Don't Bite the Bait

Sports is officially back, but some things appear to be stuck to it for the foreseeable future. Ben and his relentless wingman return with political pundit, Dave Rubin. An author, world traveler, and public speaker, Dave joins the guys to talk about the tangled web weaved between sports and politics thanks to recent events that have hit home. Dave gives the fellas his thoughts on where things look to heading in professional sports, but he also offers a few solutions moving forward. All that plus a look at Rubin's newest book which is on sale now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ka boom. If you thought four hours a day, minutes
a week was enough, I think again. He's the last
remnants of the old republic, a sole fashion of fairness.
He treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as
the rich pill poppers in the penthouse. The clearing House
of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth

(00:23):
Hour with Ben Maller starts right now, a fire cracker
hot edition of the Fifth Hour with Ben Mallard. We
are in the air everywhere the vast power of the
I Heart Podcast network, because four hours are not enough
on the overnight show, and we're doing this eight days
a week. And yet again we are joined by David Gascon.

(00:47):
He was writing Shotgun in this operation, and he is
with me, and this is guest. I'm excited about this.
I'm looking forward to talking to our I don't know
if we call him a guest or a friend hanging
out with us, but I will put the caveat here.
I have to put these caveats at the disclaimer at
the beginning. If you are easily triggered by political content

(01:08):
and polarizing issues, this is not the podcast for you.
Surgeon General's warning you should have already known that by
already downloading the podcast. But we are going to chat
here in a couple of minutes with Dave Rubin, who
has been a a successful He's got a huge following
on social media. He is a contributor, he pops up

(01:30):
on UH, Fox News and elsewhere. He's a political pundit.
He's he's got some interesting opinions on everything, and I
think he's the perfect guy to have on Guesscon because
everything has been intertwined now in sports and politics. The
sports leagues are on board with politics, whether we like

(01:51):
it or not. They have embraced this, and so I
figured we should have Dave on here, not you Dave
gesc but the other day, UH, to get some perspective
from someone that's in the mud, in the political mud
and deals with this stuff every single day, every minute
of every day. And the nice thing is is that,

(02:11):
you know, he's a New Yorker, so he's got a
great perspective East coast, West coast, uh and everything in between.
So this will be a lot of fun. I'm excited
about it. Yeah, absolutely. And he's got a book out
that we will talk about. We'll ask him about the
book here at some point it's don't burn this book
written by Dave Ruben and the man that will be

(02:32):
on here. He's also available on Twitter. You can follow
him if he probably already you follow him Reuben Report.
That's rub I n Reuben Report. He's on there. We're
on Twitter as well. We don't have as many followers
though as he does. Ben Maller at Ben Maller. You
can follow me on Twitter. Guesscon. You're on there on

(02:53):
Twitter at David J. Gascon. Alright, so without further ado here,
let's welcome in. The man will be hanging out with
hopefully a good amount of time. We'll see how long
we go with him. Dave Ruben, who joins us in Dave,
welcome in. I this is supposedly kind of a sports podcast,
so why don't we start with that? And uh, yours.

(03:14):
You have a background as a sports fan, So what
teams do you like growing up? Give me a little
history on Dave Ruben the sports fan. Oh yeah, well,
I was a huge Yankees fan. Baseball was was my
first love. So you know, the Yankees were had some
pretty terrible teams when I was growing up. I was
born in seventies six, so those you know eighties Yankees

(03:34):
teams had Mattingly and nobody else basically for a long time.
And then by the time I was in college, I
think ninety four, the Yanks won the World Series and
then obviously pretty great. Since then, basketball is really my
my true sport. Although you know, in a crazy way,
I turned out to be a Portland Trailblazer fan because

(03:55):
I saw Clyde Drexler playing. I think this was the
eighty nine or nine day off, so it was the
first time I ever watched basketball and I saw this
guy dribbling with his head down. It looked like he
was barely paying attention. And he had like forty points
and twelve rebounds and eight assists that I just loved.
How cool and calm, no show voting and uh and

(04:15):
actually we we text every now and again now, so us.
You know, it's kind of cool when you get to
connect with some of your heroes from your childhood. That's
pretty cool. Yeah, and I guess so he were around
the same age day, so that's like the Stump Merril
Yankees of the nineties right when he was Yeah, yeah,
they were there pretty terrible. So I wanted to have
you and I love your stuff. And and there's so
much going on right now in in sports that are political,

(04:38):
like uh, and I do an overnight sports radio show,
and very really obviously we haven't had sports since March
team sports, but it's all been politicized here And why
is this taking place? What is your theory on why
this is now? This is now hip? Yeah? Well, first off,
I would say it's it's really deeply dy injurious. The

(05:00):
fact that politics has leaked into everything, I mean, every
corner of our society. You know, sports media, every Netflix show,
you open Apple TV and there's a political message. Um.
The fact that that politics and the sort of day
to day machination of what's happening in Washington, d C.

(05:22):
And this culture war has has steeped into everything else
is very dangerous because, you know, a healthy society, we
need escapes. There's a reason people love sports. You may
love sports because you love playing sports, and you love
the competition and you love getting out there and sweating
and and all of that stuff. But the other reason
we love watching sports is because it's an escape. You know,

(05:44):
even now when I do cardio, I've got a cardio
machine in my office and when I do cardio, I
watch old NBA games. That's what I watch. I watch
late eighties, early nineties, you know, Bowls, Championship years, um
NBA games. I've I've been the mid watching the entire season.
Right now, I'm just picking old games that I know
are great and I watched. And what happens is my

(06:06):
brain is allowed to escape the day to day craziness
and the fact that now you know, the NBA is
gonna come back and it's gonna say Black Lives Matter
on the court and some of the players are going
to have social justice messages on their jerseys and the
rest of it. It's really dangerous because a society that
can never escape politics, I think is a very unhealthy society.

