#218 Gavin Newsom - Governor of California

What it says, what's this?

Kevin Newsome.

It's good to be with you, man.

Welcome to the show.

It's great to be here with you.

Well, this is a very unexpected interview.

Come on.

What do you mean?

Guy from California?

A coastal elite?

Hey, I've had a lot of coastal elites on lately in the tech space.

That is true in the tech space.

Yeah, I imagine your audience is ecstatic that I'm on your show.

Oh, I'm sure they will be.

But

no, in all honesty, I just, I really appreciate you coming.

And, you know, I've been wanting somebody that thinks a little different than me and is maybe on the opposite side of the fence.

And I couldn't, I've tried and I couldn't get anybody

for the last election.

And I

paid myself out to be somebody that talks to everybody.

It's been extremely hard to get somebody that thinks differently than me.

So I appreciate you coming.

No, I appreciate it.

Look, man, I appreciate your openness because I say to everybody all the time, divorce is not an option.

Man, we got to live together and advance together across our differences.

So no BS.

I mean, this is critical

because this zero sum, everyone talking past each other, down to each other.

I mean, our kids are going to model that.

It's just not sustainable.

Yeah, you know, America has become very tribal in the past eight, 12 years and just seems to be be getting more and more amplified.

And so, you know, what I really hope comes out of this is that people can use this as an example of how to talk to each other.

Yeah, I love it.

And because I think we've lost that in America.

So

kudos to you.

Thank you, Balls, for showing up today.

And

I do appreciate it.

I love it.

But

I'm going to start you off with an introduction here.

Beautiful.

Not that you need one.

Jesus, let's hear this.

I'm curious where you're going to go with it.

Gavin Newsome, 40th governor of California, leading the nation's most populous state since 2019 and the fourth largest economy in the world.

Eat your heart out, Japan.

A former mayor of San Francisco, a businessman who built the Plump Jack Group, turning a winery into a hospitality empire, host of the podcast, this is Gavin Newsom, where you've sat down to discuss issues with those you disagree with.

A husband to Jennifer and a father of four children.

Nice.

We're probably going to disagree on a few things here, but like I said, thank you for showing up.

I appreciate it.

Introduction and talks about my kids.

You won me over on that, man.

That's real bio stuff.

That's what it's all about, right?

Yeah.

I mean, come on.

That's the obituary stuff, not the resume stuff.

That's the stuff that matters.

Yeah.

But

so I'm wondering if you're, did you come here to

hang out with the 92,000 Californias?

Oh, you go.

You hit me right there, man.

The California exit.

By the way, complete bullshit.

Now, the last two years, we've seen significant growth in California's population.

So it's reversed

and record-breaking tourism.

Now the fourth largest economy in the world.

We dominate in every major industry, including the number one manufacturing state in America, 41% larger than the next largest state.

And so we're really proud of California.

And we went through a little rocky period over a two-year period where there were some adjustments all across the country, one of 18 states, many red states too, not just blue states, that saw an adjustment of population during COVID.

And now we're on the other side of that, seeing population growth back-to-back years.

Well, it's impressive.

California is an impressive state.

Even if you hate it, you're a human.

You're a very controversial state as well.

But yeah, I'd love to dive into some of the COVID and stuff later.

But a couple of things before we get started.

So everybody gets a gift.

Oh, geez, what do you got, man?

Here we go.

You ready for this?

Look, oh, Jesus.

Ready for this?

Is this an accident?

I got to report this gift, man.

That is, so that is a California compliant

SIG source E365 macro.

Come on, man.

I don't know exactly what makes it.

By the way,

this is too cool.

The fact that you would give me this.

You like that?

So you just want me TSA to take this from you and my house to watch the airport.

I'm on to you, man.

Well, I got a buddy at SIG and he was like, you got to get a SIG and his

brother.

This is fabulous.

You know what?

People, last thing people would expect is that I respect this gift.

Really?

I appreciate it.

Yeah, man.

I'm not anti-gun at all.

I'm for just some gun safe common sense that I think the vast majority of folks to the right and the left agree.

And I think we've lost a little touch with some common sense around background checks.

I think there's an age appropriateness.

I do have some challenge.

You know, I'm challenged by large capacity magazine clips in urban centers and, you know, weapons of war that are out there, sometimes outgunning the police.

And I've experienced that directly with the loss of a police officer who was gunned down by an AK-47, and the police were outgunned in Baby Hunters Point in San Francisco.

But otherwise, man, people have the right to bear arms, and I got no ideological opposition to that at all.

Do you think

you're welcome?

