Joe Rogan Experience #2113 - Christopher Rufo

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. CRChristopher Rufo0:00

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. CRChristopher Rufo0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Yo. You were just telling me that, uh, Washington State, uh, recriminalized, or is it Oregon? Recriminalized drugs?

   5. CRChristopher Rufo0:20

      Yeah, that's right. Um, this just came out the last week, but, um, Washington State, uh, rather Oregon State, had pursued the defund the police policy, the-

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:29

      Yeah.

   7. CRChristopher Rufo0:30

      ... decriminalize drugs policy, and there's now this dramatic reversal, because guess what? When you let people shoot up heroin on the side of the road, snort meth, uh, in tents, uh, downtown Portland, um, it actually is not good for society. And there's such this dramatic pushback, and I was actually shocked to see it, that Oregon lawmakers, all Democrats of course, um, said, "You know what? We've gone too far. Let's bring it back to the center." And I think that's something that's very good.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:58

      It's definitely very good. It is a little shocking that they figured it out. It just doesn't seem like... Like when you go and drive through Oakland, for example, it doesn't seem like anybody's trying to put a cork on that. They're just, like, letting it be insanely chaotic, like the areas where they have the shantytown set up and people have tents everywhere in these makeshift structures. How? At what point in time do you stop letting these open air drug dens exist where people are just cooking meth in front of everybody? That just seems so insane. So it's nice to see that Oregon's like, "Hey, let's hit the brakes."

   9. CRChristopher Rufo1:35

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:36

       Is it all drugs now? Did they just put everything in the same category? Which is also quite insane.

   11. CRChristopher Rufo1:41

       Yeah, I mean, no, it's not all drugs obviously.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:43

       It just says it right here.

   13. CRChristopher Rufo1:44

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       It says, "The measure makes the possession of a small amount of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and enables police to confiscate the drugs and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks." But what about... What are the other... See, the thing is, it, it basically, what Oregon did is decriminalize almost everything. The weird thing about drugs is you throw them all under one blanket. You know, you throw, you cover them all with one blanket. Drugs. Because caffeine's a drug, alcohol is a drug, there's a lot of drugs that we're accustomed to, to using. And I'm not necessarily in favor of those being illegal. And when you, um, you add in heroin and methamphetamine to something that we're already accustomed to, like alcohol or caffeine, it's like what, what are we, you know? Why are these the same things? Like why not just individually say-

   15. CRChristopher Rufo2:40

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:40

       ... fentanyl is unbelievably bad for you. Marijuana not so much. Let's like figure out which ones are okay and which ones are not instead of just saying drugs.

   17. CRChristopher Rufo2:51

       100%. I mean, you just have to do a really simple calculation. You say, is this drug correlated with extreme social pathology? Does it obliterate the individual? Does it cause social problems, social chaos? Um, and then you could categorize them very simply, yes and no. Okay, you have alcohol, caffeine, marijuana. You can have a functioning society where those are used.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:15

       Yeah.

   19. CRChristopher Rufo3:16

       But you can't have a functioning society where people are foiling fentanyl. Um, and especially if you look at the, the, the cities, it's wrecked these cities. The big problem, though, is that the political left in the United States has lost the, a willingness and the capacity to say no. Um, this is something we've all seen. You know, we're raised, uh, a generation of kids where, like, saying no and imposing limits is something that you can't do. It's this idea of liberating ourselves from all limits. But, you know, some limits are necessary, some limits are important. And so I think we're starting to finally see the consequences of obliterating limits and then now we're starting to say, "You know, in a reasonable way, we should start reimposing some guardrails."

