Clay Travis chats with Dave Rubin

Clay Travis is joined by political commentator  Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report. Clay and Dave discuss his dreams of becoming a sports broadcaster, how a he got into the world of comedy, his decision to come out as gay and his reasons for becoming a political commentator.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Play talks
with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome in the newest Wins and
Losses podcast. If you haven't signed up for it yet,

(00:24):
to go listen to everybody else. I think you're gonna
love them, whether it's Jason Whitlock, whether it's Washington State
football coach Mike Leach, Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference Greg Sanky.
We're kind of intersecting the world of sports, media, politics,
and business and telling stories about how people ended up
where they did, the wins and losses along the way
for the process of their lives. And this week's guest

(00:47):
is Dave Reuben. He's at Reuben Report on Twitter. He's
a man of many talents. Uh and you guys may
have watched us together on YouTube on his show before.
We've had a lot of great conversations. We've met. Couple
of years ago during the fallout of my my comments
on CNN. Would you have ever known about me if

(01:07):
you hadn't seen that clip? Did you? Had you been
cognizant of me existing before that? I think I had
come across your name a couple of times, and I
don't think I was following you yet. When I saw
that moment with you and Baldwin, I was kind of like,
whatever is going on here? And as you know, I
am a sports guy, but just because my life has
gotten so busy and the politics thing has just kind
of taken over, like I just don't have as much

(01:29):
time for that any right, But I was like, whatever
this guy is up to? That moment was so exactly
everything that I'm talking about all the time, related to
free speech, related to outreach culture, related to the mob,
related to the lunacy of the media and the crantastic
programming of CNN, yes, and all of those things that
I was like, I've got to talk to this guy.
And then what was interesting was then when I had

(01:50):
you on the show, which was just within a couple
of weeks of that, um quickly I was like, whoa,
it's not just that he gets it, but we do
both occupy what I think is coming a really increasing
space of people that are desperately trying to find some
sanity here and not trying to ransack everything that is
so good about this country. So uh so, yeah, I

(02:11):
don't think I really knew who you were before then,
but but since then it's been incredibly beneficial for my career.
Uh And a lot of people listening right now may
have initially discovered me then. Obviously, It's not like I
hadn't been in the public arena before. But it's so
hard to cut through, you know, in general, and make
a name good or bad for yourself in such a
complicated and competitive culture. I wasn't planning on that happening,

(02:34):
but I definitely leaned into it. Also, the way that
they booked those shows. It's also an impossibly difficult thing
to figure out. So for example, I just told you so,
you so, we're in my studio right now, and we
just tape my show, and I totally I'm doing Tucker
Tonight ones and I go on Fox Now probably once
or twice a week. I'm not paid or anything. I'm
not a contributor. But I always find that they let
me say whatever I want. Tucker puts me on live,

(02:56):
we don't we don't do a pre interview anymore. There's
none of that. They trust me. I can say whatever
I want, I can agree with him, disagree with him.
The rest of it but then people will say, we, well, real,
but you don't go on CNN, you don't go on MSNBC,
And it's like they don't invite any right, you want
me to just I literally took a picture when I
was in New York last week. I don't know if
you saw this on Twitter. Yeah, I tweeted a picture
of a selfie sitting downstairs at the time Warner Center,

(03:17):
which is where CNN is upstairs that Whole Foods. Take
a picture of myself. I said, hey, I'm here, I'm
happy to come on. Yeah, you know, but they but
they don't want to. Yeah, And really that does get
to so many things that we talked about about which
way tolerance is sort of veering these things and it's
not the side that you think or that you've been
trained to think that it's going in. All right, So
I want to get into your background because one of

(03:38):
the things we love to do on this show is
figure out how someone ends up where they are. So
kind of a set the scene for people listening. Right now.
We're sitting in your studio and you're a Los Angeles
abode here, which is phenomenal. You do a couple of
different really popular shows on YouTube, you distribute them. You've
had a tremendous amount of success. You're working on a
book now, You've got a lot of opportunities. You just

(04:01):
mentioned you're going on Tucker Carlson. You've got a ton
of different media opportunities all happening at the same time, right,
Which is a good place to be on the last
time I saw you, we were in uh, Washington, d C.
And you and I and kandas Owens all went out
for dinner together Trump or the Trump Hotel whatever steakhout
the Trump Hotel steakhouse there. We had an incredible conversation.
Was an awesome time. Um, And so I want to

(04:23):
circle back to you grew up a where like the
very beginning, you grew up in New York is right.
I'm a true New Yorker. When people say they're New Yorkers,
there's very few actual New Yorkers. But I was born
in Brooklyn before it was cool, ipster Brooklyn still crappy Brooklyn,
where my dad and my grandparents were from. UH. When
I was three years old, we moved out to Long Island,
which was that was the dream for if you were

(04:46):
a city, New York City or Brooklyn or Queen's person.
The dream was you could move to Long Island, maybe
to Westchester or from suburban part of Jersey. My folks
moved this out to little town called Sayasset, which is
basically smacked dead in the middle of Long Island, Exit
forty three on the l I A and uh So.
I grew up in Long Island. I went to college

(05:07):
in upstate New York, Sunny Binghamton. My dad was very
clear when I was applying for colleges. I wanted to
go to Syracuse because I wanted to be a sports
bro ester. I wanted to be on ESPN, and Marv
Albert went there, and Bob Costa went there too, and
all those guys went there. And my dad said, if
you go to a Sunny school meeting an in state
state University of New York school, we'll pay for it
because it's about nine grand women a year. And he said,

(05:30):
if you go to a private school or at a
state it's on you. I think maybe he was going
to make up the differences. You know, he would have
taken care of the nine and then I would have
had pay over. And Syracuse at the time was about
twenty five grand it's probably something like sixty girls. And
I remember thinking, I was like, I would love to
go there. I want to be on Sports Center. It
was the heyday of Sports Center. Kilbourne was was new

(05:52):
and fresh and funny before crazy before, but yeah, he
was great him and damn pack. That thing was amazing.
I loved every moment of it because it was funny,
it was edgy, it was rever ir reverend. But basically
I was like, well, I can either go to college
for free and hopefully figure out a path if I
was even thinking about it that much at seventeen years old,

(06:14):
or I can go to this place but then have
a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt. If I had
only known now that the Democrats, you know, pay off
my debt, maybe I would have done it. But and
then I lived after that. I lived in Manhattan pretty
much right out of college after a year back with
my with my folks. Lived in Manhattan for about fifteen
years and that's when I started doing stand up and

(06:34):
all that, and lived there until February when I moved
to l A. And this is like Hotel California. You
can get in, but you can never get out, alright,
so that is a that's an awesome run through. Now
at Sunni Bingam, what did you major in and how
would you describe your academic performance while there? Yeah, I
majored in political science. So I like to say that
Ben Shapiro and I are basically the only two POLYCIGN

(06:56):
majors that actually use their degree outside degree um. But
I remember that most of my political science classes, everything
that we were taught, it was like, but none of
this works, right. We really was like that, like very yeah,
like they but they'd be saying these things. They would
be saying these things about this is how the government's

(07:16):
supposed to work, in separation of powers and all the things.
But but they would always veer at the end towards
but none of it really works this way, you know.
And but I I didn't have you know, a lot
of people I think have sort of or younger kids now,
Like when I go to colleges now, I meet these
kids and even younger high school kids who are so passionate,
so driven. When I think that that a college kid

(07:39):
is coming up to me and going, WHOA, you know,
I just read Jordan Peterson's book watching your Show, and
I listened to Sam Harris talk about atheism and Joe
Rogan and that, and that they're putting so much investment
in their in their intellectual worth. It's incredible. I mean,
I truly I spent four years of college. I was
smoking pot. I was pot. I was smoking pot, playing

(08:02):
video was playing basketball top video games. Well, I was
playing all the e A sports games right then. So
it was like NBA Live and NHL nineties, So we
are close to the same, like basically the college like
the video game that the sports like. So you love basketball?
Basketball is my real sports. So yeah, basketball in your
in your office here, so you would you play intermiroal
basketball and everything else. I played every league that you