(06:28):
And it's really disappointing what's happening with the NBA right now.
And I saw even I guess it's outside was it
outside Fenway Park? Now they're gonna have a big Black
Lives Matter UH banner or something. And it doesn't really
matter what you feel, whether you believe in the Black
Lives movement, black Lives Matter movement, or you don't believe
in it, or you don't like the messaging, or you
do like the messaging. It's more the broader point that

(06:50):
we need moments to escape, we need sports to escape,
we need art, we need music to escape. But if
all of our music is going to be about this,
and all of our sports, we're gonna be about it. Man,
We're gonna be at each other throughout twenty four hours
a day. You know, I've been ringing the alarm on
this thing for a couple of years, and here it is. Yeah, exactly,
you know, And and you look at I've worked in
the sports world for a long time and talk to

(07:11):
a lot of these guys. But the popular TV trope
is that you've got the dumb jock right in all this.
And and now we're supposed to believe that these guys
are on top of everything, Dave, that they they are
on the pulse of society, and we're supposed to listen
to them. And they have so much influence? Do they
You think they have as much influence as they think
they do. You know, it's hard to say. I I

(07:35):
think that especially young people can be influenced. But you know,
I remember around Dream Team time when Barkley was outspoken
about everything, and he used to say, I'm not a
role model. And I remember as a kid, I was
about sixteen years old or so, and it didn't really
make sense to me because it was like, what do
you mean, Like, you guys are all my heroes. I
of all you guys, you know, everybody on that team.

(07:56):
How could you not be a role model. But in
a certain sense, he Shuli was telling the truth. And
by the way, Barkley, even in the last week, he's
been speaking up about some of this stuff, and as
always he's pretty on point. I mean, Barkley, Barkley really
does seem to get it. Um. It's not even a
specific matter of whether some of the athletes have more
insight into it or not. I don't mind people speaking up,

(08:18):
you know, I'm a free speech guy. But it's more
the broader point. It's that if we if you show
up to an NBA game and they got Black Lives
Matter on the court and you got social justice warrior
this on his jersey and the other one on this jersey,
that basketball will become secondary. And as I said, sports
are the great escape. So it's right. Well, the other

(08:39):
and the other bigger issue I think is that once
this this social justice virus, and that is what I
call it. It is a virus. A virus is very
easy to catch and very hard to get rid of.
Right we're dealing with the pandemic right now. Coronavirus is
very easy to catch and hard to get rid of.
That's why we're taking these precautions once this thing gets

(09:00):
to any system. So right now, it seemingly has infected
the NBA, it seemingly has affected the NFL. I mean,
the NFL is saying they're going to play the black
national anthem. No nobody heard of a black national anthem
two weeks ago, and putting that aside, whether there was
some underground black national anthem. We have one national anthem.
It's the American national Anthem. That's what we stand for.

(09:20):
You're not forced to stand if you don't want, but
most people do at games, and that's what brings us together,
that that's what causes national cohesion. But now we're gonna
have a black national anthem and an American national anthem.
How does that make sense that we're gonna have an
Asian national anthem a white national anthem. I mean, this
is dangerous stuff. But once you go down this road,
because it's not based in in fact, it's not based

(09:43):
in common decency. It can take you to some pretty
scary places. Well and absolutely, and Dave with that is
the back dropping. I'm not saying, yeah, you know, shut
up and dribble and stick to sports and all that.
But there's got to be like a fine line here.
And once the toothpaste is out of the too, if
you will here, is there any going back? Is this
just going to be the way it is and people

(10:05):
are just gonna have to deal with it. If you
don't like it, don't watch sports. You know, savvy, I
actually think that that is what's going to happen here.
But as I said, this thing wanted in the system,
it destroys the system. So you can sort of see
what's happening with the New York Times right now. It
at one time was was the paper of record, and
although you know it probably always leaned a little bit left, um,

(10:28):
you know, people thought it was pretty reputable. Now it
has been just completely infected by this thing. Every day
there's wall to wall coverage of racial issues and how
bad white people are. Just this morning tweeted out another
piece of you know where they're blaming poor schooling on
white parents. I mean, just this crazy nonsense. So it
infects these institutions. And by the way, of course, it's

(10:51):
not just The New York Times. This has infected almost
every academic institution. You know, Harvard openly discriminates against Asian
people because they, Asian apparently worked too hard and studied
too much. They had quote unquote too many Asian people there. Now,
I don't believe in that. I believe if your work hard,
I don't care what color you are. I thought that's
what that Martin Luther King Jr. Guy was saying. But

(11:12):
they institute these things. I think what is going to
happen is the more that they go down this path,
the worse and worse their ratings are going to be.
I think you're gonna see the NBA ratings absolutely tumble.
People are sick of it, they don't want to put
up with it, and to watch a bunch of millionaires
run around and complain. Um yeah, I just think I think, look,

(11:34):
we know, we know that the ratings are going down
because the NFL ratings were way down last year. So
the more that you infect any system with this thing,
the more it will destroy itself. And I think at
the time of Corona, where we've all been, you know,
pretty quarantined for the last four months or whatever it is.
People are finding other things they're going. You know, maybe
I don't need to pay three hundred dollars to go
to an NBA game. Maybe that that is a waste

