Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome in the newest Wins and
Speaker 1: Losses podcast. If you haven't signed up for it yet,
Speaker 1: to go listen to everybody else. I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: love them, whether it's Jason Whitlock, whether it's Washington State
Speaker 1: football coach Mike Leach, Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference Greg Sanky.
Speaker 1: We're kind of intersecting the world of sports, media, politics,
Speaker 1: and business and telling stories about how people ended up
Speaker 1: where they did, the wins and losses along the way
Speaker 1: for the process of their lives. And this week's guest
Speaker 1: is Dave Reuben. He's at Reuben Report on Twitter. He's
Speaker 1: a man of many talents. Uh and you guys may
Speaker 1: have watched us together on YouTube on his show before.
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of great conversations. We've met. Couple
Speaker 1: of years ago during the fallout of my my comments
Speaker 1: on CNN. Would you have ever known about me if
Speaker 1: you hadn't seen that clip? Did you? Had you been
Speaker 1: cognizant of me existing before that? I think I had
Speaker 1: come across your name a couple of times, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I was following you yet. When I saw
Speaker 1: that moment with you and Baldwin, I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: whatever is going on here? And as you know, I
Speaker 1: am a sports guy, but just because my life has
Speaker 1: gotten so busy and the politics thing has just kind
Speaker 1: of taken over, like I just don't have as much
Speaker 1: time for that any right, But I was like, whatever
Speaker 1: this guy is up to? That moment was so exactly
Speaker 1: everything that I'm talking about all the time, related to
Speaker 1: free speech, related to outreach culture, related to the mob,
Speaker 1: related to the lunacy of the media and the crantastic
Speaker 1: programming of CNN, yes, and all of those things that
Speaker 1: I was like, I've got to talk to this guy.
Speaker 1: And then what was interesting was then when I had
Speaker 1: you on the show, which was just within a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks of that, um quickly I was like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's not just that he gets it, but we do
Speaker 1: both occupy what I think is coming a really increasing
Speaker 1: space of people that are desperately trying to find some
Speaker 1: sanity here and not trying to ransack everything that is
Speaker 1: so good about this country. So uh so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think I really knew who you were before then,
Speaker 1: but but since then it's been incredibly beneficial for my career.
Speaker 1: Uh And a lot of people listening right now may
Speaker 1: have initially discovered me then. Obviously, It's not like I
Speaker 1: hadn't been in the public arena before. But it's so
Speaker 1: hard to cut through, you know, in general, and make
Speaker 1: a name good or bad for yourself in such a
Speaker 1: complicated and competitive culture. I wasn't planning on that happening,
Speaker 1: but I definitely leaned into it. Also, the way that
Speaker 1: they booked those shows. It's also an impossibly difficult thing
Speaker 1: to figure out. So for example, I just told you so,
Speaker 1: you so, we're in my studio right now, and we
Speaker 1: just tape my show, and I totally I'm doing Tucker
Speaker 1: Tonight ones and I go on Fox Now probably once
Speaker 1: or twice a week. I'm not paid or anything. I'm
Speaker 1: not a contributor. But I always find that they let
Speaker 1: me say whatever I want. Tucker puts me on live,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't do a pre interview anymore. There's
Speaker 1: none of that. They trust me. I can say whatever
Speaker 1: I want, I can agree with him, disagree with him.
Speaker 1: The rest of it but then people will say, we, well, real,
Speaker 1: but you don't go on CNN, you don't go on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: And it's like they don't invite any right, you want
Speaker 1: me to just I literally took a picture when I
Speaker 1: was in New York last week. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw this on Twitter. Yeah, I tweeted a picture
Speaker 1: of a selfie sitting downstairs at the time Warner Center,
Speaker 1: which is where CNN is upstairs that Whole Foods. Take
Speaker 1: a picture of myself. I said, hey, I'm here, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to come on. Yeah, you know, but they but
Speaker 1: they don't want to. Yeah, And really that does get
Speaker 1: to so many things that we talked about about which
Speaker 1: way tolerance is sort of veering these things and it's
Speaker 1: not the side that you think or that you've been
Speaker 1: trained to think that it's going in. All right, So
Speaker 1: I want to get into your background because one of
Speaker 1: the things we love to do on this show is
Speaker 1: figure out how someone ends up where they are. So
Speaker 1: kind of a set the scene for people listening. Right now.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in your studio and you're a Los Angeles
Speaker 1: abode here, which is phenomenal. You do a couple of
Speaker 1: different really popular shows on YouTube, you distribute them. You've
Speaker 1: had a tremendous amount of success. You're working on a
Speaker 1: book now, You've got a lot of opportunities. You just
Speaker 1: mentioned you're going on Tucker Carlson. You've got a ton
Speaker 1: of different media opportunities all happening at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: Which is a good place to be on the last
Speaker 1: time I saw you, we were in uh, Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And you and I and kandas Owens all went out
Speaker 1: for dinner together Trump or the Trump Hotel whatever steakhout
Speaker 1: the Trump Hotel steakhouse there. We had an incredible conversation.
Speaker 1: Was an awesome time. Um, And so I want to
Speaker 1: circle back to you grew up a where like the
Speaker 1: very beginning, you grew up in New York is right.
Speaker 1: I'm a true New Yorker. When people say they're New Yorkers,
Speaker 1: there's very few actual New Yorkers. But I was born
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn before it was cool, ipster Brooklyn still crappy Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: where my dad and my grandparents were from. UH. When
Speaker 1: I was three years old, we moved out to Long Island,
Speaker 1: which was that was the dream for if you were
Speaker 1: a city, New York City or Brooklyn or Queen's person.
Speaker 1: The dream was you could move to Long Island, maybe
Speaker 1: to Westchester or from suburban part of Jersey. My folks
Speaker 1: moved this out to little town called Sayasset, which is
Speaker 1: basically smacked dead in the middle of Long Island, Exit
Speaker 1: forty three on the l I A and uh So.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Long Island. I went to college
Speaker 1: in upstate New York, Sunny Binghamton. My dad was very
Speaker 1: clear when I was applying for colleges. I wanted to
Speaker 1: go to Syracuse because I wanted to be a sports
Speaker 1: bro ester. I wanted to be on ESPN, and Marv
Speaker 1: Albert went there, and Bob Costa went there too, and
Speaker 1: all those guys went there. And my dad said, if
Speaker 1: you go to a Sunny school meeting an in state
Speaker 1: state University of New York school, we'll pay for it
Speaker 1: because it's about nine grand women a year. And he said,
Speaker 1: if you go to a private school or at a
Speaker 1: state it's on you. I think maybe he was going
Speaker 1: to make up the differences. You know, he would have
Speaker 1: taken care of the nine and then I would have
Speaker 1: had pay over. And Syracuse at the time was about
Speaker 1: twenty five grand it's probably something like sixty girls. And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, I was like, I would love to
Speaker 1: go there. I want to be on Sports Center. It
Speaker 1: was the heyday of Sports Center. Kilbourne was was new
Speaker 1: and fresh and funny before crazy before, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: was great him and damn pack. That thing was amazing.
Speaker 1: I loved every moment of it because it was funny,
Speaker 1: it was edgy, it was rever ir reverend. But basically
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I can either go to college
Speaker 1: for free and hopefully figure out a path if I
Speaker 1: was even thinking about it that much at seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: or I can go to this place but then have
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt. If I had
Speaker 1: only known now that the Democrats, you know, pay off
Speaker 1: my debt, maybe I would have done it. But and
Speaker 1: then I lived after that. I lived in Manhattan pretty
Speaker 1: much right out of college after a year back with
Speaker 1: my with my folks. Lived in Manhattan for about fifteen
Speaker 1: years and that's when I started doing stand up and
Speaker 1: all that, and lived there until February when I moved
Speaker 1: to l A. And this is like Hotel California. You
Speaker 1: can get in, but you can never get out, alright,
Speaker 1: so that is a that's an awesome run through. Now
Speaker 1: at Sunni Bingam, what did you major in and how
Speaker 1: would you describe your academic performance while there? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: majored in political science. So I like to say that
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro and I are basically the only two POLYCIGN
Speaker 1: majors that actually use their degree outside degree um. But
Speaker 1: I remember that most of my political science classes, everything
Speaker 1: that we were taught, it was like, but none of
Speaker 1: this works, right. We really was like that, like very yeah,
Speaker 1: like they but they'd be saying these things. They would
Speaker 1: be saying these things about this is how the government's
Speaker 1: supposed to work, in separation of powers and all the things.
Speaker 1: But but they would always veer at the end towards
Speaker 1: but none of it really works this way, you know.
Speaker 1: And but I I didn't have you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people I think have sort of or younger kids now,
Speaker 1: Like when I go to colleges now, I meet these
Speaker 1: kids and even younger high school kids who are so passionate,
Speaker 1: so driven. When I think that that a college kid
Speaker 1: is coming up to me and going, WHOA, you know,
Speaker 1: I just read Jordan Peterson's book watching your Show, and
Speaker 1: I listened to Sam Harris talk about atheism and Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan and that, and that they're putting so much investment
Speaker 1: in their in their intellectual worth. It's incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: I truly I spent four years of college. I was
Speaker 1: smoking pot. I was pot. I was smoking pot, playing
Speaker 1: video was playing basketball top video games. Well, I was
Speaker 1: playing all the e A sports games right then. So
Speaker 1: it was like NBA Live and NHL nineties, So we
Speaker 1: are close to the same, like basically the college like
Speaker 1: the video game that the sports like. So you love basketball?
Speaker 1: Basketball is my real sports. So yeah, basketball in your
Speaker 1: in your office here, so you would you play intermiroal
Speaker 1: basketball and everything else. I played every league that you
Speaker 1: could possibly play. And my one regret, you know, I
Speaker 1: really don't have regrets in life because most because I'm
Speaker 1: in a good place now and I view the mistakes
Speaker 1: or whatever as things that ultimately ended up getting here.
Speaker 1: My one regret is that I didn't pick up basketball earlier,
Speaker 1: because because I was really good for for a while.
