Dave Rubin



[...] I have to say that my brain is still in recovery mode from taking in so many high level, important ideas. I'm a classical liberal, a free thinker. And as much as I don't like to admit it, defending my liberal values has suddenly become a conservative position. Crazy World, Sane News

David Joshua "Dave" Rubin is a failed comedian and host of the unintentional comedy show The Rubin Report on YouTube. Once a member of The Young Turks network, his content since leaving TYT has mostly been steered towards criticism of what he considers the "regressive left", while promoting conservatism. On his show, he frequently/interminably discusses freedom of speech, feminism, religion, political correctness, and the mainstream media.

Rubin's political stances have significantly changed over time, beginning with standard American progressive stances to his current Objectivist libertarian stances. When the Rubin Report was on TYT and at the beginning of his independent version of his show after it broke affiliation with TYT, his views were still generally progressive and criticizing decisions being made by big businesses, he publicly criticized National Rifle Association commercials trying to incite fear of the consequences of gun reform laws being planned to be passed by the United States Congress, addressed a decision by McDonalds to remove healthier foods from its menu in a critical manner, on a 2014 episode of TYT he rebuked self-regulation in the economy and claimed that it has never worked and he was supportive of single-payer health insurance (he still claims to be, but his definition of what that means is at odds with the conventional definition). At the start of the independent version of his show, he began to become critical of leftists who, he believed, were associated with political correctness and ran counter to progressive ideals. Rubin also abandoned TYT after the group accused atheist and anti-Islamist public figure Sam Harris of anti-Muslim bigotry, an accusation Rubin, as well as Harris himself and his supporters, have rejected.

Over time, Rubin largely developed a more right-wing audience favorable to his anti-Social Justice Warrior stances and support for free speech of figures like Harris whose views had clashed with figures on the left. He then completely disassociated with the left and became an Objectivist libertarian (though he still calls himself a "classical liberal"), supporting Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson in the 2016 US Presidential Election and has invited several guests to talk about Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy. Rubin reversed his earlier stance on self-regulation in the economy, saying on a 2018 episode of the Joe Rogan Show that he wanted major de-regulation and greater self-regulation. In addition he's shown an ever-expanding devotion to bringing in controversial right-wing figures including those with sympathies to causes of Objectivist-style libertarianism and people with far right views on topics on his show in the name of free speech. One such figure is Stefan Molyneux, known for both Objectivist stances as well as reactionary attitudes to women's rights given his openly negative view of women as well as Molyneux's support of racialist perspectives on claims of racial differences in IQ. When he does invite guests on the left now, it is usually only to complain about "regressivism".

More recently, after a period of silence from the TYT show, Ana Kasparian — co-host of TYT — has addressed Dave Rubin claiming that he, who had once been her friend, was a 'lazy fraud'. She castigated him for allegedly 'want[ing] to make a six-figure salary to host a 30-minute a week show' despite herself and her colleagues working 12 hour days 'for far less'. She reiterates that he has sold out to corporate America by pointing out that he has received money from the Koch Brothers and alleges that he has no true political identity and denouncing him as not an 'honest actor' nor an 'intellectual' and a 'fraud plain and simple'.

As of October 29, 2019, Rubin's YouTube channel has over 1 million subscribers and 230 million views. Rubin also made over $27,000 per month on Patreon from over 4300 patrons, and has over 250,000 followers on Twitter.

In September 2019, the Rubin Report found a new home on Glenn Beck's site TheBlaze, making his transition to the right unambiguously complete. Maybe working with a former Fox News star will make him stop pretending to be some weird variety of "liberal", but who knows.

In 2020, after many painful years in the political closet, Rubin seems to have finally come to terms with the fact that he is indeed a conservative. During the 2020 United States presidential election, he has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

Career
In the late 1990s, Rubin started performing "stand up comedy". His performance as a comedian was universally panned.

Following work in stand-up comedy, Rubin began hosting The Six Pack podcast on SiriusXM and joined TYT in 2013. He first gained notoriety for tacitly defending Israel's conduct during the war in Gaza in 2014, coming in conflict with the entire TYT panel during a 40-minute-long debate. He later repeated this same defense of Israeli war crimes and regurgitating of anti-Palestinian propaganda to Secular Talk. In hindsight, this was our first real look into just how reactionary he always was. Rubin decided to leave TYT in 2015 following political disagreements with Cenk Uygur. His show bounced between a series of formats and production companies (OraTV being one of them) before becoming an independent project in 2016. He now hosts his show from a "home studio" that looks like one of the fake living rooms in IKEA, and almost exclusively hosts guests with whom he agrees on the topic of "regressivism".