(11:55):
for the five bucks acost to get a freaking hot
dog and a coke. Maybe maybe this isn't the best
amount of time. And I'm telling you, man, if you
watch old basketball games or whatever your sport is, you know, football,
go watch watching old football game. You will enjoy it
just as much. Even though you could probably remember every
play and every call, it will it will remind you
of something that these new ones where they're infecting you
with with all this other stuff, just don't have to

(12:17):
be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven p m Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. David,
I'm want to jump from the free real quick with this.
I had a couple of lighter questions, but with what
you're saying to piggyback off of it, I guess if
you're a commissioner though of any major sport, whether it's
Adam Silver in the NBA, or Roger Goodell in the NFL,

(12:39):
or Rob Manford a Major League Baseball or Gary Bettman
the NHL, what do you do? What would be your
solution to what's going on right now? Because in one instance,
like you've been saying, like you want to have these
voices be heard, and you want to make sure that
that you're prominent players who are marketing your league and
propelling it to higher levels, especially monitor early they're the faces.

(13:02):
But at the same time, you don't want to sequestion
your other individuals that have a different opinion. So what
would be your solution, not an end all, be all,
but what would be a solution or an alternative for
you to get those players messages out if it's not
on the court, if it's not on the jury, that
are not on the helmets. Yeah, well look, the simple

(13:23):
answer is that there is no simple answer, right because
what I would do is I would say, look, guys,
you can do what you want off the court. Off
the court, you know, you could do what you want
on Twitter. You can do what you want on Instagram
and everywhere else, on YouTube and in in interviews and
all that stuff, and you know there's gonna be some
repercussions for it. If you just keep getting into hot water.

(13:44):
Maybe a Nike doesn't want to do a contract with you,
or this or that. Like that's all just that's what
freedom is all about. I would say, you guys have
maximum freedom to do whatever you want. You're you're paid
as basketball players. But what they have made the mistake
of doing is saying, no, this is literally going to
be on the court. We are going to paint a
political message on the court. We are going to play

(14:06):
an alternate national anthem before a football game. That's where
the dangerous thing is. You know, it's funny because a
couple of years ago, when the Kaepernick thing was really
blowing up, everybody kept saying, oh, this is such a disaster,
it's such an infringement on a free speech and everything else.
But I actually was saying the reverse the entire time,
because if you think about it, think about what happened.
Kaepernick was allowed to kneel or not kneel. That was

(14:29):
completely on him. Nobody came to drag him away. The
owners were allowed to decide whether they wanted to have
them on their team or not. The fans were allowed
to decide whether to boo him or not boo him,
or or buy jerseys or not buy jerseys. Even President
who was tweeting about it, he didn't stop anyone from
doing anything. The President has uh free speech as well,

(14:50):
so everybody got to exercise their free speech. And that's
actually a beautiful thing. You know, free speech has consequences.
So if other teams were like, you know, pretty sure,
maybe he could play here still because he's got some
skills left, but it's going to cause us just such
a freaking headache, well then that's a that's an economic
decision that they make. But in fact, everybody's free speech

(15:13):
was respected. That that's the bizarre thing that we find
ourselves in these days. Well, the lighter lighter side of
that too, Davis, I want to ask you, since you
are a part of of what's going on today's climate,
correct me if I'm wrong, and I think I saw
this a week or two ago, were you or were
you not playing heads up against Senator Ted Cruz some
pro wrestling old school process from Nintendo. I'm sitting I'm

(15:36):
sitting in my office right now and I've got my
old school Nintendo here. It is my childhood any s
that I got in on June twenty six, my birthday,
I was nine years old, and I had that thing.
I you know, you know all those old school Nintendo's
they stopped working at some point. You gotta blow in
the cartridges and you gotta whack them over the top

(15:56):
and all that. I watched the YouTube video I read
he's this thing. I took it apart, fixed it myself,
and yes, I had Ted Cruising here and we were
playing pro wrestling on Nintendo. It was one of the
original games that came out with Super Mario Brothers. And
the funny thing is he he craimed he had never
played it before, although he is a bit of a
video game guy, and you know, I'm We're live streaming it,

(16:17):
and I was like, you know, maybe I'll let him
like pin me once or twice before I beat him
at the end. But then the second he knocked me
down once he jumped on me, and the system prose
it actually just completely froze. So it appeared that Ted
Cruise beat me. But for the record, Ted, if you're listening,
you know I had your number. Yeah, And speaking of
Ted Cruz, he had a huge dust up with Mark

(16:40):
Cuban recently on Twitter. They were going back and forth,
how did you grade that fight? You know, Cruise has
become a real Twitter warrior. I gotta tell you, you know,
I wasn't a huge fan of his. I said this
to his face when I sat down with him, uh,
you know, during the election, and I kind of regret
it because I've really come to like him. I think
that something about getting the beard, uh, something that turned

(17:03):
something on in him. Um. I think his broad point
of you know where where basically he was saying a
Mark Cuban. You know, it's like, well, where are you
Mark Cuban as an NBA owner and where are the
NBA players and other owners when it comes to standing
up to China, which is which is doing all sorts
of terrible things. Right we know that there's about a
million Muslim people that are in concentration camps right now.

