Proof the US Just Passed the Point of No Return | Michael Malice

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1:43Michael Malice:There is this rise of explicit socialism reclaiming that term on the left, which has been for a long time and with obvious good reason, a very dirty word. But I can understand the psychology because if you're being told every single day that Donald Trump is this Hitler figure, he's the worst thing to happen in America, including slavery, and then you lose with the Kamala corporate PAC party person, it's like, guys, we got to double down. We got to fight because otherwise, in their mindset, another term of Trump or Trump Jr. would destroy America. So it's kind of, we're at a point where both political tribes genuinely think, maybe not incorrectly, that one more term of the opposing team is going to be the end of this country as we know it.

2:36Michael Malice:They might be both wrong. They might be both right. But that's a scary place to be when you have this level of animus because things can quickly spiral out of control, both in a legal sense and in an extra legal sense.

2:56All right, it's June 29th, 2026. I'm Dave Rubin. This is The Rubin Report, and I am joined by my old friend, host of Your Welcome, Michael Malice, the Willy Wonka of politics. That really should be the name of your show, or it should be on your epitaph or something.

3:17Michael Malice:Well, okay. First of all, I am an old friend because we're both turning 50 imminently. Let's not talk about epitaphs as we look at 50 years old, babe. I think that word is creeping in a little too soon to both of our consciousnesses. Fair enough, fair enough. So this is airing on Monday the 29th at 11 a.m. People know that it's a prerecord because I am actually in D.C. right now. I went to see, or I'm going to see as we tape this, depending on which side of the time continuing we're on. I'm going to see Bill Maher get the Kennedy Center Award, which I'm very excited about. But I did not realize that you also, I just turned 50 on the 26th, you are turning 50, what did you tell me, on July 11th?

4:01Is that what you said? July 12th, the day Hamilton died, yes. July 12th. So we are of a certain age. We are Gen Xers. And why don't we maybe start there? Because we're just going to kind of shoot the you-know-what about the issues of the day. Have the Gen Xers failed us here? Just that the gerontocracy and the 80-year-olds held on so long, and now we seem to be handing everything to the young kids. Did our guys, did our generation with Elon and maybe a few exceptions just not do what we were supposed to do to save the world?

4:33Michael Malice:What do you mean supposed to do? I mean, I'm hostile body language. I think Gen X speaks pretty well for itself. I think certainly maybe not on the political side, but that's a mess across the board. Well, I'm talking about from the political side. I think Gen Xers in general, we put aside all the racist stuff. We put aside the homophobia. We did all that stuff. We really were a very good special generation that grew up at the peak 80s America stuff. And there was so much newness all the time and music and creation and movies and video games and sports was great. But did we not do something along the way to grab some of the political part?

5:10But I'm happy to talk about it from a wider lens too.

5:12Michael Malice:No, I think you're correct. I think it's kind of odd that politics is going from boomer to the generation after us. We're like the dad who left to get cigarettes and never came home. I think we're largely underrepresented. I think Janie Vance might be one obviously prominent example. To the contrary, I'm sure there's plenty of others that I can think of off the top of my head. But yeah, it did seem to seem - But I think he's Gen Y or millennial. Is he? So yeah, I can't think of one. I'm sure if I sat down and did the math, there's plenty of people. But it has been going from like 80s, 70s and 80-year-olds, Trump, Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Mitch McConnell, to Donnie, the AOC types.

5:50Michael Malice:I'm sure you saw on Tuesday where there were these sweeps of these Democratic socialists, which seem to be taking over the Democratic Party, which is something that the Democratic Party corporate hacks are none too happy with, despite what they might claim to the contrary publicly. so I mean are we looking at a future between like 80 year old MAGA types and Mamdani types I mean this is I feel like a boomer in this sense because I feel a lot of times when boomers look at contemporary politics especially the boomers who don't like Trump's style and persona you know they think it vulgar whatever and they're like I don't have a horse in this race I hate them both I think sometimes those of us in Gen X if you're looking at like uh you know like the Mamdani people or the Cathy Hochul people.

