Background and career
David Joshua Rubin (born June 26, 1976) is an American conservative political commentator, talk show host, YouTuber, and author. He is the host of The Rubin Report, a talk show on YouTube and the BlazeTV network. The program was first launched in 2013 as part of the TYT Network; Rubin left in 2015, citing ideological differences. He previously co-hosted LGBTQ-themed talk shows, including The Ben and Dave Show (2007–2008) and The Six Pack (2009–2012), both with Ben Harvey. Rubin originally aligned with progressive politics during his time at The Young Turks. He has written that his views began to shift after observing public debates involving figures such as Cenk Uygur, Ben Affleck, Bill Maher, and Sam Harris, as well as responses to the Charlie Hebdo shooting. He later described himself as a classical liberal, and in the 2020s as a conservative and libertarian. He has been a frequent critic of progressivism and the Democratic Party.
Rubin was born on June 26, 1976, in Brooklyn, New York City. He grew up in a "fairly secular Jewish household on Long Island". He spent his adolescence in Syosset, New York, and then he resided on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for thirteen years. He attended Binghamton University, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science in 1998. In 1997, he spent a semester at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel.
In 1998, Rubin started his career in comedy doing stand-up and attending open-mics in New York City. In 1999, he became an intern at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2000, Rubin continued his career at the New York City–based Comedy Cellar. Later that year he joined with other Comedy Cellar comedians to create a public-access television series, a news program parody called The Anti-Show which was secretly filmed at NBC Studios in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In 2002, he co-founded several New York City–based comedy clubs, including Joe Franklin's Comedy Club and The Comedy Company in Times Square, where he continued to do stand-up until 2007. Rubin was the host of two podcasts, Hot Gay Comics and The Ben and Dave Show, which were turned into a television series on the here! television network. In May 2009, Rubin co-created and co-hosted the podcast The Six Pack. From October 2011 to December 2012, The Six Pack was on Sirius XM Radio as a live talk show. As of 2024, Rubin also stars in The New Norm as Chaz, a non-binary influencer who moves in with Norm and his family as a form of parole to re-educate him.
While a part of Sirius XM, Rubin created his own account on YouTube called "Rubin Report" in early September 2012. In January 2013, Rubin joined The Young Turks, where he hosted the show The Rubin Report. He moved from New York City to Los Angeles, California. On March 1, 2015, The Young Turks YouTube channel announced that Rubin would be moving to the media company RYOT. Shortly after, Larry King's Ora TV picked up the show which debuted on September 9, 2015. He left Ora TV in 2016, opting to run The Rubin Report independently. The Rubin Report had an affiliation with the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies, a Koch family foundations–funded organization which sponsored a few of his episodes in the past. Rubin frequently appears as a speaker at events hosted by Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization. Rubin has been a podcast guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, Coffee with Scott Adams, and The Ben Shapiro Show. In 2017, he starred in a video by the conservative media company PragerU titled "Why I Left the Left". Rubin's book Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason was published in April 2020 by Sentinel. It made The New York Times Best Seller list, but was critically panned. In December 2021, Rubin sold his Los Angeles house and announced that he was moving to Miami, Florida. In his announcement, he criticized California Governor Gavin Newsom as an "unbearable tyrant who dared to extend his emergency powers and then immediately take a $200,000 vacation." He also cited "high crime", "high taxes", "vaccine passports and mask conformity" as reasons for his decisions to move from California.
In 2015, Rubin launched The Rubin Report. On his show, Rubin interviews and speaks with journalists, activists, authors, comedians, and professors. Topics discussed on his show include freedom of speech, political correctness, foreign policy, and religion. Guests on his show have included Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Larry Elder, Steven Crowder, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray, John McCain, and others. Rubin has also hosted more controversial figures on his show, including Lauren Southern, Mike Cernovich, and Milo Yiannopoulos. Until late 2018, Rubin's show received much of its funding through Patreon, a crowdfunding site on which Rubin said he received over $10,000 per month before deletion. Rubin and Jordan Peterson announced their intent to leave the platform following Sargon of Akkad's ban, which they described as an assault on free speech. In a video shortly thereafter, the two announced their interest in developing an independent, free speech-oriented crowdfunding site. Peterson started Thinkspot, and Rubin co-created locals.com. By May 2019, The Rubin Report YouTube channel had 200 million views. In 2019, The Rubin Report became available on BlazeTV, a conservative subscription video service run by Glenn Beck. A 2018 report from Data & Society described Rubin as part of a network on YouTube that amplified far-right politics. The report cited as an example an interview that Rubin conducted with Stefan Molyneux in which Rubin asked Molyneux to elaborate on his views that races have different average IQ test results and that these differences are genetic. The report held that Rubin did not challenge Molyneux in any substantial way, concluding, "By letting him speak without providing a legitimate and robust counterargument, Rubin provides a free platform for white supremacist ideology on his channel." In response to the report, Rubin tweeted, "wanna explain to me how gay married, pro choice, pro-pot, against death penalty, for reforming prisons/drug sentencing, is part of reactionary right?" and "(As you and rest of mainstream slide into irrelevancy you did get the 'underestimated forces' part right, though.)"
Rubin used to be a progressive but distanced himself from that movement after several incidents, such as a disagreement with his The Young Turks colleague Cenk Uygur, and watching a disagreement between Sam Harris and Ben Affleck on the TV show Real Time with Bill Maher. Rubin has also said he disliked the left's response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting for what he saw as rationalization for the attack by criticizing the magazine for publishing images depicting Muhammad while failing to defend their right to free speech. Rubin then described himself as a classical liberal due to holding more conservative and libertarian views than most modern liberals. In December 2021, Rubin wrote an article for Newsweek where he argues that classical liberals and libertarians should vote for the Republican Party. In a 2017 interview with Reason, Rubin stated that he originally characterized himself as on the progressive left but stopped in response to the so-called "Oppression Olympics" and what he regarded as the left's rejection of freedom of speech. Rubin has since described himself as a conservative, stating in 2021: "For me to tell you that I'm not a conservative at this point doesn't really make sense." While Rubin has expressed support for several liberal views such as same-sex marriage, criminal justice reform, and marijuana legalization, he has characterized progressivism as a mental disorder.
