The Difference Between Writing Jokes for Bill Maher & Donald Trump | Evan Sayet

Summary

The Rubin Report: The Difference Between Writing Jokes for Bill Maher & Donald Trump | Evan Sayet

Release Date: May 9, 2025

In this engaging episode of The Rubin Report, host Dave Rubin sits down with guest Evan Sayet, an accomplished author, comedian, and conservative speaker. The conversation delves deep into the transformation of liberalism, the challenges faced by conservatives in modern America, and the intricate relationship between politics and comedy. Below is a comprehensive summary capturing all key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. The Evolution of Liberalism and Conservative Thought

Evan Sayet begins the discussion by reflecting on the decline of traditional liberalism. He emphasizes that true liberalism, which advocated for individual freedoms and democratic values, has shifted so far left that it now resides to the right of center. Sayet articulates this transformation by stating:

Evan Sayet [00:27]: "...how do you look at the Middle East and decide the problem isn't the homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic Islamic fascists? The problem's a tiny liberal democracy of Jews."

Rubin probes further, questioning why "good liberals" failed to counteract these shifts:

Dave Rubin [00:42]: "Why were the good liberals unable to push back against any of this?"

Sayet attributes this failure to aggressive leftist movements that systematically "cleansed the schools and the entertainment industry," combined with natural generational attrition. He recounts historical attempts by radicals in the 1960s to overthrow Western civilization, which ultimately failed because people recognized the relative prosperity and safety of America compared to other parts of the world.

Evan Sayet [04:08]: "They went underground and they went on what's called the long march through the institutions... They use the institutions to brainwash successive generations into being those warriors that they, they couldn't get earlier because they were educated by the real world."

This "long march" strategy has led to leftist dominance in academia, journalism, education, and entertainment, shaping societal norms and values over generations.

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2. Writing for Bill Maher vs. Donald Trump

A significant portion of the conversation centers around Sayet's unique experience of writing for both Bill Maher and Donald Trump. Sayet proudly notes:

Evan Sayet [00:54]: "I'm proudly the only person in the entire world who's written for both Maher and Trump."

Rubin is intrigued by the dichotomy and asks:

Dave Rubin [00:58]: "Tell me the difference between writing for Bill Maher and writing for Donald Trump."

Sayet explains that while Maher consistently delivered his written material effectively, Trump often deviated by adding unsolicited remarks, making it challenging for Sayet as a craftsman to maintain the integrity of his jokes.

Evan Sayet [11:28]: "Maher would more often say what I wrote... Trump said a lot of things I didn't write in between. It's heartbreaking and difficult sometimes."

Rubin adds a personal touch by sharing his experience of collecting insults from the President, highlighting the friction between their viewpoints.

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3. The Decline and Future of the Democratic Party

The discussion shifts to the current state of the Democratic Party, which Sayet describes as a "party of negation." He criticizes the party for focusing solely on what they are against rather than presenting affirmative policies:

Evan Sayet [13:35]: "You never hear anything in the affirmative from the political left. You only hear, he's a Nazi, he's a fascist, he's a homophobe, he's a xenophobe."

Sayet argues that this strategy has led to a lack of positive vision, making the party vulnerable to internal collapse or takeover by radicals. He envisions a future where conservatives must unify and reclaim the Republican Party from mislabels like "RINOs" (Republicans In Name Only).

Evan Sayet [16:47]: "Ultimately what needs to happen is for every sane person to come over to become a Republican... We cannot have a party with any chance of power that hates America."

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4. The Intersection of Politics and Comedy

Sayet and Rubin explore how comedy has become increasingly political. Sayet reminisces about the days when comedians like Johnny Carson provided news through humor without overt partisanship. However, the fragmentation of media channels has led to siloed audiences, preventing a unified comedic discourse.

Evan Sayet [10:42]: "Now we have so atomized our delivery system... Very little chance that one of my ideological cohorts is going to be watching the Stephen Colbert show."

Rubin laments the loss of apolitical humor, feeling that modern comedy has lost its ability to bridge political divides.