6:34Michael Malice:It's like, my God, like, what do you do? Right. So what do you make of where the Democrats are at right now? I mean, you've written a lot about authoritarian regimes and you've been to North Korea and wrote a whole book about it. And you know an awful lot about Soviet Russia and everything else. Like, what is going on with these Democrats right now? I got to tell you, maybe you're not going to be too happy to hear this, I don't think Mamdani is a worse mayor than Bill de Blasio was. I mean, I think he talks a big game and I and you and I think a lot of people were kind of nervous that when day one he comes into office, he's going to put his you know what on the desk and be like, this is my house now.

7:19Michael Malice:He has no allegiance to the Democratic Party apparatus as a whole. They fought him, just like Trump had no allegiance to the Republican establishment, certainly in 2016, He knew everything they could to keep him from getting the nomination. We're none too happy when he was the nominee and was certain to lose. But at the same time, in terms of being a mayor, maybe my standards are so low. You and I both fled the New York City area. I don't see anything he's doing that's largely outside the mainstream of Democratic Party history. And to the other side, he's in the White House shaking hands with Trump.

7:55Michael Malice:Now, this is something that, you know, and Gretchen Wittner was in that Oval Office. She was covering her face with a file folder that somehow that would make her invisible. I think most Democrats, you know, Andrew Cuomo, when he was governor, was heavily criticized for praising Trump during COVID. And it was very, you know, Trump was poison. You can't say one positive thing about him. And he kind of broke that taboo. So it's a very weird situation what's going on with the Democrats. I would be more concerned, one more point, if they didn't have such huge landslides in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

8:28Michael Malice:So if either of those candidates went down or if either of those candidates didn't win as heavily as they did, then all signs would be like, all right, the Mamdani wing is the wing of the future. Like that's where our electoral success will be. But they didn't have that as the result. The Virginia and New Jersey wins were much bigger. So now they still have to have this crossroads. Right. You know, interestingly for the record, I, my fear was never that it would be day one with him where it would, he'd slam it on the desk and here we go. I, I always felt from months ago, I was saying what I think will happen is that for about a year they can kind of fake it and it'll sort of look good.

9:07And what I was worried about was that it'll start scaling. And I do think it's starting to scale right now. So even, so I'll go with you that let's say his, let's say his policies are just a little more, this isn't exactly what I think, But for the purpose of the argument, let's just say his policies are just a little more socialist and a little more communist than, say, Bill de Blasio. Let's go with that. My bigger issue would be that he's mixing a little Islamism or jihadism into it and what's going on with radical Islam. What do you make of that?

9:36Michael Malice:Well, I think the blueprint for that is— Like putting aside the economic part for a second. Right. I think the blueprint for that is Sadiq Khan, who is the mayor of London, who is the mayor after Boris Johnson, which is quite an odd pairing. And you see this also in the mayor of, was it Seattle or Portland? I forget which one, where this very young woman who's an open socialist was elected. Somewhere in Austria, I'm blanking what city, elected their first communist mayor. Obviously, that's not in the United States. So there is this rise of explicit socialism reclaiming that term on the left, which has been for a long time and with obvious good reason, a very dirty word.

10:15Michael Malice:But I can understand the psychology because if you're being told every single day that Donald Trump is this Hitler figure, he's the worst thing to happen in America, including slavery, and then you lose with the Kamala corporate PAC party person, it's like, guys, we got to double down. We got to fight because otherwise, in their mindset, another term of Trump or Trump Jr. would destroy America. So it's kind of, we're at a point where both political tribes genuinely think, maybe not incorrectly, that one more term of the opposing team is going to be the end of this country as we know it. They might be both wrong.

10:56Michael Malice:They might be both right. But that's a scary place to be when you have this level of animus because things can quickly spiral out of control, both in a legal sense and in an extra legal sense. so so what would you say those of us broadly on the right or at least that are not socialist communist part of that thing are there better techniques that we should be doing to um to disconnect people from these bad ideas you know beyond mocking them and we can call them out we can say why capitalism's better and why socialism doesn't work like like what are the better techniques? Because I think we all have to level up right now.

11:38Otherwise, I think you're right. We will end up in a cold civil war.

11:41Michael Malice:There'll just be no way around it. I don't know that I know what those better techniques are. First of all, I think a lot of this is follow the money, like with any situation like this. Where are the Momdani types getting their funding? Who's paying for their social media? Also, AOC is not exactly a rocket scientist, right? And her social media game is second to none. So it would behoove Republicans to reverse engineer, figure out, okay, what is she's doing that's working for her so well? There's what, 40, let's suppose, people in the house whose names people know off the top of their heads, and even that's being generous.