He used to be an atheist.

In April, 2020 he released a book called Don't Burn this Book. It was universally panned by critics (except for Jordan Peterson). In April, 2022, Dave released a sequel entitled Don't Burn This Country It was also universally panned by critics.

Identity politics and free speech
Rubin, who spends much of his time lamenting identity politics, claims to have worked as a stand-up comedian in New York from the late 90s. Little video evidence of this work is available online, besides one video from 'Hot Gay Comics' in which Rubin makes a series of jokes about gays and being gay. Rubin went on to host The Six Pack, a gay-themed podcast with topics such as National Coming Out Day, on SiriusXM and gay guests like Dustin Lance Black and Lance Bass (of NSync fame). But, remember - Rubin is completely against identity politics. Hrm.

Free speech advocate Rubin, who has commented on a culture of "Oppression Olympics" from minority groups and has dismissed numerous controversies as "outrage culture", also posted a video criticising the "gay jokes" in Comedy Central's James Franco roast. This hypocrisy was best surmised when Rubin criticised Hillary Clinton for addressing a tweet to "White America", in spite of the fact that he has previously posted numerous tweets ridiculing people based on their whiteness. Without a trace of self-awareness regarding his own light-hearted jests on the matter, he later lambasted the 'regressive left' and their alleged proclivity to "demonize white people collectively and endlessly".

In spite of being critical of members of the "regressive left" that smear and name-call instead of debating ideas, Rubin reprimands his own opponents via Twitter (his favourite retorts include "loser" and "clown"). He is also known to complain about the "regressive left" blocking and unfriending people for disagreeing with them, but is also really quick to block people on Twitter when somebody tries to point out his hypocrisy.

Rubin threatened to sue Mother Jones author Josh Harkinson for libel over an article titled "Cashing in on the Rise of the Alt-Right", where he is mentioned among various alt-right figures, some of whom (like Mike Cernovich, Lauren Southern, and Milo Yiannopoulos) were featured guests on his show. Harkinson later updated the article to include Rubin's objection to the far/alt-right label, in which he says:

Further evidence of Rubin's lack of commitment to free speech has been highlighted through his siding with the NFL against its players kneeling to protest racism. In this instance he supported barring NFL players from kneeling. He had to be shown by neoconservative shill David Frum that indeed free speech extends to a general culture and not merely legal allowance.

Surprisingly, many right-wing news outlets quickly came to Rubin's defense, including National Review, Heat Street, and American Thinker.

In December, 2021, he decided to move from the "woke dystopia" and sold his Koch-funded mansion in Encino, California for $5.8 million and moved to a Blaze-funded studio in Miami, Florida. Reasons for the move include frustration with seeing people wearing masks, wanting to sidle up closer to the residences of Trump and Ron DeSantis, and wanting to show that global warming isn't real by moving to the a city that floods. He wanted to move to promote his upcoming book that bashes California as a "woke dystopia" and which glorifies pandemic-ridden Florida as a conservative paradise.

Fake news, outrage culture, and boycotts
Rubin has referred to organisations like the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, and USA Today as "fake news",  even claiming that he "won't watch" CNN as long as it employs Reza Aslan. However, Rubin has claimed that Rebel Media is "doing a pretty good job from everything I've seen", appeared on The Alex Jones Show to talk about the "Cult of the Left" and has featured with Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. Following O'Reilly's firing from the network amidst a series of sexual harassment allegations, Rubin claimed that "the rejoicing of the destruction of public people is becoming increasingly dangerous". In an uncharacteristic display of double standards, he had previously joked about progressives Keith Olbermann and Alec Baldwin being fired or suspended from TV networks, even going as far as to record himself calling the Capital One customer service line regarding Baldwin's "homophobic" comments and claiming that he had "a discussion with five gay people who all agree to never use [the company's] services again" because of its association with the actor. Free speech, y'know? Quelle surprise - Rubin has been critical of boycotts elsewhere.

Political identity and fiscal policy
Rubin identified as Republican-leaning on his blog as early as July of 2006, but said he voted a straight Democratic ticket for the 2006 midterm election, except for John Spencer over Hillary Clinton. It's unknown if his views changed from then until he signed on with The Young Turks in 2013.

"My positions basically haven't changed but I've watched as my team has gone off the deep end", says Rubin on his political ideas. If this is indeed the case, it appears that Rubin has been a conservative the whole time. Case in point, since 2016, Rubin has partnered with Learn Liberty, a project from George Mason University's Institute of Humane Studies, a libertarian think tank that receives part of its funding from the Koch brothers.

