Joe Rogan Experience #2113 - Christopher Rufo

Christopher Rufo 0:00 (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Christopher Rufo 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)

Joe Rogan 0:13 Yo. You were just telling me that, uh, Washington State, uh, recriminalized, or is it Oregon? Recriminalized drugs?

Christopher Rufo 0:20 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-

Joe Rogan 0:29 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 0:30 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 0:58 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."

Christopher Rufo 1:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:36 Is it all drugs now? Did they just put everything in the same category? Which is also quite insane.

Christopher Rufo 1:41 Yeah, I mean, no, it's not all drugs obviously.

Joe Rogan 1:43 It just says it right here.

Christopher Rufo 1:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:44 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-

Christopher Rufo 2:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:40 ... 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.

Christopher Rufo 2:51 100%. 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.

Joe Rogan 3:15 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 3:16 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."

Joe Rogan 4:03 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?"

Christopher Rufo 6:14 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-

Joe Rogan 6:28 Well, s- Seattle in 2020 was particularly insane.

Christopher Rufo 6:31 It ... particularly insane. That is-

Joe Rogan 6:33 What was the, the, the, the area? What was it called?

Christopher Rufo 6:35 The glory of the Chaz.

Joe Rogan 6:36 Chaz, that's right. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 6:37 Yeah. The Chaz.

Joe Rogan 6:39 Oh. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 6:39 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.

Joe Rogan 6:54 Walking?

Christopher Rufo 6:55 Walking.

Joe Rogan 6:55 Just walking?

Christopher Rufo 6:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:56 It's so sketchy.

Christopher Rufo 6:56 Just walking. And so, you know, you're trying to, to kind of navigate your kids around there was a, a, a homeless encampment about 100 yards away from the school with probably 40 or 50 guys cooking drugs, stealing property, causing trouble. And then, you talk to the administrators at the time, say, "Hey, this is a problem. I don't accept this. I don't like this."

Joe Rogan 7:16 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 7:16 And they say, "Oh, well, you know, we have to be compassionate to our houseless neighbors." It's like, "N- no, we don't. This is a danger to kids." And it got so bad that they were teaching the kids what to do when they found hypodermic needles in the playground.

Joe Rogan 7:30 Oh, my God.

Christopher Rufo 7:31 This is a problem. I don't want this as a parent. I want you to prevent them having to, to pick up hypodermic needles and, you know ... An- and- and it's like a group of people that are so ... It- it- it's like compassion also has to be limited.

Joe Rogan 7:45 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 7:45 You have to have compassion within reasonable limits. And for us-

Joe Rogan 7:49 But you're also ... You're dealing with people that'll just burn it all down. If you just l- allow ... If you say arson is no longer punishable, they'll burn all the houses down.

Christopher Rufo 7:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:56 These are insane people. They don't have anything. Why wouldn't they just burn it all down just for funs?

Christopher Rufo 8:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:01 Yeah. It's ... I- i- i- it's so hard to understand how it got this far. You know, I ... And I love when they use terms like the houseless. Like, you already have a word for it.

Christopher Rufo 8:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:12 Like, stop trying to dress it up with a new word. You already have a word for it. The word like ... This one's been driving me fucking crazy lately, minor-attracted persons.

Christopher Rufo 8:22 (laughs) Yes.

Joe Rogan 8:23 Um, I saw two politicians in two different speeches talk about protecting minor-attracted persons. You're talking about pedophiles.

Christopher Rufo 8:33 That's what we're talking about.

Joe Rogan 8:35 It must be that these people have no children. It must be. I don't know. If they do, they're monsters. This idea that you are going to minimize the harm caused by evil criminals who steal children's lives, ruin their lives forever, and you're just gonna call them a minor-attracted person and try to say that it's an identity? To what ... For what reason? To what end?

Christopher Rufo 9:04 I mean-

Joe Rogan 9:04 Like, why would you want to do that?

Christopher Rufo 9:06 I mean, th- the end is, uh, it's not polite to say, but it's quite clear. You look at even something that has been propagandized at length, Drag Queen Story Hour-

Joe Rogan 9:16 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 9:16 ... you say, "Wait a minute. Let's just break it down to the basic facts." These are adult men dressing up in women's clothing-

Joe Rogan 9:22 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 9:23 ... dancing and performing for other people's children. That's like ... Should be a red flag for people. But, you ... They've couched it in this language, like you're talking about euphemisms, uh, very, very soft sounding words, tolerance, inclusion. But, you're concealing from people the fact that it's like, "Ah, actually, no, this is kind of uncomfortable," um, and, like, "I wouldn't want to do that."

Joe Rogan 9:49 Well, not only that-

Christopher Rufo 9:49 And do you want to talk about sex with other people's young children?

Joe Rogan 9:52 No.

Christopher Rufo 9:53 No.

Joe Rogan 9:54 Not in a million years. You should never-

Christopher Rufo 9:54 That's like, that's like the thing you'd wanna avoid, like most in life, you know?

Joe Rogan 9:57 There's no reason to talk to them about that.

Christopher Rufo 9:59 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 9:59 There's no reason.

Christopher Rufo 10:00 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 10:01 They're not interested in it. They're little kids. And, and also-

Christopher Rufo 10:04 They're, they're not interested. It's the adults that are interested.

Joe Rogan 10:07 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 10:07 So, the question is, why? Why are adults so interested in this? What is the ideological goal, the personal goal? Um-

Joe Rogan 10:13 It's influence.

Christopher Rufo 10:14 And I find it, uh-

Joe Rogan 10:15 They're, they're influencing children because like all groups, as much as people hate to hear this, everyone wants you to join their group. It is a natural human instinct. The idea that that would not apply to gender identity, that that would not apply to sexual orientation is crazy. It applies to phones. It applies to, like, people who have Android phones are like, "Dude, just switch over."

Christopher Rufo 10:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:37 "Look, you can use the S Pen. Dude, you can switch over. Look at my AI features. Dude, you don't need iMessage." You know? There ... It's with everything. And if you don't think that happens with, uh, sexuality or with gender, you're out of your mind. It's a natural human characteristic. Why would it be ... Why would it be absent there when it's present in literally everything? People who use Windows computers shit on people who use Apple computers.

Christopher Rufo 11:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:02 "You should just try Windows, man. There's so much more variety." They want you to join.

Christopher Rufo 11:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:07 They want you to b- they want you to be a part of their church. They want you to be ... Move into their neighborhood. I'm guilty of it too. I got a bunch of people to move to Austin.

Christopher Rufo 11:14 For sure.

Joe Rogan 11:14 (laughs) It's like-

Christopher Rufo 11:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:15 It's a thing that people do.

Christopher Rufo 11:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:17 It's a thing that people do, especially if they found something that's awesome. But, this idea that a guy with fucking heavy makeup on, dressed like a tart. Like, if that was a woman, I'd be like, "What's wrong with that lady?"

Christopher Rufo 11:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:31 That's ... She's not dressing like a teacher.

Christopher Rufo 11:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:33 This is crazy. What is she doing? Why is she dressed like that? Is that a costume? Is she in a play?

Christopher Rufo 11:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:38 She's not in a play. Okay, cut. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 11:40 Yeah. Yeah. Let's, uh, pump the brakes on this one.

Joe Rogan 11:42 Let's get ... That fucking lady's gotta be insane.

Christopher Rufo 11:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:44 Does she have any kids? Well, actually, she doesn't even have a vagina. You know, she's got a penis. Like, what? Hold the fuck on. Hold the fuck-

Christopher Rufo 11:50 Now, we're getting to a whole nother level of this.