   20. JRJoe Rogan4:03

       Well, that's one of the things you find out when you're a parent that seems counterintuitive, but one of the things you find out is that children are happier when you impose limitations on them. Which sounds so crazy, but they are happier and they have less anxiety apparently, obviously I'm not a doctor, because they're, by having structure to life, it doesn't seem like everything is... Like if they're in charge, like, oh my God, I'm fucking 12 and I'm in charge. I have no idea what's going on and I get to stay out late all night. The world's chaos. Which it kind of is in some ways, but by imposing structure on them, it gives them comfort. And I find that's the case with human beings. I find that the people that I know, even artists, even comedians and wild folks, the, the, the people that have structure in their life, like have families and children and have, like, workout routines or things that they enjoy doing on a regular basis that they're very dedicated to, those are the happiest people. They're the healthiest people. They're the people that seem to feel like there's a purpose to life. The purpose is your loved ones, your family, your community, the people you hang out with, the stuff you like to do, whatever it is, pickleball, whatever it is. That gives people, like, happiness and structure. And this idea that having no, uh, no limitations and complete freedom and, you know, you want to be just, just able to, like, fly away on a whim, like that doesn't promote happiness. Like what are you trying to get out of this life? Don't you want it to be as enjoyable as possible? We've all had bad times. They suck. We try to avoid those. We try to have the good times. But that can be applied to a society as well. The way you raise children can be applied to a society. Like you need structure. You need rules. You need love and compassion. You need examples of good behavior. You need all of those things.And when you let people fucking cook meth in the middle of the street, that all goes out the window. Imagine being 12, dr- driving by a fucking drug den every day on your way to school. You're like, "Oh, my God. What do I have to look forward to?"

   21. CRChristopher Rufo6:14

       Yeah. I mean, th- that was m- my life, and my experience and observation. We moved out of Seattle in 2020, my wife, at that time, two kids, um, because of this precise phenomenon. The politics had gone totally sideways-

   22. JRJoe Rogan6:28

       Well, s- Seattle in 2020 was particularly insane.

   23. CRChristopher Rufo6:31

       It ... particularly insane. That is-

   24. JRJoe Rogan6:33

       What was the, the, the, the area? What was it called?

   25. CRChristopher Rufo6:35

       The glory of the Chaz.

   26. JRJoe Rogan6:36

       Chaz, that's right. (laughs)

   27. CRChristopher Rufo6:37

       Yeah. The Chaz.

   28. JRJoe Rogan6:39

       Oh. (laughs)

   29. CRChristopher Rufo6:39

       But, I remember, um, our oldest son, uh, was in kindergarten, first grade at the time. And, uh, we would be walking to school a few blocks up, and we'd have to be avoiding schizophrenics, avoiding tents, avoiding people shooting up, avoiding people just shitting in the street.

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:54

       Walking?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   And it's a small…

   1. CRChristopher Rufo15:00

      Central Asia, and M- Mongolia and other, and other countries that had been ruled by the Soviets, and what happened, and I think there is, uh, of course, with caveats, uh, in a much lighter way here, is you have an ideology that seeks conquest, it generates failure, and then it seeks more conquest. And so when you travel through those countries, it is the most depressing, gray, dismal, haunted kind of places you can be. It's these Soviet bloc housing. It has enormous rates of alcoholism. You see people strewn on the road, freezing to death in the winters. There's no economic productivity. There's no culture. The Soviets had e- evaporated their religions and all of their old customs. And so you have human beings that have been totally, um, e- extracted from any of their cultural traditions. They've been totally, um, uh, uh, uh, an- annihilated as far as their economic possibilities, but you still have, you know, three, four, five million people, and it's, it's what happens when your society is devoured by ideology. And so the ideology that we're seeing in American institutions is, of course, different. We're blessed with this country to have a much more robust system and history, but it's f- it's functionally the same. And, and t- to your point, in the late '80s, or late '60s and early '70s, you had true Marxist-Leninist radicals, the Black Panther Party, the Communist Party USA, the Weather Underground. And if you look at their literature, their propaganda materials from that time, and you compare it to what's happening in, let's say, Buffalo public schools, their BLM curriculum, I actually did this. I looked at the Black Panther Party pamphlets that they were selling to foment revolution in the Buffalo, uh, public schools curriculum. You know, i- it's, like, pretty close. The ideas are the same. Of course, they're softened. They use the nice language about DEI or, or what have you, but, um, y- you know, we should take ideas seriously, and bad ideas have bad consequences for societies.