(08:24):
could possibly play. And my one regret, you know, I
really don't have regrets in life because most because I'm
in a good place now and I view the mistakes
or whatever as things that ultimately ended up getting here.
My one regret is that I didn't pick up basketball earlier,
because because I was really good for for a while.
I'm about five eleven, relatively fit, or at least in

(08:46):
my hate it really was, and I had a great
three point shots, finger roll. I really could play, But
I really never picked up a ball until about eight
or ninth grade. Yeah, so if I could have started.
Yeah when when when I really was good in high school,
I was already a senior and I tried out for
the team with the high school team, and the coach
of the Sea of the high school basketball team was

(09:07):
my years before, had been my elementary school coach, elementary
school gym teacher, And I remember him coming up to me,
Mr Myers, and saying, you know, he's like, he's like, David,
you know when you were a kid, you were this
little scrawny nothing. He's like, you've got skills now, but
you're too old. He like. It was completely honest with me,
and I sort of appreciated the honesty, but so I
really it was. It was more of a recreational thing

(09:28):
my whole life. Yeah, but I love basketball more than
anything else. If that would be I should be in
the w n b A. That's as for our earlier
maybe you could if that plan, if this all the
whole thing, you can be Joanna Man. Now let's go
to Uh did you live at home for a year
like a lot of people do after school? Do you
have any idea what you're gonna do? Polly Side degree

(09:51):
and in that year, well, I was a video game guys.
So if you love video games, what do you do?
I started working at Electronics boutique, which you may know
as game Stop. My age Basic Lisa Electronics Cutique, which
most of the people listening to this became working at
the game Stop. So I was in the Broadway Mall
and Nixville, Long Island, and I was assistant manager. And
I moved more Pokemon gold than anybody. Um so I

(10:13):
did that, and you know, you quickly find out I
don't even know what the hell I was thinking. I
just needed a job, you know, I needed a job.
But I remember thinking, oh, I love video games, like
I'll be a video game sales but like that seemed
like a sensible thing. But then you quickly realized, I mean,
it's just a real retail job. And like most things,
and I'm sure you feel this way a little bit
about sports, that the more that you get in on it,

(10:34):
the more that you see that that dirty underside of
it has nothing to do with the things that you
love about it. So like selling video games has nothing
to do with telling people why you love playing Googles
and ghosts. For Mario brothers. You know. So, Uh. What
I started doing though, was literally the last thing that
I did in college. Senior year, I had my finals

(10:56):
were over already, my bags were packed, I was heading on.
I had to finish, to finish out my required courses,
I take a public speaking class. And all I had
to do was give a ten minute talk on whatever
whatever it is that I want to talk about. And
I gave a ten minute talk um about what it
was like to be in college, and I did it.
You remember Bill Cosby himself. It was his great HBO

(11:18):
special from did you ever see That's Chocolate Cake? And
the Dentist and all that? And I remember seeing that
as a seven year old. I remember seeing that in
my parents house in the in the living room, and
I remember being buckled over as a seven year old
in laughter. I could not it was the funniest thing
I've ever seen. The pain in my stomach. So basically
I decided to do, basically do a stand up routine

(11:40):
for ten minutes, and I sat just like Bill Cosby,
sitting that entire routine. Uh. And I told him what
it was like to be in college, and I talked
about hooking up and I talked about drugs, and I
talked about law of class and blah blah blah, and
half the class was laughing, and half the class was
looking at me like I was crazy. The professor completely
thought I was nuts um. But from there I was like,
whoa that that feeling of making people laugh, There's nothing

(12:01):
better than that. And a week later I was at
my first comedy club that I had never even been
to a stand up club. They said, you know, I
called this place in New York comedy club. They said,
if you can bring five paying customers, will throw you
on stage. And that's what I did, and I was hooked.
I was beyond hooked. I mean like a like a
drug in the best sense of it hooked. So how
often would you be doing stand up comedy? So the

(12:23):
first couple of years, I mean, this is very similar
to most of how comedy went back then. So comedy obviously,
like most industries, has had its up since its stands
and everything. Most people when they think of like the
golden years of comedy, you really think of like sort
of the late seventies, eighties into the very early part
of the nineties, where every comic basically from Louis Anderson

(12:43):
and Tim Allen and Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld and
Richard Lewis. Basically, you could get on the Tonight Show.
You could work the clubs for a certain amount of years,
you could perfect a five minute set, and then if
you got on the Tonight Show and Johnny liked you,
if Johnny Carson liked you, called you over the chair.
I mean everyone knows this. And he called you over
the chair, and then you were golden. You get a
sitcom and you were good to go. I mean, this
happened with Rosanne. We could do the list. This happened

(13:04):
with everybody when I started, so I was out of
college in eight So I started in June of ninety eight,
So it's twenty one years basically this month, um that,
but that bubble had burst, I mean majorly. They they
always looked back the night that they say the comedy
bubble versus when Andrew Dice Clay sold out Madison Square
Garden and basically everyone was announcing his jokes with him,

(13:25):
you know, Jack and Joe went up to who and
then everyone tells the rest of the joke, you know,
and and that that was sort of symbolic of how
the whole thing crumbled, and then comedy clubs started closing
all over the place because also television made it more ubiquitous,
so you didn't have to go to clubs anymore. And
you know, it's just like anything else we're we're in
industries right now that are massively changing. So um so

(13:47):
what happened was to go to comedy clubs or to
perform a comedy clubs. For a while, it was bringer shows.
So if you just brought a certain amount of bodies,
and right out of college of someone that grew up
in New York, I had bodies. So the first two
years I could just get people a couple of times
a week to just show up. But eventually you run
out of steam on that, and then uh so that
lasted let's say two years of a couple of nights
a week and you're working anything else or yeah, so

(14:09):
I was working as so I did the video game
thing for a while. I interned at the Daily Show.
Also a year a year after college, I forged a
letter from Binghamton University. I faked their letterhead and I
said that I was a professor in the communications department
or something, and I recommended myself to get to get
an internship at the Daily Show. So I'm interning at

(14:30):
the Daily Show during the day, which was a really
interesting time to be there because John had just taken
over from Kilbourne and I loved the Daily Show from
Kilbourne because I like Kilbourne. But it was a really
bizarre time because try to picture two public people with
different personas than those two guys. Killboard is the most smug,
you know, into himself whatever. John is the most self
deprecating personever. So the staff was in upheaval and rights

(14:53):
are getting fired left and right and all that um.
But then over the years of new and stand up,
I mean, I did every odd job you can think.
I mean, well, first off, I cleaned up comedy clubs
and clean bathrooms and literally the lowest kind of level jobs.
I would have done anything to get on stage. And
I did do anything. I mean I I bartended, I
I worked a catering companies. I used to hand out
merchandise for promotion companies on the streets, just anything I

(15:15):
could do to make a buck to go by. For
one year, I had an office job at a PR
company in New York. I've literally no idea what business
they because my head wasn't there. Somehow I got the
job and I showed up, and I guess I faked
it enough to be able to keep a job. Yeah,
but I have no idea what it's a hand amount
existence at the time to write you're making like I mean,

(15:36):
I was making nothing. I remember what your rent was, like,
how many roommates did you have? Like so when I
finally so then I left my parents house. And then
when I had that office job, so I had, you know,
maybe I was making forty five grand or something like that.
I had a couple of roommates on on an apartment
on ninety and first, so pretty far up on the
fur East Side, um, which was a really interesting place.
Ninety and first, because try to think about New York

(15:58):
City for a second. So if New York's an the
subway up there is eighty six and Lex. It was
basically ninetieth that York, which is one more east than first.
So it was basically as far as you could get
from a subway in New York City. Because eighty six,
that means I had to ninety Then I had to
go les third, second, First York, which it's a long

(16:19):
walk for for a New Yorker, especially when you're working
at a job you don't want to be at and
the rest of it. Um. But anyway, then, uh, and
I just did all sorts of just any gi like
name a job, like I pretty much did it. But
then what I had to do to get on stage
once the sort of age out of the bringer thing,
your friends are like, yeah, I've heard all those jokes.
You know, I don't want to come to shows anymore.

