Dave Rubin is one of the dumbest online pundits on the planet, and he’s also one of those people caught with his hands in the Russian cookie jar. Rubin weighed in on Taylor Swift’s endorsement, and it’s one of the sleaziest, most repulsive takes you’ll see.
“Let’s talk a little bit about how this fits into the pop culture part of this, because the pop culture is a huge driver of the cultural narrative,” said Rubin. “Poor Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris on Instagram after the debate on ABC, proudly calls herself ‘a childless cat lady.’ Elon Musk, who they hate, saw that and he wrote this: ‘Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.’ So he’s mocking and exposing the ridiculousness, right?”
“It’s like Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl,” said Rubin. “Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young, pretty girls? It ain’t pretty. So what do we have to do? We just have to keep finding each other to whatever extent we can, we have to keep waking people up, it is the only chance we have in these remaining 60 days.”
Seriously, dude? “Vote for Trump or you’ll be raped by a Venezualan gang”? Combining racism, classism, and threats of sexual assault is an ugly mix, you know. That’s just how desperate the Trumpers are getting.
Robert Forbes says
For what it’s worth she’s 34 years old. They really seem to like infantilizing women for some reason.
raven says
Needless to say, anyone sane and reasonable is far more afraid of people like Elon Musk and this David Rubin than these hypothetical Venezuelan gang members.
They are openly misogynistic women haters who also openly hate our democracy.
They will wreck the USA if they can and make women into second class forced breeders if they can.
Elon Musk and right wingnuts like David Rubin aren’t the solution to anything, they are major threats to the USA.
mathman85 says
Plus xenophobia, and a tiny soupçon of anti-leftism thrown in for good measure. Fucking hell.
stuffin says
His comments are a casserole of all the lies the creepy far-right cuckoos have concocted. They seem to excel at these things. If only they would put that energy into something productive.
rietpluim says
The dumb right keeps using the word ‘narrative’. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
robro says
These creeps better watch out or they’ll end up in one of her songs, and she can rip. She has a reputation for drawing ideas…inspiration?…for songs from her personal life and what media types think of her. “Shake It Off” is a send up of the criticism of her dancing…she describes herself as an awkward dancer…and as she says in the song, “Haters gotta hate, hate, hate”. She recounts in interviews that she wrote the song “Blank Space” about the sex-pot character the media created of her and her relationships which she felt was mean-spirited and not really her, but realized this persona was a interesting character for a song.
StevoR says
@1. raven : Yes -and not just threats to the US of A but actually to the world generally. Given the influence the USA ( & X) has plus of course the threat to Ukraine among other places that Musk specifically has already harmed.
Tabby Lavalamp says
Is it just for the pay cheque as long as the money keeps rolling in? And honestly, I don’t even know who Rubin’s audience is considering how many people on the right think he’s an abomination and insist that his family isn’t real.
StevoR says
Taylor Swift is 34 years old, born Dec 1989. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift )
I know “young” is a relative term and she’s certainly younger than me and many other people. However, she is, in fact, a grown adult woman. Infantilising her much Rubin you creep? Ditto Musk with his patronising misogynist, sleazy “you win, I’ll impregantate you & guard your cats” Xit.
FWIW Dave Rubin is ( wikichecks*) 48 & Elon Musk is 53.** Would they like being called young boys? I doubt it. It would be only slightly less accurate to do so however.
E-day is 53 days away now – I guess this might have been from a few days ago tho’..
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Rubin
.** Plus see : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
PS. Dave Rubin was once a member of TYT?! The Young Turks!? Bloody hell. Did not know. Surprises me.
StevoR says
PPS. See countdown clock here : https://www.270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock/
submoron says
Rietpluim@4 Maybe the ‘Narr’ of narrative seems right for such people in the German language?
Walter Solomon says
I’m actually surprised he didn’t add, “And you know what Haitians do with cats like yours, right?”