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:56

      And it's a small amount of people that are having an enormous influence on indoctrinating kids, and that's why you're seeing kids today that grow up with this version of the society and reality that we live in that so doesn't jive with people that are older than them, where, who didn't grow up in that system, who are like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "It's not that bad." Like, "The things you're saying are insane. You're freaking out over almost nothing and not paying attention to the important things." There's important things going on in this world, but it's not microaggressions.

   3. CRChristopher Rufo17:29

      (laughs) Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan17:29

      It's, it's not, uh, w- that Google shouldn't show images of white men-

   5. CRChristopher Rufo17:35

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan17:35

      ... when you p- pump in the AI and ask who the Founding Fathers are. It's, they wouldn't even s- they, they, did you see what they did with Nazis?

   7. CRChristopher Rufo17:42

      Did they make multiracial Nazis?

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:43

      Multiracial Nazis. They had an Asian woman Nazi.

   9. CRChristopher Rufo17:46

      That's inclusive. Yeah, I gotta say (laughs) .

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:48

       It's fucking bananas. It's bananas. It's, it's literally like a movie. It's a Mike Judge movie. It's Idiocracy.

   11. CRChristopher Rufo17:55

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:56

       It's a very strange thing where logic has just been blown by the wayside 'cause the very people that are in charge of disseminating education and, and, and-... challenging young minds have completely abandoned that task, and are now wholesale focused on promoting this ideology that must be adhered to. And none of these people exist, that are teaching these things, none of these people exist in the world that we're currently existing in, which is the outside of university world.

   13. CRChristopher Rufo18:31

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:31

       These people exist in this bizarre world where they get indoctrinated and educated, and then they indoctrinate more and educate more. And they stay in the system, and they're not out there in the world. They're just not.

   15. CRChristopher Rufo18:42

       But that raises the question-

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:42

       They don't speak for us.

   17. CRChristopher Rufo18:44

       But they don't speak for us, they don't agree with us-

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:46

       (sighs)

   19. CRChristopher Rufo18:46

       ... and yet they're ruling the institutions that are educating our children, that are forming the values, that are creating the very vocabulary that we use. You know, the, the, used to be that you'd have a quirky, Tweeted out, you know, Marxist professor who would be smoking a pipe in an Ivy League school. And you could say, "Well, that's fine, the kids go to, go to Princeton and they get two years with the, the, the Marxist whack job, and then they get out in the real world." The problem is that that ideology that was confined to a relatively small part of society, where it was tolerated because it added some k- diversity of experience or ideas, has now extended to institutions that really do matter. And so the question is, if you're sending your kids to school, the majority of the parents don't like what's being taught, and it's being taught anyway, what kind of system do we live in? Is that democratic governance? Is that the representation of the people? If we're paying for it, we're sending our kids through it, but we don't have, um, a, a, a, a stake in and, and, and the control of the values that are being formed in those institutions, you know, I think it, it's a very serious question. It's not trivial to say, "We're kind of beyond some of those limits and some of those, uh, uh, constraints that make a democratic form of government meaningful." When the bureaucracy rules, and it's pushing ideology against the will of the majority of the people, w- we're in a kind of scary position, uh, in, in our country.

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:16

       And it seems like it's, it's willing participation by the masses as well, because they feel like they're a part of change. They feel like they're a part of imposing these ideas on the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is going to have to catch up. And they will be the ones that were correct, because they were on the right side all along. And it's very strange to watch it play out, because it kinda seems unstoppable at this point. It's, it's very disheartening. Like, you see it with DAs, like, there's an issue going on right now in Austin where they, they have this progressive, Soros-funded DA who's just letting everybody out of jail.