Joe Rogan 11:52 Yeah. What are we doing here?

Christopher Rufo 11:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:54 What's going on? Like ...

Christopher Rufo 11:55 But, but that opinion is ...... completely normal, completely mainstream, held by virtually everyone.

Joe Rogan 12:01 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 12:01 But people are silent about it-

Joe Rogan 12:03 Right.

Christopher Rufo 12:03 ... because they've been stigmatized into believing if you offer any criticism of the ideology, of gender theory, or the practice, you are somehow a, a, a bigot, you're somehow, uh, homophobic, you're somehow-

Joe Rogan 12:15 You're definitely far right.

Christopher Rufo 12:16 You're far, you're a far-right extremist, and it's like-

Joe Rogan 12:18 And you're lumped in with KKK.

Christopher Rufo 12:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:20 You're lumped in with, like-

Christopher Rufo 12:21 But it's like-

Joe Rogan 12:21 ... Stormfront people, you're lumped in-

Christopher Rufo 12:22 This is a, a 90% opinion.

Joe Rogan 12:24 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 12:25 And so, y- y- you know, what, what I think is so important is to stop playing the game-

Joe Rogan 12:31 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 12:31 ... and to say, "You know what? I'm gonna tell the truth, and I'm gonna take the slings and arrows, because I know that the public opinion is on my side, and people fear speaking out, but they need representation." And that, to me, is, uh, the name of the game.

Joe Rogan 12:45 Well, you are really good at explaining everything that's happening, and, uh, really good at, like, laying it out in a very easy to understand pattern. Like, where it first was introduced into the education system, the blind spots that people have towards how Marxism works, even, e- especially, like, during the time of the 1960s and '70s when a lot of this stuff was gaining mo- momentum in the United States because of the anti-war movement, they were completely ignoring what happened in the gulags. They're completely ignoring what happened in Cuba. They had this very rosy perception of communism, which always leads to military dictatorship, always. There's no evidence of it ever not leading to that. It's the, it's like the idea of, like, "You know, I know everybody dies of rabies, but I don't think I'm gonna die of rabies."

Christopher Rufo 13:36 (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 13:36 "I'm just gonna get bit by..." Fucking rabies kills everybody.

Christopher Rufo 13:39 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:40 (laughs) There's, there's, like, one lady who didn't die of rabies 'cause of a very novel treatment where they have to put her into a medically induced coma, 'cause rabies is such an old disease, and it's such an aggressive disease that your immune system can fight it off, but it can't keep up with it, and eventually the rabies wins, and it always wins. So by putting her in a medically induced coma, I don't know what about the, the biological process of it, but it somehow or another shorted out her body to the point where it had the resources to effectively battle the rabies, because she was just completely-

Christopher Rufo 14:14 Wow.

Joe Rogan 14:14 ... immobile and in a medically induced coma. So, she actually was one of the very few people ever in history to survive rabies.

Christopher Rufo 14:22 Oh, uh, the analogy is perfect, the analogy is perfect.

Joe Rogan 14:24 So we can supply this Marxism. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 14:25 I, I mean, Marxism-

Joe Rogan 14:25 Like, we can do it. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 14:26 Marxism will put your whole society, at best, in a medically induced coma, and at worst you get starvation-

Joe Rogan 14:33 Right.

Christopher Rufo 14:33 ... gulags, uh, mass suppression, and so-

Joe Rogan 14:35 Well, it kills the society-

Christopher Rufo 14:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:37 ... is what the point is. The point is the best case scenario is that you somehow, through a medically induced coma, fucking survive it.

Christopher Rufo 14:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:44 There's no improvement.

Christopher Rufo 14:45 No.

Joe Rogan 14:45 You're probably wrecked for the rest of your life. I mean, it's probably such a horrific disease that everything's compromised after that.

Christopher Rufo 14:52 Wh- when I was in my 20s, I traveled through a lot of the former Soviet Union, uh, socialist republics, so Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, 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.

Joe Rogan 16:56 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.

Christopher Rufo 17:29 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:29 It's, it's not, uh, w- that Google shouldn't show images of white men-

Christopher Rufo 17:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:35 ... 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?

Christopher Rufo 17:42 Did they make multiracial Nazis?

Joe Rogan 17:43 Multiracial Nazis. They had an Asian woman Nazi.

Christopher Rufo 17:46 That's inclusive. Yeah, I gotta say (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 17:48 It's fucking bananas. It's bananas. It's, it's literally like a movie. It's a Mike Judge movie. It's Idiocracy.

Christopher Rufo 17:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:56 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.

Christopher Rufo 18:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:31 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.

Christopher Rufo 18:42 But that raises the question-

Joe Rogan 18:42 They don't speak for us.

Christopher Rufo 18:44 But they don't speak for us, they don't agree with us-

Joe Rogan 18:46 (sighs)

Christopher Rufo 18:46 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 20:16 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.

Christopher Rufo 20:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:56 Like, w- what'd you do? Rape people? Let them out of jail. Murder someone? Let them out of jail. It's fucking bananas-

Christopher Rufo 21:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:02 ... this idea that someone-

Christopher Rufo 21:03 Microaggression? Straight to prison. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:05 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.

Christopher Rufo 21:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:27 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.

Christopher Rufo 21:39 Sure.

Joe Rogan 21:40 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?

Christopher Rufo 22:50 Sure.

Joe Rogan 22:51 But that's ... The solution's not let them out. The solution is stop that from happening in the future, and there's no effort whatsoever put on that. There's no conscious thought of, like, "How do we get at the beginning of this?"

Christopher Rufo 23:05 Yeah. I- i- i- it, and that's a- a almost impossible question to answer because it is so complex, there are so many contributing factors, but I actually don't think it's totally necessary to do that. You actually can just say, "Here are the behaviors that we tolerate, here are the ones that we don't tolerate," and then you lay out a series of simple consequences. And so what we're seeing in El Salvador, which of course is ongoing, it's fraught with potential problems, but what they did is essentially lock up the 1% of the El Salvadorian population that were the violent, committed gang members and, and drug runners, and they reduced the murder rate by more than 90%. It used to be the most dangerous country in the world, highest murder rate. Now it's per capita, you know, depending on how you measure it, one of the safest countries in the hemisphere. The lesson is that, that it is actually a vanishingly small number of people that commit th- the, the large plurality or majority of crimes. And so, it's not that you have to have, um, a, a, a kind of soul-searching, an endless, uh, kind of navel-gazing and, and philosophizing. It's simply to say, you know, people who are a direct threat to others that commit violent crimes that maybe have 20, 30, 40, 100, uh, convictions in their criminal history, um ...... you know, cannot participate in society without limits. And it's a, it's something that people have been, um, scared to talk about. Uh, but I think that that is ending because when people start to feel a sense of danger in their daily lives, they're gonna start to break through some of those taboos and to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Yeah, they're letting people out of jail, uh, who are violent criminals. Doesn't seem to be working."

Joe Rogan 24:46 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 24:46 And, and, and I, and I think we're there. Even in Seattle, they elected a Republican city attorney. They elected a moderate city council, a moderate mayor. Um, and, and the big cities, especially the West Coast cities, are, are, are waking up to this citizen rage. These are the most prosperous cities in the history of the world, but they can't keep the streets clean? They can't keep people safe?

Joe Rogan 25:10 Well, they can-

Christopher Rufo 25:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:11 ... when Xi Jingping comes to town.