Speaker 1: I'm about five eleven, relatively fit, or at least in
Speaker 1: my hate it really was, and I had a great
Speaker 1: three point shots, finger roll. I really could play, But
Speaker 1: I really never picked up a ball until about eight
Speaker 1: or ninth grade. Yeah, so if I could have started.
Speaker 1: Yeah when when when I really was good in high school,
Speaker 1: I was already a senior and I tried out for
Speaker 1: the team with the high school team, and the coach
Speaker 1: of the Sea of the high school basketball team was
Speaker 1: my years before, had been my elementary school coach, elementary
Speaker 1: school gym teacher, And I remember him coming up to me,
Speaker 1: Mr Myers, and saying, you know, he's like, he's like, David,
Speaker 1: you know when you were a kid, you were this
Speaker 1: little scrawny nothing. He's like, you've got skills now, but
Speaker 1: you're too old. He like. It was completely honest with me,
Speaker 1: and I sort of appreciated the honesty, but so I
Speaker 1: really it was. It was more of a recreational thing
Speaker 1: my whole life. Yeah, but I love basketball more than
Speaker 1: anything else. If that would be I should be in
Speaker 1: the w n b A. That's as for our earlier
Speaker 1: maybe you could if that plan, if this all the
Speaker 1: whole thing, you can be Joanna Man. Now let's go
Speaker 1: to Uh did you live at home for a year
Speaker 1: like a lot of people do after school? Do you
Speaker 1: have any idea what you're gonna do? Polly Side degree
Speaker 1: and in that year, well, I was a video game guys.
Speaker 1: So if you love video games, what do you do?
Speaker 1: I started working at Electronics boutique, which you may know
Speaker 1: as game Stop. My age Basic Lisa Electronics Cutique, which
Speaker 1: most of the people listening to this became working at
Speaker 1: the game Stop. So I was in the Broadway Mall
Speaker 1: and Nixville, Long Island, and I was assistant manager. And
Speaker 1: I moved more Pokemon gold than anybody. Um so I
Speaker 1: did that, and you know, you quickly find out I
Speaker 1: don't even know what the hell I was thinking. I
Speaker 1: just needed a job, you know, I needed a job.
Speaker 1: But I remember thinking, oh, I love video games, like
Speaker 1: I'll be a video game sales but like that seemed
Speaker 1: like a sensible thing. But then you quickly realized, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a real retail job. And like most things,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you feel this way a little bit
Speaker 1: about sports, that the more that you get in on it,
Speaker 1: the more that you see that that dirty underside of
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with the things that you
Speaker 1: love about it. So like selling video games has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with telling people why you love playing Googles
Speaker 1: and ghosts. For Mario brothers. You know. So, Uh. What
Speaker 1: I started doing though, was literally the last thing that
Speaker 1: I did in college. Senior year, I had my finals
Speaker 1: were over already, my bags were packed, I was heading on.
Speaker 1: I had to finish, to finish out my required courses,
Speaker 1: I take a public speaking class. And all I had
Speaker 1: to do was give a ten minute talk on whatever
Speaker 1: whatever it is that I want to talk about. And
Speaker 1: I gave a ten minute talk um about what it
Speaker 1: was like to be in college, and I did it.
Speaker 1: You remember Bill Cosby himself. It was his great HBO
Speaker 1: special from did you ever see That's Chocolate Cake? And
Speaker 1: the Dentist and all that? And I remember seeing that
Speaker 1: as a seven year old. I remember seeing that in
Speaker 1: my parents house in the in the living room, and
Speaker 1: I remember being buckled over as a seven year old
Speaker 1: in laughter. I could not it was the funniest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. The pain in my stomach. So basically
Speaker 1: I decided to do, basically do a stand up routine
Speaker 1: for ten minutes, and I sat just like Bill Cosby,
Speaker 1: sitting that entire routine. Uh. And I told him what
Speaker 1: it was like to be in college, and I talked
Speaker 1: about hooking up and I talked about drugs, and I
Speaker 1: talked about law of class and blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: half the class was laughing, and half the class was
Speaker 1: looking at me like I was crazy. The professor completely
Speaker 1: thought I was nuts um. But from there I was like,
Speaker 1: whoa that that feeling of making people laugh, There's nothing
Speaker 1: better than that. And a week later I was at
Speaker 1: my first comedy club that I had never even been
Speaker 1: to a stand up club. They said, you know, I
Speaker 1: called this place in New York comedy club. They said,
Speaker 1: if you can bring five paying customers, will throw you
Speaker 1: on stage. And that's what I did, and I was hooked.
Speaker 1: I was beyond hooked. I mean like a like a
Speaker 1: drug in the best sense of it hooked. So how
Speaker 1: often would you be doing stand up comedy? So the
Speaker 1: first couple of years, I mean, this is very similar
Speaker 1: to most of how comedy went back then. So comedy obviously,
Speaker 1: like most industries, has had its up since its stands
Speaker 1: and everything. Most people when they think of like the
Speaker 1: golden years of comedy, you really think of like sort
Speaker 1: of the late seventies, eighties into the very early part
Speaker 1: of the nineties, where every comic basically from Louis Anderson
Speaker 1: and Tim Allen and Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld and
Speaker 1: Richard Lewis. Basically, you could get on the Tonight Show.
Speaker 1: You could work the clubs for a certain amount of years,
Speaker 1: you could perfect a five minute set, and then if
Speaker 1: you got on the Tonight Show and Johnny liked you,
Speaker 1: if Johnny Carson liked you, called you over the chair.
Speaker 1: I mean everyone knows this. And he called you over
Speaker 1: the chair, and then you were golden. You get a
Speaker 1: sitcom and you were good to go. I mean, this
Speaker 1: happened with Rosanne. We could do the list. This happened
Speaker 1: with everybody when I started, so I was out of
Speaker 1: college in eight So I started in June of ninety eight,
Speaker 1: So it's twenty one years basically this month, um that,
Speaker 1: but that bubble had burst, I mean majorly. They they
Speaker 1: always looked back the night that they say the comedy
Speaker 1: bubble versus when Andrew Dice Clay sold out Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden and basically everyone was announcing his jokes with him,
Speaker 1: you know, Jack and Joe went up to who and
Speaker 1: then everyone tells the rest of the joke, you know,
Speaker 1: and and that that was sort of symbolic of how
Speaker 1: the whole thing crumbled, and then comedy clubs started closing
Speaker 1: all over the place because also television made it more ubiquitous,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to go to clubs anymore. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like anything else we're we're in
Speaker 1: industries right now that are massively changing. So um so
Speaker 1: what happened was to go to comedy clubs or to
Speaker 1: perform a comedy clubs. For a while, it was bringer shows.
Speaker 1: So if you just brought a certain amount of bodies,
Speaker 1: and right out of college of someone that grew up
Speaker 1: in New York, I had bodies. So the first two
Speaker 1: years I could just get people a couple of times
Speaker 1: a week to just show up. But eventually you run
Speaker 1: out of steam on that, and then uh so that
Speaker 1: lasted let's say two years of a couple of nights
Speaker 1: a week and you're working anything else or yeah, so
Speaker 1: I was working as so I did the video game
Speaker 1: thing for a while. I interned at the Daily Show.
Speaker 1: Also a year a year after college, I forged a
Speaker 1: letter from Binghamton University. I faked their letterhead and I
Speaker 1: said that I was a professor in the communications department
Speaker 1: or something, and I recommended myself to get to get
Speaker 1: an internship at the Daily Show. So I'm interning at
Speaker 1: the Daily Show during the day, which was a really
Speaker 1: interesting time to be there because John had just taken
Speaker 1: over from Kilbourne and I loved the Daily Show from
Speaker 1: Kilbourne because I like Kilbourne. But it was a really
Speaker 1: bizarre time because try to picture two public people with
Speaker 1: different personas than those two guys. Killboard is the most smug,
Speaker 1: you know, into himself whatever. John is the most self
Speaker 1: deprecating personever. So the staff was in upheaval and rights
Speaker 1: are getting fired left and right and all that um.
Speaker 1: But then over the years of new and stand up,
Speaker 1: I mean, I did every odd job you can think.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, first off, I cleaned up comedy clubs
Speaker 1: and clean bathrooms and literally the lowest kind of level jobs.
Speaker 1: I would have done anything to get on stage. And
Speaker 1: I did do anything. I mean I I bartended, I
Speaker 1: I worked a catering companies. I used to hand out
Speaker 1: merchandise for promotion companies on the streets, just anything I
Speaker 1: could do to make a buck to go by. For
Speaker 1: one year, I had an office job at a PR
Speaker 1: company in New York. I've literally no idea what business
Speaker 1: they because my head wasn't there. Somehow I got the
Speaker 1: job and I showed up, and I guess I faked
Speaker 1: it enough to be able to keep a job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I have no idea what it's a hand amount
Speaker 1: existence at the time to write you're making like I mean,
Speaker 1: I was making nothing. I remember what your rent was, like,
Speaker 1: how many roommates did you have? Like so when I
Speaker 1: finally so then I left my parents house. And then
Speaker 1: when I had that office job, so I had, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I was making forty five grand or something like that.
Speaker 1: I had a couple of roommates on on an apartment
Speaker 1: on ninety and first, so pretty far up on the
Speaker 1: fur East Side, um, which was a really interesting place.
Speaker 1: Ninety and first, because try to think about New York
Speaker 1: City for a second. So if New York's an the
Speaker 1: subway up there is eighty six and Lex. It was
Speaker 1: basically ninetieth that York, which is one more east than first.
Speaker 1: So it was basically as far as you could get
Speaker 1: from a subway in New York City. Because eighty six,
Speaker 1: that means I had to ninety Then I had to
Speaker 1: go les third, second, First York, which it's a long
Speaker 1: walk for for a New Yorker, especially when you're working
Speaker 1: at a job you don't want to be at and
Speaker 1: the rest of it. Um. But anyway, then, uh, and
Speaker 1: I just did all sorts of just any gi like
Speaker 1: name a job, like I pretty much did it. But
Speaker 1: then what I had to do to get on stage
Speaker 1: once the sort of age out of the bringer thing,
Speaker 1: your friends are like, yeah, I've heard all those jokes.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to come to shows anymore.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing to do with whether you're good or not.