   21. CRChristopher Rufo20:56

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:56

       Like, w- what'd you do? Rape people? Let them out of jail. Murder someone? Let them out of jail. It's fucking bananas-

   23. CRChristopher Rufo21:02

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan21:02

       ... this idea that someone-

   25. CRChristopher Rufo21:03

       Microaggression? Straight to prison. (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:05

       And they're talking about a drop in crime, but it's because crime's not reported in a lot of places now, because the, the crime went up so high and they defunded the police. There's like, in Austin they need ... their 500 cops down, and the morale is down because of the defund the police and because, you know, cops ... Like, there was, I think there w- I believe there's 21 cops that were brought up on aggression charges during the Black Lives Matter protest.

   27. CRChristopher Rufo21:27

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:27

       17 of those cases I think have been dropped. I don't know, I'm not sure if that ... Find what at the ... Here, I'll send you an article. You could tell me if that ... It's, uh, in Bari Weiss's, uh, Substack today, or her, uh, her newspaper.

   29. CRChristopher Rufo21:39

       Sure.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:40

       But this is a k- a real problem where you see the results playing out, you see that they're negative. And I mean, kudos to Oregon for, you know, correcting course, but you see it playing out in, with crime and with prisons. A- and here's my nu- number one beef with this, w- all this effort to do that, all this effort to let people out of jail, no cash bail. What about reform? What about putting all that effort into reforming people? How come that doesn't exist? What about funding reform inside the prisons? What about going to all these impoverished, drug-ridden, gang-ridden communities and doing some good? How come there's no effort there? If you're a real progressive, you want fucking progress, you don't want people who are already fucked up by the system and violent criminals, habitual criminals, and just let them loose to victimize everybody else, raise everyone's anxiety, create more crime and violence, and, and have no solution to it whatsoever. That's not the solution. It's very unfortunate those people are in that situation where they are habitual criminals. And I'm sure a variety of factors beyond their control contributed to that, without doubt. Right?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      a single living politician. But since he's a top, a top of this team that people are like, "This team is our team no matter what." Like, "We're all in. I'm a fucking 49ers fan for life."

   2. CRChristopher Rufo30:11

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:12

      That's what these people are doing.

   4. CRChristopher Rufo30:13

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:13

      And they literally don't care. They'll, they'll gaslight you into a coma. Did you see that piece that someone wrote the other day? How, uh, his age is his superpower?

   6. CRChristopher Rufo30:22

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:22

      Did you see that shit?

   8. CRChristopher Rufo30:23

      I didn't see that.

   9. NANarrator30:24

      There's an excerpt from-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:24

       "Panera exempted from California's minimum wage hike thanks to Newsom" link. Okay.

   11. NANarrator30:29

       Oh, here it is.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:29

       And this is Snopes. What does Snopes say?

   13. NANarrator30:31

       Here's ex- them explaining what the article was and then I'll skip to the paragraph where it talks about Panera's-

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:36

       Do they, uh, do they debunk it?

   15. CRChristopher Rufo30:38

       Yeah. It's, this is... No, not, I don't... I didn't get through all the article, but it's ex- ex- it is explaining what happened here.

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       Okay. "The confusion exemption led..." Okay, here's... According to California state law, set to take effect April 1st, 2024, a restaurant chain with more than 60 locations nationwide that produces for-sale bread as a standalone menu item does not count as fast food. The confusing exemption led to controversy following a Bloomberg article published February 28th, reporting that the fast casual chain Panera Bread has dodged an upcoming minimum wage increase for fast food workers in California to $20 an hour. The article connected the bread exemption to billionaire Greg Flynn, a frequent donor to California Governor Gavin Newsom's political campaigns, who owns more than two dozen Panera Bread locations in the state. In a statement to Snopes, however, Newsom's spokesperson, Alex Stack, denied any such connection played a role in the law, and even suggested the exemption would not actually apply to Panera. "The governor never met with Flynn about this bill and the story is absurd," Stack said. Well, they don't have to meet, they can talk on the phone. "Our legal team has reviewed and it-"

   17. CRChristopher Rufo31:45

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:45

       "... appears that Panera is not exempt from the law."