(16:40):
And there's nothing to do with whether you're good or not.
It's just like it just is. The other way you
get on stage is your bark. You hand your hand
out tickets and uh, you hand out tickets, usually in
Times Squares where most of it went down. And I'm
sure you've been harassed. So you did that, You would
stand in Times Square. And I did that for like
eight or ten years, six six nights a week, sometimes
twice a night, two hours a night, and often in

(17:02):
the early years of that you didn't get paid either.
So you're dragging people into these clubs just with the
hope of getting you know, seven minutes of stage. Then
and I did that for a couple of years, and
then this was the first moment that my my business
sense that I think has led me here now kicked in.
I realized that I was out here with all these
other comics, some of them whom were pretty good. Um,
most of the guys from my crew have all disappeared.

(17:24):
And it's just a sad thing about comedy that often
the best guys just they can't hack it anymore, like
the true artists and the ones that are truly doing
something amazing get to a point where it just breaks them.
So out of my crew, um, we had some really
really talented people. The only one who really broke through
I guess I had now. But the only other one
Melissa Routs, who you probably know is that on a

(17:47):
Big Bang Theory m. She was at my crew. I
remember seeing her the first night and I said to her,
you were going to be the star because she could
do voices and she was just a great talent and
she's a great girl. Um, but basically just bark being
handed out these tickets. And then finally I was like,
why am I doing this so that somebody else can
be taken all the cash here? So me and a
couple of other comics, um, we found a failing restaurant.

(18:10):
It was called Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, and Joe Franklin
was an old school New York sort of like a
Larry King type of, like a local local guy. Any
of this restaurant that just every night, and they had
a back room about eight seats, and we started a
six night a week to show a night comedy club there.
It became so successful that we ended up taking over

(18:31):
the entire restaurant, and then we had two shows going.
And then that became so successful that there's a t
g I Fridays on fifty and seventh, which is the
world's largest t Yeah, I know exactly, and it's right
probably yeah, yeah, you've probably get there right what your
audience may know it as is the building next to
it is now Barkley's Building, which was Lehman Brothers before

(18:53):
the crash and everything. It's a really iconic. It's glowing
and crazy lights and everything. But anyway, there was a
room down there about a hundred fifty seats. So we
left our B list comics that Joe Franklin's Comedy Club.
We took our best guys went there six nights a week,
two shows a night, so I was basically running two clubs.
I was making real money. We were splitting the first

(19:14):
time you actually started to make real money. First time
I started making real money, I was. We were splitting
money between the comics, So comics started making money. We
had no management, so I was doing twenty five minutes
sets when most guys were doing six minutes set. We did.
We did great stuff, and we actually became so successful
that the reason it ended was because of our success.
Because then the big clubs realized, whoa, these comics, they're

(19:35):
just dragging people in off the street. You know, We're
literally just pulling people in, you know. And then the
it was the Laugh Factory. We were on fifty and seventh.
The Laugh Factory opened up a couple of blocks south,
and then Broadway Comedy Club I think, opened a couple
of blocks more. And then they just had more money
behind them and had more an army of people that
could hand out tickets, so they just nipped us off.

(19:57):
And then the whole thing crumbled, and then I moved
on to some others off. But I look back on
it with like tremendous fondness now, like those are the
good old days. Be sure to catch live editions about
Kick the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to Dave Reuben
at Reuben Show on Twitter. This is the Wins and
Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Do you remember having a

(20:19):
moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm going
to continue as a comedian? Like, was there any kind
of epiphany moment where you were like this and maybe
what age? Like, how how does that happen? How do
you end up where you are now? Because you obviously,
in order to be a comedian, you have to really
put your heart and soul into it, right into performing
for years. You have to give it everything you've got.

(20:40):
And you know, it's funny because most of your audience
listen to this. If they know me, they probably don't
know me from comedy. It's actually only in the last
year now that I'm getting back into comedy and I'm
selling out clubs across the country. And I'm telling you, truly, Clay,
you gotta come sometime. I'll bring you on statie. Yeah.
Usually what I usually do now, because i'm selling out
these clubs, I do about an hour solo and I'm
really just messing with the crowd, and I do a
ton of likely incorrect stuff and and and talk about

(21:03):
all social justice and all this nonsence, and then usually
I bring on a friend at the end. So I've
brought on Jordan Peterson. I brought on the Weinstein brothers
and Ben Shapiro and a bunch of people, and I
just get people to to see us in a in
a different way. We'll do it. So we'll do it.
Do it because I need to. I need to get
back to Nashville. That that picture, by the way in

(21:23):
my bathroom, that's from the Yeah. So I remember right
around when these two clubs opened on both sides of us,
and suddenly our numbers were dropping and we were going
from a hundred fifty people at the show, then it
was eighty, then it was for me then and then
suddenly it was like seven and the money was gone
and it was depressing and all that. I remember thinking

(21:45):
one day like, could it be possible that I've given
everything I have into this and I'm good at it?
And I'm good I was at one time. I was
like they told me, I'm I don't know if this
is totally true, but I was the youngest comic ever
passed that the comedy Seller, which was the Comedy Siller
down on Bleaker Street, is like, that's like the premoke,
that's like the really the one that matters in the city.

(22:06):
That's like the hip cool club. And I was right
out of college got past their immediately. If anything, I
got past too early, because you should have him a
lot more years I do to really do it at
that level. Um. But I remember thinking, could I give
something everything I have got, be good at it, have
done everything, and be doing something different and real and

(22:27):
all of those things, and then have it not work?
Could that be what reality is? And when I started
coming in, when you start, I think everyone has some
moment like that in their life, when that thing that
you've believed in comes into conflict with reality. And I
remember there was this other comic. His name is Brian Bombly.
He he was a decent comic, not great decent. I've

(22:48):
seen him a couple of times over the last couple
of years, and he's he's just a normal guy. Now,
he's got a regular job and a family, lives in Jerseys. Happy. Um.
But one of those nights, as that was kind of
all crumbling around us, he said to me, and he
almost had a tear in his eye. He said, Dave,
this wasn't supposed to happen to you. And I was like, oh,
Like he kind of was looking around like yeah, some

(23:09):
of these guys are good. I'm okay. He's like, Dad,
you're good, Like this wasn't supposed to happen. And I
remember like like I felt a pain, like in my heart,
like holy shit, it's and you'r how old at this point,
this is probably like late late twenties. It might have
been even the early thirties at this point, it was
probably early thirty. I mean, you're grinding a way for
a decade at this Like I gave it everything I

(23:32):
had and then and then from that point then I
started realizing, Okay, there's got to be a different way
to do this. And this is where I think it
makes sense sort of how I ended up here, because
then I started realizing, you know, none of these guys
are getting on the Tonight Show anymore. You're like, when
you know, when Leno took over the Tonight Show, there's
no stories of Leno putting the comment next to him
and the guy getting the show. Maybe that's a fault

(23:54):
of Leno. Maybe it's just the way the business was changing,
the way the economics of people getting less sitcoms because
they were more reality shows. I mean, whatever it is.
But I started thinking, this doesn't make sense. You've got
guys in comedy clubs all trying to perfect this five
minute set so that they can get on a show
that doesn't put them on, so that they can get
a sitcom that doesn't even exist anymore, you know. And

(24:15):
from that, I was like, there's gotta be another way
to do this. And also the way I had always
done stand up. People used to say to me, like,
do you have a tight five, And be like, I
don't have a type five, but I have a freaking
great half hour, a messy half hour that will be
like nothing you've ever seen before. And and I never
had any stage fright er. I can get up in
front of thousand people and just whatever popped into my head,