Andrew Nathanson says
My grandmother would call him a shonda fur die goyim. But Grandma, sadly, is gone. So I’ll do it.
robro says
In her newsletter this morning, Heather Cox Richardson gets into what happened in the post-debate “spin room”:
If there was time, the GOP might start a Dump Trump campaign. Too late for that, and Trump would fight it, of course. As my grandfather would say, “They’ve made their bed, now they’ve gotta lie in it.”
Walter Solomon says
StevoR #8
So was Jimmy Dore. Furthermore, Ana Kasparian has really leaned into pushing this Venezuelan-gang-takes-over-an-apartment-complex-in-Colorado lie. So, honestly, it’s not that surprising Rubin is a TYT alum.
StevoR says
Jimmy Dore? Who? Never ehardof him.. Lessse :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Dore
Oh. Yuk.
Also Ana Kasparian’s done what? Yuk again. Disappointing.
Thanks i guess..Again didn’t know about that.
tacitus says
@12: re:Dump Trump
Would never happen anyway. MAGA would take their ball and stay home, ensuring a total disaster for the GOP.
They were stuck with him the moment he decided to run again.
tacitus says
Dave Rubin and Tim Pool have provided countless hours of unintentional entertainment for The Majority Report and their viewers even since they “left the left” to pursue the right-wing grift-dollars.
No surprise they were pegged as useful idiots by the Kremlin.
tallora says
Jesus gods. I think I threw up in my mouth a little reading that.
jenorafeuer says
With regards to The Young Turks…
I think part of the issue is that a number of more political comedians are like a number of the louder New Atheist types, they’ve gone straight from ‘puncturing the egos of people in power is a good idea’ to ‘I’m smarter than the people in power and people should listen to me’ without entirely cluing into the fact that in the process of becoming famous they have become one of the ‘people in power’ whose egos occasionally need puncturing and they over-react to anybody doing that.
See Dennis Miller for a pre-Trump example.
Akira MacKenzie says
Yeah, from class reductionism to outright racism and anti-LGBTQ bull, Cenk and Ana have really shown their true colors over past coof years.
I’m surprised they haven’t followed Rubin into the leftist-turned-“centrist” grift.
tallora says
There is nothing new under the sun, though. Back in the 2000s, when I was a weird angry teenager and torture was in the process of being normalized (as opposed to fully normalized like now), I got in an argument with a guy about the extent of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. He told me without irony that without military intervention, the Taliban would happily invade the US to mutilate and rape his daughters… And went on to say that I was therefore on the same moral level as a rapist, since I did not advocate stopping them by any means necessary (including mass bombings, torture, and yes, more rape).
These men have always seen rape as a bludgeon with which to force their will on women. Whether it is their own rape, or someone else’s. They do not change.
Giliell says
I’m not American, but to me “vote for us so you’ll be raped by an immigrant we like” doesn’t sound that much of a winning point.
Tethys says
Poor Taylor, going around being a billionaire and the most popular musician on the planet.
Of course this douchbag needs to infantalize her by calling her a silly girl. Throwing in some racism and sexism is standard, because she needs more rape threats from smug white men with massive insecurities.
Maybe we can send him to Russia, since he seems fond of supporting fascists.
robro says
I thought that Trump jumped the shark some weeks ago but it seems he has really gone over the top now what with lies about pet eating immigrants (racist code for “some” dark-skinned immigrants), threats of rape if you don’t conform, and so forth.
And it’s beginning to show. The share price of Truth Social has dropped significantly recently, which is probably a money pool Donald is counting on to pay his legal bills. Republicans are balking at Trump’s push to keep interest rates high, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA.). Mike Johnson has pulled the funding bill that contained a tie in to a voter suppression act favored by Trump because Republicans aren’t behind it, much less Democrats. Politically they can’t afford to tank the economy right before the election
And apparently there’s evidence that Swift’s endorsement resulted in over 300k people visiting a link she published where they can start the voter registration process. More registered voters, particularly young women voters and their allies, is not what the GOP wants right now.
numerobis says
One weird thing I’ve seen in the media is Musk’s “offer” to Swift of giving her a child. Somehow, the news all seem to think it means Musk is going to give custody of one of his 12 children to her, and they’re debating which one.
