Dave Rubin – The Midterms Are “The Battle For the West”

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Guy Benson: Well, joining us now is our friend Dave Rubin, host of the popular long-form talk show The Rubin Report, author of several bestselling books, and @RubinReport on social media. Dave, welcome back to the show. Hi, what’s happening?

I want to ask you about your overall takeaways from these riots over in France that have now expanded and sort of bled over into a few other European countries as well. I know that we are told by some in the so-called news media that these are student protests. That’s the word that they almost always use, even when things get violent. The students are supposedly up in arms about the conditions in the classroom.

I would just note that it’s hard to get a more generous welfare state than the French have tried to create for themselves, but this is what they are, at least ostensibly, upset about. But then, when you look at the images, whether it’s the setting of fires, the throwing of projectiles, or whatever it might be, you see Palestinian flags. You see chanting about Allah and Gaza.

For example, here’s one chant.

That’s in French, but they’re chanting about Gaza. There was another clip where one of the ringleaders was talking about a relatively small number of police officers in one location. He said, “There’s only ten of them. Through Allah, we can kill them all,” and there’s a big cheer. That was a paraphrase, but pretty close to word-for-word.

Then there’s all the typical, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety communist, left-wing stuff. It seems like this is the dirtbag, omni-cause on parade, if anything, just exerting its power and staking its claim culturally, saying, “We run the show now.” That’s how I view it. What are your views on this? How do you see it?

Dave Rubin: Well, Guy, I know that when I was in middle school in Long Island, New York, in the late eighties, and the chocolate chip cookies they were giving us at lunch were a little smaller than we wanted, the way we resolved it was by burning down all of Nassau County. So I would imagine that maybe these people got their tips from us.

Look, there’s so much here. First off, let me just say broadly that Palestine is a country which never existed, designed to destroy countries which do exist. As you just said, it’s becoming the catch-all for all of the worst people: the anarchists, the Marxists, and obviously the Islamists and the jihadists.

Everyone in these countries–you know, there were about a dozen countries that had issues with this over the weekend, from Australia to France, which is the epicenter of it, but also the UK. We had versions of it in Belgium, New York City, Australia. I mean, it is all over the place.

You really have to think about it this way. First off, it’s not even worth wasting another sentence explaining how this has nothing to do with students wanting more money. These are not students. These are people who are there to destroy the country.

But you really need to understand that this is what Western Europe, particularly, has led in, and nobody knows how to stop it now. The reason I think it’s worth saying that with such a high level of alarm is that we are three weeks away, almost to the day, from our midterm elections here. And if the Democrats get the House and the Senate, the Trump project is over.

Yes, he will remain president, although they will try to impeach him, but it will be over. If the Democrats take power again, particularly with the presidency in 2028, our borders will be open. We will let in all of these people. We’ve already let in millions of them, and we have no idea where they are. And we will have strengthened the very ideas that we should be hacking away at right now.

So this is deeply dangerous. This is the battle for the West. And the ironic part, of course, is that for the last 75 years, Israel has been fighting tooth and nail for its life, and Europe, to paraphrase our friend Douglas Murray, is just dying a slow death.

Guy Benson: It’s interesting, since you brought up Israel just very briefly, Dave. Did you happen to see the CNN report that came out last week? I still almost can’t believe it, even for them. Really low.

They put together an investigative project that purported to show that roughly half of the hostages who were executed by Hamas in Gaza had deaths linked back to, or they sort of phrased it hazily and vaguely, the Israeli military, as if the Israeli military were at fault for these deaths.

In some cases, the hostages were used, disgustingly, as human shields and were killed. In other cases, they were murdered because there was a fear of a successful rescue operation that was imminent, so they just killed the people who were being held.

I mean, Hamas invaded Israeli territory, murdered a bunch of people, and stole the hostages. Every single thing that flows from that, every bad outcome, comes back to Hamas. And yet this CNN report was kind of trying to do an “aha, gotcha.” See, the Israelis prosecuting their war and trying to rescue their hostages actually led to some of these deaths. Like it’s a big black mark against the Jewish state.

Dave Rubin: Yeah, but look, there is no low too low, no tunnel too deep, for lack of a better metaphor, than what CNN will do.

Guy Benson: It’s pretty apropos, actually, given who loves their tunnels.