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5. The State of Hollywood and Political Correctness

The conversation turns critical of Hollywood, which Sayet believes has succumbed to political correctness and lost touch with mainstream audiences. He cites the failure of studios to produce faith-based films despite their commercial success, attributing this to a desire to promote a utopian vision devoid of traditional values.

Evan Sayet [22:40]: "Hollywood doesn't want to make popular movies... They have to be smarter than us. And the only way to be smarter than us, better than us, is to not give us the values we want to share."

Rubin observes that there's a slow shift, but major studios like Disney continue to make the same mistakes, resisting change despite clear audience demand for more relatable content.

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6. Deprogramming and Reversing Leftist Influence

Addressing the entrenched leftist ideology, Sayet emphasizes the importance of deprogramming individuals indoctrinated by mainstream institutions. He points out that modern liberalism equates thinking with bigotry, leading to indiscriminate moral imperatives.

Evan Sayet [29:49]: "Thinking was outlawed in the 1980s, because thinking is now seen as an act of bigotry... In order to eliminate discrimination, they must be utterly indiscriminate."

Rubin asks for strategies to "deprogram" those sold a set of "obvious lies." While Sayet begins to address this, the provided transcript cuts off before he elaborates fully on his methods.

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7. Reflections on the Past and Present Political Landscape

Towards the end, Sayet and Rubin reflect on how America has changed, especially with the rise of social media amplifying extreme viewpoints. Sayet notes that the "WOKE movement" has become more entrenched and pervasive, making it harder to find alternative voices.

Evan Sayet [18:25]: "It's far less crazy because the WOKE movement hadn't yet so totally metastasized... It's crazier now because the craziness is more instantly delivered and it's impossible to escape."

Rubin expresses nostalgia for pre-social media times when political situations might not have felt as intense, although Sayet counters that the fundamental issues remain deeply rooted.

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8. Closing Remarks and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, Sayet shares a personal anecdote about the first joke he ever sold to Rodney Dangerfield, highlighting his long-standing involvement in the comedy and political spheres. He underscores the necessity for balanced political discourse and warns against the dangers of a one-sided political landscape.

Evan Sayet [27:00]: "No one became quite as big as Rodney... They see us as so evil because we are the antithesis of their utopia."

Rubin and Sayet agree that restoring a healthy tension between political ideologies is crucial for a pluralistic society, avoiding the pitfalls of extreme dominance by any single perspective.

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Notable Quotes:

• Evan Sayet [00:27]: "How do you look at the Middle East and decide the problem isn't the homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic Islamic fascists? The problem's a tiny liberal democracy of Jews."

• Evan Sayet [11:28]: "Maher would more often say what I wrote... Trump said a lot of things I didn't write in between."

• Evan Sayet [16:47]: "Ultimately what needs to happen is for every sane person to come over to become a Republican."

• Evan Sayet [22:40]: "Hollywood doesn't want to make popular movies... They have to be smarter than us."

• Evan Sayet [29:49]: "Thinking was outlawed in the 1980s, because thinking is now seen as an act of bigotry."

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This episode of The Rubin Report offers a thought-provoking examination of the shifting political landscape in America, the role of comedy and media in shaping public opinion, and the challenges faced by conservatives in reclaiming their narrative. Evan Sayet's insights provide a critical lens through which listeners can understand the complexities of modern liberalism and the importance of preserving democratic values.

Transcript

[Evan Sayet]

I told a story about Muhammad Ali, the boxer. Muhammad Ali who went to fight a fight in Africa. And rather than setting up training camp here in America to be supportive, he set up camp there and spent a month there. When he came back and said, mohammed, what'd you think of Africa? And he said, quote, thank God my granddaddy got on that boat. How do you look at the Middle east and decide the problem isn't the homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic Islamic fascists? The problem's a tiny liberal democracy of Jews.

[Dave Rubin]

Why were the good liberals unable to push back against any of this?

[Evan Sayet]

Were incredibly aggressive as they cleansed the schools and the entertainment industry of the last of the remaining generations? Barr went to the White House the other day.

[Dave Rubin]

First good sign. Before I left for the Capitol, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting epithets that the President has said about me.