(24:36):
I could just kind of figure out something. It's just
the way I've always done it, and everyone, you know,
everyone does it different. There's a do you re see
the Uh the Seinfeldt documentary comedian and he put it
out out there when he UH finished the sitcom there's
a great moment with him and Gary Shandling and they're
drive into a gig and Jerry's got his notepad and
it's like, you know, like Hitler would have been proud
of the decision, you know, and Gary and Jerry turns

(24:58):
to Gary and he's like, what do you have it?
Gary pulls out like this crumbled piece of paper and
pockets like I think I was gonna do this, you know,
And like so I was much more that version of it.
And it just depends what you like and what your
creative process and all that. But then it was at
the beginnings of when my Space was starting, and I
heard this word podcast and a few other things, and

(25:20):
then I just started just being a little more active
in that world. I thought, if I could just get
a couple of followers in this world now Twitter starting,
if I could get a couple of people to start
following me. Well, you go to a comedy club, it's like,
no matter how funny you are, they're gonna go, ah,
you know that guy who went on fifth out of
the eight, you know, you had brown hair. He was
kind of funny, but they're not gonna remember your You

(25:41):
could could you could do a carl and Masque perfect Yeah,
and they just won't remember you are. It's just how
it is. So I started thinking, you know, if I
could start getting some followers on some of these things,
and then people then then tweet out a little silly
thing here and there that actually starts having more worth
than than doing the clubs every night. So I started
moving in that direction. Eventually I started doing a podcast, um,

(26:04):
and then some of those things started leading ultimately to
what got me t l A, which was doing a
show with the Young Turks, which now really feels like
a whole lifetime ago, and that's only six and a
half years ago. So as part of that process, you start,
let's go back up personally. So, uh, you're gay. I
don't think that's a massive secret. When did you by

(26:25):
far the most bored, But when did you like sort
of come out for lack of better term, asister during college?
Was before college? Like, um, well, it's funny, you know,
I'm you know, I'm writing my book, right, it's not
that personal in my book, but I am actually relating.
One of the things that I'm really trying to do
is relate being in the closet about sexuality related to
a political classic that I think so many people are

(26:47):
in right now. Sure a huge amount of your listeners
are in that where they're going. I have a couple
of thoughts that are outside of wolkedom, and you're calling me,
I don't saint Donald Trump is hitler, And it's like
you maybe you think that, but you're like, I'm do
not say that at work because you think about that,
Think think how what that does to the average person
when you can't say something that you think right. So

(27:08):
that's what I'm really trying to do with a good
portion of the book is is relate these two things.
Because you're a gay comedian, and most people when they
hear gay comedian, they think like, oh, that guy's got
to be like the locust person on the planet, right,
And you're probably surrounded by But I bet when you
saw even from the comedy sphere is a lot of
those comedians also have thoughts that are similar to yours,
but they might not be comfortable saying right with that

(27:30):
entertainment universe. Well, it's funny because when you asked me
about my comedy life, like to me, the gay part
doesn't even come up because A because I never addressed it,
I was still, I was closet and mess, I was struggling.
My own is that I truly feel like I feel
more comfortable here talking to you like this than if
I was doing like a gay podcast that right, I
would personally much rather talk about sports and politics or

(27:55):
video games or whatever. Then I don't care about the
Housewives of bel Air or those things. That a great show,
by the way, it's close to that name. But my
wife is a huge fan of all the housewife so
I see them all well. When I had that's Andy
Cohen's universe, right, And a lot of people be like, oh,
Andy Cohen is a gay comedian. Oh he's incredibly woke

(28:16):
or whatever the personality might be. But it's actually I mean,
and the reason why I bring it up is because
I just find it fascinating because it cuts across so
many different arenas. Right. Oh yeah, and like, so were
you conscious? You said you're a polyci major, So I
didn't even you didn't even answer, like, so did when
did you officially? Yeah? Well, so first off, she was

(28:36):
quickly on Andy Cohen, um, so I had him on
my show. So my podcast was doing pretty well, and
then it got picked up by Sirius XM. Yeah, and
we were doing it was sort of well, it was
on the out que channel, the gay channel. You know,
gay people should have a separate yeah, right, separate. We
should have a separate channel, you know. And I always
wanted to be on the political channels, but they put
us there. But I had Andy Cohen on a couple
of times, and I've never cared about any of that BRABO. Yeah,

(28:58):
but the one thing that I did like about him,
even though I don't care about any of the stuff
that he's doing, when I've interviewed him, I think twice,
both times in person, and I thought, this guy, he
really cares about what he's doing. I don't care about it,
but I don't have to. He has to do. He
really does. And I thought, all right, I can accept
he does a great job that show. But he is
also is great on stern Um. But it is interesting how,

(29:20):
you know, like the Ellen degenerous is of the world
sort of you almost think if you're a gay comedian
that everybody thinks in that same way. Right. Yeah, Well,
there's there's a couple of pieces of that. So, first off, Um,
especially at the time and even now when gay people
are on television, you're either like this a sexual neuter
nothing so like Anderson Cooper. Yes, you know what I mean,
you have no idea really what he thinks about anything.

(29:43):
He would never you know, on New Year's he's allowed
to have a drink and then he has a for
a split second, right right, right right. But there's just
like this, he's the voice of God and in like
his sexuality has almost no impact at all. And now
I look, I'm not saying you're he's the newscaster, so
I'm not saying his sexuality should. But there's a certain
thing that he sort of is, is this very a
sexual neither here nor there anything um, And that's sort

(30:08):
of what they like. So you can either be an
over the top gay. So so in comedy especially, it
was like you could be Mario Cantone and singing show
tunes and this, and there's many versions of that. You
could be Paul in sort of a for our time.
You could be this over the top gay thing. Otherwise
there was no space. So I remember when I when
I came out professionally, and the only reason I did
was because I couldn't live with myself. And I mean

(30:29):
I just genuinely. It's not that I was doing a
lot of jokes about dating chicks or anything, but sometimes
I did, and I started just hating myself. You know.
I was also also in a good, normal relationship, and
so my life track, which had always been behind my
career track, well, then, as I told you, the career
thing started to stall because the clubs were closing, and

(30:49):
then my life was getting good. And when my life
started getting better than my career, I had no idea
how to function because it had always been the other way,
with my career instead of my life. So um, but
when I came out, I remember going to the mainstream
clubs and then it was like Reubens gay, and it
was very clear they had no use for me because
whatever it was that I whatever it is that I

(31:11):
am this version of gay, which, by the way, there
are many people like me out there. Um, they like
their you know, beer, beer, Homer Simpson says, Marge, I
like my beer called to my homosexuals, flaming and like
that's kind of what they want. They want this minstrel show,
not a real human to talk about those things. Um,
And so that really tripped up my career as well.

(31:32):
But then I was able to take that mess turn
it into this podcast, which got me on the gay
channel on Serious x M. I begged and begged the
executives put me on any of the political channels. I
don't care. Put me on the left channel, put me
on the right channel, so this is the nonpartist channel,
put me on there. Anything. But they were basically like,
you're gay, get do your gay thing over there. And

(31:54):
uh So the reason and the reason I ended that
show actually series wanted us to stay the re and
I ended it was because I used to get more
fan mail from people saying, I love your show. I've
never heard anything like this before. You're my kind of gay,
you know, blah blah blah. But they would say, I
can't share your show because I'm I'm closeted, and I

(32:14):
started looking this is how messed up. This is the
people that I'm I'm nothing special, I'm just someone doing
what I what I'm doing. But the people that I'm
helping most actually are harming me in a certain way
because they won't share my stuff. And I really but
but that's also related to the political Yeah, I got it,

(32:35):
I'll show it to you. I gotta to our peep box.
A fan sent me this awesome Simpsons poster. He does
original Simpson's artwork. It's the coolest. It's a map of Springfield,
but done by like the way you'd see like an
old school um real estate map, just like blocks of
property and where everything. It's so cool, it's original. Blabbla.
He writes me this beautiful note. He's a huge fan.