Speaker 1: It's just like it just is. The other way you
Speaker 1: get on stage is your bark. You hand your hand
Speaker 1: out tickets and uh, you hand out tickets, usually in
Speaker 1: Times Squares where most of it went down. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've been harassed. So you did that, You would
Speaker 1: stand in Times Square. And I did that for like
Speaker 1: eight or ten years, six six nights a week, sometimes
Speaker 1: twice a night, two hours a night, and often in
Speaker 1: the early years of that you didn't get paid either.
Speaker 1: So you're dragging people into these clubs just with the
Speaker 1: hope of getting you know, seven minutes of stage. Then
Speaker 1: and I did that for a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: then this was the first moment that my my business
Speaker 1: sense that I think has led me here now kicked in.
Speaker 1: I realized that I was out here with all these
Speaker 1: other comics, some of them whom were pretty good. Um,
Speaker 1: most of the guys from my crew have all disappeared.
Speaker 1: And it's just a sad thing about comedy that often
Speaker 1: the best guys just they can't hack it anymore, like
Speaker 1: the true artists and the ones that are truly doing
Speaker 1: something amazing get to a point where it just breaks them.
Speaker 1: So out of my crew, um, we had some really
Speaker 1: really talented people. The only one who really broke through
Speaker 1: I guess I had now. But the only other one
Speaker 1: Melissa Routs, who you probably know is that on a
Speaker 1: Big Bang Theory m. She was at my crew. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing her the first night and I said to her,
Speaker 1: you were going to be the star because she could
Speaker 1: do voices and she was just a great talent and
Speaker 1: she's a great girl. Um, but basically just bark being
Speaker 1: handed out these tickets. And then finally I was like,
Speaker 1: why am I doing this so that somebody else can
Speaker 1: be taken all the cash here? So me and a
Speaker 1: couple of other comics, um, we found a failing restaurant.
Speaker 1: It was called Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, and Joe Franklin
Speaker 1: was an old school New York sort of like a
Speaker 1: Larry King type of, like a local local guy. Any
Speaker 1: of this restaurant that just every night, and they had
Speaker 1: a back room about eight seats, and we started a
Speaker 1: six night a week to show a night comedy club there.
Speaker 1: It became so successful that we ended up taking over
Speaker 1: the entire restaurant, and then we had two shows going.
Speaker 1: And then that became so successful that there's a t
Speaker 1: g I Fridays on fifty and seventh, which is the
Speaker 1: world's largest t Yeah, I know exactly, and it's right
Speaker 1: probably yeah, yeah, you've probably get there right what your
Speaker 1: audience may know it as is the building next to
Speaker 1: it is now Barkley's Building, which was Lehman Brothers before
Speaker 1: the crash and everything. It's a really iconic. It's glowing
Speaker 1: and crazy lights and everything. But anyway, there was a
Speaker 1: room down there about a hundred fifty seats. So we
Speaker 1: left our B list comics that Joe Franklin's Comedy Club.
Speaker 1: We took our best guys went there six nights a week,
Speaker 1: two shows a night, so I was basically running two clubs.
Speaker 1: I was making real money. We were splitting the first
Speaker 1: time you actually started to make real money. First time
Speaker 1: I started making real money, I was. We were splitting
Speaker 1: money between the comics, So comics started making money. We
Speaker 1: had no management, so I was doing twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: sets when most guys were doing six minutes set. We did.
Speaker 1: We did great stuff, and we actually became so successful
Speaker 1: that the reason it ended was because of our success.
Speaker 1: Because then the big clubs realized, whoa, these comics, they're
Speaker 1: just dragging people in off the street. You know, We're
Speaker 1: literally just pulling people in, you know. And then the
Speaker 1: it was the Laugh Factory. We were on fifty and seventh.
Speaker 1: The Laugh Factory opened up a couple of blocks south,
Speaker 1: and then Broadway Comedy Club I think, opened a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks more. And then they just had more money
Speaker 1: behind them and had more an army of people that
Speaker 1: could hand out tickets, so they just nipped us off.
Speaker 1: And then the whole thing crumbled, and then I moved
Speaker 1: on to some others off. But I look back on
Speaker 1: it with like tremendous fondness now, like those are the
Speaker 1: good old days. Be sure to catch live editions about
Speaker 1: Kick the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
Speaker 1: am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to Dave Reuben
Speaker 1: at Reuben Show on Twitter. This is the Wins and
Speaker 1: Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Do you remember having a
Speaker 1: moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue as a comedian? Like, was there any kind
Speaker 1: of epiphany moment where you were like this and maybe
Speaker 1: what age? Like, how how does that happen? How do
Speaker 1: you end up where you are now? Because you obviously,
Speaker 1: in order to be a comedian, you have to really
Speaker 1: put your heart and soul into it, right into performing
Speaker 1: for years. You have to give it everything you've got.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny because most of your audience
Speaker 1: listen to this. If they know me, they probably don't
Speaker 1: know me from comedy. It's actually only in the last
Speaker 1: year now that I'm getting back into comedy and I'm
Speaker 1: selling out clubs across the country. And I'm telling you, truly, Clay,
Speaker 1: you gotta come sometime. I'll bring you on statie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Usually what I usually do now, because i'm selling out
Speaker 1: these clubs, I do about an hour solo and I'm
Speaker 1: really just messing with the crowd, and I do a
Speaker 1: ton of likely incorrect stuff and and and talk about
Speaker 1: all social justice and all this nonsence, and then usually
Speaker 1: I bring on a friend at the end. So I've
Speaker 1: brought on Jordan Peterson. I brought on the Weinstein brothers
Speaker 1: and Ben Shapiro and a bunch of people, and I
Speaker 1: just get people to to see us in a in
Speaker 1: a different way. We'll do it. So we'll do it.
Speaker 1: Do it because I need to. I need to get
Speaker 1: back to Nashville. That that picture, by the way in
Speaker 1: my bathroom, that's from the Yeah. So I remember right
Speaker 1: around when these two clubs opened on both sides of us,
Speaker 1: and suddenly our numbers were dropping and we were going
Speaker 1: from a hundred fifty people at the show, then it
Speaker 1: was eighty, then it was for me then and then
Speaker 1: suddenly it was like seven and the money was gone
Speaker 1: and it was depressing and all that. I remember thinking
Speaker 1: one day like, could it be possible that I've given
Speaker 1: everything I have into this and I'm good at it?
Speaker 1: And I'm good I was at one time. I was
Speaker 1: like they told me, I'm I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is totally true, but I was the youngest comic ever
Speaker 1: passed that the comedy Seller, which was the Comedy Siller
Speaker 1: down on Bleaker Street, is like, that's like the premoke,
Speaker 1: that's like the really the one that matters in the city.
Speaker 1: That's like the hip cool club. And I was right
Speaker 1: out of college got past their immediately. If anything, I
Speaker 1: got past too early, because you should have him a
Speaker 1: lot more years I do to really do it at
Speaker 1: that level. Um. But I remember thinking, could I give
Speaker 1: something everything I have got, be good at it, have
Speaker 1: done everything, and be doing something different and real and
Speaker 1: all of those things, and then have it not work?
Speaker 1: Could that be what reality is? And when I started
Speaker 1: coming in, when you start, I think everyone has some
Speaker 1: moment like that in their life, when that thing that
Speaker 1: you've believed in comes into conflict with reality. And I
Speaker 1: remember there was this other comic. His name is Brian Bombly.
Speaker 1: He he was a decent comic, not great decent. I've
Speaker 1: seen him a couple of times over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, and he's he's just a normal guy. Now,
Speaker 1: he's got a regular job and a family, lives in Jerseys. Happy. Um.
Speaker 1: But one of those nights, as that was kind of
Speaker 1: all crumbling around us, he said to me, and he
Speaker 1: almost had a tear in his eye. He said, Dave,
Speaker 1: this wasn't supposed to happen to you. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: Like he kind of was looking around like yeah, some
Speaker 1: of these guys are good. I'm okay. He's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: you're good, Like this wasn't supposed to happen. And I
Speaker 1: remember like like I felt a pain, like in my heart,
Speaker 1: like holy shit, it's and you'r how old at this point,
Speaker 1: this is probably like late late twenties. It might have
Speaker 1: been even the early thirties at this point, it was
Speaker 1: probably early thirty. I mean, you're grinding a way for
Speaker 1: a decade at this Like I gave it everything I
Speaker 1: had and then and then from that point then I
Speaker 1: started realizing, Okay, there's got to be a different way
Speaker 1: to do this. And this is where I think it
Speaker 1: makes sense sort of how I ended up here, because
Speaker 1: then I started realizing, you know, none of these guys
Speaker 1: are getting on the Tonight Show anymore. You're like, when
Speaker 1: you know, when Leno took over the Tonight Show, there's
Speaker 1: no stories of Leno putting the comment next to him
Speaker 1: and the guy getting the show. Maybe that's a fault
Speaker 1: of Leno. Maybe it's just the way the business was changing,
Speaker 1: the way the economics of people getting less sitcoms because
Speaker 1: they were more reality shows. I mean, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But I started thinking, this doesn't make sense. You've got
Speaker 1: guys in comedy clubs all trying to perfect this five
Speaker 1: minute set so that they can get on a show
Speaker 1: that doesn't put them on, so that they can get
Speaker 1: a sitcom that doesn't even exist anymore, you know. And
Speaker 1: from that, I was like, there's gotta be another way
Speaker 1: to do this. And also the way I had always
Speaker 1: done stand up. People used to say to me, like,
Speaker 1: do you have a tight five, And be like, I
Speaker 1: don't have a type five, but I have a freaking
Speaker 1: great half hour, a messy half hour that will be
Speaker 1: like nothing you've ever seen before. And and I never
Speaker 1: had any stage fright er. I can get up in
Speaker 1: front of thousand people and just whatever popped into my head,
Speaker 1: I could just kind of figure out something. It's just
Speaker 1: the way I've always done it, and everyone, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone does it different. There's a do you re see
Speaker 1: the Uh the Seinfeldt documentary comedian and he put it
Speaker 1: out out there when he UH finished the sitcom there's
Speaker 1: a great moment with him and Gary Shandling and they're
Speaker 1: drive into a gig and Jerry's got his notepad and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, like Hitler would have been proud
Speaker 1: of the decision, you know, and Gary and Jerry turns
Speaker 1: to Gary and he's like, what do you have it?
