Dave Rubin in Australia: The View from the Future — Politics, Culture, and the Battle for the West

When American commentator Dave Rubin opened his latest broadcast with the words, “I’m in Brisbane, Australia, and apparently I’m in the future,” it was more than a joke about time zones. It was a metaphor for what his trip had become: a cross-continental glimpse at how Western nations, separated by oceans, are increasingly fighting the same political and cultural wars.

Speaking to camera after a sold-out tour across Australia and an appearance at the Consilium Conference, Rubin reflected on two weeks of conversations that, in his words, felt like “a mirror held up to America.” From Sydney to Perth to Brisbane, the questions were identical: What does it mean to be Australian? How do you defend your country, your values, your culture?

A Common Western Crisis

Rubin’s travels, following earlier visits to Israel, Hungary, and the UK, convinced him that national boundaries no longer contain the culture war. Immigration, assimilation, identity politics, and faith in Western values — all the same issues haunting Washington and London — now dominate conversations in Canberra and Budapest alike.

“It’s ironic,” Rubin said. “The biggest debates about borders are the very debates that transcend borders completely.”

In his telling, Australia, like America, is caught between pride in its traditions and guilt imposed by its elites. And, as he turned from his tour back to the U.S. political battlefield, Rubin saw those same contradictions taking catastrophic shape in two stories unfolding thousands of miles away — one in New York City, the other in California.

The New York Meltdown: Zorhan Mandami and the Politics of Victimhood

The first story involved Zorhan Mandami, a rising Democratic Socialist from Queens and, in Rubin’s words, “a socialist/communist/Marxist … with a little bit of jihad.”

Rubin’s outrage centered on Mandami’s dual Ugandan-American citizenship and his refusal to condemn Uganda’s anti-gay laws — laws that still prescribe death for homosexuals. Appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield argued that such citizenship shouldn’t disqualify anyone from holding office. Maher pushed back: if a candidate’s second nation kills gay people, he said, renouncing that tie would be “the liberal thing to do.”

Rubin sided with Maher, noting that true liberalism defends human rights, not political convenience. “This clown worked for Biden,” Rubin snapped, “and it shows what these lefties always do — they put politics over everything.”

The real scandal, he continued, was the inversion of moral logic. Progressive activists who once championed free expression now defend regimes and ideologies that suppress it. “Bill Maher would prefer gays not be killed,” Rubin quipped. “Oddly, the progressive wing defends a guy who’s pretty much okay with that.”

Mandami, for his part, had presented himself as a victim of Islamophobia, recounting that his aunt “stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.” Rubin, who lived in New York during the attacks, called the anecdote “fabricated theater.”

“There was more concern for the Muslim community on 9/12 than there was on 9/10,” he said. “That’s the human condition they pretend doesn’t exist.”

To Rubin, the problem wasn’t faith but falsity. “He desperately wants to be the victim,” he said. “Born with a silver spoon, soft-lens videos, fake accents depending on who he’s talking to — and he’s still the victim.”

The word Islamophobia, Rubin added, was “a made-up term designed to break brains,” quoting the late Christopher Hitchens: “A word created by fascists and used by cowards to silence morons.”

For Rubin, Mandami personified a new moral disorder — one that elevates grievance above gratitude and turns the language of compassion into political weaponry. “Victimhood,” he said flatly, “is now at the top of the leftist hierarchy.”

California on Fire — Literally and Politically

From there Rubin pivoted to a state he knows well: California, where Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were once again under fire — this time, quite literally — over mismanaged wildfires and urban decay.

And, in true Hollywood fashion, a movie star had entered the plot.

Actor-director Mel Gibson, whose Malibu property has been damaged by previous fires, publicly accused Newsom of “criminal negligence.” His words spread across conservative media like — well — wildfire.

Gibson mocked the governor’s obsession with optics. “All that reputational damage,” he said, “riding horses with American flags through soccer fields scaring kids — that’s weakness masquerading as strength.”

Rubin could hardly contain his approval. “When Mel Gibson is the calmest man in the room,” he said, “you know something wild is going down.”

Newsom’s perfectly sculpted calm cracked. As the clip went viral, the governor’s staff scrambled to contain the fallout. The meme economy, however, proved unstoppable: “Spend less on hair gel,” Gibson had quipped — and suddenly it was printed on T-shirts from Fresno to Tallahassee.

Rubin called the exchange “California’s most cinematic scandal yet — the rebel versus the coiffed technocrat.”

The deeper issue, he argued, wasn’t celebrity gossip but governance. “Everything costs a fortune except common sense,” Gibson had said. To Rubin, that one line summed up an entire administration: glitzy, expensive, and empty.

The Illusion of Authenticity

Rubin’s critique of Newsom extended beyond policy into personality. On a recent TV interview, Newsom recounted his “struggles” growing up — eating macaroni and cheese, turning on the TV to escape poverty.

Rubin laughed out loud. “His father worked for Getty Oil and his grandfather was an oil tycoon,” he said. “He wants you to think he grew up poor, but look at his high-school photo — the most stylish kid in the class, hanging out with the Getty heirs.”

The contradiction, Rubin argued, revealed something larger about progressive politics: “They can fake everything, because their ideas are bad. Image is the last thing they still control.”