(32:57):
I've helped him wake up politically all that stuff. And
he says, my only word, West is that you don't
tag me on Twitter and put a picture of this
because I don't want the mob to come after me.
And so I sent him a personal email. But like, think,
how so that's why this this chapter that I'm working
on right now. Between the closet related you can be
in the closet related to anything. You could be in
the closet related to sexuality. You can be in the

(33:18):
closet related to political positions. You can be in the
closet related to a medical condition that you have, or
or just anything that you are hiding from yourself, which
becomes just sort of an insidious, destructive force. Uh. And
I can tell you this that the the pain of
those things or the residual effect of those things. They

(33:39):
don't you know, they don't just disappear the second you
kind of start getting better. They stay with you for
your whole life in many ways, I think. So the
reason I want to bring that up is you are
considered all right, right, we haven't even mentioned so far
right like, but and I am by some people as well,
and I think a lot of people listening to us
right now we'll find that a little bit ludicrous. But

(33:59):
I wanted to bring it up because you are gay,
you are married, right, you are pro choice. I believe
I'm strugg I'm really struggling with that one. Um. But
the more the Democrats go crazy with the late term stuff,
it's becoming I'm starting to see an ethical dilemma that
I didn't fully see before. I'm also writing about it.
And once you start, as you know, you started sporing,

(34:20):
now you start really going, well, what do I really
think about these things? But but yes, I do consider
myself a pro choice up into up into a point. Yeah,
and look, I'm so you were very similar in that
rights right, So I'm pro pro gay marriage. I am uh,
you know, pro choice. Although I do think it's interesting
the way it's getting, you know, even more policy I
than it already was. It feels like I don't know

(34:41):
where you are on the death penalty. But I mean,
so these are all things that traditionally would be like right,
and yet I think both of us have had this
sort of you know, it's colloquially, I guess the red
pill moment right from the reference to to the matrix
back in the day. When did you start to have

(35:02):
sort of your red pill moment? Was it gradual? You know,
you're in the comedy scene, you are in the entertainment universe,
you moved to Hollywood. Uh, you know you talk about
there's a lot of people I think in the entertainment
industry who are in the closet not about their sexuality
but about their politics. Um so when did this start
to happen for you? Well? I always describe it as

(35:22):
if you were looking at my baseball card. You'd have
my picture on the front, and then you look at
the back, and the back you'd see the stats and
you'd go, wait a minute, game married, pro choice against
the death penalty, pro legalizing leading for performing, the prison system,
of all those things, and all those things we agree with, right,
although those things, so you go, this makes no sense.
But because I would say under my neigme would say,
Dave Rubin, all right on the front and the stats,
and you go, wait, this makes no sense. And that's

(35:43):
what I have always said about the people who attack
me to that that it's just ludicrous. But but that's why.
But that's why I think, like when I found someone
like you, where I found someone like Handi's Owens or
a couple of other people that I really identify with,
regardless of whether we agree on everything or not, I'm like,
there's something beautifu full happening here, and we have to
figure out how to nurture it. Because we come from

(36:05):
you know what I mean, on my lifelong New York
or you're from Nashville, you're one of the sports world,
blah blah blah, straight gay, all those nonsensical markers. But
it's like, intellectually, we can't and and and that thing
there's it's not a coincidence that we're both thriving right
now in crazy times. That's not a coincidence. It's actually
evidence that we're doing something right. But but to answer

(36:26):
your questions, there were a couple of moments that really
broke me out of And now I come from a
family of New York liberals, but but not woke liberals.
They were liberals in the best sense of it. They
were liberals. My parents now are liberals in the JFK
sense of liberalism. That's not what your country can do
for you, as where you can do for your country.
They loved Mayor Ed Cootch, who was a good old
fashioned liberal. They loved Daniel Patrick moynihan, m real liberals

(36:49):
that liberals meaning live and let live, but the government
has some use utility to do certain things. Right. Um.
I think what happened to me was when I moved
out here and I was still was a liberal and
the lefty and the whole thing. It was when gay
marriage was really hot, so before it got past and
I started working at the Young Turks and they were
pretty far left progressive network, but they were so slamming

(37:12):
their fists down about gay marriage in such a passionate way.
That was for something that was so personal to me
that I thought, these these are liberals on steroids and
it was good. It struck me as good. It's like
maybe maybe liberals just needed balls, and that's what these
people had and all that it crumbled very quickly, because
there there's a couple of moments that it really crumbled.

(37:33):
So um, I'll just blow past two, and then i'll
give you the third one because I've told these stories
many times. But the first one was when I'm sure
you've seen this probably was when Sam Harris was on
Real Time with Bill Maher and he got into that
fight with Ben Affleck. They were talking about radical Islam,
and Affleck turns to Bill Maher and Sam Harris. I
didn't know who Sam Harris was at the time, had
no idea, but I see this mild mannered neuroscience discussing

(37:56):
atheism and Bill Maher, who had been one of my
comic heroes and and the standard bearer of the left ever,
and they talk about radical Islam, making a point don't
be bigoted towards people Muslims, but you can talk about
a set of bad ideas the way you criticize Christianity
or Judaism, or or the Republican platform or anyway else.
An athlete turned to them and said, you know, you're

(38:17):
gross and racist, and then and then it was it
just sort of derailed from there, and what I saw
happen after that was that the next couple of weeks,
the entire lefty media, HuffPo, media, buzz Feed, everybody was
saying Bill Maher is racist. Sam Harris is racist. And
I watch it live. I mean, I've always loved that show.
I watch it live and I thought, I don't know
who the hell this guy is, but he's not racist, right,

(38:37):
And I certainly know that Bill mar is not racist.
And but watching that feeding frenzy and then even my
guys on my network started doing it too, and that
so then it really woke up because I was just like,
this makes no sense. We have to be able to
criticize ideas without being bigoted towards people. But even more
it was that once someone says the racist thing, everyone

(38:57):
else on the left basically uses it and it excuse
to do scorched earth everything. So there was there was
that moment. Then there was I'm actually not totally sure
of the order of these two because they were pretty close.
Charlie Hebdo was a few months after that, and I
was on air at The Young Turks and one of
the hosts was screaming about how you can't make cartoons.
You're inciting people, and that the people who don't remember

(39:20):
that that was like, there's a cartoon making fun of
the prophet Mohammed and uh and in France and in France, yes,
And they stormed the house and tried to execute everybody.
They murdered several cartoonists, they slaughtered some other people. Um
and this idea though that if you if you do
something that a certain set of people don't want you

(39:41):
to do or that are against their religious pieces, that
you're the bad guy. And there seemed to be more
sympathy towards them than there were the dead bodies. And
if you remember during Charlie, there were a couple of
days where they hadn't found them, and for those couple
of days, it was like those bodies were still were
still warm and were and these guys could. They ended
up killing more people, went to a Kasher supermarket and
killed some people there, and it's like the sympathy seemed

(40:03):
to be with them, or or at least with people
that might be thought of as something like them. And
I thought this is completely out of whack. One of
the one of the co hosts on the show started
screaming something about how the Charlie had there the issues
were against Islam, and I said to him, I was like,
I don't know what the percentages, but I guarantee you
it is not. And it's something like this, I'm gonna

(40:24):
slightly butcher the numbers. It's something like out of four
hundred plus covers, it was three about there were far
more about the pope, far more about orthodox choose and
by the way they ridiculed everything that was like, that's
the entire purposes, like there's no sacred cow, so to speak,
like everything is a target. That was the point that
in the best sense of what The Simpsons did in
its heyday, where you could literally make fun of everybody,

(40:45):
the best sense of what Don Rickles would do in
a comedy club. Oh there's an Irish guy there, there's
a black guy there, there's a South Park still south
Park basically still does. Yeah. So then there was that
one and the one that really sort of was the
final culmination of everything. Do you know a guy by
the name of David Webb who's serious x M guy.
He's a he's a conservative, he's on the right leaning
channel there And when I was a big lefty on

(41:06):
the gay channel at sex m, but I really wanted
to do politics. I met him and we disagreed on
basically everything. But he was like, come on, Edi well
and and I used to go on his radio show
all the time. He's a black conservative, super nice guy.
Used to get drunk after and and have whiskey and
have a good time. And we disagreed on everything. It
was fine. Well, one day I was on the on
Turks and they were playing a clip and he I

(41:27):
think Webb was guest hosting for Sean Hannity that way,
and they're playing the clip of Webb and I don't
even remember what he was saying. But then suddenly all
my co hosts were saying, what an uncle Tom, that
guy is, what a sellout? What you know that personally?
All of the awful things you could say right about
a concern about a black conservative. And and then that
was the moment that it fully crystallized, because I was like,

(41:49):
these people who scream about tolerance all day long, now
see a black man who does not think the way
they believe a black man should think, which is prejudice
because prejudge the fact that he is black. They believe
that that means he should prescribe to a certain set
of beliefs and they're doing it in the name of tolerance.
And I thought, I know, David, I know this guy.

