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David Rubenstein

Co-Founder & Non-Executive Co-Chairman, Carlyle Group

Search every verified David Rubenstein interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, has been promoting two recently released books: *Inside the Owner's Box*, about sports franchise ownership, and *Speaking of America*, a collection of 19 conversations he held with members of Congress at the Library of Congress. In interviews, he discussed that the private setting encouraged more candid remarks than typical public appearances, and he reflected on the decline of bipartisanship in Washington, attributing it partly to fundraising dynamics that reward ideological extremes. He also addressed his decision to step down from the Kennedy Center board, describing the institution as having become politically contentious and noting it is currently closed. Rubenstein, who leads the ownership group of the Baltimore Orioles, has spoken extensively about the challenges of owning a sports team, calling it more complicated than private equity. He described the purchase as a civic gesture aimed at helping Baltimore, and discussed plans to revitalize the area around Camden Yards. On economic matters, he warned that the U.S. federal debt of $40 trillion, plus unfunded liabilities, would likely be repaid through currency devaluation, and he said the post-World War II global order has ended, with allies now building their own defense capabilities. He also commented on the Iran conflict, saying President Trump may have underestimated the difficulty of destabilizing the Iranian government.

Recent appearances

  • David Rubenstein on New Book, “Speaking of America”

    October 19, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Television

    David Rubenstein, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman of Carlyle Group, has released two books in recent weeks: Inside the Owner’s Box, about the experience of owning a sports franchise, and Speaking of America, which brings 19 conversations he held with members of Congress at the Library of Congress into public view ahead of the midterm elections. He discusses the private setting encouraged Washington figures to speak more candidly than they would in public. He speaks with Romaine Bostick on "The Close." -------- More on Bloomberg Television and Markets Like this video? Subscribe and turn on notif…

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  • America's Book Club - Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis

    October 18, 2026 · 📺 C-SPAN and David Rubenstein

    Elliot Ackerman's books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is the author of the novels "Sheepdogs," "Halcyon," "Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing," and "Green on Blue," as well as the memoirs "The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan" and "Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning." He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and…

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  • 🚨BILLIONAIRE DAVID RUBENSTEIN WARNS: AMERICA’S IS $100 TRILLION IN DEBT—ONLY THING TO SAVE US!

    October 15, 2026 · 📺 Earn Your Leisure

    In this powerful conversation, billionaire investor and Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein discusses his journey from working for President Jimmy Carter to co-founding The Carlyle Group just one month before the historic 1987 stock market crash. He shares the hardest parts of building one of the world’s largest investment firms, now managing $485 billion in assets, and explains what he looks for when investing in private companies. Rubenstein also breaks down America’s growing debt, stock market uncertainty, recession cycles, private equity, AI, China, and the devaluation of money. He e…

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  • David Rubenstein on Trump, Iran, AI & Why He Bought the Orioles

    October 15, 2026 · 📺 On Brand with Donny Deutsch

    Billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group co-founder, Baltimore Orioles owner, and host of Bloomberg's The David Rubenstein Show) talks about Trump's future, the war with Iran, AI, and his new book, Speaking of America: Great Conversations at the Library of Congress. Rubenstein explains why he bought the Orioles as a gift to his hometown, and why tripling the payroll didn't buy a winning season. He talks about his "patriotic philanthropy," from repairing the Washington Monument to sending replicas of the Declaration of Independence to every governor and U.S. embassy for Ameri…

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  • What David Rubenstein Learned From Buying the Baltimore Orioles

    October 10, 2026 · 📺 McKinsey & Company

    What’s it really like to own a professional sports team? And why is private equity increasingly getting in the game? In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with David M. Rubenstein, owner of the Baltimore Orioles and cofounder and cochair of the Carlyle Group, a global investment management firm, about Inside the Owner’s Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports. Through discussions with leading team owners and insights from his own experience, Rubenstein reveals the financial forces reshaping professional sports and the leadership de…

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  • David Booth on Investing, Dimensional and Staying Calm | The David Rubenstein Show

    September 24, 2026 · 📺 David Rubenstein

    David Booth started Dimensional Fund Advisors out of a Brooklyn brownstone in 1981 with an idea that challenged conventional investing: investors should have exposure to smaller companies as part of a diversified portfolio. Today, Dimensional manages more than $1 trillion. Booth sits down with David Rubenstein to discuss his new book, "Stay Calm," which applies his investment philosophy of staying calm during periods of market volatility, to navigating the uncertainties of life. He's on this week's episode of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations. This interview was recorded Au…

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  • Billionaire David Rubenstein: Owning a Sports Team Is Harder Than Anything I've Done Before

    September 22, 2026 · 📺 Anthony Scaramucci

    Connect with top talent ready to help your business grow: https://www.upwork.com/ I am honored to be joined by my friend and repeat guest on Open Book, David Rubenstein. He has built one of the most successful careers in private equity, but he’ll be the first to tell you that owning a baseball team may be even harder. We talk about what he’s learned inside the owner’s box, why the best leaders know when to get out of the way, and his mission to bring a World Series championship back to his hometown of Baltimore. David M. Rubenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Invest, H…

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  • 271: David Rubenstein, Co-Founder of The Carlyle Group, on the Business of Sports, Investing and ...