…
If not for them, I wouldn’t have even considered any read less skeezy than his offering to take her as a sex slave.
LykeX says
I guess now at least people will stop pretending that it was just a “joke” about giving her one of his children. Clearly, we all know that it wasn’t that, right?
Giliell says
Can we agree that offering somebody one of your children is also extremely disturbing?
LykeX says
True, but when you’re dealing with Elon’s ramblings, that’s probably as good as it’s going to get.
Steve Morrison says
Well, of course he did! How else could he escape from being electrocuted?
Tethys says
Offering a give a complete stranger a child is creepy in so many different ways, but I don’t believe muskrat was implying he would give her one of his existing children as if they were his property. (Though I don’t doubt he considers them his property).
He was offering an implicit rape threat to her like a disgusting sleazebag.
Bringing ‘Venezulan rape-gangs’ into the discourse strips away any pretense of plausible deniability.
Taylor employs an entire security team to guard her from creeps like these. If anyone needed a big strong man, and your options were Travis Kelce or the muskrat, it’s obvious that nobody would pick muskrat, or Dave Rubin.
silvrhalide says
Rubin & Muskrat are 13 year old edgelords trapped in middle-aged bodies. Imagine Beavis & Butthead in their 50s and you’ve pretty much got those two clowns. Putting down any woman who is more successful than they are with gendered slurs and threats is standard playbook for 13 year old edgelords with a terminal case of envy and no real accomplishments of their own.
Pathetic.
Raging Bee says
How do creepy assholes like this guy have ANY CLUE whom any gangs are looking to rape? Does he know any of them? Are they in contact with him?
And if he doesn’t know who they’re planning to rape or might rape, why would he pretend to know? I’m really not sure which of those two possibilities is creepier…
tallora says
It’s a racist dogwhistle as well. Appealing to the idea that Latino gangsters prefer raping pretty, white women. “You should shut up and be grateful for our [white, male] protection, we could always take that protection away and you wouldn’t like what happens then.” Just a turducken of gross and evil. “Accept our golden cage, or we will throw you to the wolves.”
And these men somehow wonder why we hate their guts.
robro says
Springfield, OH government and schools had to shut down today and evacuate buildings because of bomb threats in multiple locations. Sentiments have run high in Springfield because of the influx into the city in the past few years of 10,000-15,000 Haitian refugees. There has been an increase in crime, although not pet eating. Springfield is fairly small…about 60k…for an influx of that many people of limited means. Local resources have been stretched because of it, and have asked for Federal assistance.
We can only guess the perps at this point. That it comes from some MAGA stalwart would not surprise. Of course, Donald and the GOP are going to exploit the hell out of it, even it makes things worse.
Silentbob says
@ 28 Giliell
Presumably the trans one.
Silentbob says
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-transgender-daughter-vivian-wilson-interview-rcna163665
chrislawson says
We can’t cancel creeps like Rubin because he appears on outlets that seek out creeps.
rietpluim says
It shouldn’t be surprising that there are creeps like Trump, Musk, and Rubin, but it is troubling that they are so influencial. Way too many people take them seriously.
LykeX says
@tallora #34
It definitely has a “they’re coming for our women” vibe to it. Emphasis on the “our”.
Giliell says
@ Silent Bob
She’s a fully grown adult
lanir says
This is a public service announcement.
We do not hold the US presidential election in Venezuela.
No part of Colorado is in Venezuela.
The only connections I could find between Taylor Swift and Venezuela were creepy Dave’s* wishful imaginings and some showings of her Eras Tour film.
If your conception of a gang from a struggling country is an organization full of globetrotting super soldiers who can take and hold ground in foreign countries which local law enforcement cannot enter or contest, then… you should probably check that you’ve taken your meds today. No seriously, do that. If you’re not on meds, you should probably seek out a mental health professional because it sounds like maybe you should be.
note, not Ze Frank’s Creepy Dave, which is amusing and does not seem inclined to fantasize about SA