   19. CRChristopher Rufo31:48

       Whoops. Yeah. (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       The legal team reviewed it after they... So, there is an exemption?

   21. CRChristopher Rufo31:52

       Right, right. So, that's where I was gonna get to this.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:54

       Okay, so how would they not be ex- The provision exempting restaurants that make and sell bread as a standalone item from the rule was included in both the 2022 and 2023 bills. The exemption, as we mentioned above, is real and was achieved by not designating such restaurants as fast food. However, Newsom's office said a legal analysis determined Panera, like other chain bakeries, does not fall under the exemption because it mixes its dough off-site instead of fully producing bread on the premises of its retail locations.

   23. CRChristopher Rufo32:23

       Oh, my God.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:24

       Interesting, but that makes sense.

   25. CRChristopher Rufo32:26

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:26

       That makes sense because they're just... It's like Subway, right? Subway doesn't make the dough either.

   27. CRChristopher Rufo32:30

       Yeah. That's right. Starbucks doesn't make the dough.

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:31

       So, this... So, this... But that... Why would you be able to pay people less if you have an-

   29. CRChristopher Rufo32:35

       At a bakery.

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:35

       ... an artisan bakery that requires more skill? Like, you're not-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh. (laughs) …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      because if I really wanna go full tinfoil hat conspiracy, I would say, "Well, if I was a foreign country, uh, I would be promoting this as much as possible in any way I could. I would be funding organizations to do things that would, uh, destroy cities. I would be funding, uh, universities to continue insane policies. I'd be teaching them the kinda things that they taught people," where that woman ... Do you remember, you saw that woman who, uh, talked to Josh Hawley? And, uh, h- he was asking, I think it was like, "Can men get their periods?" And, uh, and she is actually laughing while she ... I just wanna point out-

   2. CRChristopher Rufo45:43

      Oh. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:43

      Yeah. I just wanna point out, what you're saying is transphobic.

   4. CRChristopher Rufo45:47

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:47

      And opens up trans people to violence. Like, what?

   6. CRChristopher Rufo45:50

      I think she was a Stanford law professor.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:53

      Uh, she was some- somewhere.

   8. CRChristopher Rufo45:55

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:56

      Might've been Berkeley.

   10. CRChristopher Rufo45:57

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:57

       But it was, whatever it was, it was like, "What did you just say? What did you just say, and why did you say it that way?" You think... You're so accustomed to being in your bubble that you don't recognize how gross it is when you giggle before you say something.

   12. CRChristopher Rufo46:13

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       "I just wanna point out, what you're saying is transphobic and opens up trans people to violence." Like some, some w- men can have periods.

   14. CRChristopher Rufo46:22

       B- but this is, this is the dominant culture in HR departments, K through 12 schools, universities, government bureaucracies.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:30

       Yeah.

   16. CRChristopher Rufo46:30

       That is the, the social game that has been established. And so, you know, when we took over at New College of Florida, it was the most left-leaning university. It's basically the evergreen, it was the evergreen state of Florida. It was, the, the, the student population was more than 50% trans, queer, and nonbinary.

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:48

       More than 50%.

   18. CRChristopher Rufo46:49

       More than 50%.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       What is the odds of that?

   20. CRChristopher Rufo46:51

       Uh-

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       In terms of, like, the normal account when they do... If you get a random group of 100 human beings in the country.

   22. CRChristopher Rufo46:56

       There's a bit of a disparity there.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:58

       (laughs)

   24. CRChristopher Rufo46:58

       Uh, you know, especially 'cause, like, nonbinary is fake. It's not a thing.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:02

       Right.