(42:10):
I've debated all of these issues with him, and I
should have said it on air. I didn't. I was
I was actually so dumb struck that it was happening
in real time that it like couldn't calibrate properly in
my brain. But that was it. I was like, Holy cow,
these people, these are these are the new racist And
I really believe that now. And I hate to It's
like I don't want to become the thing that we're

(42:31):
always railing and this um, but I think it's important
to identify that, as you just said to me on
my show, does the KK exists, there's some racists, there's
some homo folks, all those things. Yes, they have no
institutional power, they're routinely mocked by everybody. They're not on television,
they don't have political power. They should be marginalized or ignore.
I would basically say ignore them. But but when they

(42:53):
show up to do something evil or or whatever, you
you can counter protests and the rest of it. Um,
But racists exist. It just is. But The new racism
is what's coming out of the left these days. The
new racism is that we are going to judge you
by these things. You may have seen this story in
the last couple of days. There was this Detroit rap

(43:14):
festival and they were going to charge people more than
black people. And one of the black young woman rappers,
young female rappers, she was like, I'm not gonna do this.
My one of my grandmother's is white. And it's like, well,
you said this a couple of times in our hour.
This idea that this thing will it has to just
crush itself because it's so antithetical to logic that there's
so many competing things happening that it will eat itself.

(43:37):
And it's just like what the question really is, what
will it take down in the process of in this
disruptive and in sports is an interesting microcosm of this
because we've talked about it like if you have someone
and Caitlyn Jenner now is a good example because I
wrote about this in the book Bruce Jenner in the
nineties seventies, if he had decided to become Caitlyn Jenner

(43:59):
and tried to Pete in the Olympics, he was the
best male athlete in the world, and what he does
did he would be like I mean it, not even
any in the same stratosphere for the women if he
had decided to flip and you avoid asking those questions,
right like his sports as an ultimate meritocracy, but the
meritocracy is divided as men or women right now. If

(44:19):
you want to say, okay, we won't have a line
between men's and women's sports, then women won't play sports.
But they won't make any of the high school teams
most of the time in soccer or basketball, certainly not
in football, volleyball, whatever you want to play, because men
are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And that's not
If you want to argue biology as sexist, you can
have with it. But like that is that, That's the

(44:40):
universe that we live in, and I wonder when it's
going to blow up on itself because the logic falls
apart as you follow it down its course. And that
is what I started to see happening in the world
of sports. And I say, my, you know, sort of
red pill moment was the University of Missouri protests, which
were based in totally lies, and everybody he covered them,
and the football team doesn't play and everything else, and

(45:03):
when you actually examine all the factual underpinnings, it's a
house of cards. There's nothing there. Well, that's the thing,
And that's why the red pill analogy really works, because
Morpheus is giving Neo the choice, do you want to
go back and sleep and have some level of comfort
in the world and in your existence, or do you
want to see the world as it is, not as
you want it to be, but as it is, and

(45:24):
then figure out how to function in that world. And
obviously we know what Neo does. He takes the red pill.
And I think for most of the people that probably
like what we do. I think what we're doing at
the moment is this is another thing I'm writing about,
is we're giving There's there's a major bravery deficit in
the world right now. I don't know exactly why it is.
It has something to do with an amorphous mob that
will come and destroy People are terrified of losing their

(45:46):
jobs over a Facebook post, Twitter post, and then it's like,
so guys like us come around and I don't know
what it is, Like maybe we could do we could
get a whole crew of like twenty of us and
do like a mass therapy session. We'll find out that.
You know, when we were all seven years old, the
bully came around and you guys didn't let him bully
like like some something who writes what it is. But
I think that that people are sort of outsourcing their

(46:08):
bravery these days, which which is a weird thing. Again,
I don't think, um anyone special other than I'm just
doing what I think I should do. So I think
all of these things lead to a weird place where
people from the sports world and the political world, and
now I see it. I have a friend I lived
upstairs from me in New York City. His whole life lefty, lefty, lefty, crazy,

(46:29):
progressively his whole life. He's get this, You'll love this.
He's about fifty two years old. He is a straight
male choreographer on Broadway. UM, I probably even shouldn't have
said that because there's so few. I'm probably not, but
he was, and he's done major stuff and major stuff
on TV, and he was in effect told in the
last year or so start looking for a new line

(46:50):
of work, because why would anyone ever hire a straight
male choreograph, straight white male choreographer. Now, ironically, if you
care about diversity, that's the first because they're all gay.
They're all gay, and most of them are not white anymore,
and all that nobody cares. Nobody cares about you you care.
I mean, that's the thing. They've tricked everyone into thinking
that we all care about these things. And you know,

(47:13):
it's like I just traveled the world for a year
with Jordan Peterson and I'm supposed supposedly he's all right,
and we're you know, speaking of angry racist and it's
like all it was a LoveFest, like you could not believe.
Every single night, every single night, Fox Sports Radio has
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and

(47:35):
within the I Heart Radio app search f s R
to listen live. You talked about the way that the
Bill Mars story was covered by like the Huffington Post
and all these different places. You regularly get attacked in
the media. I regularly get attacked in the media. Why
do you think that happens? Well, I think that that
because we just went through and said, like all of

(47:56):
the things, like if you put our political beliefs on
a baseball card on the back. You would be like,
I'm curious why that is, because I think both of
us are very middle of the road, right, but in
a weird way, we're the biggest threat to them. And
that's an interesting point, right, So if you're middle of
the road now, and especially so, the one, the one
identity politics thing that I have over you is the
is the gay thing, right, so they have none. By

(48:19):
the way, was a straight white guy, I'm like that
on the victim victimization pyramid, I'm nowhere near the tip,
so they can pin you a little bit more easily
than you know what I mean, like that, that's a
little bit more easy. The reason that that I get
as much hate as I do, and I'm even seeing
it from some of the good liberals now where they're
turning on me a little bit, because it's something that
you referenced earlier on my show is they will always

(48:41):
try to throw something else under the bus to extend
their life, their shelf life basically, and that's what they're
always doing. Now what they I don't know if they
know it or not, but ultimately you're just pulling the
pins out from underneath your own your own foundation. Let's say, um,
I think basically what's happening here is that for me,
it's like they look at the baseball car, gay guy,
blah blah blah, all these liberal beliefs. But I survived.

(49:03):
I talk about their nonsense, and I survived, and not
only the survive, I thrived. So they really have to
extract the high cost on me. So when when they're
throwing down hate on me, it's not really that they're
trying to destroy me anymore. I do think in some ways,
I've I want to knock on wood when I say this,
but I sort of feel like I've I've crossed the threshold.
You survive, I'll where I'll be okay, right, and I
know how to deal with it. What they're really trying

(49:25):
to do is signal to everybody else you see what
we're gonna do to you if you try. And that's
why they hate on Candice is so out of control.
All Candice is doing. Look, I don't agree with everything
she said. She sent out a tweet about, um, if
you burn the flag, you know you've got like a
year to like give up your citizen over the top
and nuts and by the way, I'm having dinner there
in a couple of weeks and I'll bring it up.