(17:26):
I mean, these these videos are being shown. You can
find these videos online, and it's like no one from
the NBA is saying a word about that because they've
got seriously lucrative deals over there. I think ted with
calling out that hypocrisy, and uh, I don't know that Cuban,
you know, backed it or backed him off his position
in any real way. Yeah, he did a little tap

(17:47):
dance there. It's it's just everyone who's in. You're obviously
the NBA guy, and I like the NBA obviously were
talking about all these sports. But it's like they're big
hypocrites and they don't seem to have a problem with it,
which is very very Yeah, it's like their cherry picking
certain things and other things they're going to completely ignore
because it obviously don't touch the money, right, isn't that
the golden rule they have, don't touch the money. Yeah,

(18:09):
you know, it's tough. Look, all of these things are businesses,
you know. I think the kid and all of us
wants to think that it's all about what happens on
the court and all of that kind of stuff. But
at the end, at the end of the day, the NBA,
the NFL, these things are businesses, servers making a business
decision when he decided to put Black Lives Matter on
the court because and I think in Silver's mind, I'm

(18:31):
not a mind reader, but I think it's probably something
like this. I think it's probably like he's gone. Man.
If I don't if I don't do this, they will
come from my head. And in many ways, that's what's
happening here. The reason this this sort of tear down
the monuments, you know, defund the police, all of these
things that we know we're wrong. We all, all the
adults know these things are wrong. But the reason that

(18:51):
they keep spreading is because everybody sort of thinks, oh,
I don't say anything, I'll be okay. This this thing
will just pass over me. So Silver is actually inviting
the monster into his own home, and the monster is
actually going to rest the whole place, and then and
eventually it will come for him no matter what I mean.
I guarantee you you can mark my words on this

(19:12):
clip the hell out of it. The social justice thing
will come for a child at the end of the day.
He's a he's a millionaire white guy, and he thinks
that if he can throw them some stuff like black
Lives Matter on the court, that that will buy him
some time. And he's right. It will buy him a
little time, but it will not buy him much time.
They will take him out at some point, and we

(19:32):
see this across across all the boards. I mean, they
will take out all of these guys when they want to.
So you know, the hypocrisy there for everybody. And I
would say, I would say, if I was an athlete
right now, I think I would be so freaking thrilled
to be doing what I love, making millions of dollars
getting you know, living a lifestyle that any of us

(19:54):
or virtually anyone else on earth would kill to live.
That I would try to be a little respectful of that.
And that's not to say I would never speak out
about things that matter to me. Um. But what I
think these guys don't realize is they're burning down their
own house. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven p
m Pacific. Daveuton, speaking of speaking, You've done a lot

(20:17):
of that with all kinds of people. Did you or
could you ever envision yourself doing this ten fifteen years ago?
I mean, you're you're sitting down with Senator Cruz, You're
you're talking to Ben Shapiro. Uh, you know, Jordan Peterson
likes you have a lot of different people on a
different platforms. Joe Rogan of course, like what inspired all

(20:39):
this and like what was the ultimate motivation behind it.
I mean, no joke, guys, I kind of wanted to
do what you do. When I was in college, I
wanted to be on the SPN. That was right when
Sports Center was really blowing up, when Olberman and Dan
Patrick had that hour, and Craig Kilborn, who I thought
was just like he was just such a perfect example

(21:01):
of like a great sports anchor, but he was also
really funny and had a unique perspective. And I was like, Oh,
that's what I want to do for a living. Like,
who wouldn't want to do that, you know, just like
talk about sports and be funny and silly and all
that stuff. And it just sort of never it never
materialized for me. And I was always into politics anyway
I was. I was a political science major. And I

(21:23):
got out of I got out of college and I
suddenly was like, oh, man, I guess I got to
get a job. And I started doing stand up And
I did stand up for about twelve years in New
York City, and I had plenty of success and all
the struggles that come with that, and eventually I got
a serious XM show where I was doing mostly pop culture,
and then about eight years ago, moved out to l
A and started really getting into more of the political world.

(21:46):
It's kind of funny to move to l A to
get into the political world, because you know, you think
a DC or New York is the political place, but
there is something interesting brewing out here in l A
these days. And it's it's just been, uh truly when
I when I think about it, when I was writing
my book, it's like the year that I spent on
the road with Jordan Peterson. We did about a hundred
shows in about twenty countries, and I met just thousands

(22:07):
and thousands of people from every walk of life, every
you know, we went across the United States and just
to all of these places in Europe and Canada and elsewhere,
and it's like to be able to connect with all
these people and realize, like, it's just so cool that
you know that what I'm thinking here in my house
in l A is the exact same thing that somebody
in Calgary is thinking. And that's the same thing that

(22:29):
somebody in Dublin, Ireland is thinking, and it's the same
thing that somebody in Des Moines, Io is thinking. And
when you really realize that that that's real and that
we're all just people trying to figure out our way
through life, and there's other people like us. It's it's
pretty empowering. So I think all I've done is say
what I believe. And if you say what you believe,
I think And this is a very Jordan Peterson style message.

(22:50):
But if you say what you believe and you fight
for what you believe, honestly, you have no idea how
much you can change the world. And the best example
I can give of that is is literally in my life.
I mean, anyone right now that's listening to this. You know,
twenty years ago, if you had a thought, you had
a great thought, of funny thought, you know, edgy, political thought,
whatever it might be, you can't do much with it.

(23:11):
Right you can tell your friends, you could, uh, you
could write it down whatever. Now you can get on
Twitter and for all you know, two minutes later, a
million people may have read your thought, a million people
may have senior video read your meme, whatever it is.
That's an incredible power that we all have right now,
and I think people don't realize how powerful we all are. Well,

(23:32):
and Dave, you mentioned comedy, and I've been a big
fan of stand up comedy I've never tried it, and
you did it, you said you had some success. Probably
that's that way exactly. But is this the is this
the death of stand up comedy? To me? When I
used to go to comedy clubs back in l A,
back in the you know, back in the days, the
greatest comedy was the most offensive, derogatory comedy, but it

(23:55):
was hilarious, and I, I guess I should feel bad
for laughing now compared to however, now, you shouldn't feel
bad for a laughing. You shouldn't because that's that's the
beautiful thing. Think about Don Rickles, right. Don Rickles was
the great insult comic of fifty years in the United States.
And he would go on stage and he'd point to
this guy, the Asian guy, and a black man, and
a white guy, and the Jew and the gay guy.