Speaker 1: Gary pulls out like this crumbled piece of paper and
Speaker 1: pockets like I think I was gonna do this, you know,
Speaker 1: And like so I was much more that version of it.
Speaker 1: And it just depends what you like and what your
Speaker 1: creative process and all that. But then it was at
Speaker 1: the beginnings of when my Space was starting, and I
Speaker 1: heard this word podcast and a few other things, and
Speaker 1: then I just started just being a little more active
Speaker 1: in that world. I thought, if I could just get
Speaker 1: a couple of followers in this world now Twitter starting,
Speaker 1: if I could get a couple of people to start
Speaker 1: following me. Well, you go to a comedy club, it's like,
Speaker 1: no matter how funny you are, they're gonna go, ah,
Speaker 1: you know that guy who went on fifth out of
Speaker 1: the eight, you know, you had brown hair. He was
Speaker 1: kind of funny, but they're not gonna remember your You
Speaker 1: could could you could do a carl and Masque perfect Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they just won't remember you are. It's just how
Speaker 1: it is. So I started thinking, you know, if I
Speaker 1: could start getting some followers on some of these things,
Speaker 1: and then people then then tweet out a little silly
Speaker 1: thing here and there that actually starts having more worth
Speaker 1: than than doing the clubs every night. So I started
Speaker 1: moving in that direction. Eventually I started doing a podcast, um,
Speaker 1: and then some of those things started leading ultimately to
Speaker 1: what got me t l A, which was doing a
Speaker 1: show with the Young Turks, which now really feels like
Speaker 1: a whole lifetime ago, and that's only six and a
Speaker 1: half years ago. So as part of that process, you start,
Speaker 1: let's go back up personally. So, uh, you're gay. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a massive secret. When did you by
Speaker 1: far the most bored, But when did you like sort
Speaker 1: of come out for lack of better term, asister during college?
Speaker 1: Was before college? Like, um, well, it's funny, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm writing my book, right, it's not
Speaker 1: that personal in my book, but I am actually relating.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm really trying to do
Speaker 1: is relate being in the closet about sexuality related to
Speaker 1: a political classic that I think so many people are
Speaker 1: in right now. Sure a huge amount of your listeners
Speaker 1: are in that where they're going. I have a couple
Speaker 1: of thoughts that are outside of wolkedom, and you're calling me,
Speaker 1: I don't saint Donald Trump is hitler, And it's like
Speaker 1: you maybe you think that, but you're like, I'm do
Speaker 1: not say that at work because you think about that,
Speaker 1: Think think how what that does to the average person
Speaker 1: when you can't say something that you think right. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'm really trying to do with a good
Speaker 1: portion of the book is is relate these two things.
Speaker 1: Because you're a gay comedian, and most people when they
Speaker 1: hear gay comedian, they think like, oh, that guy's got
Speaker 1: to be like the locust person on the planet, right,
Speaker 1: And you're probably surrounded by But I bet when you
Speaker 1: saw even from the comedy sphere is a lot of
Speaker 1: those comedians also have thoughts that are similar to yours,
Speaker 1: but they might not be comfortable saying right with that
Speaker 1: entertainment universe. Well, it's funny because when you asked me
Speaker 1: about my comedy life, like to me, the gay part
Speaker 1: doesn't even come up because A because I never addressed it,
Speaker 1: I was still, I was closet and mess, I was struggling.
Speaker 1: My own is that I truly feel like I feel
Speaker 1: more comfortable here talking to you like this than if
Speaker 1: I was doing like a gay podcast that right, I
Speaker 1: would personally much rather talk about sports and politics or
Speaker 1: video games or whatever. Then I don't care about the
Speaker 1: Housewives of bel Air or those things. That a great show,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's close to that name. But my
Speaker 1: wife is a huge fan of all the housewife so
Speaker 1: I see them all well. When I had that's Andy
Speaker 1: Cohen's universe, right, And a lot of people be like, oh,
Speaker 1: Andy Cohen is a gay comedian. Oh he's incredibly woke
Speaker 1: or whatever the personality might be. But it's actually I mean,
Speaker 1: and the reason why I bring it up is because
Speaker 1: I just find it fascinating because it cuts across so
Speaker 1: many different arenas. Right. Oh yeah, and like, so were
Speaker 1: you conscious? You said you're a polyci major, So I
Speaker 1: didn't even you didn't even answer, like, so did when
Speaker 1: did you officially? Yeah? Well, so first off, she was
Speaker 1: quickly on Andy Cohen, um, so I had him on
Speaker 1: my show. So my podcast was doing pretty well, and
Speaker 1: then it got picked up by Sirius XM. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we were doing it was sort of well, it was
Speaker 1: on the out que channel, the gay channel. You know,
Speaker 1: gay people should have a separate yeah, right, separate. We
Speaker 1: should have a separate channel, you know. And I always
Speaker 1: wanted to be on the political channels, but they put
Speaker 1: us there. But I had Andy Cohen on a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and I've never cared about any of that BRABO. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the one thing that I did like about him,
Speaker 1: even though I don't care about any of the stuff
Speaker 1: that he's doing, when I've interviewed him, I think twice,
Speaker 1: both times in person, and I thought, this guy, he
Speaker 1: really cares about what he's doing. I don't care about it,
Speaker 1: but I don't have to. He has to do. He
Speaker 1: really does. And I thought, all right, I can accept
Speaker 1: he does a great job that show. But he is
Speaker 1: also is great on stern Um. But it is interesting how,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Ellen degenerous is of the world
Speaker 1: sort of you almost think if you're a gay comedian
Speaker 1: that everybody thinks in that same way. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple of pieces of that. So, first off, Um,
Speaker 1: especially at the time and even now when gay people
Speaker 1: are on television, you're either like this a sexual neuter
Speaker 1: nothing so like Anderson Cooper. Yes, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: you have no idea really what he thinks about anything.
Speaker 1: He would never you know, on New Year's he's allowed
Speaker 1: to have a drink and then he has a for
Speaker 1: a split second, right right, right right. But there's just
Speaker 1: like this, he's the voice of God and in like
Speaker 1: his sexuality has almost no impact at all. And now
Speaker 1: I look, I'm not saying you're he's the newscaster, so
Speaker 1: I'm not saying his sexuality should. But there's a certain
Speaker 1: thing that he sort of is, is this very a
Speaker 1: sexual neither here nor there anything um, And that's sort
Speaker 1: of what they like. So you can either be an
Speaker 1: over the top gay. So so in comedy especially, it
Speaker 1: was like you could be Mario Cantone and singing show
Speaker 1: tunes and this, and there's many versions of that. You
Speaker 1: could be Paul in sort of a for our time.
Speaker 1: You could be this over the top gay thing. Otherwise
Speaker 1: there was no space. So I remember when I when
Speaker 1: I came out professionally, and the only reason I did
Speaker 1: was because I couldn't live with myself. And I mean
Speaker 1: I just genuinely. It's not that I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of jokes about dating chicks or anything, but sometimes
Speaker 1: I did, and I started just hating myself. You know.
Speaker 1: I was also also in a good, normal relationship, and
Speaker 1: so my life track, which had always been behind my
Speaker 1: career track, well, then, as I told you, the career
Speaker 1: thing started to stall because the clubs were closing, and
Speaker 1: then my life was getting good. And when my life
Speaker 1: started getting better than my career, I had no idea
Speaker 1: how to function because it had always been the other way,
Speaker 1: with my career instead of my life. So um, but
Speaker 1: when I came out, I remember going to the mainstream
Speaker 1: clubs and then it was like Reubens gay, and it
Speaker 1: was very clear they had no use for me because
Speaker 1: whatever it was that I whatever it is that I
Speaker 1: am this version of gay, which, by the way, there
Speaker 1: are many people like me out there. Um, they like
Speaker 1: their you know, beer, beer, Homer Simpson says, Marge, I
Speaker 1: like my beer called to my homosexuals, flaming and like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what they want. They want this minstrel show,
Speaker 1: not a real human to talk about those things. Um,
Speaker 1: And so that really tripped up my career as well.
Speaker 1: But then I was able to take that mess turn
Speaker 1: it into this podcast, which got me on the gay
Speaker 1: channel on Serious x M. I begged and begged the
Speaker 1: executives put me on any of the political channels. I
Speaker 1: don't care. Put me on the left channel, put me
Speaker 1: on the right channel, so this is the nonpartist channel,
Speaker 1: put me on there. Anything. But they were basically like,
Speaker 1: you're gay, get do your gay thing over there. And
Speaker 1: uh So the reason and the reason I ended that
Speaker 1: show actually series wanted us to stay the re and
Speaker 1: I ended it was because I used to get more
Speaker 1: fan mail from people saying, I love your show. I've
Speaker 1: never heard anything like this before. You're my kind of gay,
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah. But they would say, I
Speaker 1: can't share your show because I'm I'm closeted, and I
Speaker 1: started looking this is how messed up. This is the
Speaker 1: people that I'm I'm nothing special, I'm just someone doing
Speaker 1: what I what I'm doing. But the people that I'm
Speaker 1: helping most actually are harming me in a certain way
Speaker 1: because they won't share my stuff. And I really but
Speaker 1: but that's also related to the political Yeah, I got it,
Speaker 1: I'll show it to you. I gotta to our peep box.
Speaker 1: A fan sent me this awesome Simpsons poster. He does
Speaker 1: original Simpson's artwork. It's the coolest. It's a map of Springfield,
Speaker 1: but done by like the way you'd see like an
Speaker 1: old school um real estate map, just like blocks of
Speaker 1: property and where everything. It's so cool, it's original. Blabbla.
Speaker 1: He writes me this beautiful note. He's a huge fan.
Speaker 1: I've helped him wake up politically all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: he says, my only word, West is that you don't
Speaker 1: tag me on Twitter and put a picture of this
Speaker 1: because I don't want the mob to come after me.