That's crazy.

Last name I expected.

I expected a hat.

Okay.

You gave me a goddamn gun well i got another gift for you too okay but um

but diving into the two-way stuff i'm just i'm just curious we see

a lot of the cities that don't have that don't that you can't conceal carry or it's extremely hard to get concealed carry or or you know california being one of them yeah illinois new york i mean do you think that

Everyday citizens carrying a gun reduces crime or increases crime?

I think the evidence, evidence suggests the opposite.

It increases the likelihood of a gun death.

And you look at all the states with the most comprehensive gun safety reforms, they have lower gun death rates than states with weaker gun laws.

And there's a correlation there.

California is one of the lowest gun death rates in America.

The highest murder rates in the country tend to be red states, significantly so.

You look at the murder rate, eight of the top 10 murder rates per capita in the country are all red states.

Well, I thought Chicago was the number one.

No, well, as cities, you'll have different experiences.

But at state levels, gun safety, from our perspective, saves lives.

And we have the data to bear that out.

You look at the common sense gun safety laws that California started establishing in the 90s.

You look at our gun death rate from the 90s till today, significant reduction, nation-leading reduction in the gun death rate.

So

that's the prison to which I'm into the data.

I'm into the evidence.

I'm also deeply mindful and respectful of the Second Amendment Amendment and people's constitutional rights.

But as it relates to just simple common sense around background, the idea we're addressing the issue of background checks, and we haven't fundamentally addressed some of those gaps where people are struggling with mental health disorders and the like or substance abuse,

I just don't understand that gap.

Well, I think that the gap is

a, at least for me, I can tell you why it bothers me.

I mean, I carry a gun everywhere.

I protect to protect myself and my family.

And,

you know, when I hear about the

background checks and

mentally unstable people, I mean, you know, a lot of veterans, I mean, almost all veterans are pro-gun and

fought for the country and want to be able to own one to protect themselves and their family.

And especially, you know, if there's any recourse from those wars, which

we've talked about it on here, there's supposedly over a thousand sleeper cells of terrorists within our borders.

And, you know, but if we go down that road, I mean, I know for a lot of veterans, me included, is, is, you know, some people have been diagnosed with PTSD and depression and shit like that from coming home from combat.

And so is it, you know, maybe we start with schizophrenia, but then the next thing is, oh, well, is PTS going to be on there?

Is depression going to be on there?

Am I going to lose my fucking rights, you know, when I fought for the country because somebody

deems me unstable?

Well, maybe I'm not.

But a convicted felon,

someone that has had a violent, dangerous past, someone is a domestic abuser.

I'd like to red flag some of those folks.

I can't argue that.

Can't argue that.

And so unless we have a system that allows at least some vetting with some objective constraints along the lines of what you suggest,

right now it's so, it's just this zero-sum games.

Like you're either pro-gun or or anti-gun.

It's like, no, that's not the case, man.

There's nuance here.

And I think if you look, I mean, you look at, I'm not a polling guy, but it's interesting when you look at gun safety polling, like Fox News polls and these sort of top four controversial issues, they're overwhelmingly supported by partisan.

support for some of these safety measures.

And I just think people demagogue this, they demagogue on all sides.

But that, you know, it's not inuring to a safer country.

I mean, there's no other country in the world that has this kind of gun violence.

And it suggests we're doing something very differently in the rest of the world.

Everyone has mental health problems.

It's not unique to the United States of America.

It's not about that.

That's not the issue.

I just think it is the accessibility.

The suicide rates are off the charts in the United States because of the simple access as well.

So look,

it's a tough issue.

It's very divisive.

It's weaponized.

Again, blue and red, certainly weaponized nationally.

But,

man, lived experience, former mayor, living in cities, dense urban centers,

and looking at the evidence in California.

As I refer to it, common sense gun safety.

Well, let me ask you this then.

I mean, I know you want certain weapons restricted.

And, you know, there's the California compliant versions of everything,

but it's really hard for people to get a concealed carry permit in California.

Why is that?

Yeah, because I mean, the idea of, I mean, just, I think there's a cultural construct in California that people just don't want people running around with concealed carry.

And, you know, folks you're running into in a restaurant or bar, you're on the Barton Bay Area Rapid Transit, or

you're in a school or in the playground and everyone running around that's got a gun.

And, you know, the good guys from the bad guys, I think there's just sort of a cultural mindset around that, a concern around that.

We allow for it.

There's a process.

There's, you know, law enforcement as a process.

By the way, we exempt law enforcement from these gun safety laws in the vast majority of cases, along the lines of what you're suggesting.