(24:15):
And what he did was he made everyone in that
room realize that they too are the butt of the joke,
that they too are part of the fabric of America.
That is what it is all about. When we suddenly say, now, oh,
you can't joke about this person because of this or
that person because of that. What you're saying is they're
protected they're they're too weak. This is what we call

(24:37):
the soft bigotry of low expectations. That these people, if
we treat them like everybody else, something wrong will happen
to them where they will wilt like a flower in
the sun. That is such a dangerous thing. And I'll
tell you when. So you know, these last couple of years,
because I've achieved other success. When I'm on the road,
I'll usually just I can sell out whatever club I'm doing,

(24:58):
and I just basically run road show. It's more like
a circus. I get up there and I start messing
with the crowd, and I do crowd work, and I
throw T shirts into the audience, and I get people
to yell about what what their oppression is and all
sorts of silly stuff. And it's it's very different and
very politically incorrect. Unfortunately, people haven't put too much of
it online. So that's that's good for now. Um, but yes,

(25:20):
we need you know. It's the same thing that I
was saying about sports, the way you need sports as
an escape. If if what you do at the end
of a workday is crack open a beer and watch
a basketball game so that you can decompress you need
comedy for that too. And the more that these things
become politically correct, the more that these things become about
something that they're not really about, the worst this is
going to be for for for us and for the country. Dave,

(25:43):
if you're not canceled in the next couple of years,
do you have any thoughts of running running for office? Uh?
You know a lot of people have been asking me.
The Libertarians want me to run. I mean, I I
that it's not what I want to do. I mean,
I think I've I've created something nice. I think I'm
I'm a pretty solid explainer of ideas and a halfway
decent interviewer and and I enjoy doing that. Um, you know,

(26:06):
the political machine. I think Trump is a really good
example of this. The political machine is so dirty, and
it's so messed up, and and you know, the games
that they will play and the stuff that they will
drudge up about you. You know, I've lived a life
I'm not ashamed of that I've done. I've done some
stuff in my day. And it's like the idea that
that's what it would be about instead of the ideas

(26:27):
We've all lived their life. By the way, I wouldn't
want someone who hasn't really lived the life to be
to be president or to be a politician in any way. Um,
but unfortunately, the system is so is so screwed up
that I think it's not a game for me to play.
I don't think I don't I don't think I could
ethically do the things that it would probably take to win.
And I think a lot of people feel that way actually,

(26:49):
which is pretty unfortunate. Yeah, and they have to go back.
He would talking earlier in the conversation about the messages
on uniforms from it's really the trifecta. Who got base
ball is going to allow it on their cleats? Basketball
in the Jersey's NFL has said they're gonna have Black
Lives Matter and some of those other messages on the helmet.
What would happen if a player were to come out

(27:12):
and say, I want to put pro America message or yeah,
god forbid of Donald Trump message? How would that be received? Well,
it would to put out just like a generally pro
American one and be stopped. I mean that would be
something else which I wouldn't put past these guys. Obviously,
if someone was to put MAGA on there or something
you know, relatively pro Trumpet would It would cause all

(27:35):
sorts of problems. But that's the point. If you are
going to infect your system with politics, well then you
can't infect it halfway. It's going to be infected. It's
fully So you can't say, Okay, we're going to allow
political messages on cleats and on the courts and on
the jerseys, but only the political messages which we think
are okay, which by the winks I only know. In

(27:57):
the case of the NBA, I mean they authorize what
like dozen or two dozen political messages that can be said.
So what NBA is now deciding what political messages can
be said, I mean that's pretty authoritarian. That sounds far
more like something China would do than something the United
States would do. And as we know, NBA has has,
you know, all these contracts with China and a deep

(28:19):
future that it wants in China. That probably explains some
of this stuff. But look, the more they do this,
I think it's going to be reflected in ticket sales.
I think it's going to be reflected in viewership. I
think because of Corona, people are doing are looking at
the world differently. We're spending more time at home. I
think more people are thinking about what really is important.

(28:40):
And what's really important usually is family and friends and
and stood and and that kind of stuff. And the
more that you see people that are millionaires be so
out of touch and lecture you while you pay them
to do it, I think that's going to turn a
lot of people off. Be sure to catch live editions
of the Ben Maller Show. We Day said two am

(29:01):
Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Well and and Dave, I've talked
about this on the overnight show that they do. And
when I when I mentioned I'm not really in favor
of the messages on uniforms and all that people say,
it's uh. The blowback is that black lives Matter is
not political. That's the That's the message that I get
when I said, I don't think this is a good idea.
So let me ask you, Dad, you're in the political

(29:23):
mud here. Is black lives matter a political message? The message? Absolutely,
It is almost as political a message as it could
possibly be. If you were to tell me that black
lives do I believe black lives matter? Well, yes, I
believe black lives matter. Of leaves, white lives matter. Straight
lives matter, Gay lives matter, believe it or not. Even
think white Christian heterosexual men's lives matter, believe it or not.