Speaker 1: And so I sent him a personal email. But like, think,
Speaker 1: how so that's why this this chapter that I'm working
Speaker 1: on right now. Between the closet related you can be
Speaker 1: in the closet related to anything. You could be in
Speaker 1: the closet related to sexuality. You can be in the
Speaker 1: closet related to political positions. You can be in the
Speaker 1: closet related to a medical condition that you have, or
Speaker 1: or just anything that you are hiding from yourself, which
Speaker 1: becomes just sort of an insidious, destructive force. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I can tell you this that the the pain of
Speaker 1: those things or the residual effect of those things. They
Speaker 1: don't you know, they don't just disappear the second you
Speaker 1: kind of start getting better. They stay with you for
Speaker 1: your whole life in many ways, I think. So the
Speaker 1: reason I want to bring that up is you are
Speaker 1: considered all right, right, we haven't even mentioned so far
Speaker 1: right like, but and I am by some people as well,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people listening to us
Speaker 1: right now we'll find that a little bit ludicrous. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring it up because you are gay,
Speaker 1: you are married, right, you are pro choice. I believe
Speaker 1: I'm strugg I'm really struggling with that one. Um. But
Speaker 1: the more the Democrats go crazy with the late term stuff,
Speaker 1: it's becoming I'm starting to see an ethical dilemma that
Speaker 1: I didn't fully see before. I'm also writing about it.
Speaker 1: And once you start, as you know, you started sporing,
Speaker 1: now you start really going, well, what do I really
Speaker 1: think about these things? But but yes, I do consider
Speaker 1: myself a pro choice up into up into a point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and look, I'm so you were very similar in that
Speaker 1: rights right, So I'm pro pro gay marriage. I am uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pro choice. Although I do think it's interesting
Speaker 1: the way it's getting, you know, even more policy I
Speaker 1: than it already was. It feels like I don't know
Speaker 1: where you are on the death penalty. But I mean,
Speaker 1: so these are all things that traditionally would be like right,
Speaker 1: and yet I think both of us have had this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, it's colloquially, I guess the red
Speaker 1: pill moment right from the reference to to the matrix
Speaker 1: back in the day. When did you start to have
Speaker 1: sort of your red pill moment? Was it gradual? You know,
Speaker 1: you're in the comedy scene, you are in the entertainment universe,
Speaker 1: you moved to Hollywood. Uh, you know you talk about
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people I think in the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry who are in the closet not about their sexuality
Speaker 1: but about their politics. Um so when did this start
Speaker 1: to happen for you? Well? I always describe it as
Speaker 1: if you were looking at my baseball card. You'd have
Speaker 1: my picture on the front, and then you look at
Speaker 1: the back, and the back you'd see the stats and
Speaker 1: you'd go, wait a minute, game married, pro choice against
Speaker 1: the death penalty, pro legalizing leading for performing, the prison system,
Speaker 1: of all those things, and all those things we agree with, right,
Speaker 1: although those things, so you go, this makes no sense.
Speaker 1: But because I would say under my neigme would say,
Speaker 1: Dave Rubin, all right on the front and the stats,
Speaker 1: and you go, wait, this makes no sense. And that's
Speaker 1: what I have always said about the people who attack
Speaker 1: me to that that it's just ludicrous. But but that's why.
Speaker 1: But that's why I think, like when I found someone
Speaker 1: like you, where I found someone like Handi's Owens or
Speaker 1: a couple of other people that I really identify with,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether we agree on everything or not, I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's something beautifu full happening here, and we have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to nurture it. Because we come from
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, on my lifelong New York
Speaker 1: or you're from Nashville, you're one of the sports world,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, straight gay, all those nonsensical markers. But
Speaker 1: it's like, intellectually, we can't and and and that thing
Speaker 1: there's it's not a coincidence that we're both thriving right
Speaker 1: now in crazy times. That's not a coincidence. It's actually
Speaker 1: evidence that we're doing something right. But but to answer
Speaker 1: your questions, there were a couple of moments that really
Speaker 1: broke me out of And now I come from a
Speaker 1: family of New York liberals, but but not woke liberals.
Speaker 1: They were liberals in the best sense of it. They
Speaker 1: were liberals. My parents now are liberals in the JFK
Speaker 1: sense of liberalism. That's not what your country can do
Speaker 1: for you, as where you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: They loved Mayor Ed Cootch, who was a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned liberal. They loved Daniel Patrick moynihan, m real liberals
Speaker 1: that liberals meaning live and let live, but the government
Speaker 1: has some use utility to do certain things. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: I think what happened to me was when I moved
Speaker 1: out here and I was still was a liberal and
Speaker 1: the lefty and the whole thing. It was when gay
Speaker 1: marriage was really hot, so before it got past and
Speaker 1: I started working at the Young Turks and they were
Speaker 1: pretty far left progressive network, but they were so slamming
Speaker 1: their fists down about gay marriage in such a passionate way.
Speaker 1: That was for something that was so personal to me
Speaker 1: that I thought, these these are liberals on steroids and
Speaker 1: it was good. It struck me as good. It's like
Speaker 1: maybe maybe liberals just needed balls, and that's what these
Speaker 1: people had and all that it crumbled very quickly, because
Speaker 1: there there's a couple of moments that it really crumbled.
Speaker 1: So um, I'll just blow past two, and then i'll
Speaker 1: give you the third one because I've told these stories
Speaker 1: many times. But the first one was when I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've seen this probably was when Sam Harris was on
Speaker 1: Real Time with Bill Maher and he got into that
Speaker 1: fight with Ben Affleck. They were talking about radical Islam,
Speaker 1: and Affleck turns to Bill Maher and Sam Harris. I
Speaker 1: didn't know who Sam Harris was at the time, had
Speaker 1: no idea, but I see this mild mannered neuroscience discussing
Speaker 1: atheism and Bill Maher, who had been one of my
Speaker 1: comic heroes and and the standard bearer of the left ever,
Speaker 1: and they talk about radical Islam, making a point don't
Speaker 1: be bigoted towards people Muslims, but you can talk about
Speaker 1: a set of bad ideas the way you criticize Christianity
Speaker 1: or Judaism, or or the Republican platform or anyway else.
Speaker 1: An athlete turned to them and said, you know, you're
Speaker 1: gross and racist, and then and then it was it
Speaker 1: just sort of derailed from there, and what I saw
Speaker 1: happen after that was that the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: the entire lefty media, HuffPo, media, buzz Feed, everybody was
Speaker 1: saying Bill Maher is racist. Sam Harris is racist. And
Speaker 1: I watch it live. I mean, I've always loved that show.
Speaker 1: I watch it live and I thought, I don't know
Speaker 1: who the hell this guy is, but he's not racist, right,
Speaker 1: And I certainly know that Bill mar is not racist.
Speaker 1: And but watching that feeding frenzy and then even my
Speaker 1: guys on my network started doing it too, and that
Speaker 1: so then it really woke up because I was just like,
Speaker 1: this makes no sense. We have to be able to
Speaker 1: criticize ideas without being bigoted towards people. But even more
Speaker 1: it was that once someone says the racist thing, everyone
Speaker 1: else on the left basically uses it and it excuse
Speaker 1: to do scorched earth everything. So there was there was
Speaker 1: that moment. Then there was I'm actually not totally sure
Speaker 1: of the order of these two because they were pretty close.
Speaker 1: Charlie Hebdo was a few months after that, and I
Speaker 1: was on air at The Young Turks and one of
Speaker 1: the hosts was screaming about how you can't make cartoons.
Speaker 1: You're inciting people, and that the people who don't remember
Speaker 1: that that was like, there's a cartoon making fun of
Speaker 1: the prophet Mohammed and uh and in France and in France, yes,
Speaker 1: And they stormed the house and tried to execute everybody.
Speaker 1: They murdered several cartoonists, they slaughtered some other people. Um
Speaker 1: and this idea though that if you if you do
Speaker 1: something that a certain set of people don't want you
Speaker 1: to do or that are against their religious pieces, that
Speaker 1: you're the bad guy. And there seemed to be more
Speaker 1: sympathy towards them than there were the dead bodies. And
Speaker 1: if you remember during Charlie, there were a couple of
Speaker 1: days where they hadn't found them, and for those couple
Speaker 1: of days, it was like those bodies were still were
Speaker 1: still warm and were and these guys could. They ended
Speaker 1: up killing more people, went to a Kasher supermarket and
Speaker 1: killed some people there, and it's like the sympathy seemed
Speaker 1: to be with them, or or at least with people
Speaker 1: that might be thought of as something like them. And
Speaker 1: I thought this is completely out of whack. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the co hosts on the show started
Speaker 1: screaming something about how the Charlie had there the issues
Speaker 1: were against Islam, and I said to him, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the percentages, but I guarantee you
Speaker 1: it is not. And it's something like this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: slightly butcher the numbers. It's something like out of four
Speaker 1: hundred plus covers, it was three about there were far
Speaker 1: more about the pope, far more about orthodox choose and
Speaker 1: by the way they ridiculed everything that was like, that's
Speaker 1: the entire purposes, like there's no sacred cow, so to speak,
Speaker 1: like everything is a target. That was the point that
Speaker 1: in the best sense of what The Simpsons did in
Speaker 1: its heyday, where you could literally make fun of everybody,
Speaker 1: the best sense of what Don Rickles would do in
Speaker 1: a comedy club. Oh there's an Irish guy there, there's
Speaker 1: a black guy there, there's a South Park still south
Speaker 1: Park basically still does. Yeah. So then there was that
Speaker 1: one and the one that really sort of was the
Speaker 1: final culmination of everything. Do you know a guy by
Speaker 1: the name of David Webb who's serious x M guy.
Speaker 1: He's a he's a conservative, he's on the right leaning
Speaker 1: channel there And when I was a big lefty on
Speaker 1: the gay channel at sex m, but I really wanted
Speaker 1: to do politics. I met him and we disagreed on
Speaker 1: basically everything. But he was like, come on, Edi well
Speaker 1: and and I used to go on his radio show
Speaker 1: all the time. He's a black conservative, super nice guy.