    September 17, 2026 · 📺 BlackRock

    Sports investing has evolved as franchise values have risen, live sports have retained a powerful hold on audiences, and ownership has become an increasingly sophisticated business. Yet sports teams remain unusual assets, combining economics with competition, community identity and deeply emotional fan relationships. Host Oscar Pulido speaks with David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group and control partner of the Baltimore Orioles ownership group, about his move from private equity into sports investing. They discuss his decision to invest in his hometown team, the r…

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  • David Rubenstein: the dollar will go down in value

    September 14, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Sam's database on how long it takes to become a millionaire: https://clickhubspot.com/738i Episode 861: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) sits down with David Rubenstein ( https://x.com/DM_Rubenstein ) to talk about turning Carlyle into $500B, his $14B miss, and the greatest business lessons in history. — Show Notes: (0:00) Turning $5M into $500B (5:13) Scrappy private equity (11:58) Don’t fool yourself (14:14) Turning down 20% of Amazon (16:23) Recruiting big shots (20:40) Finding the right partner (22:02) Trade-offs (27:39) Witnessing ascents to power (31:40) The Greatest Sentence Eve…

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  • The state of global private equity in 10 minutes with David Rubenstein, Carlyle

    June 11, 2026 · 📺 SuperReturnTV

    At SuperReturn International 2026, we were joined by private equity legend David Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Carlyle, to discuss what he calls a “tale of two cities macro backdrop": ongoing and potential conflicts (Iran, Russia-Ukraine, and rising China-Taiwan tensions) alongside a resilient U.S. and global economy marked by record-setting IPOs, active dealmaking, manageable inflation, and solid GDP growth. Watch the interview to learn what a several decades of private equity experience does to your view of the current market landscape, how AI AI is dominating investment focus, inf…

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  • David Rubenstein on Resilience, Risk, and What Really Drives Success

    May 15, 2026 · 📺 The Carlyle Group

    In the season premiere of Navigating Leadership, host Admiral James Stavridis joins David Rubenstein – co-founder of Carlyle and co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles – for a candid conversation filmed at Camden Yards.

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  • David Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Carlyle Group: Pursue Something Meaningful

    April 14, 2026 · 📺 Stanford Graduate School of Business

    In this View From The Top interview, Sanil Rajput, MBA ’26, speaks with David Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of the Carlyle Group. David shares his journey from a modest upbringing in Baltimore to the White House and ultimately to building one of the world’s leading private equity firms. He reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped his career, including early failures, the role of luck and resilience, and how he broke into an industry he initially knew little about. He also offers a candid look at the evolution of private equity – from leveraged buyouts to value creation – and how f…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“For a country to keep its population the same, women of childbearing age need to have on average 2.1 children at their childbearing years. We're down at 1.6. So that means the population is going down without immigration. And when populations go down everywhere in the world, GDP goes down. Nobody has a higher GDP when their population is going down. So at some point, the country will recognize without immigrants comi”

“Well, behind closed doors, they do have some relationships that are better than what you might appear in the press. But, basically, what's happened is fundraising is almost everything that matters in Washington these days. You raise money from the far left, the far right. Nobody raises money saying, I'm gonna go to Washington. I'm gonna do what's right for the country. I'm be right down the middle. That doesn't raise”

“Increasingly, we ought to be very concerned about that. And the way I'd express it, David, is it's not so much an on and off switch that suddenly on Tuesday you flick a switch and aircraft carriers are obsolete. That's not how this will transition. But we ought to be very cognizant back to war changing in front of our eyes. The risks of operating and putting so much in a tiny number of really huge, really expensive s”

“On Iran, I worked in the White House with President Carter and obviously we had the hostages that were taken in 1979. And clearly since that time we've been more or less enemies with Iran. I think that my sense from afar was that President Trump got Maduro pretty readily and thought maybe he could do the same thing in a day and a half or two days or maybe in less than three or four days. He could destabilize the enti”

“In any given time in history in our country, people always say this is the worst of times or this is really a troubling situation. So, you have to discount that. But right now, there's no doubt that the post-World War II period has ended. The post-World War II period was one where Europeans depended on us for their defense, when people around the world depended on us for foreign aid, people around the world depended ”

“The only way out, and honestly, is to repay it in devalued dollars. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to repay this debt in dollars that are worth less than the dollars we borrowed when I'm alive. In other words, we devalue our currency, and that's how we're going to repay it. There's no other solution, unless you want to do something radical, like significantly raise taxes or cut spending, and peo”

Other executives at Carlyle Group

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