Dave Rubin recently aired a Direct Message clip in which he and guests dissected Adam Sosnick’s blunt on-air confrontation with Andrew Tate over the now-infamous Miami nightclub footage. Rubin’s show framed the exchange as a moment where someone on the right finally called BS on evasive excuses after a scandal that went viral for all the wrong reasons.
The footage that sparked this all-out scramble showed a group of internet personalities at a Miami venue singing along to Kanye West’s banned track “Heil Hitler,” with some guests performing what looked like Nazi salutes — images that rightly horrified many Americans. Vendôme faced immediate backlash, and videos from a limousine ride to the club and inside the VIP area circulated widely, forcing local officials and Jewish groups to condemn the spectacle.
Andrew Tate went on Patrick Bet-David’s PBD Podcast to explain himself, insisting he didn’t sing the words and trying to paper over the incident as “kids” doing dumb, attention-seeking stunts. That explanation didn’t land for a lot of viewers — and for good reason — because the footage wasn’t ambiguous to ordinary Americans who know right from wrong.
Adam Sosnick, who is Jewish, didn’t let Tate off the hook; he pushed back on the “they’re just kids” framing and mimicked the salute to underline why this was far more than juvenile tomfoolery. That kind of blunt accountability is what the conservative movement should be about — defending free speech while drawing a hard line against genuine hate and antisemitism.
Rubin’s decision to spotlight the exchange on his Direct Message segment was the right call — conservatives must call out bad actors in our own orbit instead of reflexively defending anyone with a big follower count. If the right wants to regain credibility with mainstream Americans, it starts by being honest about where influence crosses into toxicity and by insisting on standards of decency that don’t evaporate when a clip goes viral.
Let’s be clear: the outrage should be aimed at the behavior and the venue’s culpability, not at shutting down debate. Reporting later suggested the nightclub’s management was far from blameless, with video and reporting indicating owners and staff were implicated in the same revelry they later vowed to investigate. That kind of hypocrisy fuels distrust in our institutions and gives the left an easy narrative about rotten elites.
Patriots who love free speech must hold a steady line: defend the right to speak without endorsing hate, demand consistency from platforms and venues, and stop pretending viral stunts are merely harmless jokes. If conservatives want to lead the culture war, we need to win the moral argument by being fearless about exposing lies and cowardice — whether it’s from the left, the media, or influencers who earn attention by crossing every line.
