The Exchanges

Q I want to ask about new media and entrepreneurship. So you've amassed millions of followers as a media figure, but you're also a builder. You're an entrepreneur. Like, like what have you built and what are you building these days?

A Well, I got two companies on the horizon, but the, the thing that I built in the, in the tech world outside of just my production company that, that built Rubin report, which is more on the media side is I started locals, which obviously you know about because you were one of our first investors. Um, and really it was, it was born Purely the way I think a good company is usually born out of, which was necessity. I was on, I was creating, uh, my show via Patreon, which was the subscription model that basically everybody was using online. It was the one website that if you created anything, if you were an unboxer, if you were a politics guy of game or whatever, if you wanted a subscription model, you went through Patreon, uh, to do a very truncated version of the story. They started having really highly censored Uh, censorship policies that I was not happy with. Uh, they were blowing up accounts. You know, if you said something they didn't like, they would just delete you overnight. No warning, no chance for reconciliation.

AI assessment note: “the thing that I built in the in the tech world... is I started locals”

Q No, I know. You know, in my policy group, we have teams in like 20 states, so we're fighting like hell for the country right now, and I'm excited about it. On that policy note before we end, I want to ask you, what do you think of Trump's second term? What's going on with politics? How are we doing?

A I think it's basically been flawless. It's been as good as you could possibly imagine. He's like, a 120 days in. I think the trade deals, uh, you know, as, as Sac said on all in a week or two ago, we have to see where they land. But for the most part, well, first off, the market completely came back after three days of craziness. It seems to me we are going to get good deals. Like, it seems fairly obvious that we're going to get good deals out of probably 60 countries, or at least better deals than we had. The border has been closed. We are doing deportations. I am Before getting rid of as many illegals as we can.

AI assessment note: “I think it's basically been flawless. It's been as good as you could possibly imagine.”

Q Well, that's why some people call it the woke right, I guess. Is that a term that you think's stupid, or does it kind of make sense?

A Um, I think it makes sense because they're starting to use the, it's not that they're into the exact same Idea set, but they're starting to use the same tools, and they're starting to use some of the same language. What I would say as it pertains to Tucker is, I would love to see, again, Tucker can run his show however he wants, and I don't want Tucker kicked off anything or anything else. I was texting with him last week, so I'm not sitting here like shitting on him, but what I would like to see is, okay, Tucker, if you, if you have whatever these beliefs are, and you keep bringing all of these people on, and you're such an arbiter of truth, as I think he purports to be, Well, then you have to, don't just talk about Ben Shapiro every week. Invite him. He texted me, said, he said he's welcome on a show, but he won't publicly invite him. So it's like publicly invite him, or I'll go on and discuss this stuff, or I'm sure you would. There's videos of him two years ago saying Douglas Murray is the most important public intellectual we have, and nobody knows more about anything. And now he's mocking him every week. So I think we're all just asking him to maybe be a little bit more Open than he is or something like that. I'm not calling to censor him at all. I don't think he's evil. I think there are some people who are genuinely bad actors in this space.

AI assessment note: “I think it makes sense because they're starting to use the... same tools”

Q you have a big audience and the audience, uh, kind of like responds well to certain things. And so you're, you as a, as a journalist or a media personality, you start thinking in terms of your, what your audience wants to hear, what they're going to share. Like he, is he responding to certain people on the right and kind of echoing what they want to hear right now?

A So again, I can't speak to what's in his heart, but what I can speak to is that this is a guy who is in cable news, right? He was huge on cable news. It was the number one rated show in cable news when he got axed, but he was in a certain box and it had certain, you know, it was like a, like bumper bowling. Like it was just in these kinds of lanes, right? Then he, and when Tucker at the height of his career, he came to my house to do my show. He walks into my garage And he sees my studio, and I had a TV, well before, you know, this is before COVID, so like I was early in on the home studio thing, and I had a, as good a studio at, you know, as they have on network TV, he opens up the door to my garage, his exact words were, holy fucking shit, you did it. He could not believe how free I was, right? Like that, and, and I think, so that got in his mind. I'm not saying it was just me, but like the idea that there's freedom on the other side, you can do whatever you want. So then he gets, Fired by Fox for whether it had to do with the election stuff or whatever it was, he gets fired by Fox. Now he's free. He's in a completely different world where the pressures are completely different. And then with algorithms and everything else. Yeah. If you just keep giving red meat to your people and the algorithm keeps pushing them that direction, you, you, you know, it's basically like if you …

AI assessment note: “Yeah. If you just keep giving red meat to your people and the algorithm”

Q You were at UATX, New University. We had Jason Calcanis and you up there. What was your impression of the place and the students?

A I really was super impressed. I mentioned to everybody up there that I just did Oxford Union not too long ago, about two and a half months ago, and I did the debate there, and you know, it's incredible. You go to Oxford, and it's an over a thousand-year-old institution, and just, you know, you feel like you're in kind of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. You just really strongly feel this ancient Tradition, and when you really think about it, when you look at all the pictures, I'm sure you've been there many times, when you look at the pictures on the wall of all of the classes over the hundreds of years, as long as they had photography, and you're like, boy, this thing has stood for so long, and they've turned all these good and bad ideas out, and how many, you know, uh, governments it survived, and all this stuff, it's really incredible. And yet, truly, I was not that impressed with the students. I really wasn't. It's kind of a weird thing to talk about.

AI assessment note: “I really was super impressed. I mentioned to everybody up there that I just did Oxford”

Q AI and how it's going to change what people need to study. Jason was saying in 10 or 20 years, it's like any of the skills tied to studying hard and, and, and taking, well, taking the SAT and getting a high score, none of that's going to matter at all. It's going to be different skills. What do you think about that? What should we be studying right now?

A What should we be studying? Well, I would say regardless, even if the robots are going to replace us, and even if Skynet is going to turn on, and even if we're all going to end up in the pink slime of the matrix, and all of those things, which are all likely, and we're probably in it right now, Still knowing the classics and actually knowing history and some of those things and learning in person and all of that is still great. You know, I've had a running joke with my entire team that we're all going to be replaced. Like first it was like, ah, they'll replace the editor. And then I was like, ah, well, they will replace the director and then they'll eventually place their producer. And then eventually they'll replace the host. You know, it does feel like that is the direction that this is all going one way or another. As I mentioned last night, we're working on an AI version of me. So when I go away, Dave Rubin can actually guest host my show, which will be pretty cool. And we'll, when I come back, we'll be able to see, hey, can, does AI Dave.

AI assessment note: “Still knowing the classics and actually knowing history and some of those things”