As it relates to our veterans and military, there are exceptions to many of the rules that we advance.

But on concealed carry,

that's been a principle that we just believe in.

A permit process that's, yeah, admittedly very comprehensive.

And it's what your state wants.

It's what the state, I think, overwhelmingly wants.

Well, I mean,

well, I disagree with it.

I mean, I do, you know, digging into your background, I mean, I've found a number of things that have

a number of narratives against you that there's definitely some nuance on.

But one thing that I did find is that it does seem that

whether people want to fucking agree with me or blast me or whatever for saying it, I mean, it seems like

you're doing what the majority of the population in California wants.

Yeah, and I mean, look,

and it's not, look, they don't hire hire me to be a weather vane, right?

I mean, I think leadership's defined.

You know, they hire me for judgment and

they want leadership.

And so it's not about public opinion in that respect, but you have to be sensitive to public opinion.

I did two gun safety laws that I actually put on the ballot so I can validate.

the assertion that I just made.

That's where the public is because my gun safety legislation overwhelmingly passed in California.

Interesting.

And so that was my initiative.

I got out.

I did signatures and put it in front of the voters, worked with law enforcement on some exceptions and exemptions along the lines that I suggest.

And it's been well received.

Now there's certain pockets and camps say, you know, folks in the gun rights movement, look, I'm a poster child for them.

I get it.

Except, you know, what did I do on Mother's Day?

I was at wing and barrel with my kids with a nine-year-old.

doing skeet shooting.

No shit.

That's what I did on Mother's Day.

Are you any good at it?

I'm not good.

I'm great at it, okay?

Because I've been doing it for years and years for the goddamn record.

You can laugh.

I wish we were doing that right now.

Your wife must be a shooter.

She Mother's Day for skeet shooting.

Mother's Day skeet shooting.

God is my witness.

You got a cool wife.

And so we're with the kids and we're with grandpa and grandma.

And, you know, that's she grew up.

And she's, we got married in Montana.

My daughter's name is Montana.

Family has a ranch out there.

We're hunters, bow hunting for me primarily.

My son, 11 years old, got his first rifle from his grandfather, and that was a point of pride.

It was emotional.

Like my attachment, the history, that attachment to his grandpa now because of that.

So again,

I celebrate that.

And at the same time, man, running the fourth largest economy in the world, size of 21 state populations combined, trying to keep people safe.

We have a different approach than many states in the country, but the approach is bearing fruit.

if you look at gun death rates and murder rates substantially lower in the state of California and in the vast majority of blue states.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Well, I got another gift for you.

What is that?

All right, here we go.

Oh, it's my favorite one.

How are you going to make up it?

What is this, man?

Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states.

I'm hoping you brought me some California gummy bears.

Brother, that's, you know, by the way, when I did that gun safety initiative, I also did the legalization of cannos for adult use in California.

Right on.

That means it only reinforces my progressive

bona fides or whatever you were.

What's that word?

Bona fide, whatever the hell it is.

Thank you, man.

I'm advertising this.

Look at this.

You're welcome.

Gummies and a gun.

Gummies and a gun.

Jesus.

Gummies and a gun.

What the hell is that?

And we just started this.

I want to see what happens at the end.

What else?

Oh, we got lots lots of good stuff coming.

But

so one last thing to crank out before we get going.

And

actually,

before I read this question, so I want to do a life story on you and

go through your life story from childhood all the way up until now.

And along the way, we will dive into some issues that I know that we disagree on.

Awesome.

And

have a beautiful discussion.

I love it.

Big, beautiful discussion.

But

one thing, so I have a Patreon account.

It's a subscription account, and it's turned into quite the community.

And they've been here with me since the beginning.

And so what I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

Oh, interesting.

And so I just posted a picture of us at breakfast.

And about two minutes after I did the post, what do you got?

Joe Rogan texted me.

Motherfucker.

Joe, I loved it.

By the way, I'm a Joe Rogan fan.

He ain't a fan of mine, but I'm a Joe Rogan fan.

No bullshit.

Right on.

And I've lived for decades.

I feel like it's a decade back in the day.

Before Joe was Joe Rogan.

He was just a podcaster, man.

Now he's a third phenomen.

Well, he's a...

Jesus, what did Joe say?

Okay.

He's a good friend of mine.

So this is from Joe Rogan.

Oh, God.

This is a tough one.

He won't have me on the show, by the way.

Who will be held accountable for mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children which were unnecessary and ineffective?

And who will take responsibility for the unprecedented increases in myocarditis and cancer cases among them?