[Evan Sayet]

I'm proudly the only person in the entire world who's written for both Maher and Trump.

[Dave Rubin]

Tell me the difference between writing for Bill Maher and writing for Donald Trump.

[Evan Sayet]

So when I walked into a Republican meeting for the first time, I heard something I'd never heard before. I heard people who could argue in the affirmative for the things they believe. They can tell you why they believe what they believe, how it works, where it has worked in the past. You never hear anything in the affirmative from the political left. You only hear, he's a Nazi, he's a fascist, he's a homophobe, he's a xenophobe. Though we cannot have a party with any chance of power that hates America, the left leaves us no alternative. Then the only alternative is the. The far right.

[Dave Rubin]

And what do you think the best way to deprogram the people that are. That are being, you know, sold into this set of obvious lies? I'm Dave Rubin. This is the Rubin Report. And joining me today is an author, a comedian, a conservative speaker, and more, Evan Syed. Evan, how are you?

[Evan Sayet]

I am so good, David. How are you?

[Dave Rubin]

I'm doing just fine. Can I call you a conservative speaker? I was going through your resume here, a lot of conservative stuff, but you're kind of an old school lib. I mean, I guess that's. We have a similar journey, I suppose.

[Evan Sayet]

Very, very much so. I say I'm in the conservative thought industry, so I. I sell my thoughts in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes humorous, sometimes not so humorous, but always now in an attempt to be on the right side of things.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, a conservative thought person. What's going on in the world of conservative thought these days. It seems to me that most sane people are basically conservatives at this point. That there's kind of a wide tent conservative thing happening. And that's what most of us are whether, whether we like the C word or not.

[Evan Sayet]

Indeed. Well, let's start with the fact that I'm not a right wing fanatic. I'm an anti left wing fanatic. And what I feel your brother, when I've come to recognize, look, I'm still the same New York City born liberal, lowercase L, Jew in the entertainment industry I always was. The problem is at a certain point they moved so far left that liberalism, true liberalism, lowercase l, liberalism resides right of center. You know, if you wish to conserve a liberal democracy, then you have to be a conservative in this two party system.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, the line I keep using on this is conservative in the streets, liberal in the sheets. Like it's sort of like no one really cares what you're doing in your own private life for the most part, if you're an American.

[Evan Sayet]

And.

[Dave Rubin]

But you need some conservatives to kind of put up the walls, literally and figuratively, to protect that liberalism. What, what happened to the liberals, do you think? I mean, my audience has heard some version of this conversation obviously because this is kind of my own political journey. But I'm always interested in seeing if someone has the right sort of prescription or autopsy on what happened to the good liberals who most of us used to be.

[Evan Sayet]

Well, you have to go back to the 60s radicals and their attempt to violently overthrow Western civilization and this country. They declared war. They literally declared war. Bernadine Dorn, the wife of William Ayers, founder of the terror group the Weather Underground, took to a back of microphones and said, hi, I'm Bernardine Dorn and I'm going to read to you a declaration of war. And they tried to foment revolution. The problem was they couldn't get anybody to join them. The problem was, even though back then there really were some real and serious wrongs and oppressions, Jim Crow, segregation, even then the people who were being oppressed still recognized they had it better in America than they had it anywhere else else because they knew the world. Many of them were first or second generation immigrants. Others had just come back from World War II and seen what the, what the, what the rest of the world is like. And in one of my books, I think the Woke Supremacy, I tell a story about Muhammad Ali, the boxer Muhammad Ali who went to fight a fight in Africa. And rather than Setting up training camp here in America to be supportive. He set up camp there and spent a month there. And when he came back, they said, mohammed, what'd you think of Africa? And he said, quote, thank God my granddaddy got on that boat. Remember, this is not only a black man from the Jim Crow south at this point, he converted to Islam. This was a black Muslim man from the Jim Crow South. And still he recognized that as many injustices that still needed to be fought, America was still a far greater place than any place else in the world. So they couldn't get people to join their revolution. They went underground and they went on what's called the long march through the institutions. Slowly, over time, they, they became the powers that be in academia and journalism, education and entertainment. And they use the institutions to brainwash successive generations into being those warriors that they, they couldn't get earlier because they were educated by the real world. So, Mark Rudd, one more thing, and I don't mean to filibuster. Mark Rudd, who is one of those original radicals, a bloodthirsty, horrible human being, said the true flowering of the 60s, the 60s revolution, will come in the 90s when we've taken over the institutions. Well, he was wrong only because he missed the obvious. Once they'd taken over the institutions, they'd need one more generation to then use those institutions to create their warriors. So, Dave, if it's 30 years from the 60s to the 90s, what's 30 years from the 90s?