Speaker 1: Used to get drunk after and and have whiskey and
Speaker 1: have a good time. And we disagreed on everything. It
Speaker 1: was fine. Well, one day I was on the on
Speaker 1: Turks and they were playing a clip and he I
Speaker 1: think Webb was guest hosting for Sean Hannity that way,
Speaker 1: and they're playing the clip of Webb and I don't
Speaker 1: even remember what he was saying. But then suddenly all
Speaker 1: my co hosts were saying, what an uncle Tom, that
Speaker 1: guy is, what a sellout? What you know that personally?
Speaker 1: All of the awful things you could say right about
Speaker 1: a concern about a black conservative. And and then that
Speaker 1: was the moment that it fully crystallized, because I was like,
Speaker 1: these people who scream about tolerance all day long, now
Speaker 1: see a black man who does not think the way
Speaker 1: they believe a black man should think, which is prejudice
Speaker 1: because prejudge the fact that he is black. They believe
Speaker 1: that that means he should prescribe to a certain set
Speaker 1: of beliefs and they're doing it in the name of tolerance.
Speaker 1: And I thought, I know, David, I know this guy.
Speaker 1: I've debated all of these issues with him, and I
Speaker 1: should have said it on air. I didn't. I was
Speaker 1: I was actually so dumb struck that it was happening
Speaker 1: in real time that it like couldn't calibrate properly in
Speaker 1: my brain. But that was it. I was like, Holy cow,
Speaker 1: these people, these are these are the new racist And
Speaker 1: I really believe that now. And I hate to It's
Speaker 1: like I don't want to become the thing that we're
Speaker 1: always railing and this um, but I think it's important
Speaker 1: to identify that, as you just said to me on
Speaker 1: my show, does the KK exists, there's some racists, there's
Speaker 1: some homo folks, all those things. Yes, they have no
Speaker 1: institutional power, they're routinely mocked by everybody. They're not on television,
Speaker 1: they don't have political power. They should be marginalized or ignore.
Speaker 1: I would basically say ignore them. But but when they
Speaker 1: show up to do something evil or or whatever, you
Speaker 1: you can counter protests and the rest of it. Um,
Speaker 1: But racists exist. It just is. But The new racism
Speaker 1: is what's coming out of the left these days. The
Speaker 1: new racism is that we are going to judge you
Speaker 1: by these things. You may have seen this story in
Speaker 1: the last couple of days. There was this Detroit rap
Speaker 1: festival and they were going to charge people more than
Speaker 1: black people. And one of the black young woman rappers,
Speaker 1: young female rappers, she was like, I'm not gonna do this.
Speaker 1: My one of my grandmother's is white. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you said this a couple of times in our hour.
Speaker 1: This idea that this thing will it has to just
Speaker 1: crush itself because it's so antithetical to logic that there's
Speaker 1: so many competing things happening that it will eat itself.
Speaker 1: And it's just like what the question really is, what
Speaker 1: will it take down in the process of in this
Speaker 1: disruptive and in sports is an interesting microcosm of this
Speaker 1: because we've talked about it like if you have someone
Speaker 1: and Caitlyn Jenner now is a good example because I
Speaker 1: wrote about this in the book Bruce Jenner in the
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, if he had decided to become Caitlyn Jenner
Speaker 1: and tried to Pete in the Olympics, he was the
Speaker 1: best male athlete in the world, and what he does
Speaker 1: did he would be like I mean it, not even
Speaker 1: any in the same stratosphere for the women if he
Speaker 1: had decided to flip and you avoid asking those questions,
Speaker 1: right like his sports as an ultimate meritocracy, but the
Speaker 1: meritocracy is divided as men or women right now. If
Speaker 1: you want to say, okay, we won't have a line
Speaker 1: between men's and women's sports, then women won't play sports.
Speaker 1: But they won't make any of the high school teams
Speaker 1: most of the time in soccer or basketball, certainly not
Speaker 1: in football, volleyball, whatever you want to play, because men
Speaker 1: are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And that's not
Speaker 1: If you want to argue biology as sexist, you can
Speaker 1: have with it. But like that is that, That's the
Speaker 1: universe that we live in, and I wonder when it's
Speaker 1: going to blow up on itself because the logic falls
Speaker 1: apart as you follow it down its course. And that
Speaker 1: is what I started to see happening in the world
Speaker 1: of sports. And I say, my, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: red pill moment was the University of Missouri protests, which
Speaker 1: were based in totally lies, and everybody he covered them,
Speaker 1: and the football team doesn't play and everything else, and
Speaker 1: when you actually examine all the factual underpinnings, it's a
Speaker 1: house of cards. There's nothing there. Well, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: And that's why the red pill analogy really works, because
Speaker 1: Morpheus is giving Neo the choice, do you want to
Speaker 1: go back and sleep and have some level of comfort
Speaker 1: in the world and in your existence, or do you
Speaker 1: want to see the world as it is, not as
Speaker 1: you want it to be, but as it is, and
Speaker 1: then figure out how to function in that world. And
Speaker 1: obviously we know what Neo does. He takes the red pill.
Speaker 1: And I think for most of the people that probably
Speaker 1: like what we do. I think what we're doing at
Speaker 1: the moment is this is another thing I'm writing about,
Speaker 1: is we're giving There's there's a major bravery deficit in
Speaker 1: the world right now. I don't know exactly why it is.
Speaker 1: It has something to do with an amorphous mob that
Speaker 1: will come and destroy People are terrified of losing their
Speaker 1: jobs over a Facebook post, Twitter post, and then it's like,
Speaker 1: so guys like us come around and I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is, Like maybe we could do we could
Speaker 1: get a whole crew of like twenty of us and
Speaker 1: do like a mass therapy session. We'll find out that.
Speaker 1: You know, when we were all seven years old, the
Speaker 1: bully came around and you guys didn't let him bully
Speaker 1: like like some something who writes what it is. But
Speaker 1: I think that that people are sort of outsourcing their
Speaker 1: bravery these days, which which is a weird thing. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't think, um anyone special other than I'm just
Speaker 1: doing what I think I should do. So I think
Speaker 1: all of these things lead to a weird place where
Speaker 1: people from the sports world and the political world, and
Speaker 1: now I see it. I have a friend I lived
Speaker 1: upstairs from me in New York City. His whole life lefty, lefty, lefty, crazy,
Speaker 1: progressively his whole life. He's get this, You'll love this.
Speaker 1: He's about fifty two years old. He is a straight
Speaker 1: male choreographer on Broadway. UM, I probably even shouldn't have
Speaker 1: said that because there's so few. I'm probably not, but
Speaker 1: he was, and he's done major stuff and major stuff
Speaker 1: on TV, and he was in effect told in the
Speaker 1: last year or so start looking for a new line
Speaker 1: of work, because why would anyone ever hire a straight
Speaker 1: male choreograph, straight white male choreographer. Now, ironically, if you
Speaker 1: care about diversity, that's the first because they're all gay.
Speaker 1: They're all gay, and most of them are not white anymore,
Speaker 1: and all that nobody cares. Nobody cares about you you care.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing. They've tricked everyone into thinking
Speaker 1: that we all care about these things. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I just traveled the world for a year
Speaker 1: with Jordan Peterson and I'm supposed supposedly he's all right,
Speaker 1: and we're you know, speaking of angry racist and it's
Speaker 1: like all it was a LoveFest, like you could not believe.
Speaker 1: Every single night, every single night, Fox Sports Radio has
Speaker 1: the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
Speaker 1: of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and
Speaker 1: within the I Heart Radio app search f s R
Speaker 1: to listen live. You talked about the way that the
Speaker 1: Bill Mars story was covered by like the Huffington Post
Speaker 1: and all these different places. You regularly get attacked in
Speaker 1: the media. I regularly get attacked in the media. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that happens? Well, I think that that
Speaker 1: because we just went through and said, like all of
Speaker 1: the things, like if you put our political beliefs on
Speaker 1: a baseball card on the back. You would be like,
Speaker 1: I'm curious why that is, because I think both of
Speaker 1: us are very middle of the road, right, but in
Speaker 1: a weird way, we're the biggest threat to them. And
Speaker 1: that's an interesting point, right, So if you're middle of
Speaker 1: the road now, and especially so, the one, the one
Speaker 1: identity politics thing that I have over you is the
Speaker 1: is the gay thing, right, so they have none. By
Speaker 1: the way, was a straight white guy, I'm like that
Speaker 1: on the victim victimization pyramid, I'm nowhere near the tip,
Speaker 1: so they can pin you a little bit more easily
Speaker 1: than you know what I mean, like that, that's a
Speaker 1: little bit more easy. The reason that that I get
Speaker 1: as much hate as I do, and I'm even seeing
Speaker 1: it from some of the good liberals now where they're
Speaker 1: turning on me a little bit, because it's something that
Speaker 1: you referenced earlier on my show is they will always
Speaker 1: try to throw something else under the bus to extend
Speaker 1: their life, their shelf life basically, and that's what they're
Speaker 1: always doing. Now what they I don't know if they
Speaker 1: know it or not, but ultimately you're just pulling the
Speaker 1: pins out from underneath your own your own foundation. Let's say, um,
Speaker 1: I think basically what's happening here is that for me,
Speaker 1: it's like they look at the baseball car, gay guy,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, all these liberal beliefs. But I survived.
Speaker 1: I talk about their nonsense, and I survived, and not
Speaker 1: only the survive, I thrived. So they really have to
Speaker 1: extract the high cost on me. So when when they're
Speaker 1: throwing down hate on me, it's not really that they're
Speaker 1: trying to destroy me anymore. I do think in some ways,
Speaker 1: I've I want to knock on wood when I say this,
Speaker 1: but I sort of feel like I've I've crossed the threshold.
Speaker 1: You survive, I'll where I'll be okay, right, and I
Speaker 1: know how to deal with it. What they're really trying
Speaker 1: to do is signal to everybody else you see what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do to you if you try. And that's
Speaker 1: why they hate on Candice is so out of control.