(49:45):
You know. It's like people were like, you better condemn her,
publicly condemn her. I don't want better publicly condemned my friends.
You know. It's like I can defer everything that they
disagree with. It's like it's so stupid, but but like
we disagreed when we went out to dinner. I don't
think she like they had the Guardians of the Galaxy
guy had lost his remember that Disney Yeah, and I

(50:06):
was like, I think they gave it back to him.
And my thing is like, I don't want to set
the precedent of going through every single word that everybody's
ever said. The guy's a good director, right, I loved
Guardians of the Galaxy one and Guardians of the Galaxy
to same thing. Kevin Hard I think is a pretty
good comedian. I think he should have been able to
host the Oscar. Of course he was standing what he
said ten years ago on Twitter, right, So he makes

(50:26):
some gay jokes ten years ago on Twitter, and then
I mean, this is this is how perverse and twisted
this thing is. He then goes on Ellen de Generous,
America's favorite lesbian, goes on her show, she says, you're good,
I understand, and then what do they do? They try
to destroy her for accepting his apology, and it's like,
what what do you people want? You people mock religious
people all the time, and yet religious people have a

(50:47):
redemption narrative, you have some forgiveness matters all of these things.
You guys have become far worse than those things. But
the hell was the question there? Uh? I was? We
were tying in, like talking about the the why the targets.
Oh so, so I think partly it's that so I've
escaped Candice's messages. Black people don't have to be democrats.
Any sane person would think that's a totally reasonable message.

(51:10):
But but they have to extract a high cost on her.
You can't just be a black girl saying what you
think and just walk out there and right. So they
so they say that modern liberalism has actually caused more problems,
you know, I mean, like, yeah, trust me. And it's
not fun for me to say that, you know, And
I I say this all the time. I would love
to be proven wrong here. If the ending of my
story and my success is that the left somehow reconstitutes

(51:35):
itself brings brings the roots of liberalism back, and I
my choice was, which is what I say all the time. Now,
I see so much more opportunity on the right to
talk to the never trumpers as well as the MAGA people,
as well as the conservatives and the libertarians and the
and caps. There's such an interesting fight of ideas happening there.
And I get invited to all of these things. I

(51:55):
get standing ovations despite telling them five policies that I
disagree with them on. I can't get one invite the
other one. Oh, it's fascinating. But if I if I
get proven wrong at the end of this, if liberalism
returns and I'm wrong because it is returned being reconstituted
from the left, I will have a mea culpa. I
will retire and disappear. You'll never hear from me again.
And I promise you I'd be thrilled. I'll be in

(52:16):
the NBA W n uh. So, how did you meet
Jordan Peterson and how did that tour come about? And
what was the experience like on your life? And for
people out there who might not know Jordan Peterson because
they're listening to us right now, who is he? And
and it kind of how did how did he climb?
In relevant? So, Jordan's is a Canadian psychologist who had

(52:36):
a clinical practice and as well as he was teaching
at University of Toronto, but he had taught at Harvard
before and had a great academic career for like thirty years.
But a normal, brilliant guy, but a normal dude otherwise,
a normal academic career, like was not somebody chasing fame
or any of those things. Then a couple of years ago,
there was this bill trying to be passed in Canada,
Bill C seventeen, which would have criminalized either by financial

(53:00):
penalty or potentially even jail, if you mis gendered someone.
Literally if you walked up down and you were walking
down the street and you said hi, mam, and it
turned out to be a guy, that would have been
a crime. And all he said was, I have no
problem with trans people. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've dealt
with these issues, but I do not want the government
to uh to be able to impose speech, and certainly

(53:24):
I don't want the governments be able to punish you
for it. That then became an incredibly controversial thing. Everyone
says he's a transphobe, he's a homophobe, blah blah blah.
And then what happened was, I'm sure it's the way
it is for for you to when you start finding
out about people, you start seeing something bubbling up on Twitter,
and people kept saying, Ruby, you gotta talk to this
Peterson guy. This was in um November of sixteen, so

(53:47):
like days before the wasted Yeah, and we had just
moved into this house on November one, so my studio
was being built and I didn't have a studio yet,
so I did a Google hang out with him. I
had never met him in person. First time we ever
said hello. We had a crappy internet connection here. It's
popping in and out the whole time. It's it's pixelated
our audios. Off, I do an hour talk with this guy,

(54:07):
talking about psychology and gender projects and all these things.
He tells a story about which he tells off and
now this story about the story of Pinocchio and that
you have to wish upon a star and what lying
can do all these things, and he's crying. He's literally
crying as he's doing it. And we finished the interview
and I turned to David, who was my husband and producer,
and I said that guy is either an absolute genius

(54:30):
or completely insane. There's no middle ground perfect I don't
know which it is. Subsequently, over the last couple of years,
I've I've interviewed him many times, we did a couple
of public speaking things together, and then he wrote this book.
It's right there. It's called Clover Rules for Life, which
is basically it's it's the under title or the secondary
title is an antidote to chaos, And basically he's trying
to tell people just get you know, everyone wants to

(54:52):
fix the world first. Everyone wants to just I can
fix everything. I know all the policies that can fix everything.
How do you fix yourself first? How don't you make
sure you wearing a shirt that fits? How about you
have a haircut that that is right? You know what
I mean? How about you brush your teeth like some
some seriously basic thing, but that somehow, especially for young men.
But it's not just young man. I mean the media
tries to portray it that he's just talking to angry

(55:14):
young men, and because it's just not true. But he
has given something to people that I've now seen all
over the world. I've seen we've performing in front of
hundreds of thousands of people who desperately needed this message
of personal responsibility and taking pride in yourself and and
that the individual is the the essence of Western society

(55:34):
and all of those things. The way we ended up
on tour together was I had him in here one
day with Ben Shapiro, is the three of us talking.
This is uh last January, so about a year and
a half ago, and he was doing his first test
show at the Orpheum downtown. It's a great theater down
about three thousand seats. He was doing it that night,
and as he was walking out the door and we
really just knew each other a little bit. At that point,
I said, Hey, you know, if you want me to

(55:55):
come down tonight, I'll warm up the crowd. I'll make
some lobster jokes. Because he doesn't lobster and now this
or some metaphors, I said, I'll make you. I'll make
some jokes and then I'll get out of your way.
And he was, without even hesitating, he was like, absolutely,
calm on down. I went down there. I just crushed it.
I knew all the right references to make with his
crowd and the whole thing, and all his agents from
CIA were there and they came up to me after

(56:17):
and they were like, you know who you with? What
do you do when I was with W M. E.
But I was like, all right, let's move and I
went with them. And then the tour started and as
I said, a hundred some odd stops and sold out
all over the Old Country. And he went over to England.
Like we went to England, We went to Denmark, we
went to Ireland. We went to Sweden, Copenhagen, Helsinki, um,
we went to Australia. I couldn't go to New Zealand

(56:39):
cause I had some other commitments. I mean, all over
the world. And to see this is the cool thing.
So when when we talk about how you come from
a sports perspective and say I come from a political perspective,
when you see something else, when you see that some
guy I was buying a cap one day, I was
going a hat at H and V in Sweden. I
just needed a hat that day it was windy. I
was like, Harris Brandon, we're getting the at. I go

(57:00):
into HM to buy hat. There's one guy in line
and I hear him talking and he's telling the cash here,
he goes, I'm buying this. He goes, this is my
first suit I've ever bought. I'm going to see Jordan
Peterson tonight. And the cashier goes, I'm going to see
Jordan Peterson tonight. And then I just walked up behind them.
The cash here is looking at me because I'm standing
by the other guy, Dave Reuben, and I was like,

(57:20):
I'm going to see exactly what I said, and I'm
going to see Jordan peters in tonight too. And that's
when I started realizing, because this this thing kept happening
all over the place. Where there was the time we
boarded a plane and we're sitting in the front row
and uh, this young black guy, probably like years old,
who was working at the airline you had one of
the you know, like white vests on. He was working