   26. CRChristopher Rufo47:02

       It, it's, it, it just doesn't exist. It's a-

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:04

       You could be nonbinary.

   28. CRChristopher Rufo47:05

       I, I mean, maybe I am.

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:06

       You can be. You just-

   30. CRChristopher Rufo47:06

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

   2. CRChristopher Rufo1:00:01

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

      The same, the same year we had the defund the police? Th- This... That's scary. That's scary because that's the opposite of we are... where we expect... If you look at, like, Pinker's work on, on violence over time, you, you see that societies are trending in a very positive direction. At least we were until 2020. And that this one change, it's a... That... Just because it was just one year, but that one year was just three years ago, kids. Okay? The, the... Another thing like that could do that again, especially when you're dealing with even more people who are released out into the world with these radical ideas, especially the people that are inclined to believe that violence is a necessary aspect of change. (sighs) And these are ironically the same people that don't want anybody to be armed. It's, it's all so wild. It's so wild because the...... if you wanted to create a perfect recipe for a collapse of a society, you would have a president who's not there. You would have a society that is run by fucking maniacs in the educational institutions, that when ANTIFA commits violence, somehow it's mostly peaceful. But yet when anyone else does it, especially if anybody else does it in any sort of a right-wing way, that is everything you could throw at it, transphobic, racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever the fuck you could say. It's everything wrong with the world. Like, this is a recipe for a civil war. It's a recipe for chaos. It's a recipe for a complete collapse of everything that's around us. If you just go from what happened so quickly in 2020, it's not hard to imagine if you could bring yourself back to the time in 2020, to think, "This is never coming back, and it's gonna be like this forever and it's gonna get way worse." 'Cause if it can get like this, where people can just smash into stores and loot, that's what I started seeing.

   4. CRChristopher Rufo1:02:04

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:02:04

      That's one of the things that got me out of California. I watched these guys smash into this, this clothing store and, and steal everything. By the way, all white kids. Um, and I saw-

   6. CRChristopher Rufo1:02:15

      What, down in Santa Monica or something?

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

      It was in Woodland Hills.

   8. CRChristopher Rufo1:02:17

      Woodland Hills?

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:02:17

      And I s- I saw, um, there was a, uh, a Target there that got, uh, targeted too, that these, they lit like a dumpster on fire and pushed up against the door. There was a lot of shit that people weren't getting caught for. And it was like right after the George Floyd riots, so the, um, the, the cop cars in- burning on the highway were an image burned in everyone's mind still. And I was like, "Oh, I know how this movie plays out. I'm getting the fuck out of here." Like that was my first thought, is like, "I need to figure out how to get out of here." Like, this is ... I can't stay, 'cause this is only gonna get worse. And if you don't get out now, and you're gonna wish you got out when something happens to someone you love. We gotta get the fuck out of here. This is bad. And the ... it's not hard to imagine that our society, given the current situation and given the current influences, i- it's going in that direction. And if I was in another country, I'd be fucking pumped. Uh, I was looking at, uh, what's that la- lady's name? Rachel whatever-it-is? The, the admiral? First female admiral?

   10. CRChristopher Rufo1:03:20

       Rachel S-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:03:20

       (laughs)

   12. CRChristopher Rufo1:03:20

       S- sir, or-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:03:21

       LeVine?

   14. CRChristopher Rufo1:03:21

       Madam Rachel Levine.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:03:22

       Yeah, Madam ...

   16. CRChristopher Rufo1:03:24

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:03:24

       Wonderful. Hilarious. And this other one that was a, some s- recent trans military person who was saying we should all put our pronouns in all of our emails, even if it's obvious. Like, shut the fuck up.