Christopher Rufo 25:12 (laughs) That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:14 How wild is that one? That dude is so wild.

Christopher Rufo 25:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:17 Because what he does is so blatant.

Christopher Rufo 25:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:20 Like the Panera Bread thing.

Christopher Rufo 25:21 The Panera Bread thing.

Joe Rogan 25:22 The Panera Bread thing is amazing.

Christopher Rufo 25:24 You almost have to respect it.

Joe Rogan 25:25 You almost have to respect it.

Christopher Rufo 25:26 It's so brazen.

Joe Rogan 25:28 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 25:28 It's like-

Joe Rogan 25:29 Explain it to people.

Christopher Rufo 25:30 Wait, hold on.

Joe Rogan 25:31 They don't-

Christopher Rufo 25:31 Yeah, the Panera Bread. So it's like you're gonna, uh, raise the minimum wage for all fast food restaurants to $20 an hour, except for Panera Bread.

Joe Rogan 25:39 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 25:39 Uh, because the Panera Bread guy is his friend-

Joe Rogan 25:41 I think it's separate.

Christopher Rufo 25:42 ... and, and donor. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:42 But the way around that to make it don't look that obvious is places with bakeries.

Christopher Rufo 25:46 But the, what i- that, that's not... What is the... I mean-

Joe Rogan 25:49 Why? Why a specific way of cooking?

Christopher Rufo 25:52 There is no-

Joe Rogan 25:52 The Subway bakery?

Christopher Rufo 25:53 ... rational justification. There's no rational justification for it. Uh, and, and, and so it's almost like-

Joe Rogan 25:58 Oh, but it says Panera is not exempted from California's fast food minimum wage law after all. On February 28th, Bloomberg reported that bakery chain Panera would be exempt from California's AB 1228 law, a law that raises minimum wage for fast food workers from $16 to $20 an hour starting in '81. So why, um, is that?

Christopher Rufo 26:17 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 26:17 How is it not exempt if it's-

Christopher Rufo 26:18 That's a hell of a fact check. I didn't know that. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:20 But they were saying that it was, bakeries were exempt. So what is exempt? Uh, it said, okay, "Governor Gavin Newsom told the Los Angeles Times Panera would not be exempt from the law. The spokesperson also denied a claim the Bloomberg piece, which st- cited sources close to the matter that Newsom pushed for an exemption that applies to businesses that bake bread and sell as a standalone, sell it as a standalone item, calling the report absurd." So it, is it a fake story?

Narrator 26:46 That's, I mean, it's-

Christopher Rufo 26:47 Or is it something that they, they, they hustled on-

Joe Rogan 26:49 That they might have corrected course quickly?

Christopher Rufo 26:50 ... and corrected course quickly, yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:52 Yeah. Uh, roll up to the top. So where's the re- initial report? Let's find the initial report. Because why would Bloomberg spread bullshit? Bloomberg is a financial paper, right?

Christopher Rufo 27:04 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 27:05 That's not something-

Christopher Rufo 27:07 I don't think it would be.

Joe Rogan 27:07 You-

Christopher Rufo 27:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:08 You really can't do that if you're running a financial paper. It's not like the New York Times. The New York Times can say, "Israel bombed the hospital and 500 people were killed," and put it on the front page, even if it's not true. And everybody just assumes it's true because it's the New York Times, but they can kind of get away with that.

Christopher Rufo 27:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:27 And then they still exist. But if Bloomberg started doing shit like that, if Bloomberg started lying about businesses and what businesses are, or tax laws, that seems insane. "How Panera Bread ducked California's new $20 minimum wage." This is Bloomberg. "Governor pushed for a carve-out that's perplexed industry observers and benefited a donor." So how do we know that this is true?

Christopher Rufo 27:49 Uh...

Joe Rogan 27:49 Do we have to subscribe?

Christopher Rufo 27:50 The dreaded paywall.

Narrator 27:51 Hold on one second. One second.

Joe Rogan 27:52 Okay, no worries. We'll subscribe. You owe, uh, we owe you, Bloomberg. But it's, um, there must be something to it. And it's so hard with that guy because when you just look at the way he praised, uh, Biden, "I would never run against him, a man of character." You know, like, to, like, "I'm old school." It's... God. He, it's like he's playing someone in a movie that's-

Christopher Rufo 28:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:15 ... a crazy person. It's like, that's how, that's how, like, a really good actor-

Christopher Rufo 28:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:22 ... would play a complete crazy person who's insincere enough that smart people recognize it-

Christopher Rufo 28:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:30 ... but that, like, really dull-minded, blue-no-matter-who people are like, "He's a winner. That guy, he's got my vote. I'll tell you what, he can win. He can win this for us."

Christopher Rufo 28:40 But the problem is, is that that's not wrong. I mean-

Joe Rogan 28:42 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 28:42 ... Gavin Newsom is a fearsome political talent and his willingness to do or say anything-

Joe Rogan 28:49 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 28:50 ... and do it with a straight face, with that sincere voice, and that cool-

Joe Rogan 28:53 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 28:53 ... you know, swoopy hair. I mean-

Joe Rogan 28:55 I love that he keeps getting busted too.

Christopher Rufo 28:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:57 I love that he got busted during the pandemic eating inside with no mask on. He's just fucking-

Christopher Rufo 29:03 Sh- th- the shamelessness on that guy is like, it, it's like a laboratory specimen.

Joe Rogan 29:07 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 29:08 I mean, it's actually is an interesting guy and fascinating person in that way. I'm not a fan. I disagree with him politically, but I don't think he should be underestimated because those of us who can see through it-

Joe Rogan 29:19 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 29:19 ... I think are actually a pretty small number of people.

Joe Rogan 29:22 Well, uh, I think you're probably right, and I think there's also people that just want a really good quarterback for the team. That's what I think. I think they barely care who the president is, and I think that's pre- obvious b- with Obama. Excuse me, with, uh, with, with Biden. Um, not with Obama at all. The opposite with Obama.

Christopher Rufo 29:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:43 Obama was, like, the best example of what we have to offer. But Biden is, without doubt, anyone can beat him. If, if you were just comparing competence, you know, someone who you would trust talking, someone who you would trust to go meet foreign dignitaries, there's zero... He has, he's no one he's gonna beat. He's not gonna beat 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."

Christopher Rufo 30:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:12 That's what these people are doing.

Christopher Rufo 30:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:13 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?

Christopher Rufo 30:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:22 Did you see that shit?

Christopher Rufo 30:23 I didn't see that.

Narrator 30:24 There's an excerpt from-

Joe Rogan 30:24 "Panera exempted from California's minimum wage hike thanks to Newsom" link. Okay.

Narrator 30:29 Oh, here it is.

Joe Rogan 30:29 And this is Snopes. What does Snopes say?

Narrator 30:31 Here's ex- them explaining what the article was and then I'll skip to the paragraph where it talks about Panera's-

Joe Rogan 30:36 Do they, uh, do they debunk it?

Christopher Rufo 30:38 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.

Joe Rogan 30:44 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-"

Christopher Rufo 31:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:45 "... appears that Panera is not exempt from the law."

Christopher Rufo 31:48 Whoops. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:49 The legal team reviewed it after they... So, there is an exemption?

Christopher Rufo 31:52 Right, right. So, that's where I was gonna get to this.

Joe Rogan 31:54 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.

Christopher Rufo 32:23 Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 32:24 Interesting, but that makes sense.

Christopher Rufo 32:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:26 That makes sense because they're just... It's like Subway, right? Subway doesn't make the dough either.