[Dave Rubin]

That's right about now.

[Evan Sayet]

Right about now. Which is why they're using the same language that they wouldn't have used even 15 years ago. Barack Obama was still calling it fundamental change, whereas Bernie Sanders is calling it what it is, revolution.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Evan Sayet]

Two things. One is they were incredibly aggressive as they, as they cleansed the schools and the entertainment industry of the last of the remaining generations. And that countervailing influence, but also natural attrition. The older generation, the last of the great generations passed on. And we were, we were remiss in fighting back because things were so easy, things were so good that you know what, we could be this open minded because nothing bad could happen to America. I'm a little bit older than you are, but I think you saw this time in America as well where it was forever going to be America was forever going to be prosperous, America was always going to be safe. America was never going to be challenged. And thus, if there are no consequences to being wrong, we didn't stand up enough for what's right.

[Dave Rubin]

So as a guy that's gone through Hollywood and you worked for Bill Maher actually on Politically Incorrect and you've done some stuff with Letterman over the years, you've been around the block. You've also written for Donald Trump. I mean, you've really had quite a resume here.

[Evan Sayet]

I do believe I'm just so hyped up. I'm so happy to be with you. But I do believe when Maher went to the White House the other day, I'm probably the only person in the entire world who has written for both Maher and Trump.

[Dave Rubin]

That's whether that bodes well for your future in the industry, I can't tell you. But so as someone that's been through the entertainment side of things and through politics and everything else, what do you make of this moment we're in right now where these things seemingly have collided into each other and there's very little distinction between politics and comedy, which I guess gets a guy like Bill Maher at the White House in the first place, right?

[Evan Sayet]

Indeed. Look, comedy has always served a political purpose. Even when Johnny Carson was, was apolitical, seemingly so people still got their news from Johnny Carson. And it may have been a more subtle delivery, but nonetheless, a lot of the liberalism, lowercase l liberalism, we got from Johnny, we got our mores and acceptable morals by the jokes he laughed at or the jokes he presented or the guests he put on.

[Dave Rubin]

So it was political, not partisan, I guess is the way you put it.

[Evan Sayet]

That's brilliant. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Now we have so atomized our delivery system. There were three networks back then. Suddenly there were 103, and now 1003. And so you no longer need to have this general audience where everybody sits down together, everybody watches the same thing, that the politics has become atomized as well. Very little chance that one of my ideological cohorts is going to be watching the Stephen Colbert show. Conversely, very little chance that one of my opponents, ideological opponents, is going to be watching Gutfeld.

[Dave Rubin]

Tell me the difference between writing for Bill Maher and writing for Donald Trump.

[Evan Sayet]

Maher would more often say what I wrote. It wasn't that Trump didn't say what I wrote. It's that he said a lot of things I didn't write in between. And that can be a tad frustrating because if you're a craftsman, as I am, and that's not just a pat on the back, I'm paid to be that a joke is not just the funny punchline. The joke is every word that leads to it. It's heartbreaking and difficult sometimes. Whereas Maher, he's a pro and he nailed it time and again.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah. I would imagine, though, at some level, Trump, because of his, like, comedy chops, I guess you would say, in some sense it must have been a little bit fun, even if he was kind of ad libbing off your stuff to watch him operate in that way.

[Evan Sayet]

No, it's fun watching him screw up other people's material. Not mine. Not.