This is particularly true regarding "Rubinomics". In news that will shock nobody, Rubin has frequently espoused conservative positions in regards to taxation and claims that limited government is an issue about which he cares most. He has argued against raises to the minimum wage, claiming that it will force McDonalds to replace workers with iPads, and has been a critic of the estate tax. He has advocated for flat income taxes due to his belief in "real equality", with "some level" of progressive tax. When interviewing Andrew Yang and discussing Yang's Freedom Dividend basic income proposal, Rubin called for "blow[ing] apart the social safety net as is", claiming it to be "just a boondoggle of middle management." None of these are progressive positions that the Left has suddenly abandoned.

In chastising the "regressive left", Rubin claims that "if you don't evolve the day they evolve, you're a bigot". However, when confronted with evidence of his previous progressive views on Twitter and accused of hypocrisy, Rubin defended himself by stating that "my feelings have changed as time has gone on", asserting that "[p]eople evolve, it's called being human. But some would rather attack" without a hint of irony. So it seems that the real rule is "if you don't evolve the day Dave Rubin evolves, you're a regressive".

Rubin also thinks he supports single-payer health care. We say "think" because Rubin thinks single-payer is a combination of public and private. He has doubled-down on this misunderstanding/ignorance of what single-payer actually is.

In an interview with David Pakman, he said he agreed with Trump's tax policy, and also didn't seem to know that corporate taxes are levied on profits, not capital expenses.

However recently it seems he's given up on claiming he's for single-payer, judging by a twitter post in which he bemoaned the Canadian healthcare system and asking "Why do you need the government to force you to do it?"

Guests
In recent years, Rubin's show has become a platform for relatively obscure individuals from far-flung corners of the Internet to espouse bizarre or downright extreme opinions with little to no recourse or push-back from the host. For instance, claims from guests that the Canadian Nazi Party was "backed up and egged on" by Jewish groups to increase hate crimes and suggestions that Barack Obama is a communist have gone unchallenged by Rubin. While claiming to be (or have been) liberal, he rarely seems able to explain his positions. For example, he mistakenly believed that Bernie Sanders wanted to raise taxes to 90% and yet still claimed to intend to vote for him (despite being fiscally libertarian). When interviewing Milo Yiannopoulos, his reasoning for supporting Sanders was "he seems like a nice person."

Rubin is notorious for asking a series of big names onto his show through direct tweets. Many individuals ranging from the political sphere – Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Bernie Sanders, James Comey, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, Tom Perez, Gavin Newsom — to the celebrity world - Cher, Carrie Fisher (RIP), Betty White (RIP), Howard Stern, Azealia Banks, Ben Affleck, Kevin Hart, Elon Musk, Sarah Silverman, Joss Whedon, Rob Reiner, Chelsea Handler Stephen King, Mark Ruffalo Michael Moore, Rachel Maddow Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, Seth MacFarlane, Ana Navarro, Jimmy Kimmel, - have been invited in this manner. Shockingly, none of these high profile people have taken up the invitation to appear on a low-rent YouTube show recorded at someone's house and, despite Rubin's best efforts, the vast majority of his guests are fringe characters from niche corners of the internet (or even - in possibly his most narcissistic move yet - the show's own fans).

Despite claims from Rubin that he wants left-wingers on his show but they are too chicken to debate him, many left-wing YouTubers like Sam Seder, Ana Kasparian, ContraPoints, David Pakman, and Hbomberguy have all said that they would love to go on his show to talk about the marketplace of ideas. Rubin, however, has stated he will not have them on his show because they are dishonest and have told lies about him. Dish it out but can't take it, eh Dave?

Notable guests from the New Center™
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White Nationalist Guests
Whilst decrying the so-called "regressive left" at every turn, Rubin has described guest Tommy Robinson, the former head of the far-right English Defence League with a string of violent and non-violent criminal convictions to his name, as "extremely moderate". Rubin has taken to Twitter to complain about YouTube demonetization; it's almost as if advertisers and corporations want nothing to do with a show that allows ideologues to spout egregious views and get away with it scot-free.

His interview with the 'race realist' Stefan Molyneux on the subjects of 'race and IQ' is one of the most popular videos on his channel with over 1 million views. In the video Rubin does not challenge Molyneux's claim that black people have smaller brains, and laughs at the idea that as an Ashkenazi Jew he might have a higher IQ than other races. Molyneux has no scientific background and believes, amongst other absurd things, that people of different races cannot successfully transplant organs.