumble and new media rises. That's partly why everything feels kind of crazy right now. Social media, we're all walking around the world in our pocket for 20 years. What that has done to our brains and endless doom scrolling and all of these things. It is just the world is so fundamentally different in 2025 than it was 30 years ago. It's literally unimaginable. I mean, 30 years ago it was 1995. It's unimaginably different. The world and how we're going to do all of this and then get it to a place. I forget the phrase you use, but how do we get it to a place. Place where there's sort of some comfortable middle that gets us all like, oh, America's pretty good. And yeah, you're allowed to be crazy that way and crazy this way. I don't know what ties that together, but I think that's. That really is. I would say it's the great challenge for people like us, but it's the great challenge for everybody, really, because we all have to live in this.
- [47:59]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it is. It's hard to break through in the attention economy without having provocative content essentially. Right. I personally don't like to watch people fighting as much. It's just not my style. And I think that there are other humans out there like me. I like debate, but I don't like nasty fighting, name calling just for the sake of it actually, like kind of like resolution sometimes if there is debate, like, I want people to feel like they came out of it understanding the other person a little bit more. Maybe that there isn't a market for that. Maybe everyone wants to watch a wrestling match. I don't know. You know, I'm. I'm still new to that, this, but I believe that of the 800 million people on YouTube, there have got to be at least a slice of them that are like me and that are like minded. And I think that's the cool thing about this space too. Like, maybe I'm not going to crush it with like 20 million, you know, followers or this and that. I, I'm. I go to silent retreats, you know, I put my phone away for a month. Seriously, I, that's like, that's how I think. I'm a pacifist. So I really, even though I'm obviously a sassy Jersey girl at the same time time, you know, I still, I, I'm not, I'm not the type of person that would just like do it just to, you know, create, to foment anger in people. Like, I actually hope that even if there is anger in entertainment, you ended up walking away with understanding and a little bit more peace and liking other people a little bit more.
- [49:16]
Dave Rubin
I would highly recommend if you haven't seen a Jordan on Rogan's podcast from like two weeks ago. Because Jordan, who's a clinical psychologist first, before he became, I would, I would say a modern prophet, basically, he really got into the psychological elements that are driving so much of this. We think so much of the fighting is about politics. Like it's Democrats versus Republicans and conservative versus Liberals. But there's really a psychological condition that has gripped us and it's amplified online again because of anonymity, because of virality and all of those things. And it's really, really worth watching.
- [49:49]
Unknown
Hi. I'm worried about the lack of accountability that exists in the alternative media space. I think it's a good thing, that random example when Tucker Carlson knowingly and maliciously lies about details of the Dominion voting system case as what happened in 2021, he gets fired. Because I think that in this country we should value transparency and fairness and accuracy in our media. If somebody like Dana Bash unknowingly received a large sum of money from a foreign Democrat alliance state funded media, I would trust that cnn, even if she did it unknowingly, would fire her. Traditional media has professional standards that are followed to frame traditional media as this cabal of liars who are knowingly hiding things about the previous administration. Well, we don't have evidence of that. I mean.
- [50:39]
Dave Rubin
Well, we do have evidence the alternative.
- [50:41]
Unknown
Media space can be biased. They often are and they get away with it. How many times does Joe Rogan have to apologize for spreading misinformation on his podcast before the alternative media space reckons with the fact that there's a real accountability problem in it?
- [50:55]
Dave Rubin
Well, you're asking five different questions. But I would say, well, I don't know that Rogan has ever apologized for having any conversation. I would say that this is a great challenge, actually, that now that as I said earlier, that we are ascendant and they are descendant, there is a new responsibility. I tell the truth to the best extent that I can on my show, period. I don't lie to my audience. I may get things wrong. I love making corrections on my show. My producer's back there. He knows, like if I get to correct myself in the middle of the show, it's like a joke to us. It's become, oh, I missed I got a number wrong or I mentioned the wrong name or the wrong date. And it's kind of fun to do that. I think it shows some accountability. But not everyone is going to do that. And if the answer that you're looking for is, oh, we should take out Rogan or Tucker shouldn't be allowed to be on YouTube or I shouldn't be allowed to be on Spotify or something like that. I mean, I'm not for censorship at that level. So, again, a lot of this, it relies. It falls on you as the viewer to have some discernment over who you're watching and who you're trusting. And that puts more of a responsibility on us to tell the truth.