[Dave Rubin]

Not your material. So we're at this strange cultural moment and. And the good libs, or the old school libs as you described, I think mostly are, are Republicans. What. What do you think can happen? I mean, the last couple weeks on my show, we've been covering it pretty extensively. Just the absolute descent into madness that has happened with the left. And they have no leader anymore. The Democrat Party seems to be an absolute freefall. Will they hand this thing to the true radicals? Do they somehow bring in a moderate to make any sense of it? I mean, what do you think is gonna. What do you want to happen and what do you think will happen?

[Evan Sayet]

The problem with the political left is that they are not for anything. The idea is that believing in things being for something causes disagreements, fighting and war. So the only way to live in a world where there's no nothing to kill or die for. If you want to go to when John Lennon took this ideology and put it to song, in order for there to be nothing to kill or die for, there has to be nothing to live for. There has to be nothing positive. And this is one thing. When I first walked into my first Republican meeting, right? Post World War. Post World War II, no, Post 9, 11. Wow. I don't even know where that came from.

[Dave Rubin]

How old is this guy?

[Evan Sayet]

I look all of a sudden right? But post 9, 11, and the response of the political left, the idea that we deserved it, that it was the chickens coming home to roost, that the way to prevent further attacks was to be nicer to the terrorists, well, this was insane to me. And so I had to think, if this is how liberals, if this is what people who are called liberals believe that. Am I really a liberal? And Dave, I have an expression. The first time you think is the last time you're a Democrat. And so when I walked into a Republican meeting for the first time, I heard something I'd never heard before. I heard people who could argue in the affirmative for the things they believe. They can tell you why they believe what they believe, how it works, where it has worked in the past. Whereas you never hear anything in the affirmative from the political left. You only hear, he's a Nazi, he's a fascist, he's a homophobe, he's a xenophobe. So vote for us by default. And when that no longer works, and I believe they have so overused it, when that no longer works, they have nothing to say because there's nothing that they're for. They're against the police, they're against the border, they're against protecting children. They are the party of negation. And once that doesn't work, once they can't scare them with us, it's over for them. The problem is this. There's so much damage that has been left in their weight that we have generation upon generation that is literally miserable. And. Oh, I'm so sorry.

[Dave Rubin]

Oh, and you might be saying that that could be Ilhan calling you right now.

[Evan Sayet]

No, you know what? At least it's not a pager going off.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Evan Sayet]

No. And ultimately what needs to happen is for every sane person to come over to become a Republican. We then split in half and, and we become the conservatives because people misund and they get angry. We are not the conservative party, we are the Republican Party. Which means when they call people rhinos, they're not rinos, they're just not conservatives. And what eventually will have to happen is that those they call the rhinos, the more moderate non conservatives, will go back and become the equivalent of the Democrat party just like they used to be at the soul. Though. We cannot have a party with any chance of power that hates America. We cannot have a party that is so desperate to show that nothing is true, that science is wholly irrelevant to them. Men can't have babies. We can't have a party that embraces our enemies because they so despise us that they would rather march down the street queers for Palestine than to wave an American flag. But I think we've gotten to a point now where those people like Bill Maher put aside his personal dislike for Trump. Well, Trump's not going to be running in four years, or when all these people have come over to our side, our side will split into two and will return to the two equal parties, one of which is more to the left than the other.

[Dave Rubin]

You ever long for the old days before social media, when all of this maybe felt a little less crazy, and maybe it was always this crazy, but we didn't see it because you weren't walking around with the world in your pocket?

[Evan Sayet]

Both things are true. It was far less crazy because the WOKE movement hadn't yet so totally metastasized and ossified that there was no alternative voice to be found in academia. There was no alternative voice to be found in mainstream media. There was no alternative. So it is crazier now because the crazies have solidified their hold on the political left. It's also crazier because the craziness is more instantly delivered and it's impossible to escape. It's in your hand. So it's crazier and it's faster. Crazy.

[Dave Rubin]

You have any worries about the right? So you create this coalition that in some sense it's a loose coalition, as you said, it could split down the road, which would be a better splitting than what we have with the Republicans and the Democrats now. But do you have any concerns that that could go out of whack?