(29:45):
I know it's crazy. Um, but the Black Lives Matter organization.
Go to their website. They are an avow with Marxist
organization who would like to do things such as destroyed
the nuclear family. I'm not making this up. This is
the stuff that is on their website. And this, by
the way, is the stuff that the NBA is signing onto.

(30:07):
When they say they're with Black Lives Matter, they don't
mean they mean they're signing on with the organization. I
keep seeing a commercial now from Spite where they're saying,
you know, we're donating X amounts of Black Lives Matter.
As I said, before you turn on Apple TV, there's
a message about this or that. So these things that
they are not signing onto some amorphous message that we
all agree with. We all agree lives matter, and I

(30:29):
personally don't care whether they're white or black or anything else.
If if injustice exists, then I would I would prefer
it not exist, and I will fight it where it
where it exists. Um, but that's not what this is about.
This is this is a political organization that has infected
at the grassroots level. I would say almost every political

(30:50):
institution that we have, well democratic or lessie political institutions,
and certainly academic and media and otherwise. So the answer
to that is yeah, absolutely. And every time someone asked
you that question, just send them a link. Send them
the link, and then say you tell me the bigger
question all this is, are you surprised by any of
this transpiring? Now? I wish I wasn't. Man, You know,

(31:14):
it's funny. I get a lot of people that over
the years said a lot of mean things about me
on Twitter or whatever. That is what it is that
suddenly you are singing my tune, they're not giving me
credit for it, and a lot of people I tweeted
something about this this morning. It's like a lot of
people who were going after me a couple of years
ago or now just repeating the stuff that I was saying. Um,
it was very obvious to me. I spent a lot

(31:36):
of time going to college campuses and talking and all
of these things, and the violence that I was met with,
and the people protesting and calling me nazi and all
of these crazy things. Even though I'm telling everybody I
want them all to be treated equally and with respect
and decency and equality under the law. All of this, um,
it was very obvious to me that this thing was

(31:56):
not going to just stay on college campus. That's whatever.
All the critics, the critics, usually the lefty critics New
York Times crew, Oh, this is just some college thing,
and when these kids get out into the real world,
they'll see what it's all about. And they were completely wrong.
Their institutions, whether they're political or sports or whatever it is,

(32:17):
they were left with. But I would say, they had
a wound, and these guys just infected the wound and
now they've taken over. So, uh, you know, I guess
there's something. There's something nice. You know, there's something kind
of weird. It's like when you're ahead of the curves,
I guess for a while, you start feeling behind it.
And that's sort of what I feel right now, because
it's like, I'm glad that people are catching on. But

(32:37):
to be totally honest with you, guys, I wish I
was wrong. I wish I had been wrong this whole time. Well, Dave,
you migrated from New York out here to California, and
we've got to get personal with your real quick, because I,
unlike Ben, have a real big love and fascination of
everything on the coastline, which is typically what's the four
oh five Freeway. Have you found a sweet spot for

(32:59):
Mexican food that you absolutely adore? Because Ben and I
go back and forth in a couple of different places,
but southern California Mexican food, you really can't go wrong
wherever you go. Oh man, I'll tell you you can't
go wrong. You really can't here. I'll give you a
very very cliche answer for anyone that's listened and met
in l A. But Casa Vega in the Valley, I

(33:21):
think it's sort of right on the studio City Sherman
Oaks border. Uh. It's it's been here forever. It's a
big kind of celebrity hangout, and it's just like an
old school canteena kind of place. The food is not great,
it's kind of salty and whatever, but they make great Margarita's,
great music, great atmosphere. It's fun and funky, and unfortunately

(33:42):
I haven't been there, and you know whatever, it is
now five months or something. But I've learned to make
a pretty mean Margarita on my own. So happy to
make one of those for you guys. Any of these
did margarite pro wrestling? We could do this, Ben, David,
have you been to El Coyote over on Beverly. That's
a pretty good spot too. That's me and guessing there.

(34:03):
You know, I may I used to live on that side.
I'm not over there anymore. I don't remember specifically. I
used to go to Tortilla Republic over in West Hollywood
every now and again, which is pretty good. Did it
a bit of a scene over there, now? Yeah, I was, David.
I won't get back to this loosely. The sports thing.
So a couple of weeks ago, we had another rude bar.
This was not about Black Lives matter. It was exposing people.

(34:27):
We had to Sean Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles, who
sent out a bunch of like anti Semitic stuff and
you know, wild stuff on social media, and the people
in sports. Many of these guys that were saying if
you're quiet, if you don't say anything, you're part of
the problem, said nothing about this. They had no no opinion.
I mean, how did you think that whole episode went down? Yeah?

(34:50):
I mean This is the problem with identity politics, because
identity politics, what it does is it says, oh, you're Black,
you have this worth. You're Jewish, you have this worth.
Your white you have this worth. And they put it
in a in a competing pecking order. So picture a triangle.
It's a hierarchy. And in this case black is above
Jewish and Jewish is above white, and we can add

(35:12):
in where the other ones fit. It's it's quite a
bizarre thing. But in this case, because it was a
black man saying something about Jewish people and that doesn't
fit into the equation everyone that's always against oppression and
against bigotry and four diversity and four dollars, they got
real quiet, real quick. But I will say this, Charles Barkley,
who I referenced earlier, he was on NBA on TNT

(35:33):
the other night and he actually totally called it out.
And you know, I know, he got some flak for it.
Now they're calling him a cellout and and uncle Tom
and the rest of it. And it's like man free
thinking these days is there's a high price to pay
for it. But I think if more people do it
will be better off. But any any time, whether it's
if you're saying all black people think like this or

(35:54):
behave this way, that's bigotry. If you're thinking all white
people or Jewish people think this, behave this way, that's bigotry.
The only way you counter that is by judging an
individual person for their actions and their thoughts. So if
you meet a black person and they're they're nice and
thoughtful and interesting, that's one way you can judge them.