Speaker 1: All Candice is doing. Look, I don't agree with everything
Speaker 1: she said. She sent out a tweet about, um, if
Speaker 1: you burn the flag, you know you've got like a
Speaker 1: year to like give up your citizen over the top
Speaker 1: and nuts and by the way, I'm having dinner there
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks and I'll bring it up.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like people were like, you better condemn her,
Speaker 1: publicly condemn her. I don't want better publicly condemned my friends.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like I can defer everything that they
Speaker 1: disagree with. It's like it's so stupid, but but like
Speaker 1: we disagreed when we went out to dinner. I don't
Speaker 1: think she like they had the Guardians of the Galaxy
Speaker 1: guy had lost his remember that Disney Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I think they gave it back to him.
Speaker 1: And my thing is like, I don't want to set
Speaker 1: the precedent of going through every single word that everybody's
Speaker 1: ever said. The guy's a good director, right, I loved
Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxy one and Guardians of the Galaxy
Speaker 1: to same thing. Kevin Hard I think is a pretty
Speaker 1: good comedian. I think he should have been able to
Speaker 1: host the Oscar. Of course he was standing what he
Speaker 1: said ten years ago on Twitter, right, So he makes
Speaker 1: some gay jokes ten years ago on Twitter, and then
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is how perverse and twisted
Speaker 1: this thing is. He then goes on Ellen de Generous,
Speaker 1: America's favorite lesbian, goes on her show, she says, you're good,
Speaker 1: I understand, and then what do they do? They try
Speaker 1: to destroy her for accepting his apology, and it's like,
Speaker 1: what what do you people want? You people mock religious
Speaker 1: people all the time, and yet religious people have a
Speaker 1: redemption narrative, you have some forgiveness matters all of these things.
Speaker 1: You guys have become far worse than those things. But
Speaker 1: the hell was the question there? Uh? I was? We
Speaker 1: were tying in, like talking about the the why the targets.
Speaker 1: Oh so, so I think partly it's that so I've
Speaker 1: escaped Candice's messages. Black people don't have to be democrats.
Speaker 1: Any sane person would think that's a totally reasonable message.
Speaker 1: But but they have to extract a high cost on her.
Speaker 1: You can't just be a black girl saying what you
Speaker 1: think and just walk out there and right. So they
Speaker 1: so they say that modern liberalism has actually caused more problems,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like, yeah, trust me. And it's
Speaker 1: not fun for me to say that, you know, And
Speaker 1: I I say this all the time. I would love
Speaker 1: to be proven wrong here. If the ending of my
Speaker 1: story and my success is that the left somehow reconstitutes
Speaker 1: itself brings brings the roots of liberalism back, and I
Speaker 1: my choice was, which is what I say all the time. Now,
Speaker 1: I see so much more opportunity on the right to
Speaker 1: talk to the never trumpers as well as the MAGA people,
Speaker 1: as well as the conservatives and the libertarians and the
Speaker 1: and caps. There's such an interesting fight of ideas happening there.
Speaker 1: And I get invited to all of these things. I
Speaker 1: get standing ovations despite telling them five policies that I
Speaker 1: disagree with them on. I can't get one invite the
Speaker 1: other one. Oh, it's fascinating. But if I if I
Speaker 1: get proven wrong at the end of this, if liberalism
Speaker 1: returns and I'm wrong because it is returned being reconstituted
Speaker 1: from the left, I will have a mea culpa. I
Speaker 1: will retire and disappear. You'll never hear from me again.
Speaker 1: And I promise you I'd be thrilled. I'll be in
Speaker 1: the NBA W n uh. So, how did you meet
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson and how did that tour come about? And
Speaker 1: what was the experience like on your life? And for
Speaker 1: people out there who might not know Jordan Peterson because
Speaker 1: they're listening to us right now, who is he? And
Speaker 1: and it kind of how did how did he climb?
Speaker 1: In relevant? So, Jordan's is a Canadian psychologist who had
Speaker 1: a clinical practice and as well as he was teaching
Speaker 1: at University of Toronto, but he had taught at Harvard
Speaker 1: before and had a great academic career for like thirty years.
Speaker 1: But a normal, brilliant guy, but a normal dude otherwise,
Speaker 1: a normal academic career, like was not somebody chasing fame
Speaker 1: or any of those things. Then a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: there was this bill trying to be passed in Canada,
Speaker 1: Bill C seventeen, which would have criminalized either by financial
Speaker 1: penalty or potentially even jail, if you mis gendered someone.
Speaker 1: Literally if you walked up down and you were walking
Speaker 1: down the street and you said hi, mam, and it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a guy, that would have been
Speaker 1: a crime. And all he said was, I have no
Speaker 1: problem with trans people. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've dealt
Speaker 1: with these issues, but I do not want the government
Speaker 1: to uh to be able to impose speech, and certainly
Speaker 1: I don't want the governments be able to punish you
Speaker 1: for it. That then became an incredibly controversial thing. Everyone
Speaker 1: says he's a transphobe, he's a homophobe, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And then what happened was, I'm sure it's the way
Speaker 1: it is for for you to when you start finding
Speaker 1: out about people, you start seeing something bubbling up on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and people kept saying, Ruby, you gotta talk to this
Speaker 1: Peterson guy. This was in um November of sixteen, so
Speaker 1: like days before the wasted Yeah, and we had just
Speaker 1: moved into this house on November one, so my studio
Speaker 1: was being built and I didn't have a studio yet,
Speaker 1: so I did a Google hang out with him. I
Speaker 1: had never met him in person. First time we ever
Speaker 1: said hello. We had a crappy internet connection here. It's
Speaker 1: popping in and out the whole time. It's it's pixelated
Speaker 1: our audios. Off, I do an hour talk with this guy,
Speaker 1: talking about psychology and gender projects and all these things.
Speaker 1: He tells a story about which he tells off and
Speaker 1: now this story about the story of Pinocchio and that
Speaker 1: you have to wish upon a star and what lying
Speaker 1: can do all these things, and he's crying. He's literally
Speaker 1: crying as he's doing it. And we finished the interview
Speaker 1: and I turned to David, who was my husband and producer,
Speaker 1: and I said that guy is either an absolute genius
Speaker 1: or completely insane. There's no middle ground perfect I don't
Speaker 1: know which it is. Subsequently, over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: I've I've interviewed him many times, we did a couple
Speaker 1: of public speaking things together, and then he wrote this book.
Speaker 1: It's right there. It's called Clover Rules for Life, which
Speaker 1: is basically it's it's the under title or the secondary
Speaker 1: title is an antidote to chaos, And basically he's trying
Speaker 1: to tell people just get you know, everyone wants to
Speaker 1: fix the world first. Everyone wants to just I can
Speaker 1: fix everything. I know all the policies that can fix everything.
Speaker 1: How do you fix yourself first? How don't you make
Speaker 1: sure you wearing a shirt that fits? How about you
Speaker 1: have a haircut that that is right? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? How about you brush your teeth like some
Speaker 1: some seriously basic thing, but that somehow, especially for young men.
Speaker 1: But it's not just young man. I mean the media
Speaker 1: tries to portray it that he's just talking to angry
Speaker 1: young men, and because it's just not true. But he
Speaker 1: has given something to people that I've now seen all
Speaker 1: over the world. I've seen we've performing in front of
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people who desperately needed this message
Speaker 1: of personal responsibility and taking pride in yourself and and
Speaker 1: that the individual is the the essence of Western society
Speaker 1: and all of those things. The way we ended up
Speaker 1: on tour together was I had him in here one
Speaker 1: day with Ben Shapiro, is the three of us talking.
Speaker 1: This is uh last January, so about a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, and he was doing his first test
Speaker 1: show at the Orpheum downtown. It's a great theater down
Speaker 1: about three thousand seats. He was doing it that night,
Speaker 1: and as he was walking out the door and we
Speaker 1: really just knew each other a little bit. At that point,
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, you know, if you want me to
Speaker 1: come down tonight, I'll warm up the crowd. I'll make
Speaker 1: some lobster jokes. Because he doesn't lobster and now this
Speaker 1: or some metaphors, I said, I'll make you. I'll make
Speaker 1: some jokes and then I'll get out of your way.
Speaker 1: And he was, without even hesitating, he was like, absolutely,
Speaker 1: calm on down. I went down there. I just crushed it.
Speaker 1: I knew all the right references to make with his
Speaker 1: crowd and the whole thing, and all his agents from
Speaker 1: CIA were there and they came up to me after
Speaker 1: and they were like, you know who you with? What
Speaker 1: do you do when I was with W M. E.
Speaker 1: But I was like, all right, let's move and I
Speaker 1: went with them. And then the tour started and as
Speaker 1: I said, a hundred some odd stops and sold out
Speaker 1: all over the Old Country. And he went over to England.
Speaker 1: Like we went to England, We went to Denmark, we
Speaker 1: went to Ireland. We went to Sweden, Copenhagen, Helsinki, um,
Speaker 1: we went to Australia. I couldn't go to New Zealand
Speaker 1: cause I had some other commitments. I mean, all over
Speaker 1: the world. And to see this is the cool thing.
Speaker 1: So when when we talk about how you come from
Speaker 1: a sports perspective and say I come from a political perspective,
Speaker 1: when you see something else, when you see that some
Speaker 1: guy I was buying a cap one day, I was
Speaker 1: going a hat at H and V in Sweden. I
Speaker 1: just needed a hat that day it was windy. I
Speaker 1: was like, Harris Brandon, we're getting the at. I go
Speaker 1: into HM to buy hat. There's one guy in line
Speaker 1: and I hear him talking and he's telling the cash here,
Speaker 1: he goes, I'm buying this. He goes, this is my
Speaker 1: first suit I've ever bought. I'm going to see Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson tonight. And the cashier goes, I'm going to see
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson tonight. And then I just walked up behind them.
Speaker 1: The cash here is looking at me because I'm standing
Speaker 1: by the other guy, Dave Reuben, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see exactly what I said, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to see Jordan peters in tonight too. And that's
Speaker 1: when I started realizing, because this this thing kept happening
Speaker 1: all over the place. Where there was the time we
Speaker 1: boarded a plane and we're sitting in the front row
Speaker 1: and uh, this young black guy, probably like years old,
Speaker 1: who was working at the airline you had one of
Speaker 1: the you know, like white vests on. He was working
Speaker 1: on the bridge or whatever. They were trying to close
Speaker 1: the door, and he ran up to Jordan said, he said,
Speaker 1: they could fire me for this, but I've got to
Speaker 1: tell you you changed my life. I got this job
Speaker 1: because you you saved my life. I started caring about
Speaker 1: myself and all these things, and I saw that relentlessly
Speaker 1: happened forever and Uh, it was. It was incredibly changed
Speaker 1: my life. You can't if you're around something that that,
Speaker 1: that's that good and real and honest for that long
Speaker 1: and it doesn't change your life, You've got no hope.