[Evan Sayet]

There's concern that if the left leaves us no alternative, then the only alternative is the far right. And that scares me more than if we split up and go back to how it had been, which are people with similar base values who have differences in matters of degree. Oh, we should tax more and have a bigger safety net. We should tax less. And. But. But there was never, is America evil? You know, do we need to destroy and then rebuild some utopian premise that that only exists, as in the John Lennon song in the Imagination? But I don't worry about a lot of things. I'll tell you why. The best piece of advice I ever got was from our friend David Horowitz, who, you know, may he wrestle, just passed away. Yeah, it'll. But I asked him at one point, how do you do it? How do you get up every morning knowing what you know, seeing what you see, being bombarded by what you're bombarded by. How do you get out of bed? And he said to me, evan, I always remind myself the future has never been what I thought it was going to be. And so I stay out of the future. I do not extrapolate. Who knew in 2010 that some random guy on some minor cable channel would use the words tea party and it would change the course of history. And so I know that the future is not going to be an exact extrapolation of where we are now. So I fight the fight that's in front of me and I live the life that God gave me.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, then my next question is going to be a little bizarre. But because you're also a Hollywood guy, I mean, what do you think? So I was going to ask you kind of what the future, it's funny you said future, because I was going to ask you what you think the future of Hollywood is. But maybe a better way to phrase it then in light of what you said is what do you think Hollywood was it ever, was it destined that it was gonna get this out of control in some sense for some of the reasons that you described, like that the radicals, when they took over the institutions, Hollywood was easily gonna fall because it's really just a money making machine and all of the parts are replaceable. The greatest actor is still replaceable. So you could, it would be very easy to just decimate it the way it's been decimated. And where when I was 13, go, go to the movie theater and there were 10 movies I wanted to see and now I haven't seen a new movie in three years.

[Evan Sayet]

Well, they got a little big on themselves. They didn't recognize how easily they could be replaced, not only by other films from other countries, but by all new technologies. And by the way, by not going to the movies, it's so easy that they just didn't anticipate, even though it was right in their face, that change was coming and that they better satisfy their audience. And so actually people don't realize this. Hollywood doesn't want to make popular movies. The people behind them may or may not, but in order to get a star, they have to make a movie that's going to offend America because they don't want these stupid people to think they agree with us. They've got to be smarter than us. And the only way to be smarter than us, better than us, is to not give us the values we want to share.

[Dave Rubin]

Do you think they're wisening up to that? I mean, it does seem like maybe it's going away a little bit now, right?

[Evan Sayet]

Well, it's hard to think that when Disney keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. I mean, I realized years ago when no, Gibson made the Passion, Passion of the Christ. Right, when he made the Passion of the Christ. At that moment, every studio should have been making a faith based movie. And even to this day they're not. You know, maybe they're throwing it off to one of their ancillary companies, but instead you have to have angel studios making it and raking in the dough and still they're not doing it. So I don't think, I think that they are so convinced that they are offering us a utopia. And the utopia that they are offering requires for there to be no God, be no patriotism, be no personal possessions except theirs. Because only when everything is nothing is there nothing to kill or die for.

[Dave Rubin]

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[Evan Sayet]

No, you made me laugh there. But there are so many whose names I don't necessarily recognize because I don't have the desire to sit and watch stand up after all of these years. But Bill Burr can certainly make me la laugh. Bill Maher can certainly make me laugh. But what thrills me is that this canker saw of wokeness, this fever blister of wokeness seems to have broken. And time after time I get these reels on Facebook one after another of decidedly and intentionally and very much not PC comedians. And I'm laughing again.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah. Is that the strangest thing? I mean, at the height of wokeness, which also of course coincided with COVID that I would, anytime I'd see somebody doing stand up, a lot of times it wasn't even in person. They were doing, you know, these horrible zoom things or whatever. But like comedians in some sense became the most politically correct. And I was like, I mean, this is George Carlin just rolling over in his grave right now.