(36:16):
And if you meet somebody who isn't that, then you
judge them for that. You don't say, oh, all black
people are like this, And that's the same obviously goes
for any race, any gender, any sexuality. David. With that
being said, though, obviously you know we've all had experiences
in the sports realm or the media realm. But what
about younger individuals that are just getting out of college,

(36:36):
they have internships, and you talk about them. I wanted
to stand stand their ground and have their voice be heard.
But what happens when you have that fine line between
voicing your thoughts and your opinions and also towing the
company line, because those things can be split in today's
world and the ramifications we've seen high school football coaches

(36:58):
get terminated from their job because they go on one
side of the political aisle as opposed to the other.
So what would you say to some of the young
professionals they're looking to make a career out of this thing. Yeah, well,
first off, let's be clear, we know which side of
the aisle that you take the position publicly that gets
you fired. Right, It's it's always it always goes one way. Right,
Nobody nobody comes out and says I'm a Democrat, I

(37:20):
support Nancy Pelosi and gets fired. It's only if you
say you're a Republican or a conservative, or or you
support Trump something like that. So that's that's one thing.
The second part is I get this question a lot
of college campuses because kids will say to me, you know, Dave,
I'm I'm in a class, my my professors, a total
socials justice warrior. I want to say the truth, but
I want to get the grade. And when I first

(37:41):
who started speaking on college campuses a couple of years ago,
I used to say, you know, if you're an undergrad,
just suck it up and just get through get the grade,
because that way you hopefully get into the grad school
you want or whatever it is. And you'll get to
the company you want to work for and you're okay.
I've really changed my opinion on this. I think you
must say what you think, and you must do it

(38:02):
often at cost to yourself, because especially if you're a
young person, if you, let's say your your nineteen, you're
in college, or even right out of college. Because I
think that's what you're asking. You're you're you're you know,
you're the mail guy in the in the big company. Right.
It's not that you should run around demanding everyone listened
to your political thoughts all the time. I mean, you
should probably mostly focus on your job. But if you

(38:25):
don't say what you think, do you think you're going
to be braver three years from now, six years from now,
ten years from now, if you're in college, do you
think you're going to be braver when you have car
payments and a mortgage, and a wife and a dog
and a kid and all sorts of the other stuff
that come with life. I think once they get you
to bow when you're young, it's very hard to be

(38:47):
I mean, you think about it for yourself. Guys, when
was the last time you've heard one of one of
your friends who's around our age. A guy in his
forties suddenly he gets brave out of nowhere and they're
telling everybody what he thinks. I mean, maybe he had
a mental breakdown, but that's that's pretty much it. So
I think you have to do it. It will come
with the cost, But I think the greater cost is
that you know, you just will live your life as

(39:08):
a frog in a slowly boiling pot, and one day
that frog is boiled. It's as simple as that. See.
The thing for me is, and I don't know if
if you're been agree with me on this, is that
I've got a ton of friends and even co workers
that were nothing like this five six, seventy years ago,
and the power of social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and

(39:29):
god forbid my Space. Then all of a sudden they
became brave. That changed. Well, are you saying they became
braver they suddenly became brainwashed? I think that. I think
they became brave. I think I think you know, these
are people you'd have civilized conversations with and at times
civil discourse, but then all of a sudden you go

(39:50):
on social media and you see what their profile and
what they post, and it's drastically different than how they
converse with you, right right, So look full have been
brainwashed by this stuff. It is as simple as that.
The idea that identity politics is a good thing, that
we should judge people on their skin, color and gender

(40:11):
and sexuality. These are the reverse of every message that
anyone has been taught in a liberal democracy. This is
the reverse what did Martin Luther King Jr. Want? He
wanted his children to grow up in a world where
they would not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character. Well, who's judging
by the color of skin right now? It's the people

(40:31):
who purport to be the anti racist. It's it's the
Black Lives Matter crew that are making everything about race.
That isn't to say that there are no race racist people.
Of course, there are racist people. There are always going
to be racist people. Humans. Humans are flawed. I think
the best of the thing that you can do is
express better ideas and hopefully show them that the ideas

(40:52):
of bigotry are wrong. Um. But the idea that you
can build a system, I mean, this is what we're
being told right now that are entire your system. The
two d fifty year American experiment that this thing is
long and evil, even though it brought more prosperity to
more people than any other place in the history of
the world, and everyone in the world it still wants
to come here. Nobody wants to leave, right, I mean,

(41:13):
look at the numbers. Nobody's leaving the United States. The
older people who leave the United States are billionaires who
want to save some money on taxes. That that tells
you something. But we're being told that our system was
so evil and it's only these people who can rebuild
a system, and they're going to rebuild it, you know,
by burning our whole system down. You know, it's a

(41:35):
lot easier to burn things than to build things. And
I think that watching it's tough because I know what
you're going through, and I know what a lot of
people in momentary It's like, man, I've had lifelong friends
that you know, didn't show up to my wedding and
they'll say you're racist, and you say, well, have I
ever expressed a racist No, Well, you you talked to
this person or you didn't post about this or something.