Speaker 1: You know, I will close out here because I know
Speaker 1: you've got a ton of stud things going on. I
Speaker 1: gotta get and do my my television show, which is
Speaker 1: a good problem to have to write. Yeah, I say
Speaker 1: it all the time. You gotta get onto your television shows.
Speaker 1: I gotta go do my television shows. Um, you mentioned
Speaker 1: those guys, Shapiro, Peterson, yourself, myself, actually a lot of
Speaker 1: differences of opinion. Yeah, Yet you can have a sit
Speaker 1: and have a rational conversation, and I think that's what
Speaker 1: appeals to people so much. Why do you think rational
Speaker 1: conversation has suddenly become the province of what would people say,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party? It would have been the exact opposite
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. So these things have been flow, which
Speaker 1: is why I would tell people not to become too
Speaker 1: attached to a party. Rights a party. If you're attached
Speaker 1: to a party, you're just attached to a platform, which
Speaker 1: is really just attached to a person. Yes, and so
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be attached to that way you should be
Speaker 1: attached to would be a Bay six set of ideals.
Speaker 1: So in my case, I believe that the ideas that
Speaker 1: I talked about about classical liberalism, I believe are the
Speaker 1: right set of ideals. Um, we would be a whole
Speaker 1: other show to really dive into into all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But Shapiro, for example, so Shapiro is Orthodox jew He
Speaker 1: is a religious belief that is against gay marriage. Now
Speaker 1: there are Christian Conservatives that have that belief, in eventel
Speaker 1: and you're not offended by that opinion, right like you
Speaker 1: can have that is the very opinion that society for
Speaker 1: thousands of years held. Now I could run around and
Speaker 1: think that everyone that existed before me was an evil bigoted,
Speaker 1: homophobia and a big racist, that all these things or
Speaker 1: and and this is really what I believe. So one
Speaker 1: of the nights um that Jordan and I were doing
Speaker 1: a different show in l A, I said to Ben,
Speaker 1: I said, why don't you come on stage tonight? And
Speaker 1: we've had this running thing where Ben and I in
Speaker 1: this very studio which is in my home where I
Speaker 1: look with my husband, where I know Ben disagrees with
Speaker 1: me from his own personal religious perspective, but by the way,
Speaker 1: he takes the libertarian approach when it comes to policy,
Speaker 1: so he's he wants religion out of it. So I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. Right. We got through under twenty million
Speaker 1: people in this country. They're allowed to believe, but they
Speaker 1: want they can't legislate my life. But we've had this
Speaker 1: running joke about that Ben won't bake me a gay
Speaker 1: wedding cake. So I said, Ben, why don't you come
Speaker 1: on stage tonight. You'll do your I'll bring you on,
Speaker 1: you'll do your thing. And I said, why don't you
Speaker 1: bring me a cake on stage? So I go up there,
Speaker 1: do my thing for ten minutes, crowds going nuts um,
Speaker 1: and then I said, we got a surprise guest bench
Speaker 1: where he walks out with the cupcake. People are going bananas,
Speaker 1: I mean bananas. He then he says a couple of
Speaker 1: things about giving me this cake. Then he does a
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson impression. He walks off, crowd goes nuts, and
Speaker 1: I'm in a room now three thousand people celebrating the
Speaker 1: fact that these two people have have a different view
Speaker 1: online but can break bread or cupcakes with each other.
Speaker 1: I then look on too. You know, we tweet the
Speaker 1: video out and a couple of pictures of it, and
Speaker 1: you know it good. But because I get so many tweets,
Speaker 1: there's hundreds of tweets from tolerant progressive saying there's the
Speaker 1: self hating gay in the home of Phobe and who
Speaker 1: is more pathetic or some version of or just you know,
Speaker 1: all the other words that they can say about us.
Speaker 1: And this is the flip that I think most people
Speaker 1: have to understand about tolerance. So why has it become
Speaker 1: so rare? It's because the this woke thing has become
Speaker 1: a secular religion. As my friend Peter Bogosian calls it.
Speaker 1: There is no redemption narrative, and none of those things exists.
Speaker 1: They want there's a reason they want to destroy history.
Speaker 1: There's a reason they want to redefine words like owner
Speaker 1: when it comes to NBA owners. There's a reason that
Speaker 1: they want to take down monuments. There's a reason that
Speaker 1: they want to I mean, isis what does isis do
Speaker 1: it goes into Syria and it blows apart things that
Speaker 1: have existed for thousands of years. Wait until they come
Speaker 1: for Mount Rushmore, because they will the Obama Library, which
Speaker 1: is being built now when the radical woke radicals, if
Speaker 1: if they win, they will take that now because he
Speaker 1: was against gay marriage. You mentioned the one which I
Speaker 1: think is the one for the next generation when they
Speaker 1: find out that we ate meat, we used to kill
Speaker 1: cattle who are putting methane out into the CEO two
Speaker 1: and they will look at us the way you might
Speaker 1: look at your grandparents and think, oh, they didn't know
Speaker 1: asbestos was was killing them, or like some version of
Speaker 1: all of those things. So that's what we have to fight.
Speaker 1: And and and by the way, I do think that
Speaker 1: most people are pretty freaking decent. I think that most
Speaker 1: people want to live in a society with other people.
Speaker 1: I would much rather talk to people I disagree with um.
Speaker 1: As a rule, when I go to colleges, I do
Speaker 1: a talk for like an hour, and I always, every
Speaker 1: single time, without exception, I say, if you disagree with me,
Speaker 1: you come up first to ask a question. And it's
Speaker 1: like I keep getting invited by conservatives, but I can't
Speaker 1: get any of these tolerant lefties or liberals to invite me.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they will one day. The last question for you.
Speaker 1: We're in l A. We had a couple of earthquakes.
Speaker 1: Uh were in your studio and looks so like so
Speaker 1: far that they are. But what do you think you
Speaker 1: said you were a big NBA fan or grew up
Speaker 1: a big basketball fan. What do you think about Kauai
Speaker 1: and Paul George to the Flippers and now Lebron and
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis the Lakers? Will you go to games this year?
Speaker 1: So I'll give you one just quick NBA thing. I
Speaker 1: think I told her the last time. So my my
Speaker 1: hero in life it was Clyde Drexler, who was on
Speaker 1: the Blazers for years and lost in the finals a
Speaker 1: couple of times, then lost in the Western Conference finals,
Speaker 1: and when he was thought of as much older, he
Speaker 1: was traded to the Rockets and won the championship that year.
Speaker 1: And that, um, that story always stuck with me, that
Speaker 1: this guy who I loved, who was who was amazing,
Speaker 1: but but because he was in Portland, was sort of
Speaker 1: ignored by the media and he wasn't Jordan's. He just
Speaker 1: wasn't Jordan's. So he played the same position it wasn't Jordan's,
Speaker 1: but and he kept getting close, kept getting closed, but
Speaker 1: then finally got there. It became ingrained in me that
Speaker 1: if I kept doing something, I would get there. And
Speaker 1: this is in contrast to They're one of my best
Speaker 1: friends who was a comic by the name of Mike Singer.
Speaker 1: And you've never heard of Mike Singer, not because he
Speaker 1: wasn't a great comic, but he was from Chicago and
Speaker 1: his whole life he was a huge Cubs fan. And
Speaker 1: this is before they won the chance, you know, the
Speaker 1: World Series. In the last couple of years. Mike's story,
Speaker 1: the story he had been telling himself his whole life,
Speaker 1: was based around the Cubs. You're you're never gonna win.
Speaker 1: You're never gonna win, and he eventually gave up. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a connection there my story that I
Speaker 1: told myself. Stories have value, and the athlete who I
Speaker 1: loved the most. It took him a long as time,
Speaker 1: and people said he was washed up at that point
Speaker 1: and he had you know, blah blah blah, but he
Speaker 1: got there and that really got ingrained in me. Um So.
Speaker 1: As for the As for the Lakers, now, I mean Kauai,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's you know, bounced around from the
Speaker 1: Spurs and then just did this with Toronto. You know,
Speaker 1: can the Clippers ever really be good? Can the Clippers
Speaker 1: actually make a Western Conference finals, and I would love
Speaker 1: to go to some games this year. I just haven't
Speaker 1: had freaking time, you know. I also, you know I'm
Speaker 1: doing all right on YouTube, but that kind of money,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not like that. Clay Travis cl Over, Hey, look,
Speaker 1: I could disappear in a heartbeat, and I think you
Speaker 1: will be when the new book comes out. But we
Speaker 1: need to talk again. We need to go to movie,
Speaker 1: go to an NBA game, and also when you're in Nashville,
Speaker 1: we need to hang out. I'm gonna do some stand
Speaker 1: up there with all those nice people, and I'll bring
Speaker 1: you on stage and that'll be awesome. You can follow
Speaker 1: him if you're not familiar with him. Dave Reuben at
Speaker 1: Reuben Report. The new book will be out in May.
Speaker 1: It's coming out in May, and it'll be up on
Speaker 1: Amazon and everywhere else soon. You'll share the links. I
Speaker 1: can tell you the name. We're like two weeks off.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to check it out. Seriously, appreciate the time.
Speaker 1: I hope people enjoyed our version with you as well.
Speaker 1: But this is awesome. It's been great to get to
Speaker 1: know you. It's nice to do something else in my studio. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've been sitting there. I know you can hill. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry. I'll being on camera. H this
Speaker 1: has been wins and losses. I'm Clay Travis, He's Dave Reuben.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy it. Let me
Speaker 1: know what you think. As always, we'll be back next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Be sure to catch live editions about
Speaker 1: kick the Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six
Speaker 1: am Eastern three am Pacific