Christopher Rufo 32:30 Yeah. That's right. Starbucks doesn't make the dough.

Joe Rogan 32:31 So, this... So, this... But that... Why would you be able to pay people less if you have an-

Christopher Rufo 32:35 At a bakery.

Joe Rogan 32:35 ... an artisan bakery that requires more skill? Like, you're not-

Christopher Rufo 32:38 Like, are the... Is the bakers, uh, lobby that powerful where they're like this?

Joe Rogan 32:42 No, the opposite.

Christopher Rufo 32:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:43 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 32:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:43 I mean, well, the, the, the bakers are the ones who would be lobbying for more money.

Christopher Rufo 32:47 That's what I mean.

Joe Rogan 32:48 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 32:48 The, the actual bakers, yeah. So, I... That... I mean, they... But even look at Snopes. Snopes has done a fact-check on my work that actually got debunked. PolitiFact has done it, Washington Post. They fact-check-

Joe Rogan 32:59 Oh, the history of Snopes is wild.

Christopher Rufo 33:00 ... is wild.

Joe Rogan 33:01 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 33:01 But a lot of these fact-check sites, they've actually had to retract claims against me where they say, "Oh, you know, Chris Rufone is reporting, said X, Y and Z. It's not true." And then I provide them the documentation, the evidence, I raise a stink about it, and then they reverse course. And a l- a lot of these like... That's such a mess of facts. And who do they reach out to, to verify? Governor Newsom's office.

Joe Rogan 33:21 Right.

Christopher Rufo 33:21 Well-

Joe Rogan 33:22 Who said it's absurd.

Christopher Rufo 33:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:23 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 33:23 Of course he's gonna say it's absurd-

Joe Rogan 33:24 Of course.

Christopher Rufo 33:24 ... 'cause he got in trouble for it, so...

Joe Rogan 33:26 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 33:26 But I, I think the point about Biden that you're making is, is, is really instructive because Biden is like the Weekend at Bernie's president.

Joe Rogan 33:34 Yeah, exactly.

Christopher Rufo 33:34 I mean, it's like, they, they, they wheel him around. And so what you get a, a glimpse of is the, the Democratic Party machine. What are their priorities? What are they gonna put on the teleprompter? What is the staff level gonna decide is important? And then they kind of wheel Biden out there to kind of, kind of stammer for a couple minutes, say the talking points and get out. And so we're, we're seeing what's important to the party as a movement. The opposite is Trump. Trump is, you know, uh, a, a, a unique individual figure. The party is following him. Look, these are the two models that we have, and increasingly the voters are saying, "We wanna have a rematch."

Joe Rogan 34:12 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 34:12 What do you think?

Joe Rogan 34:13 Well, uh, it's, it's... It is interesting that he's so frail that he's transparent, right? And he's so transparent to the point where, uh, the White House press secretary accidentally tweeted as him from her account. You saw that?

Christopher Rufo 34:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:27 Right? Which is wonderful. I love when that happens 'cause it's like, "Thank you. I was wondering and now I know," you know.

Christopher Rufo 34:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:32 "I was really confused. I kinda had a feeling it was you."

Christopher Rufo 34:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:36 You know? And is, is there ever been a worse White House press secretary? She's... It's... How, how did she get that job? She's so bad at convincing people. There's, there's a bunch of like hardcore, ideologically-driven, left-wing pundits that are on YouTube that could do a way better job.

Christopher Rufo 34:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:55 And they would be fucking psycho about it.

Christopher Rufo 34:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:57 They would be psycho about it, and the left would be like, "Yeah."

Christopher Rufo 35:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:00 Like, she's not the one.

Christopher Rufo 35:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:01 Like, she's fucking terrible at it. She gets called out for stuff all the time. She gets set up for stuff all the time. Like Peter Doocy is always setting her up. He talks to her about... (laughs) He...

Christopher Rufo 35:10 Doocy's amazing. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:11 He's, he's so good. He'll provide a little bit of this, but then what about that?

Christopher Rufo 35:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:15 And, you know, she's just awful at it.

Christopher Rufo 35:18 And, and she's only really challenged by one person-

Joe Rogan 35:20 Right.

Christopher Rufo 35:20 ... in the briefing room.

Joe Rogan 35:21 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 35:21 And still manages to bungle it on the daily.

Joe Rogan 35:24 Well, it's just there's so-

Christopher Rufo 35:25 But-

Joe Rogan 35:25 ... much madness-

Christopher Rufo 35:26 This-

Joe Rogan 35:26 ... she has to, like, cover up.

Christopher Rufo 35:28 It's what it... And, and look, this is again a, a kind of brass tacks way of talking about it, but it's what happens when you put identity over competence.

Joe Rogan 35:36 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 35:37 Everyone knows, like, explicitly, and then when you hire someone, it's a big celebration of all the different intersectional identities the, the, the candidate has.

Joe Rogan 35:44 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 35:44 You know, this is our first, you know, Black female, I don't know, LGBTQ, not really sure.

Joe Rogan 35:48 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 35:49 Um, and, and so the, the, the problem with that though is when you're not making a decision based on competence, merit, excellence, you're buying into it at the front end on that different hierarchy of decision-making. But then on the backend, you can't do anything about it.

Joe Rogan 36:04 Right.

Christopher Rufo 36:04 You say, "Well, you elevated this person for identity, you can't fire that person because of incompetence."

Joe Rogan 36:09 Unless they steal women's clothes from the airport.

Christopher Rufo 36:12 Y- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:12 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 36:12 Unle- Exactly. Unless they get a little sideways, you know?

Joe Rogan 36:17 (laughs) That guy was my favorite.

Christopher Rufo 36:18 But the, the Harvard story is this exact-

Joe Rogan 36:20 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 36:20 ... phenomenon. And, um, you know, after the 10/7 attack, Harvard kind of reveals the ideology in the institution. And then, um, uh, a- another reporter and I obtained the plagiarism documents. We were the ones who broke the plagiarism story.

Joe Rogan 36:34 Let's... Just for people that aren't aware, for maybe... So, this can be standalone. Uh, what Christopher is referring to is that Harvard, uh-... the, the s-... The president of Harvard and, and the president of MIT and Penn-

Christopher Rufo 36:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:48 ... they all had this meeting where they were grilled by... Who, which was the con-

Christopher Rufo 36:55 Stefanik.

Joe Rogan 36:56 Yes. Who grilled them about using anti-Jewish hate, and is that hate speech to say, "Death to the Jews"? And their answer was essentially, "If it's actionable-

Christopher Rufo 37:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:09 ... then it's hate." It was the most bonkers-

Christopher Rufo 37:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:12 ... bizarre mental gymnastics, and also with that one woman from Penn, done in the most condescending way.

Christopher Rufo 37:18 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:18 It's like she is so accustomed to being the boss, so accustomed to people, like, accepting her word and not dealing with the outside world, that she doesn't realize how fucking insane what she's saying is.

Christopher Rufo 37:31 Yeah. I, uh... The question was, if, if students were, uh, calling for the genocide of Jews, would that violate Harvard's policy?

Joe Rogan 37:41 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 37:41 And the answer from Claudine Gay, the former president, was, "It depends on the context."

Joe Rogan 37:46 (gasps)

Christopher Rufo 37:47 It's like, I mean, o... You know. And so, that is a moment where things that had been, uh, obscure, especially for people on the center-left-

Joe Rogan 37:57 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 37:57 ... suddenly became clear.