   18. CRChristopher Rufo1:03:35

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:35

       Shut the fuck up. You, you ... How, how come something that used to be considered a mental illness just 10 years ago is now at a precedent in that now it's a, a valuable asset, now it's an important part of our community? Now it's not? L- like, if you found out someone was suicidal, would you want them in charge of the nukes? You wouldn't, right? Well, you know, m- w- just on paper, the amount of trans people that are suicidal is much higher than everyone else. Like, isn't it something insane like 40%? It's something crazy like that. What, what are you doing? Like, are we ignoring facts and statistics? If you know that someone is a bipolar schizophrenic and you got them working on a gun range, should they, "Hey, Harry, we just pulled your file, and, uh, you fucking fly off the handle, and you, you have, uh, 113 violent episodes since you were a teenager."

   20. CRChristopher Rufo1:04:30

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:04:30

       "Give me that gun, you motherfucker."

   22. CRChristopher Rufo1:04:31

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:04:31

       "Get out of here. You can't work here anymore."

   24. CRChristopher Rufo1:04:32

       It's like putting Kanye in charge of like an airwing in the Air Force or something. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:04:36

       (laughs) Just-

   26. CRChristopher Rufo1:04:37

       Like, whoa, I don't know about that, yeah. Um ...

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:04:38

       It's just nuts-

   28. NANarrator1:04:40

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:04:41

       ... where we have decided that ... Listen, I have full sympathy for someone who has gender dysphoria. I've met many people that I truly believe they have somewhere in there they are a woman and they got stuck in a man's body, and I think that's real and I think that's always happened. But, but when you make that more powerful than just being a normal person, more preferable than just being a normal person, subject to l- less scrutiny than being a normal person, just a regular per- ... Like w- I'm not saying you should discriminate against trans people. I think you should just let everybody be whoever the fuck they are. But don't tell me that I'm supposed to ignore all the other things that could be at play. Say if you're a biological male inmate, and you decide that you're a woman and you want to transition to women's prisons, which in California 47% of men have done, don't tell me that just because you're trans, like I'm supposed to abandon that. Like I'm supposed to ignore that sex offenders could just walk into a women's locker room with an erection, and everyone's supposed to ignore that. Like, what are you do- you're, y- now you are fucking up the, the acceptance of trans people, 'cause you're saying that trans people are gonna come along with all these sex offenders, which is not really true. There's a lot of the trans people that aren't sex offenders. They're just trans. These other people are taking advantage of this fucking massive loophole that you've left in here, and you're victimizing female professional athletes, female college athletes. You're, you're jeopardizing scholarships for those athletes. You're doing a lot of things that fuck up biological women, and there's no consideration for that at all.

   30. CRChristopher Rufo1:06:35

       Yeah. Uh, uh, and, and look at the, this kind of sorority house I think is the, probably the best example of this phenomenon, where you have some, you know, 6'2" male that is now bunking with a house full of women, young women-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:20:56

   Ugh. Um, when you…

   1. CRChristopher Rufo1:15:00

      Harvard, or critical race theory, or DEI, all of these stories that I've broken and campaigns that I've run, is at least turn people on to the idea that something is deeply wrong, put a name and a face to it, and then offer some pathway for them to resolve these problems. And, um, you know, it, I- I- if we don't, we lose the great promise. We were promised liberty and equality. Those are the two fundamentals. You, you, you don't see, you, you, people don't even have an understanding of what that means anymore, and so we have to recover intellectually what has been, uh, uh, uh, uh, e- erased from our, our discourse, and then we have to fight in the arena of actual political power. We have to take action, we have to change laws, we have to reform bureaucracies, we have to lead institutions. And so every day that I wake up it's like, that's what I'm doing. What wins are we putting up on the board? Because unless we're having substantial wins in all these little areas, um, that social credit system that you're talking about, it's just a matter of time.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:16:02