[Evan Sayet]

Yeah, well, they, they were just like George Carlin was the vanguard and, and, and the tip of the spear of that movement. They see themselves as the tip of the spear of the woke movement. And they see us as so evil because we are the antithesis of their utopia. If it wasn't for people like us, they would live in this paradise and thus they can't give an inch. If they laughed at themselves, they'd be weakening the revolution. And so they substituted vitriol for humor. And that's all you. There was nothing but vitriol. And look, there's a reason I was able to write for the Arsenio hall show, right? I was the voice of black America.

[Dave Rubin]

Yeah, I kind of skimmed over your resume, but you've written for a Arsenio, Politically Incorrect win Ben Stein's money. That guy must have been hilarious off camera, right?

[Evan Sayet]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Rubin]

You know, you've done stuff with Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, Larry Elder. I mean, it's an all star cast that you've been around for all these years.

[Evan Sayet]

Indeed. You want to hear the first joke I ever sold?

[Dave Rubin]

Let's go.

[Evan Sayet]

Okay. I sold it 22 years old. I sold it to Rodney Dangerfield, who was. Oh, my sex life is like a Star wars character, Han Solo. And it was all uphill. All uphill from there.

[Dave Rubin]

That's pretty solid. Can I ask how much you sold a joke for back then?

[Evan Sayet]

Well, it depends who you sold it to. If I sold it to him, it was 50. If I sold it to Dreeson, it was 35. I'm still not over it.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, Dreeson never became. Never became quite as big as Rodney.

[Evan Sayet]

Oh, that is then. Well, look, nobody became quite as big. But there was a time when Dreeson was the single most televised comedian of all because he was so well crafted and so mainstream in those positive ways that there was no show he didn't do.

[Dave Rubin]

Right. He would guest host a lot of the shows, I think would guest hostler.

[Evan Sayet]

He is the only white comedian to ever appear on Soul Train.

[Dave Rubin]

Is that right?

[Evan Sayet]

That is true.

[Dave Rubin]

With that white hair, too. I mean, my God.

[Evan Sayet]

Well, he was. And I don't want to keep talking. I want to talk about me. But he was the only black and white comedy team ever. He and Tim went out to be via his flag trap in WKRP in Cincinnati, and. Oh, I'm so sorry, Tim. But indeed. Okay, enough about him. More about me, more about you, More about.

[Dave Rubin]

Well, actually, it's interesting. So you wrote for some of these guys. And one of the things that I think all the time now is that late night comedy. I mean, it's become so freaking political, it's unbearable. I long for the days of Johnny and everybody else, but even the way that they could just. We had people in Hollywood that could still be people, you know, like you had some guys like Rodney would go and do panel and be doing shtick, obviously, but then you'd have other guys that could get up there and just be normal. And we've lost that too. So we got a lot of things that we need to fix.

[Evan Sayet]

Indeed. Well, because everything on the political left, and actually it was David Horowitz who made this point as well. Everything on the political left is for the revolution. The issue is never the issue is the revolution. Everything's for the revolution. And even though they don't recognize many of them, the rank and file, you know, and this is my real claim to fame as a. A conservative thinker is what people call the unified theory of liberalism and why it is that so many good, smart, decent, loving, caring, generous people ignore fact and reason and side always with evil. How do you look at the Middle east and decide the problem isn't the homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic Islamic fascists? The problem's that tiny liberal democracy of Jews? You know, how do you look at what went down in Ferguson, Missouri, and decide the problem isn't this career thug high on drugs who just struggle on the local businessman? The problem is the white racist cop. How do you. And get it so completely wrong? And the reason they do is because thinking was outlawed in the 1980s, because thinking is now seen as an act of bigotry. Indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because discrimination is homophobia, xenophobia, all these things. So in order to eliminate discrimination, they must be utterly indiscriminate.

[Dave Rubin]

So how do we deprogram people? I mean, this is probably the number one question that I still get asked now because I've had a little. A little life experience doing it. But what do you think the best way to deprogram the people that are. That are being, you know, sold into this set of obvious lies?

[Evan Sayet]

The good news is the bad news, and that is that so many of them are so miserable because they have nothing in their lives. They've been told, you know, no country's no religion, so they.