 The culture wars, the wokeness wars may in fact just be kind of a distraction from those more fundamental issues. It's a point that your friend Peter Thiel recently made on Barry Weiss's podcast. I want to play that clip real quick and get your reaction to Thiel's statement as, you know, another fellow Floridian. The focus on identity politics, on the woke religion, you know, is probably a distraction from stagnation. It's a distraction from economics. It's a distraction from the way in which the younger generation in the U.S. is probably going to have a hard time having as a good standard of living as their parents. And so there's a set of issues we do not want to talk about. You know, I think DeSantis would make a terrific president. If he's the Republican nominee, I will strongly support him in 2024. But I do worry that focusing on the woke issue as Ground Zero is not quite enough. So I mean, I agree pretty much with Peter Thiel that while there's aspects of these culture wars that are important and worth discussing that they shouldn't really be central and we've got bigger fish to fry. There's the lagging economic growth, inflation, a lot flows from that, but there's also the degradation of our institutions. And in some sense, like I was saying before, what we really need is a strict constitutional list to kind of restore the balance of powers, be very clear about where state action ends. And I'm not exactly sure that DeSantis is that. Maybe he's better than the alternatives on offer at the moment, but I just think it's always worth sticking to our principles and pointing out how far short just about every moderate and politician falls. But otherwise, there's really no path towards something better if we don't kind of keep our eye on the ball. Sure. Well, first off, I just think DeSantis is your guy. I think you're going to begrudgingly, I guess, or maybe a little slower get there. But it just seems obvious to me. And I think you will find somebody that has an absolute respect for the Constitution. And some of the comments that you read there, Nick, I mean, people are saying he's going after free speech or something like, what can't you say in Florida? You can say whatever you want. Okay. Specifically on Teal, he happens to be a good friend of mine, so let me not hide that. I believe that you, I like him a lot and I think he's a brilliant thinker, obviously. But I believe that you can walk and chew gum at the same time and you can deal with the woke stuff, which by the way, Zach, when you deal with the woke stuff, you start fixing the institutions because the institutions you're worried about, they're being destroyed by woke. They're being destroyed by diversity, equity and inclusion. So you can do that at the same time. You then can do all of the things that have led Florida to be the freest and most popular prosperous state in the union. And the proof is only in the three-fingered pudding. It's here. Just look what's going on in Florida. So if you were to say to me, well, he's focusing on woke. So now look what's happening. His cities are being overrun by drugs and homeless people. Well, then we might have an issue or some other version, but it's actually all working here. So I think that argument is a little thin to me when you just compare it with the facts on the ground. I just can't. The zeal with which you prosecute that war can often, the war on woke can often cause you to engage in just really gross state overreach in the ways we've already talked about before. I guess we just disagree on whether that constitutes state overreach. It's the same thing with cleaning up crime or controlling the border. These things all sound good and orderly, but there's ways that if you don't have a strict fidelity to the rule of law that they can go horribly bad and authoritarian. We didn't even really get a chance to go much into immigration, but some of how that's played out here has been alarming, whether it's deporting people to Martha's Vineyard or allowing buying that I find it reprehensible to use to use people as props like that. And the rhetoric around immigration, you know, this for me is one of the biggest problems I have with the Republican Party, and I don't pretend that the Democratic Party is good on immigration. But, you know, my grandparents, I'm sitting, I'm talking to you from New York City where my grandparents showed up 100 years ago. They would not be allowed in the country, you know, now. And the anger at immigrants is just wrong. I think the Republican Party is making a huge mistake by being so zealously anti-immigrant. But well, first off, I don't think they're anti-immigrant. They are anti-immigrant. I think they're anti-immigrant. I think they're anti-immigrant. Donald Trump wanted to reduce, and he said it constantly, I want to reduce legal immigration as well as illegal immigration. Ron DeSantis is not talking about legal immigration. He's only talking about immigration as an illegal phenomenon, and drugs are being smuggled across the Mexican border. That has nothing to do with immigration policy. It has to do with the failure of immigration policy, of letting people who want to come here and participate and contribute to American life. And if we're going to want economic growth, immigration is going to be a big part of that. So I think there's just some of the focal points are just wrong at the moment from my point of view. What worries me about that fight that he has against wokeness is that I'm not convinced that he really is going to be a defender of the Constitution. When I moved to Florida, I liked that DeSantis swerved away from the public health establishment. So a lot of what you're saying resonates with me, Dave. I like that he put a big emphasis on letting individuals make their own choices. I think it was good for the people living in Florida. I think it was good for the economy of Florida. What I don't like about the post-COVID DeSantis is now he seems pretty willing to use state power to advance a conservative social agenda and punishes enemies, and I'm worried he's going to be left. What would be an example of that? I assume you mean Disney, right? That's one that's a great example. Yes. Okay. So we should we should do the Disney thing. Look, Disney had tons. I've actually got a list of them here because I had a feeling you were going to ask me about them so I can read them all off to you. Disney because I know this is an issue with libertarians that we should never use the government for anything except what he did was use the government in the exact way that libertarians want the government to be used. You don't want government overreach, but you do want to make sure there isn't crony capitalism. Disney took DeSantis took special benefits away from Disney, meaning Disney had been granted special benefits related to building codes and water rights and this airport and taxes and a whole bunch more. I'm happy to read them all off to you that were not granted to their competitors such as SeaWorld and Universal Studios and Gator World, which in essence do the same thing. So Disney, he then took their special rights away, thus evening the playing field, which is to me the ultimate thing that a libertarian would want. You would want the government only to act to even the playing field. So the playing field was like this and then he used the government to do this. There are thousands, right, or hundreds of special tax districts in Florida that were in place and remain in place. He also carved out in his social media law, he carved out an exception for Disney before they crossed him on gay rights. So it seems like it's, I mean, part of, you know, let's actually speak for myself. But for me, part of it is that he is not acting out of principality. He's actually acting out of personal peak. Hey, thanks for watching an excerpt from our conversation with Dave Rubin. You can watch another excerpt from that conversation right here or the full conversation over here and tune in every Thursday at 1 p.m. for more conversations like this.