      Ugh. Um, when you look at the current political landscape, um, particularly, um, these, uh, these trials, how disturbed are you by what seems to be this acceptance that people have for prosecuting political opponents? 'Cause to me, regardless of what you think about Donald Trump as a human being, and the, the polarizing figure that he is, setting the precedent of trying your political opponents to somehow or another either put them in jail or make them seem like complete, total criminals in a way that would, for the casual, for the person who's not reading deep into the headlines, for the, the casual Democrat that sees this Trump real estate thing that just happened where he got fined $365 million, y- the casuals, I've, I've seen people argue, you know, that, you know, fraud is fraud, and this, that, and he's a fucking fraud. And, and then I saw Kevin O'Leary explain it, uh, from Shark Tank, he was saying, "This is what every real estate developer does. They say my building's worth $400 million, and then someone comes along from the bank and they say, 'No, it's worth $300 million. We'll give you a loan on $300 million.'" Or whatever it is, whatever the number-

   3. CRChristopher Rufo1:17:23

      It's negotiation.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:17:24

      But also, real estate pricing in general is a strange thing to, to say that's fraud, because people overvalue their property all the time. I mean, it's a standard thing that people do. When someone has a house and it's worth $700,000, they start, decide to list it as $900,000, and the, the real estate person says, "Well, you know, it's, it's really, it's, it's really pushing it." And the guy's like, "That's what I want. I think it's worth $900,000." Like, people have always done weird shit like that.

   5. CRChristopher Rufo1:17:55

      For sure.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:17:55

      And then when you have this leftist judge that says that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million-

   7. CRChristopher Rufo1:18:00

      Abroad.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:18:01

      ... like then you just showed all your silly hands. You showed, you showed your hand, 'cause this is, that's a crazy thing to say in a place that is the most expensive real estate on earth.

   9. CRChristopher Rufo1:18:11

      Yeah. (laughs) And I, I, yeah, and the Mar-a-Lago property is, is not worth $18 million. I mean, that's absurd.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:18:16

       Isn't it like 18 acres?

   11. CRChristopher Rufo1:18:17

       Yeah, it's huge. It covers both sides of, of the little, you know, key, or whatever you call it, the little island. But, the, the bigger question is, the, the question that was first raised by the presidency of Richard Nixon that is now coming to fruition with the, with the presidency and the kind of ex-presidency of Donald Trump, we have a democratic system that favors Trump, uh, in the sense that he won in 2016, he's winning the primary right now for Republicans in, in 2024. Um, but you have a bureaucracy that is dead set against him, and the rhetoric amounts to a, a very odd claim. They, they essentially say, "We want to keep him off the ballot, we want to put him in prison, we want to bankrupt him so he can't become the president, even if the people support him. We want to deprive the people of making the decision." So you want to take it out of the realm of politics and into the realm of administrative justice, or the criminal justice system.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:19:14

       Right.

   13. CRChristopher Rufo1:19:14

       And adjudicate it in that way, on bogus pretexts. I mean, the, the cases are bogus. Um-And so, what you're, the question that we're raising is, who actually rules in this country? Is it the American people who get to decide by their vote who represents them in the government, or is it the permanent bureaucracy that has accumulated so much power? What they can say even to Donald ... I mean, Donald Trump has been one of the most famous people in the world for decades. He's e- enormously wealthy. He's already been the President of the United States, a powerful person. And the message is, "We can take out anyone that is a threat to the interest of the system that we've built up." And so, as someone who ... I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. I did vote for him for 2020. I'll absolutely vote for him now in 2024. Um, um, it is a contest of how we think of our democratic system, and I'm of the mind that the people should decide, not the bureaucracy. Um, and this is a contest where Democrats are saying essentially, "We have to destroy democracy in order to save democracy." Democracy has very different meanings in the two usages, usages in the, in that sentence. We have to destroy democracy as we've traditionally known it, electing a president through a vote of the people, in order to save democracy which is ruled by expert opinion, ruled by the bureaucracy, and essentially left-wing hegemony, left-wing domination over institutions. And, as someone who tries to maximize whatever I can do to push forward on these issues politically, it's not lost on me that if they can wipe out someone like Donald Trump, you know, we're, we're all table stakes, relatively.

Episode duration: 2:23:07