Dave Rubin: Right. I mean, look, what would any nation on Earth do if 1,400 of their people were killed? From an American perspective, that would be about 50,000, if you adjust for population. There would be about 50,000 Americans being killed in one day and another 15,000 or so being taken hostage.

Guy, you saw the 47-minute video, if I’m not mistaken. We saw it together on an Israeli base. The beheading, watching someone behead someone with a butter knife while smiling, isn’t even the most grotesque thing that you see.

What would any nation do? Now, the irony, of course, is that many Western nations would do nothing. They would let their people die, and they would do nothing. They have no will to live or fight.

Again, this gets to what I said a moment ago. Israel is fighting for its existence. Is it possible that, in military strikes and crazy hand-to-hand combat underground, some Israeli soldier accidentally shot a hostage or something to that effect, or died in an operation where they were trying to rescue people? Of course that’s possible. But no one, especially in modern warfare, has ever had to fight anything like this.

The irony is that the more these people do this, or the more the same group of people call this a genocide, which of course it is not, the more likely it is that the next time this happens–and there’s always a next time; that’s an inevitability, hopefully never anything close to this–Israel might say, “You know what? We could have leveled the place in three days. We could have ended all of Gaza and never had another rocket shoot out of it or any threat ever. We would have had to make the most horrific choice ever and lose some of our people. But we could have done that in three days instead of having three years of war and then dealing with the endless lies and slander.”

So the real issue here, again, is what will Europe do as these things are now on their territory? There are undoubtedly Hamas members and affiliated groups, and Hezbollah members and affiliated groups, in all of these European countries, absolutely in Australia, and likely in the United States of America.

When these things happen here, our mainstream media has taught us all the wrong lessons about how to behave. I think we should be taking some tips from the Israelis rather than going after them for trying to save their own people, which is the most righteous thing you could do as a nation.

Guy Benson: I think one of the dark ironies in this is that a lot of the Muslim world, these governments in that part of the world, have cracked down very significantly on radical Islamism within their own borders.

I know you often talk about how the Egyptians treat Gaza. Everyone talks about Israel. No one ever wants to talk about Egypt’s giant barbed-wire fences and towering walls to keep the Palestinians out because of all the terrorism and other concerns there.

But that threat is taken deadly seriously by a lot of these governments in Muslim-majority countries. What you end up getting as a result is a lot of people being indoctrinated and radicalized in the West. They come to the West, which is where they get indoctrinated.

For example, this Omani pilot who tried to pull a 9/11 against Israel was, thank God, stopped by a brave pilot and all those passengers. The reports are that he was radicalized in Australia.

Then you look at what’s happening here in our own country. The Washington Free Beacon reported on a survey of American undergraduates–college-age kids in our country. One of the questions was whether they preferred socialism or capitalism. By a double-digit margin, socialism won.

Another question gauged support for Hasan Piker, who said that America deserved 9/11. The question was, “Do you agree? Did America deserve 9/11?” Twenty-two percent–between one in five and one in four undergraduates who responded to the survey–said yes, America deserved 9/11.

Guy, I don’t like to get apoplectic about things or too apocalyptic and doomer-y, but between the indoctrination, the weakness, the algorithms being manipulated, and the people within our country who clearly hate us and Western civilization and are going full throttle on this stuff, I just feel like a lot of normal people are slumbering through what is happening, what is being actively done right now.

Dave Rubin: Yeah. Well, look, this is an example of why it’s much harder to be a conservative or lean conservative than it is to be progressive.

A progressive just wants to endlessly change things. You can always tear things down. You can always change things. You can always manipulate things. You can always tell people, “Oh, things will be better if we do this, that, or the other thing,” and blah, blah. It doesn’t even matter who has a track record of doing any of those things.

Conservatives generally have to conserve something. So it takes a little time to figure out, well, what is that thing, and how do we conserve it? Conservatives generally believe in the rule of law and education and are busy going about building things and doing things.

The activist class, which the far leftists took over over the course of decades and rampaged through the institutions, basically built a generation of foot soldiers. And that has now left us in this very bizarre position.

Look, in some ways, I think that ultimately, as people age, they tend to become more conservative. Maybe some of these LARPing jihadis wearing Hamas masks in New York City will age out and realize, “Boy, what have I done with my life? This movement did nothing for me. It just used me.”

I also think things like what we’ve talked about–the Queers for Palestine movement–will eventually lead people to realize that Palestine is very different from queers. As New York City gets more Islamicized, they might realize that the radical Islamists are not really fond of gays, lesbians, and the rest of them.