Joe Rogan 37:59 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 38:00 Um, and so this caused all sorts of chaos, predictably. Um, you have donors dropping out. You have, uh, alumni furious. And then, uh, a, a little birdie sent, uh, a- another reporter and, and me a document showing that actually, Claudine Gay, you know, great scholar of Harvard, had plagiarized dozens of passages in her PhD thesis. And so, in this context of this big fight, you know, you get a document like this, and you say, "This actually reveals the heart of this conflict." And so, published it. Obviously it causes a huge firestorm. But the question is the same. It's to say, to Harvard, "Okay. DEI is the de facto highest principle of the university now. That's clear. But your motto for the last, you know, three, 400 years has been veritas, truth." And, and we put them in a dilemma where they had to choose one. You either choose DEI or you choose truth. Which one are you gonna sacrifice? And I think as a country, the reason that story drove so much attention, is because that's where we are politically, that's where we are on policy, that's where companies find themselves. Where are we going? What are our values? And we have this competing set of values. And for me, as someone who... Look, I'm, I'm, I'm unabashed. I'm a, a, a, I'm a political person. I try to drive political change. Um, I think framing the question clearly, so that people really understand what's at stake, um, is just the beginning part of the process of getting sanity back.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Yeah, and I think people are wake up... Jamie, why don't you shut your mic off? Because Carl is snoring up a storm over there. (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 39:42 Carl.

Joe Rogan 39:43 (laughs) While you were talking, I was hear... (snores)

Christopher Rufo 39:44 (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:46 ... Geez, Carl, is that boring?

Christopher Rufo 39:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:48 Carl gets bored quick.

Christopher Rufo 39:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:49 He's only four months old.

Christopher Rufo 39:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:52 Um, but wh-... The, the, the curious thing to me was that most people, until they saw those videos, weren't aware of how far it had gone, and, and then they're like, "Okay, now I kind of get it." And there's been a, a, a very, very big reaction since then of people realizing how insane everything has gotten. I think that this is something that, um, came up... Like, when Jordan Peas- Peterson first started doing my show, which was, I think... When was Jordan's first appearance? Was it 2015? 2016?

Christopher Rufo 40:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:21 Somewhere around then? When I had, um, seen his story and, and seen these videos of him being interviewed, explaining to people, "No, you don't understand. If you impose this legislation that makes it a hate crime to not y- use someone's preferred gender pronouns, this is not gonna stop there. It's gonna keep going, and going, and going, and going, and you can't let it happen." And he's right. And back then-

Christopher Rufo 40:48 100% right.

Joe Rogan 40:48 But back then, the pushback was f- so fascinating, because people were like, "Why are you having this guy on your show to talk about this thing that's happening only in these obscure universities? It's never gonna go anywhere." But now you look at it eight years later, and it's fucking everywhere. It's everywhere.

Christopher Rufo 41:04 Dude, I, I... So, one of the things that I do, I'm a trustee at a public university in Florida, New College of Florida. Governor DeSantis appointed me and a number of other reformers to take over this university, uh, replace all of the leadership, and then turn it into a classical liberal arts university. It's in Sarasota. It's a beautiful campus. The tuition is less than $7,000, and we want to turn it into a place where, uh, you know, conservative families can send their kids and feel like they're getting a good education. Um, but when we did this, what we did is, we, we came in, we replaced the leadership, we abolished the DEI department, we terminated the gender studies program, uh, and then we said, "You know, we're not gonna comply with these ridiculous pronoun rules." And so the old DEI director, uh, and then her allies at the ACLU and elsewhere, um, actually filed a federal civil rights complaint against me, so I'm currently under investigation by the fe- by federal civil rights bureaucrats for refusing to call this woman by ze/zir pronouns.

Joe Rogan 42:05 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 42:05 Ze/zir. Not, you know... Okay, trans, okay, man, woman, okay, whatever.

Joe Rogan 42:10 Oh.

Christopher Rufo 42:10 Ze/zir. And it's like, look-

Joe Rogan 42:11 Either way, federal indictment, imagine, imagine, for even just refusing to call this person he/him.

Christopher Rufo 42:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:17 People are, have always been rude.

Christopher Rufo 42:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:19 Are we gonna, like, legislate against rudeness? Are we gonna say that, like, if someone decides to call me Mrs. Rogan, uh, I... Can I, can I get them arrested and locked in a cage 'cause they're being rude to me, 'cause they're calling me a girl?

Christopher Rufo 42:31 If you are a member of a protected class, yes, that's where it's going, that's where they'd like it to go. And look, I have to spin up lawyers. Thankfully, the university is handling it. But I mean-

Joe Rogan 42:41 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 42:41 ... this is not trivial. And the, the, the, what Peterson, you know... Jordan Peterson, great. What he brought up, um, illustrates this point.... if they can get you to lie about something trivial, they can get you to lie about anything.

Joe Rogan 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Christopher Rufo 42:55 It's a simple sales technique. You get people in the door, you get them to buy some small item, you get them to kind of cash up, and then you work them up the chain to a bigger purchase or a bigger commitment or a bigger ideology. It's how cults work.

Joe Rogan 43:08 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 43:09 Um, and so, like, I, I learned this as a kid. My, my father's Italian, from Italy, and we went to Rome, uh, and to, to the Vatican. This, this sales guy, it's like everything about sales and persuasion I learned at, like, 10 years old, um, watching this guy. He came up, he said, "Oh, you know, sir, uh, it's a beautiful day. I had a new grandchild that was born. Let me give you, uh, this beautiful St. Christopher medal," or St., St. Joseph medal, um, uh, "to celebrate this." And as soon as you take it, you know you're hooked, because he's gonna sell you the commemorative Vatican coins for a hundred bucks or whatever.

Joe Rogan 43:40 Mm.

Christopher Rufo 43:41 And so this is the ante, you know? Once you put in the ante, you're playing the hand. And so this stuff is like, it's rage bait for the right. It drives headlines, it drives outrage, it drives, you know, some, some kind of momentum.

Joe Rogan 43:53 Ratings.

Christopher Rufo 43:54 Ratings. But what it's not driving, unfortunately, is a substantive pushback, legal, administrative, policy, and, and, and as far as, uh, uh, kind of deeper cultural changes. But I, I, I'm very concerned, because these are just these gambits where they make, and once they stick, then you're in. It's very hard to roll back. Look at the military. You have-

Joe Rogan 44:16 Right.

Christopher Rufo 44:16 ... all of these, uh, you know, men masquerading as women that are now suddenly elevated in the military hierarchy. This is not trivial. We're the most powerful military in the world. We maintain, uh, you know, kind of international peace.

Joe Rogan 44:30 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 44:30 And it's like now the highest concern is trans? Mm, no. Not n- I don't think that this is, uh, how we should be making decisions, and I don't think that we should be submitting to the original lie. You should never submit to the original lie, because if you do, you can never successfully push back again.

Joe Rogan 44:49 It's, it's certainly odd that they're pushing that. It, it, you know, this is where I get so confused, 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-

Christopher Rufo 45:43 Oh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:43 Yeah. I just wanna point out, what you're saying is transphobic.

Christopher Rufo 45:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:47 And opens up trans people to violence. Like, what?

Christopher Rufo 45:50 I think she was a Stanford law professor.

Joe Rogan 45:53 Uh, she was some- somewhere.

Christopher Rufo 45:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:56 Might've been Berkeley.

Christopher Rufo 45:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:57 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.

Christopher Rufo 46:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:13 "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.

Christopher Rufo 46:22 B- but this is, this is the dominant culture in HR departments, K through 12 schools, universities, government bureaucracies.