(41:56):
And that's that's crazy, man. And it's uh, it's a
dangerous place. It's just a dangerous place for a society
to be at. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports
talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I
Heart Radio app search f s R to listen Live
Well and Dave and the piggyback up what you were

(42:18):
talking about a few minutes ago. Here. I've got a
kind of network of guys that work in radio around
the country that I text and talked to. And a
lot of these guys are afraid to give any political,
even loosely political opinion because all this is related sports
now with politics, they feel like they have to say
what the mainstream is saying or else they're gonna get canceled.

(42:41):
It's a where it's like this has been They've all
been pushed into the closet on how they actually think
because they're afraid they're done if they actually say what
they believe. It's wild. What's going on right now? Oh? Yeah, well, look,
people who get paid to talk for a living, right
what are you guys getting paid for. It's to talk,
it's to share your opinions. And now we live in
the time where if you share one opinion or you

(43:02):
raise an eyebrow or in the wrong way or not
your head, or if took a picture with somebody who
years later did something bad, that they're going to take
you out. But again, the only way we defeat this,
we don't defeat this through legislation. I don't even think
we defeat this by voting in the right people, although
I think that would help at a certain level. The
only way we defeat this is for the average person

(43:24):
to get more braves. If they can't fire all of us,
they can't cancel all of us. But what they're praying
on is that they can scare enough of us to
never say what they think. You know, a good example
of this is Tucker Carlton. Now I have I've become
friendly with Tucker, and I like him, and we have
some agreements that we have some political disagreements, which by
the way, he brings me on his show to to

(43:45):
bring up um. But you know, every day there are
people that just wait for Tucker to say one wrong
thing so they can start a boycott against him. And
what I alreadys tell people is it's not that they're
really trying to take out Tucker Carlson. What it is
is that they're trying to signal to you. They're trying
to signal to you. Oh man, See, we can even

(44:06):
get Tucker. We can even get this guy on Fox
News who makes millions. So if we can get him,
we damn well sure can get you. And that that's
the really dangerous thing. But again, the only thing and
the only thing that will stop it is you. You've
got to put a foot in the sand, a draw
line in the sand and say I will not give
into this thing. And it's not going to be easy.

(44:27):
You will lose friends, you will have family members turn
on you. Uh. This is I laid this all out
in my book. In many ways, this is what the
book is about. That you will go through all of
these things, but I promise you you will be better
on the other side. Because when it is way better
to live as you see fit and be hated than
to live on your knees and be loved, I think

(44:50):
who wants that? Dave? On that note, do you enjoy
what you do now? I mean, obviously this is this
is a it's a vaultal time right because you just
mentioned with your wedding and Ben and I obviously working together,
we hear things and see things but it is. It
is flammable, it is volatible. Um. But you're getting the
message out in one way and other people are getting

(45:11):
the message out in another way. Do you enjoy this? Like?
Are you are there days where you're not having fun
with what you're doing? Um? Well, of course there are
days when I'm not having fun, and there's there's moments
in a day when I'm not having fun. But by
and large, look, I get to say what I think,
I've survived the mob. Many times, I've helped people, um,

(45:31):
survived their own mobs. You know, I get I get
a ton of fan mail from all over the literally
all over the world, people saying that I've helped start
them on their own political or philosophical adventure. I've got
to meet, you know, heroes of mine and all kinds
of people that are that are cool and relevant and fun. Um.
You know I told you before my childhood hero was

(45:53):
Clyde Director. One day, I literally just called up my agent.
I said, hey, I don't gonna sound crazy, but you
know I used to love Cry the Bride when I
was a kid. I was like, can you get me
his number? And he's like, hang out a second, And
within two minutes I had his number and now we
text every now and again. It's like, that's pretty freaking cool.
So I would say it's not to say it doesn't
come with its stresses, because it obviously does. But you

(46:13):
know of the time when someone comes up to me
at the supermarket or wherever I am, it's like they
have something positive to say. So you know, you get
a cirt amount of hate online and that's not fun.
But I would say it's a it's a price I'm
willing to pay for everything else. And if you mentioned
the book, and if there's a guy listening right now,
I was like, on the fence, still sell them. Give

(46:36):
me the name of the book and tell them why
they should buy the book. Yeah, it's called Don't Burn
this Book, and it's simply is about everything that we've
discussed here. I mean we we sort of bounced around
at all. But what the idea of the book really is,
more than anything else, is I lay out my sort
of political philosophy and my personal philosophy, and I lay

(46:57):
out all my political positions. And it's not to convince
you that I'm right about every political position I I
I personally happen to be pro choice. But I'm not
trying to make new pro choice. You know, I'm not
trying to make someone gay for gay marriage, let's say.
And I'm not trying to make someone I believe in,
you know, like a fifteen percent or eighteen percent flat packs.
I'm not trying to convince you any of the things.

(47:18):
I'm trying to show you that I've thought about these issues,
and these are the conclusions I've come to. And the
important thing is for you to think about think about
these things honestly, and come to a conclusion. If your
conclusion is different than mine, well that's the beautiful thing,
because we've got millions of billions of people of this country,
and I wouldn't want to live in a country with
people who only thought the same things as me. So

(47:40):
it's about it's about thinking for yourself and and being
able to know enough so that when the mob comes
for you, you will survive. And and don't burn this book.
And where can they get it? David? I just saw
your Twitter feed. You have a link there is there
is there somewhere else that you can get the book
as well. Sure it's available elsewhere. It's wherever books are sold.
You can go and don't burn this book dot com

(48:01):
or of course it's on Amazon, who are overlorded these days. Yeah,
I got you, all right, Dave, thank you so much
for your time. I appreciate you. No your busy guy
and continued success my pleasure, guys. Thanks Rot