Some of these things will eventually collide with reality, and that will help. But we’re in a really, really dangerous spot.

Look, if the Republicans do not hold in these midterms, Trump is largely done. We can’t even begin to comprehend what that looks like. He has loomed so large–absolutely, in my view, and I think in your view as well–as a positive figure on this planet for the past decade-plus. If that ends, and it really could start ending on November 4th, we’re in an awful lot of trouble.

Guy Benson: You mentioned Queers for Palestine. I want to play you a soundbite or two. This was highlighted by Andy Ngo. This is a guy referred to as a British influencer who goes out there and talks, preaches, and makes videos.

He’s being interviewed in this particular clip that Andy flagged. This British influencer’s name is Mohammed Saifullah. He was asked about his worldview and how he thinks things ought to be done in the United Kingdom, his new home country.

Well, here’s part of what he had to say, since you brought up gay people.

Mohamed Abdou: If I was the PM, my police would grab the gay person. That person would be taken to court. Evidence would be asked, you know? The person has a right to speak for himself, to defend himself. If the evidence is there that this person is a homosexual, then straight away I would order my executioners to take him.

Guy Benson: Get rid of him. And what about the stoning of people?

Mohamed Abdou: One hundred percent. People don’t understand it’s not just women, it’s men too. It’s men and women who have been married before who commit fornication or adultery. But if you’ve been married before or if you are married currently and you get caught doing adultery, whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re getting stoned to death.

Dave Rubin: So, he said, “Deport.” Do I have to let you even finish the sentence, my friend? Deport, denaturalize, and deport.

I don’t care if that guy’s in the UK. I don’t care if he’s in America or any other Western nation. These are not values that are aligned with ours.

You don’t even have to like gay people. You don’t have to like adultery or anything else. But we’re not stoning people to death. We’re not putting people to death for your faux morality. I have no doubt that, for that guy, it is faux morality and not real morality.

I’m sorry, but our countries are not based on, “You don’t like it? Leave.” And the problem Western Europe has is that it has no will–and really, all of us across the world have this problem.

This will all come down to Trump. Nobody in any civilized nation has the cojones, let’s say, to do what needs to be done here, which is that you’re going to have to deport tons of people. But you’re also going to have to denaturalize tons of people.

I think what Trump’s doing with Ilhan Omar right now, or what the DOJ is doing with Ilhan Omar, perhaps, is a sign that we’re going to get serious about this stuff. I think he’s trying to signal that before the election here.

But we have people within our borders–literally people dressed up no differently than the Hamas fighters who went into Israel on October 7th–wandering around our cities right now. And nobody does anything.

Now, Zohran’s not going to do anything because he’s on their side. But if the feds aren’t going to do anything, how do we know the difference between someone who’s an actual Hamas fighter walking down Fifth Avenue dressed exactly like one of them and someone who’s just LARPing?

So we need to start doing some things. Again, if Trump doesn’t do it, nobody will. And that, I think, is really what we’re up against.

I think that’s what they’re banking on in Western Europe. Do you think some leader of the UK is going to do what it takes? Maybe Marine Le Pen can do it in France, but that’s a huge maybe. Meloni in Italy has been largely a disappointment on this stuff.

It’s going to take someone who has quite literally–I think Donald Trump is the only person on Earth who can do it.

Guy Benson: Well, I think in a lot of these Western countries, there’s been a huge amount of pandering from politicians who are a little bit scared of an element of their base but also want those votes very much.

So they will go through all the motions–Palestinian statehood, whatever–and it has not actually helped at all. These countries and societies keep going down this type of path.

You might say, “Well, who’s this random influencer? Why even bring him up?” All I know is that a bunch of normal, average Brits have been arrested for mildly problematic tweets that they instantly deleted, and they got a knock on the door from the police.

Then here’s this guy talking about his program of murdering and executing homosexuals and apostates and stoning people to death. And I guess that’s fine because of the two tiers that exist in that country when it comes to the enforcement of the law.

The overall approach of so many so-called leaders in the West is that they whistle past the graveyard. They want their power in the moment, and these are the people they need to vote for them. That’s how you put coalitions together.

Then, all of a sudden, you look around and things get rather scary. There aren’t very good or easy options for turning the ship around, and I think that’s a huge part of your point here.

Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report. Follow him at @RubinReport on social media. Dave, heavy stuff, but we appreciate your time.