Joe Rogan 46:30 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 46:30 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.

Joe Rogan 46:48 More than 50%.

Christopher Rufo 46:49 More than 50%.

Joe Rogan 46:50 What is the odds of that?

Christopher Rufo 46:51 Uh-

Joe Rogan 46:51 In terms of, like, the normal account when they do... If you get a random group of 100 human beings in the country.

Christopher Rufo 46:56 There's a bit of a disparity there.

Joe Rogan 46:58 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 46:58 Uh, you know, especially 'cause, like, nonbinary is fake. It's not a thing.

Joe Rogan 47:02 Right.

Christopher Rufo 47:02 It, it's, it, it just doesn't exist. It's a-

Joe Rogan 47:04 You could be nonbinary.

Christopher Rufo 47:05 I, I mean, maybe I am.

Joe Rogan 47:06 You can be. You just-

Christopher Rufo 47:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:06 ... you just say it.

Christopher Rufo 47:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:07 You just say it. I knew a dude who just said it. He used to date only girls.

Christopher Rufo 47:10 (laughs) That was his, that was his strategy?

Joe Rogan 47:12 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 47:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:13 It's like a, it's like a con.

Christopher Rufo 47:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:14 It's a con. You, you're part of the, the-

Christopher Rufo 47:17 Male feminist, basically.

Joe Rogan 47:17 ... LBGT, exactly. Yeah. Those little cuttlefish.

Christopher Rufo 47:20 You know, it is like a, it's a strategy.

Joe Rogan 47:24 100%.

Christopher Rufo 47:25 And, and it works maybe at the initial, but there are negative consequences.

Joe Rogan 47:28 Yeah, there's flaws. Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 47:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:30 There's flaws, and then once women figure out what you're doing, they don't respect you anymore.

Christopher Rufo 47:34 But what happens, so we go to the university, and, you know, we're the new bosses. The governor gives us a mandate to, to, to do significant changes and reforms. And I remember I took some of my guys, we, we kind of landed on campus the first time. Student protests, death threats, you know, SWAT team mobilized to, to, to protect us. And I remember meeting with the old administrators, you know, and walking in and, and, and, and these are, these are people that are just wagging their finger in my faces, i- in my face, rather, fingers in my face. They're saying, "Oh, you can't do this. You're opening up the community to violence. Um, you're this, blah, blah, blah. You can't host a talk on campus," because th- all, all these, all the same stuff you're talking about. And then I think, like, "All of you are about to get fired. Do you not understand the situation that you're in? Your finger wagging is not gonna work anymore." The governor is tough as nails. He told us before we took over, "If you're not driving massive negative headlines, if you're not, if you're not, if you're not getting flak, um, you're not doing your job. I'll back you up 100%. Go in and make the change." But what I realize in that moment is that the people who have created little nests of power with this ideology have never been challenged. No one in the meeting says, "Actually, this is a stupid idea."

Joe Rogan 48:52 Right.

Christopher Rufo 48:52 "We should get back to business."And so for me, it was this remarkable realization that we've created this social and psychological pattern within our institutions where they're, like, fragile, brittle, um, uh, uh, uh, unhinged because the most passive aggressive, the most ideological, the most kind of nagging person ends up winning. Uh, and if we're gonna have better institutions, we have to have people, men and women, that go in and just say, "No. No more bullshit, no more games, no more ideology. We have a serious job to do. We're gonna get it done. And if you don't join the mission, you're out. Pink slip." You know? And so that's kind of what we did. Um, you saw the same thing at Twitter when Elon took over Twitter. These are the hard decisions that we haven't made in a long time that I think are, are, are, are desperately needed.

Joe Rogan 49:46 I, I think so too, and I think that what they're doing by allowing this culture where every anxiety gets justified and amplified, you're, you're just creating more anxious people. You're creating more fucked up kids. You, you're, you're turning the whole world into this, uh, unfixable, systemically racist, chaotic scene that you have to go out and amend. And you have to amend it through DEI, and you have to amend it through e- equality of outcome, and you have to amend it through tax the rich, and, like, the, the, the whole thing behind it is just so unhinged. And how many of those people, if they had gone to a place where they were met with intellectual challenges by motivated professors who are not ideologically driven who could have taught them m- important things about life that they would remember and apply to the world as they go out and try to make their way? We're not preparing people for that because the people that are preparing the people have never done that, and it's a giant part of the problem. It's like someone teaching you how to do a thing that they don't do.

Christopher Rufo 51:12 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:13 Unless they're teach- That's why I say about drag queens. Unless they're teaching you how to be a drag queen, I'm not interested.

Christopher Rufo 51:20 No, but that's what they're doing. I mean, they're-

Joe Rogan 51:22 Yeah. Yeah, they're doing that, sort of.

Christopher Rufo 51:24 ... they're, they're... For sure, it's a modeling thing. The drag queen comes in, uh, with a position of status, prestige, admiration.

Joe Rogan 51:32 Right, it's Miss Wanda.

Christopher Rufo 51:32 It's presented as this amazing, you know-

Joe Rogan 51:34 Yes.

Christopher Rufo 51:34 ... life path. And even the drag queen theorists, if you read their academic papers, which is not everyone's cup of tea, but I, I, I've, I've made the sacrifice, um, they say very queer- th- very clearly and very queerly, um, they say, "We are, um, uh, training kids to move, uh, into the, uh, queer ideology, the ideology of queer theory, the academic discipline, but also for, um, uh, kind of other ways of knowing, creating a..." You know, one of the phrases they use is, "A site of queer pleasure." Um, and, and it's like they're not hiding the ideology that's driving this, um, uh, if you, if you, if you dig far enough. And they really say, they say, "We need to abolish the heteronormative traditional family because that's oppressive." Having a mother and a father and a nuclear household environment is a form of racism, transphobia, whatever, all of the different, you know, kind of social ills you could imagine. And so we have people that have no sense of responsibility. We've inherited some good and some bad. You're born into the world in a tragic state of being. Your society and your tradition and your history is some mixture of good and bad. I think, on the whole, our history, our tradition is, on net, very positive, very good. Still problems to solve. That's a kind of universal human nature. But what we're training kids to believe is that everything behind them is evil. All of the structures that have provided a sense of discipline and meaning and purpose should be demolished, and they should be replaced by ideological communities. Uh, I, I mean, that, to me, is, is, is evident in the outcomes. We're creating a, a generation of anxious, depressed, suicidal, confused kids that have been deprived of all these structures that could actually help them along. Um, I've seen that across the board in my reporting, in my work as a documentary filmmaker, in my own personal life. And so we have to start first by, I mean, assessing your own situation. What do I do with my kids?

Joe Rogan 53:35 Right.

Christopher Rufo 53:35 And a lot of people are asking that question right now. I don't know about you, but when I grew up, if you were a upper middle class, professional class household, your parents, you know, bought a house in a nice neighborhood, enrolled you in public K- kindergarten, and you kind of went up. It was set it and forget it.

Joe Rogan 53:51 Mm-hmm.

Christopher Rufo 53:51 That's over. Parents are finally starting to say, "Hey, wait a minute. I actually have to look into this. I wanna be careful and considerate about, you know, where I'm sending my kids and, and, and what kind of life I'm raising them, uh, to live."