In a separate clip, Newsom denounced “anti-woke” backlash as “anti-Black.” Rubin’s response was surgical. “DEI is evil,” he said. “If you look at ten résumés with equal qualifications and bring race or gender into it, you are practicing racism. Be colorblind.”

To him, Newsom’s rhetoric showed how far Democrats had drifted from liberal universalism toward identity obsession. “If he believed any of it,” Rubin said, “he’d step aside and back a candidate of color. But he won’t, because it’s all performance.”

The Numbers Behind the Narrative

Rubin highlighted what he called “one of the most underreported scandals in the country”: Newsom’s decision to grant 62,000 commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

“Every one of those jobs was taken from an American,” he said, quoting Representative Mike Collins. “Every one of those drivers puts the public at risk.”

The larger pattern, he argued, was systemic negligence — a government more concerned with virtue signaling than safety. “People always ask when the madness ends,” he said. “It doesn’t. Leftism is a bottomless hole.”

Yet Rubin found allies in unexpected places. Former Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had recently criticized Newsom’s proposal to suspend California’s independent redistricting commission — a move many saw as gerrymandering in disguise.

“Everything the government does is temporary until it’s permanent,” Schwarzenegger warned. Rubin agreed: “They’ll always find another excuse to tighten the screws on anyone who doesn’t bow to the system.”

Trump, Peace, and the Global Turn

Mid-broadcast, Rubin’s tone shifted from outrage to optimism. “Let’s talk about some good things,” he said.

His example: Donald Trump’s surprising string of diplomatic wins.

According to a Fox News segment he cited, Trump had helped broker a cease-fire between Cambodia and Thailand, threatening tariffs rather than bombs to push both sides to the table. The deal, Rubin noted, required the release of prisoners and withdrawal of heavy weapons — “a peace process through pressure, not war.”

Quoting Trump — “We did something a lot of people said couldn’t be done” — Rubin contrasted that pragmatism with what he called “the United Nations’ endless grift of war.”

“The UN turns off his teleprompter,” Rubin joked, “but Trump still finds a way to make peace.”

Listing recent negotiations — India–Pakistan, Israel–Iran, Armenia–Azerbaijan — Rubin marveled: “He’s averaging one peace deal per month.”

Then came a clip of the Malaysian prime minister thanking Trump personally. “The world needs leaders who promote peace strongly,” the prime minister said. “To achieve that, you have to break some rules.”

Rubin smiled. “Trump’s hobby is making peace,” he said. “And the world’s better for it.”

The View from Asia: Japan’s New Resolve

From Southeast Asia, Rubin turned further east to Japan, where a new prime minister — Sanae Takaichi, the country’s first woman in the role — had just announced a bold plan to confront Japan’s demographic decline.

Her message: have children, defend culture, protect borders.

“It’s not bigotry,” she said in a translated clip Rubin played. “It’s about law and order. We welcome foreign workers, but we will respond firmly to illegal acts.”

Rubin called her speech “a master class in sane nationalism.”

“She’s saying exactly what every Western leader should say,” he explained. “Defend your culture, encourage families, and remember that technology — the robots — can solve labor shortages without destroying identity.”

Jordan Peterson’s Deeper Point

To underscore that argument, Rubin played a segment from Dr. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has long warned that Western societies undervalue family life.

“We teach young women that their career will define them,” Peterson said. “But most people don’t have careers — they have jobs. And if you’re 45 with no one, it doesn’t get better after that. Little children pay you back immensely — they’re an unconditional source of joy and love.”

Rubin, a father himself, grew reflective. “That’s what it’s all about,” he said quietly. “Politics sits on top of this deeper truth — family, meaning, continuity. We all know it.”

Keeping the Tent Together

As his show closed, Rubin aired a short clip from his keynote at the Consilium Conference, where he addressed divisions within the modern right.

“We were the shining beacon where everyone came to make a better life,” he told the audience. “That promise of liberalism — integrating people with different beliefs and still upholding universal rights — is what made America unique.”

The challenge, he argued, is to preserve that broad coalition under the MAGA umbrella without surrendering to extremism. “Trump is trying to hold a very tenuous position,” Rubin said. “How do we keep the widest tent possible? I honestly don’t know if it’s possible. But as long as people further right than me are willing to live in the same country as me, we can win elections — and fix some of these problems for the first time in a long time.”

Beyond Left and Right

What made Rubin’s broadcast resonate wasn’t only its political content but its framing: a traveler reporting from “the future.” By filming from Australia — literally a day ahead of the U.S. — he cast himself as both correspondent and prophet, diagnosing patterns that link continents.

Whether discussing immigration in Sydney, socialism in New York, corruption in Sacramento, or demographic crisis in Tokyo, Rubin returned to a single thesis: the survival of Western civilization depends on rediscovering confidence in its own values.

Freedom, family, honesty, gratitude — ideas once taken for granted — now need defending as fiercely as borders or economies.

In that sense, Rubin’s tone in Brisbane wasn’t merely combative; it was elegiac. The comedian turned commentator who once mocked politics as performance now treats it as moral duty.

“America was the shining beacon,” he said. “But we have to decide whether we’re going to keep leading the world in defending Western values — or let that light go out.”

The next morning he boarded a flight back to Miami, promising to be “live tomorrow, jet-lagged but ready.” From the other side of the world, Dave Rubin had sent a message to his audience — and to the West itself:

Wake up. The future is already here.