- [52:05]
Tara Palmeri
I mean, that's pretty hard for the viewer to know that, especially when they're just getting fed things all day long. I mean, are they really going and seeing, like, okay, let Me Google this YouTube channel and then find out. You know, I agree with you. I, I personally, you know, a lot of people who are independent content creators, they accept money from political PACs. They don't tell anyone that they take money from the Republicans or they take money from the Democrats. And they say they're journalists, but they're not. You can't take money from a political pac. I mean, right now, my company is being funded by my substack, so it does not have very much money. Okay? And even, even I feel uncomfortable with taking money to advertise on my substack because, like, it's gonna be really, really, really, really hard to do this, and I don't even know that it will necessarily work. I shouldn't say that, but you know what I'm saying? Like, if I really want to do this, like, properly, I cannot take money. And if I do, I'll have advertisers eventually on my podcast, I'm sure, and I'll probably have to read some stuff, but I have some boundaries. Like, I'm not gonna read from pharmaceuticals. I'm not gonna read from big oil. I'm not gonna read from people that I know don't, just do not. Well, they don't align with me and what I stand for. But I absolutely am not going to read for a political pac. I'm not going to be funded by anyone political. In fact, as people have come to me and said, I want to invest in your company, and I've been very particular about that. I'm not even taking investment money right now. But if I do, there's going to be a Republican on the board, there's going to be a Democrat on the board, because, like, I don't want anyone to say that my news agency is in some, some way, you know, biased by who I report to. And that's why, frankly, I'd love for it to truly be independent and never have an investor, and it's just harder, it's slower. Not going to make any money for a while, but I don't know why not.
- [53:55]
Dave Rubin
I would also add one thing, which is that I think there seems to be a little confusion in general. Like, people seem to think that if you get institutional money, that somehow, if you work for MSNBC or, or CNN or New York Times, Washington Post, that somehow that money is somehow cleaner. Rachel Maddow, when the vaccine came out, went on her show and gave one of her, you know, very fake, I would say it's half written on the screen, but basically crying monologues saying that if you get the vaccine, you will not get nor transmit Covid. Now, she was either a liar or had no idea what she was saying or was paid to say that. I can't speak to what's going on in her mind. So I don't know what the answer to that is, but I know that I didn't do that. Now, Rachel Maddows paid $20 million a year. I'm pretty sure that's what her contract is. And now she.
- [54:40]
Tara Palmeri
Her production company is.
- [54:41]
Dave Rubin
But, yeah, her production company paid $20 million. I guarantee you that's more than the Rubin Report budget. I wish my budget was $20 million a year. But I would put my track record in terms of getting stories straight and telling them right against every one of these people, and I would come out looking like an absolute all star every single time. Somehow I didn't think that Brett Kavanaugh was a serial rapist. Somehow I didn't think that Kyle Rittenhouse was a racist white supremacist. Somehow I didn't tweet out that Jesse Smollett was hung and that proved that America was a white supremacist country. Somehow I didn't get very fine people wrong. Somehow I didn't get Covid wrong. Somehow I didn't get Trump Russia wrong. So. And again, I'm not even saying. I'm not even patting myself on the back to say it. I'm just saying I was watching things as they came by and analyzing them to the best of my ability. Where someone like Rachel Maddow, clearly, at that time, at the height of the craziness of COVID Pfizer, which is literally funding Meet the Press on NBC.
- [55:38]
Tara Palmeri
I've worked at those networks, so they don't tell you what to talk about based on your corporate.
- [55:42]
Dave Rubin
It doesn't mean that they sit you down and tell you. But Rachel had no. She either had. Well, so then, which. Which is it?
- [55:50]
Tara Palmeri
I think she's just.
- [55:51]
Dave Rubin
Well, then, is she a journalist? Just.
- [55:53]
Tara Palmeri
She's a commentator, frankly.
- [55:54]
Dave Rubin
She's a commentator. Oh, well. But I think if Rachel Maddow was up here, she would say she's a journalist. So if the idea is she's just.
- [55:59]
Tara Palmeri
Telling you she's a commentator, she's a liberal commentator. And I don't think she would say she's a journalist.
- [56:04]
Dave Rubin
Well, either way, I don't think she's particularly good at her job.
- [56:07]
Tara Palmeri
She's like, if Jennings got. Scott Jennings got his own show. That's what she is.
- [56:12]
Dave Rubin
Right. Well, but Scott, I think, would say it. I don't know if she would, but I love free speech. But I'm gonna stop it right now.