Joe Rogan 54:06 Yes. And there's not a lot of good options. That's what gets confusing. And for a lot of my friends whose kids are, uh, about to go to high school and about to go to college, you know, they're making these next steps in- towards adulthood. It- it's- it's- it's really scary to them 'cause they're like, "Look, your kid can go down the wrong fucking road, man. They can go down the wrong road and not be able to self-correct, get caught up in momentum, and not realize that you're not contributing to any good. You're, you're just fucking things up worse." And that none of this unhoused, or home free, or whatever you wanna call it, it's not helping anybody. All this language, all this verbiage, it's not helping anybody. And you, you have to fucking work hard to get by in this world, and it's important. It's- it's an important fact- facet of being a human being.... you, you have to learn what your capabilities are. You have to learn how to push yourself. You have to learn to do things that make you uncomfortable. You have to learn that. And the only way you fucking learn that is by going through it. And if we protect kids every step of the way from any sort of difficult thing at all, lower math scores, because people... too many people aren't graduating, so this must be racist. Let's lower the scores. Let's, uh, let's just pass people. Fuck it. We don't wanna be bad people. Let's just pass people instead of teaching them. It's hard to learn shit. It's hard.

Christopher Rufo 55:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:29 It takes work. That's the whole reason why it's so impressive when someone is really well-read. Like, "Wow, that guy put in the work."

Christopher Rufo 55:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:37 It's really impressive when someone knows a lot of stuff. It's really impressive when someone's really good at something. Well, why is it impressive? Because we know it's fucking hard to do. It's that simple. If you wanna develop human beings that have potential and have... and can reach their full potential in this life and be a fulfilled human being, you gotta teach them how to work hard. That's part of the pro- the process. It's unavoidable. And if you don't have that facet, if you don't have that as a core tenet of how you view the world, you're fucking up, 100%. There's no way you're gonna get everything out of life without hard work. It just... You'll be anxious. You'll be depressed. You'll b- You'll feel lost. You won't feel like you accomplished anything. You'll feel like it's been handed to you. You'll be a trust fund baby. You'll be fucked. It's not good for you. You have to work hard. And so you have to overcome, including emotional harm. You have to go through bullshit. You have to go through bad friendships and bad relationships and, and bad coworkers and bad employers. You have to go through that. It's part of the process. It's how you become a human being. And you can't protect people every goddamn step of the way, or we're just gonna create a bunch of grown-up babies-

Christopher Rufo 56:54 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:55 ... who are screaming in the streets, "Stop oil now," blocking the highway with signs painted with oil, wearing sneakers made with oil. Every fucking thing they own was driven by a truck that was powered by oil. It's insanity. And this is what we've got.

Christopher Rufo 57:11 And y- y- people... Look, I, I, I'm in that world of words, ideas, publication. It's a pretty easy life in some ways, right? You know, you're doing reading, you're doing writing, you're doing media. Um, but I have a lot of friends, uh, that are... you know, live in my small town that do actual hard work. You know, they're doing...

Joe Rogan 57:29 Carpentry.

Christopher Rufo 57:29 They're working in the oil business.

Joe Rogan 57:31 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 57:31 They're working on commercial plumbing. They're working in-

Joe Rogan 57:33 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 57:33 ... actual real things that, that we depend on but we take for granted.

Joe Rogan 57:37 Right.

Christopher Rufo 57:37 And those things are actually hard. Uh-

Joe Rogan 57:39 Super fucking hard.

Christopher Rufo 57:39 Those things are super hard. It takes a ton of dedication, a ton of skill, and it's the reason that those of us who are privileged enough, in the real sense of the word, can do what we do. We depend on this entire infrastructure o- of the actual physical world. And so, um, I get endlessly frustrated with people who have these... "Ban oil." Oh, ban oil? Our whole society collapses instantly.

Joe Rogan 58:03 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 58:03 Everything that you do is... vanishes in, in 10 seconds. And so it's like we've created people with not only no connection to the real world around them, but they have no connection to their own nature as human beings. I mean, these are people that don't know what it means to be human. They're just kind of symbols of ideology. They're, they're, they're like... You know, you look at those videos and you're like, these are not people who are, uh, making even conscious decisions. These are kind of puppets as part of some, uh, agenda, as part of some memetic ideology that is, um, nihilistic at, at its heart. And that's where I think we're going. If you hate your traditions, you hate your history, you hate your economy, um, you hate your, your own skin color, you know, y- y- y- y- y- you have no sense of values. And that's what we all want at the... We all operate on a sense of values, whether it's conscious or unconscious. And when you try to wipe away all s-... all, all existing values as somehow oppressive or racist or patriarchal, you're dooming people who need to grow up in a world where they know, you know, north from south.

Joe Rogan 59:12 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 59:12 They know up from down.

Joe Rogan 59:14 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 59:14 Um, and so, you know, with my own kids, that's what I'm trying to do is, is, is pr- you know, protect them, uh, to the extent that's necessary, create good influences, create some structure, and then prepare them to fight. Uh, because life is a, a fight. Life is a struggle. They're gonna confront, uh, very difficult things as they grow up. And, you know, and then at some point, you know, you hope that you've prepared them enough.

Joe Rogan 59:38 (smacks lips) Yeah. And when you're looking at the difference between the world of today and the world of just 20 years ago, the change is so quick. I- there's never been a moment in time where so much of society collapsed so quickly. Like, what, what year was it? Was it 2020 that we had the highest jump in murder ever?

Christopher Rufo 1:00:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:01 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.

Christopher Rufo 1:02:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 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-

Christopher Rufo 1:02:15 What, down in Santa Monica or something?

Joe Rogan 1:02:16 It was in Woodland Hills.

Christopher Rufo 1:02:17 Woodland Hills?

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 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?

Christopher Rufo 1:03:20 Rachel S-

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 (laughs)

Christopher Rufo 1:03:20 S- sir, or-

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 LeVine?

Christopher Rufo 1:03:21 Madam Rachel Levine.

Joe Rogan 1:03:22 Yeah, Madam ...

Christopher Rufo 1:03:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:24 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.

Christopher Rufo 1:03:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 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."

Christopher Rufo 1:04:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 "Give me that gun, you motherfucker."

Christopher Rufo 1:04:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 "Get out of here. You can't work here anymore."

Christopher Rufo 1:04:32 It's like putting Kanye in charge of like an airwing in the Air Force or something. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 (laughs) Just-

Christopher Rufo 1:04:37 Like, whoa, I don't know about that, yeah. Um ...

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 It's just nuts-

Narrator 1:04:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:41 ... 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.

Christopher Rufo 1:06:35 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-

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 Yeah.

Christopher Rufo 1:06:48 ... in a sorority house somewhere, and look, obviously, you know, this guy's a pervert. That, full stop. That is a, a kind of patently obvious thing, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 Which certainly could be.

Christopher Rufo 1:06:59 They're, they're, they're exploiting it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 He's certainly-

Christopher Rufo 1:07:00 They're manipulating it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 You should certainly consider the possibility that he's a pervert.

Christopher Rufo 1:07:04 I think it's a, at, at, at, at, at the minimum a-... big, bright red flag that is waving in your face. But the question is an institutional question. You know, w- who are, who the, the, you know, the fathers of these young girls, the deans of the universities, the university presidents, it's like, "Hey, wait a minute, like, accommodate this person, try to talk to this person, figure out what the deal is, assess whether it actually is kind of a, a real threat or not, um, figure out some alternate arrangement for this person." But especially if the young women are telling you, "We don't want this, we're uncomfortable with this, we don't like this. Get this person out," it's a failure on our social institutions that we haven't developed a, any kind of method for solving this problem.