(57:42):
on the bridge or whatever. They were trying to close
the door, and he ran up to Jordan said, he said,
they could fire me for this, but I've got to
tell you you changed my life. I got this job
because you you saved my life. I started caring about
myself and all these things, and I saw that relentlessly
happened forever and Uh, it was. It was incredibly changed
my life. You can't if you're around something that that,

(58:02):
that's that good and real and honest for that long
and it doesn't change your life, You've got no hope.
You know, I will close out here because I know
you've got a ton of stud things going on. I
gotta get and do my my television show, which is
a good problem to have to write. Yeah, I say
it all the time. You gotta get onto your television shows.
I gotta go do my television shows. Um, you mentioned

(58:24):
those guys, Shapiro, Peterson, yourself, myself, actually a lot of
differences of opinion. Yeah, Yet you can have a sit
and have a rational conversation, and I think that's what
appeals to people so much. Why do you think rational
conversation has suddenly become the province of what would people say,
the Republican Party? It would have been the exact opposite

(58:46):
twenty years ago. So these things have been flow, which
is why I would tell people not to become too
attached to a party. Rights a party. If you're attached
to a party, you're just attached to a platform, which
is really just attached to a person. Yes, and so
you shouldn't be attached to that way you should be
attached to would be a Bay six set of ideals.
So in my case, I believe that the ideas that
I talked about about classical liberalism, I believe are the

(59:07):
right set of ideals. Um, we would be a whole
other show to really dive into into all that stuff.
But Shapiro, for example, so Shapiro is Orthodox jew He
is a religious belief that is against gay marriage. Now
there are Christian Conservatives that have that belief, in eventel
and you're not offended by that opinion, right like you
can have that is the very opinion that society for

(59:27):
thousands of years held. Now I could run around and
think that everyone that existed before me was an evil bigoted,
homophobia and a big racist, that all these things or
and and this is really what I believe. So one
of the nights um that Jordan and I were doing
a different show in l A, I said to Ben,
I said, why don't you come on stage tonight? And
we've had this running thing where Ben and I in

(59:48):
this very studio which is in my home where I
look with my husband, where I know Ben disagrees with
me from his own personal religious perspective, but by the way,
he takes the libertarian approach when it comes to policy,
so he's he wants religion out of it. So I'm
okay with that. Right. We got through under twenty million
people in this country. They're allowed to believe, but they
want they can't legislate my life. But we've had this
running joke about that Ben won't bake me a gay

(01:00:10):
wedding cake. So I said, Ben, why don't you come
on stage tonight. You'll do your I'll bring you on,
you'll do your thing. And I said, why don't you
bring me a cake on stage? So I go up there,
do my thing for ten minutes, crowds going nuts um,
and then I said, we got a surprise guest bench
where he walks out with the cupcake. People are going bananas,
I mean bananas. He then he says a couple of

(01:00:31):
things about giving me this cake. Then he does a
Jordan Peterson impression. He walks off, crowd goes nuts, and
I'm in a room now three thousand people celebrating the
fact that these two people have have a different view
online but can break bread or cupcakes with each other.
I then look on too. You know, we tweet the
video out and a couple of pictures of it, and
you know it good. But because I get so many tweets,

(01:00:52):
there's hundreds of tweets from tolerant progressive saying there's the
self hating gay in the home of Phobe and who
is more pathetic or some version of or just you know,
all the other words that they can say about us.
And this is the flip that I think most people
have to understand about tolerance. So why has it become
so rare? It's because the this woke thing has become

(01:01:15):
a secular religion. As my friend Peter Bogosian calls it.
There is no redemption narrative, and none of those things exists.
They want there's a reason they want to destroy history.
There's a reason they want to redefine words like owner
when it comes to NBA owners. There's a reason that
they want to take down monuments. There's a reason that
they want to I mean, isis what does isis do
it goes into Syria and it blows apart things that

(01:01:37):
have existed for thousands of years. Wait until they come
for Mount Rushmore, because they will the Obama Library, which
is being built now when the radical woke radicals, if
if they win, they will take that now because he
was against gay marriage. You mentioned the one which I
think is the one for the next generation when they
find out that we ate meat, we used to kill

(01:01:58):
cattle who are putting methane out into the CEO two
and they will look at us the way you might
look at your grandparents and think, oh, they didn't know
asbestos was was killing them, or like some version of
all of those things. So that's what we have to fight.
And and and by the way, I do think that
most people are pretty freaking decent. I think that most

(01:02:20):
people want to live in a society with other people.
I would much rather talk to people I disagree with um.
As a rule, when I go to colleges, I do
a talk for like an hour, and I always, every
single time, without exception, I say, if you disagree with me,
you come up first to ask a question. And it's
like I keep getting invited by conservatives, but I can't
get any of these tolerant lefties or liberals to invite me.

(01:02:43):
Maybe maybe they will one day. The last question for you.
We're in l A. We had a couple of earthquakes.
Uh were in your studio and looks so like so
far that they are. But what do you think you
said you were a big NBA fan or grew up
a big basketball fan. What do you think about Kauai
and Paul George to the Flippers and now Lebron and
Anthony Davis the Lakers? Will you go to games this year?

(01:03:03):
So I'll give you one just quick NBA thing. I
think I told her the last time. So my my
hero in life it was Clyde Drexler, who was on
the Blazers for years and lost in the finals a
couple of times, then lost in the Western Conference finals,
and when he was thought of as much older, he
was traded to the Rockets and won the championship that year.
And that, um, that story always stuck with me, that
this guy who I loved, who was who was amazing,

(01:03:26):
but but because he was in Portland, was sort of
ignored by the media and he wasn't Jordan's. He just
wasn't Jordan's. So he played the same position it wasn't Jordan's,
but and he kept getting close, kept getting closed, but
then finally got there. It became ingrained in me that
if I kept doing something, I would get there. And
this is in contrast to They're one of my best
friends who was a comic by the name of Mike Singer.
And you've never heard of Mike Singer, not because he

(01:03:46):
wasn't a great comic, but he was from Chicago and
his whole life he was a huge Cubs fan. And
this is before they won the chance, you know, the
World Series. In the last couple of years. Mike's story,
the story he had been telling himself his whole life,
was based around the Cubs. You're you're never gonna win.
You're never gonna win, and he eventually gave up. And
I think there's a connection there my story that I
told myself. Stories have value, and the athlete who I

(01:04:08):
loved the most. It took him a long as time,
and people said he was washed up at that point
and he had you know, blah blah blah, but he
got there and that really got ingrained in me. Um So.
As for the As for the Lakers, now, I mean Kauai,
the fact that he's you know, bounced around from the
Spurs and then just did this with Toronto. You know,
can the Clippers ever really be good? Can the Clippers

(01:04:30):
actually make a Western Conference finals, and I would love
to go to some games this year. I just haven't
had freaking time, you know. I also, you know I'm
doing all right on YouTube, but that kind of money,
you know, I'm not like that. Clay Travis cl Over, Hey, look,
I could disappear in a heartbeat, and I think you
will be when the new book comes out. But we
need to talk again. We need to go to movie,
go to an NBA game, and also when you're in Nashville,

(01:04:50):
we need to hang out. I'm gonna do some stand
up there with all those nice people, and I'll bring
you on stage and that'll be awesome. You can follow
him if you're not familiar with him. Dave Reuben at
Reuben Report. The new book will be out in May.
It's coming out in May, and it'll be up on
Amazon and everywhere else soon. You'll share the links. I
can tell you the name. We're like two weeks off.
I can't wait to check it out. Seriously, appreciate the time.

(01:05:10):
I hope people enjoyed our version with you as well.
But this is awesome. It's been great to get to
know you. It's nice to do something else in my studio. Yeah, yeah,
you've been sitting there. I know you can hill. You
don't have to worry. I'll being on camera. H this
has been wins and losses. I'm Clay Travis, He's Dave Reuben.
Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy it. Let me
know what you think. As always, we'll be back next week.
Thanks for listening. Be sure to catch live editions about

(01:05:32):
kick the Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
am Eastern three am Pacific