12:18Michael Malice:The fact that everyone in America knows this broad's name isn't due to any bills she's passed. It's simply due to her social media game, and because she's kind of cute, but that has a limited shelf life, as you and I are both well aware as we approach 50 and have reached 50. But that is something where - That's not why they're coming to the show. Come on, come on. But I mean, you and I, to that point, you and I are both old enough to remember, during Obama, the media were creaming themselves because Obama's social media game is so great and they've leveraged Facebook and the Republicans are cavemen and they're never going to be elected because the social media game is just on lock.

12:56Michael Malice:And then Donald Trump, who was never elected to anything, who was regarded politically as a joke, tweeted his way into the White House. So all these tools or techniques that either team uses are public. And it just takes enough young people, I would think, to be like, all right. But the thing is, I don't think Mitch McConnell and Mitch McConnell types are listening to their grandkids to be like, this is what you need to do on Instagram. This is what you need to do on TikTok and so on. I'm pretty sure they have Mitch McConnell with the air thing in his mouth right now, forcing him to watch this show every day.

13:28So we'll see. Maybe some of this will get through. I don't know. You know, they prop him up once a day. It's like Dracula. They open up the thing. It's so ridiculous that he's still in office. Let me ask you this. What do you, do you think that it is in some sense just a function of our freedom and the beauty of this country and all it was set up upon, that we are now allowing these terrible ideas to flourish. That because we put freedom at such a high place in the hierarchy here, that it's going to allow terrible people to come in and quite literally take our freedoms away from us.

14:04Michael Malice:Yes and no. I think it's also because people on the right don't understand, as well as people on the left, that human beings aren't truth-seeking animals. We are narrative-seeking animals. so you can give me all the stats and statistics about rent control and uh you know hunger and communist countries i don't care if you're telling me a story that i can't put food on the table because elon muslim just became a trillionaire and that rings true in my mind you've got my support so it's entirely a function of telling the right stories that reach people and when you have nothing or you are at the bottom of the totem pole and have little to lose and someone's like screw both of them, I'm your guy, that's going to resonate with a lot of people.

14:50Michael Malice:And I think we're at a point across the political spectrum where people feel the sense of hopelessness and the sense of, politics is crazy, where are we going? So anyone who speaks with an air of certainty, even if they're blowing smoke out of their ass, is still going to come off as a leader because just on an emotional level, it feels like this guy knows what he's talking about. In a world where everything seems to cost more and deliver less, Angel's doing something pretty special for America's 250th birthday. Right now you can become a premium Angel Guild member for just$15 a month, normally$20, and with that price locked in for an entire year.

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16:44But it seems to me, this is still the best country in the world. I see no reason to leave it or abandon it. Everyone still wants to come here. And yet, and even if you look at what's happened in the last week, where all these people from all over the world are coming here from the world cup. And there's all these amazing videos where you've got like Japanese people eating barbecue for the first time. And they think it's the greatest thing. And there, you have people from Norway walking into Walmart and they're blown away Like, it seems to me it's more of a psychological condition of things are pretty good, could always be better, but we think they're horrible, and that's actually not true.

17:20Michael Malice:Well, you're not going to find anyone who loves this country more than I do, especially being an immigrant. I am very conscious of how much I love America as we reach our 250th birthday. But I always say I love this – I hate the government because I love my country, right? So I think the upsetness that people have is because the politics seem to be completely incoherent and broken. It seems that there's absolutely no ability on virtually any issue to find a majority consensus and coherence. Part of this is due to the fact that the House is basically – there is no majority. The Republicans have one or two seats, but there's at least three or four Republicans that Trump can't rely on.

17:56Michael Malice:So you're not getting legislation through. So when there is this stalemate and people seem to be just running for re-election, a lot of people are upset because I think inflation, especially in prices, is something that hits everybody, especially the poorest of the poor. And you're going to blame the president. You're going to blame politics in general. And, yeah, I think that's a very fair reason for people to be distraught. And listen, just because we're the best country in the world doesn't mean everything's fine. You're not saying everything's fine, certainly. but I think there's this sense of where are we going as a country that seems to be pervasive.