Joe Rogan 1:07:51 Well, it also shows our oppression hierarchy that we have always protected women from sexual predators unless that sexual predator identifies as a group that has a social hierarchy above biological women, which is a trans woman, and that's where we're at.

Christopher Rufo 1:08:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:10 And it just shows that this is cult thinking. We're in a cult. This is a doctrine that could've been created in the top of a mountain by a wizard. It's nonsense. It's fucking nonsense. And somehow or another, it is the norm in a lot of universities, and it's fucking crazy. And these women that have to deal with this shit, that's, it's fucking nuts that people aren't insanely outraged-

Christopher Rufo 1:08:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:38 ... and that it's not stopped immediately.

Christopher Rufo 1:08:40 People are scared. That- that- that's the common denominator to all of these things.

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 But the problem is the rebound of that is, are equally horrific 'cause the rebound of that is that people have enough. And then when people have enough and they find out there's this biological male that's being housed in this women's sorority and this biological man, maybe he does something to one of those women, that person... There's gonna be vigilante justice, and that's the last thing you want.

Christopher Rufo 1:09:06 We want to avoid that by having sensible policies now and head off these problems before they balloon into something that is unmanageable. And so... But, you know, it's like-

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 If it's not already.

Christopher Rufo 1:09:18 Again, people are scared to speak out. You talk to folks that are... You know, I- I used to have this idea that, "Oh, you know, there's the concept of fuck you money." Once you have a certain kind of net worth, uh, you're untouchable, uh, you, you have, you're kind of immune to, to, to social consequences. You can do whatever you want. That's not even true. I talked to a lot of folks, um, of, of, you know, considerable m- means and not all of them, but many of them are also scared because there's status and prestige concerns, family concerns, business concerns, and so it really is up and down the line. People are scared to speak. They're scared to tell the truth, and because there are real social consequences for doing so.

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 Well, there's real, real consequences across the board. It's not just social. There's economic consequences. There's, there's, you know, there's consequences in terms of your own personal safety.

Christopher Rufo 1:10:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:13 There's a lot, a lot of weird shit is going on that people are just tolerating, and it's so strange for me for... You know, I'm 56 years old. I was born in 1967. Uh, I lived in a different world. And, you know, I grew up in a world with no internet. And so to watch this world change the way... and to be a part of the internet now and to st- to have li- existed in both worlds-

Christopher Rufo 1:10:35 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:35 ... is a very fascinating contrast because I get to see... Like how old are you?

Christopher Rufo 1:10:39 39.

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 Okay. So you don't know shit. You don't know shit about the pre-internet days.

Christopher Rufo 1:10:43 (laughs) I didn't get a cell phone till my senior year in high school.

Joe Rogan 1:10:46 (laughs) Oh, you poor baby.

Christopher Rufo 1:10:46 Yeah, it's like-

Joe Rogan 1:10:47 But you had a computer at home though, huh?

Christopher Rufo 1:10:49 Yeah, we had a computer for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 And it was attached to the internet?

Christopher Rufo 1:10:51 It was attached to like AOL, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:52 Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a little... something.

Christopher Rufo 1:10:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:55 Um, he kids today, like the 20-year-olds, they don't know jack shit about no internet. They have-

Christopher Rufo 1:10:58 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:10:59 They have full 5G everywhere they exist, and they're always on.

Christopher Rufo 1:11:03 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:03 They're always on. They're always on. They also know where everybody's location is because they use Snap Map. They're all, they're all Snap Mapping each other. So they know like, "Oh my God. She told me she was gonna go to Becky's house, but she's over at Debbie's house." Like, (laughs) you know, like, it's like-

Christopher Rufo 1:11:16 It's like surveillance of your friends.

Joe Rogan 1:11:18 ... it's fucking nuts, man.

Christopher Rufo 1:11:18 Can you imagine? Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:19 It's also it gets you very accustomed to the idea that you have no privacy, which is, uh, a reality that we will soon sh- soon face. And the problem is also that the same people that are involved in pushing these psychotic policies, they're not just the educators. There are also these institutions that recognize the power dynamic and the amount of influence that you can have if you can get people to adhere to these things. You can get them to do something really stupid, like submit to a social credit score system, which you would attach to a centralized digital currency. Now you've got communism and it's (snaps fingers) like that. It's very quick. And just like people self-censors, censored on, on Twitter and self-censored on you- before Elon Musk and self-censor on YouTube because they don't want to get demonetized, people start doing that in regular society. They will do that because you don't want your social credit score system to, to drop. And it could be something as simple, simple as not using ze/zir.

Christopher Rufo 1:12:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:22 Not using ze/zir and all of a sudden you get hit with a federal charge of not using ze/zir and now you are, uh, being tried for discrimination. And if those fucking psychos are in charge, you might get convicted. And now all of a sudden you've got a real Soviet Union style gulag situation in 2029 United States of America with Admiral Levine as our first female president.

Christopher Rufo 1:12:51 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:12:52 Yeah, that could be our first female president.

Christopher Rufo 1:12:54 I mean, we... Could... It's... But, but we're not far from there right now.

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 No.

Christopher Rufo 1:12:57 I mean, the, the, the absurdity of the ACLU filing a complaint and now the Department of Education Civil Rights Division following up for refusing to use ze/zir pronouns-

Joe Rogan 1:13:06 (gasps)

Christopher Rufo 1:13:06 I mean, it's like it is what it is. This is something we're already here. And, and so the, the first step is to intimidate, right?It's an intimidation mechanism. You gotta defend yourself, you gotta get a lawyer, you have to spend time on it. Right. Maybe you'll get deposed or subpoenaed for your records and texts and-

Joe Rogan 1:13:21 Right.

Christopher Rufo 1:13:21 ... documents. Um, and so a formal social credit system that's tied to, like, your digital identity would just take this to the Nth power. And, you know, I spent a year living in Western China when I was a documentary filmmaker, and, uh, this is like where the Uyghurs are. The Uyghurs are the Muslim minority population of China's west, um, and they're, you know, ruled by the Han Chinese, who comprise the, the majority of the country. And so I was observing kind of what they're doing, what they were doing over time, and, uh, and it gets to be a centralized control over your identity. You know, they wouldn't allow Uyghur men to wear mustaches, like trivial things that are, that are, that are the beginning. But then it's like very serious kind of regulation of thought and opinion, and so it's propaganda that is backed up by force. That's really all that we're talking about. And we have, in a much milder form, like a, like a, a kind of like a light beer form, um, propaganda that is backed up by, by the force of the state. Um, and we have to push at every opportunity and, look, I'm a conservative, I work with conservative politicians, intellectuals, because we're cobbling together the only viable counter-movement. You can't solve this by culture alone. You have to get in the arena of politics, you have to change the law, and you have to replace institutions that are broken with new institutions. It's an uphill fight. There's not a huge reservoir of talent and resources at our disposal, but what I've been trying to do, whether it's with 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:02 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-

Christopher Rufo 1:17:23 It's negotiation.

Joe Rogan 1:17:24 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.

Christopher Rufo 1:17:55 For sure.

Joe Rogan 1:17:55 And then when you have this leftist judge that says that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million-

Christopher Rufo 1:18:00 Abroad.

Joe Rogan 1:18:01 ... 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.

Christopher Rufo 1:18:11 Yeah. (laughs) And I, I, yeah, and the Mar-a-Lago property is, is not worth $18 million. I mean, that's absurd.

Joe Rogan 1:18:16 Isn't it like 18 acres?

Christopher Rufo 1:18:17 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.

Joe Rogan 1:19:14 Right.

Christopher Rufo 1:19:14 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