18:31Michael Malice:And when people have that sense of wandering in the desert, that's not good psychologically for them. So what would you do if you were advising Trump right now? If you got the call and they were like, Malice, you understand, you know, some of the underbelly of the internet stuff. We need some help messaging. We got to fix some of this. We get this ascendant socialist communist thing. What do we do to inspire the right people to get out there and wake up and vote and talk to their neighbors and everything else? Honestly, I don't think it would be that hard. I think it would be a matter of doing just a lot of focus groups, figuring out, okay, what messages resonate with people?

19:11Michael Malice:What messages don't? I think Trump as a leader is a very visceral figure. He flies off his mouth all the time. I think that's overwhelmingly a positive for him, but sometimes it's a negative. I also think that internationally, he is fumbling the ball more than he needs to. I think he's often making enemies where he could be making just people who are scared of him. Like Giorgio Maloney, who's the prime minister of Italy, he recently said, oh, she was begging me for a photo. And she's like, you're lying. I never said that. That's the kind of thing where even if she was, she wasn't, you're picking a fight you didn't need to pick.

19:50Michael Malice:So I think a lot of times his bravado and his antagonism is an issue. locally he doesn't have the majority and i think the the democrats have been very smart and i'm kind of shocked maybe it was pelosi who i think is the smartest strategic strategic thinker that they have who told them sit down and shut up and let the republicans have a circular firing squad and we have a binary political system so when the republicans all destroy themselves we're going to pick up the slack and that seems to have been their strategy and it's working wonders for them in my opinion. You know, I'm not a black pill guy, but, and you did write a book called The White Pill and you've got the, uh, it's right behind you.

20:33I mean, so are you very black pilled in that sense when it, when it comes to midterms and which way this thing's going to go? Well, I'm not a Republican at all. I'm not black. No, I know. I know you're not a Republican, but in that your idea set, I know you're an anarchist. Okay, fine. But like your idea set is more friendly, let's say, to people on the right than on the left. Fair to say?

20:55Michael Malice:Yeah, but I don't know that the—so I hate to break it to you, but I don't think the budget has grown smaller under Trump and the Republicans than it did under Biden. And I think Trump, with the Democratic Congress, is in fight mode, and that's him at his best. I think people forget that in 2018, the first Trump midterms, it was a given that they were going to lose the Senate. And then they started pulling that Kavanaugh BS and they blew their shot at the Senate. So I know a lot of people on the right correctly think the Republicans can't take a win when they have a chance to just shoot themselves in the foot.

21:31Michael Malice:and they forget how often the Democrats do that as well and blow good opportunities because at the end of the day, they have their own crazy base and it's really hard for the Pelosi sometimes to tell them to sit down and shut up because you're spooking Karen and Karen is the swing vote that decides elections in this country. Yeah, listen, I'm completely with you on that. I mean, I keep saying it. It's like in a weird way, the best thing that could have happened is this crazy result out of New York City. Let three more of these people appear, let them all go in on democrat socialism communism bust out all the jihad stuff the endlessly scream free palestine and then come november maybe the average person the average person who maybe isn't a hardcore republican or democrat might just walk into the booth and be like ah one more time for america as opposed to going all in on the other stuff in the virginia race abigail what's her last name i'm blanking her last name spanberger spanberger other thing shellberger um she was asked during the campaign about trans kids and she goes, oh, that's an interesting issue.

22:31Michael Malice:What I want to talk about how my opponent has no economic plan. It was a seamless transition. Ha ha. But point being, she knew how to stick to the issue that would win, even though governing, she's going to govern from the left. So they have the discipline. And I think a lot of Republicans in Congress really don't like each other and they don't like the direction the party is going. It's going to pick up that slack. But it also depends on the candidates in different races. You're not beating Klobuchar in Minnesota for the gubernatorial race. It looks like Michigan might elect a Muslim senator for the first time in history.

23:09Michael Malice:So I'd be looking at Georgia. I'd be looking at Ohio, which I think if Vivek loses, the Senate seat might be lost as well. And of course, Maine is the big question. Here's the big thing that drives me crazy. People have this delusion that moderates are more electable than ideologues. Well, Romney and McCain lost, and Trump won two or three times, depending on who you ask. So the idea that a moderate Republican with a big history behind her, huge vote-getter, is a shoo-in over a radical, I think he's actually literally mentally ill person. I don't think he's actually not crazy. Right, Plattner you're talking about.