Second to that, do you feel any remorse for that draconian decision that was obviously heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical company's desire for maximum profit?

Yeah,

I've been, I've signed some of the most progressive laws against big pharma in the country.

So I have receipts on that.

So no one should suggest that it was about doing the bidding of big pharma, quite the contrary.

California, like many states, Red States included, Florida included, moved forward early in the pandemic, working with the Trump administration and the advisors from the Trump administration to impose dirt and strategies to mitigate the impacts of this novel disease, coronavirus.

What's interesting about this process is none of us have really reviewed.

in an objective way.

It's all through the lens of politics, what we did right and what we did wrong.

And so I'll answer that question by telling you what I've just tasked.

I've asked our team to put together an objective review of everything we did right, everything we did wrong.

We're interviewing people that vehemently disagree with us, that oppose the mask mandates, that oppose the stay-at-home orders, people that are international experts.

We're stress testing our entire process.

Could have, shoulda, would have.

Comparing and contrasting to what other states did.

I mean, Florida shut shut down their bars and restaurants before California, before California.

The question was, when did we start to unwind some of those restrictions?

California was more restrictive, and we were certainly aggressive at scale.

As it relates to vaccines, vaccines save lives.

But Joe asked a very different question about children.

And I respect that.

And that was where there was a lot of feedback with a lot of experts that I had as advisors.

By the way, I used advisors from two other states.

We did this West Coast Alliance to review not just what was coming from the federal government, but to have a prism and lens on the recommendations coming from the CDC through our own independent advisors.

And I took their advice, not as a doctor, but as a governor.

So with humility, seriously, humility and grace, I've asked them to have that report done.

It's going to be done next month.

And it'll be the only state that I know of that is putting out a truly objective review of what went right and what went went wrong.

And I know everyone's a goddamn genius now in hindsight.

But at the time, none of us knew what we were up against, including the President of the United States, who I worked very closely with.

There wasn't a Democratic governor in America that worked closer during the pandemic than I did with Donald Trump.

And you can go back and stress test that.

And I say that with the kind of humility he deserves as well, and grace, or rather, grace that he deserves in terms of the decisions he made early on.

We were all up against something none of us had any experience around, and we counted on the experts.

What are some of the things during COVID that you think maybe were a mistake or that you could have done?

Well, I mean,

we were sitting there with Purel.

Remember early on, we had price gouging issues around getting Purel.

We were wiping down everything in the house.

And we were concerned it was airborne and folks, you know, we were worried about people being outside even.

And we realized then, after the fact what the hell are we doing shutting down the beaches and open areas and you know and not understanding that early on and so I think that of all issues looking back I remember Florida that was a big issue too even there not just in California no I mean it was in Florida I remember they they had that cruise ship off the coast of Florida that was just stuck there yeah for I can't remember how long and I say that because look at Florida I keep bringing up because I think there's sort of this sort of triumphant new narrative it's all myth-making it's all storytelling narrative there's some truth to it, but there's a lot of bullshit about it.

You know, Florida had worse educational outcomes during COVID than California.

Kids did worse on reading and math scores.

Fact, three out of the four areas, fourth grade reading and eighth grade reading and math,

three out of the four categories, California outperformed.

From a health perspective, they had more per capita deaths than California.

And from a wealth perspective, their GDP contracted more than the state of California.

I mean, on three key areas, there's a lot of mythology around what they did versus, again, big blue state, California.

Again, we weren't the only state doing it, but the state of mind of the California derangement syndrome, there's a Trump derangement syndrome, no question.

But there's also California derangement syndrome, as if California stands unique in some of these interventions and respects.

It's true.

in some, but not all.

I just think more objective minds should review.

And for one reason, we're going to have another one of these damn things.

And we're totally unprepared unprepared because we're so distrustful of everybody.

And again, we see the world purely through the lens of red versus blue.

And so to Joe, that's a good question.

And I want an objective answer, not a political answer.

And that's why I've tasked these folks to objectively stress test what we did right, what we did wrong.

What are some of the things that are, I mean, how far along are you on that poll?

They're almost done.

We've been working on this six months.

In fact, not only six months, a couple of years ago at Sunnylands, California, which is an amazing place down near Palm Springs, I invited and convened a group of international experts around COVID, and they began the process of stress testing.

The interviews that are going to inform this report were done then, a few years ago.

And now we're really looking through all the data, which is county by county.

Remember, California is, you know, I know we did the stay-at-home order, which was top-down, but a lot of the local decisions really informed the pathway ultimately out of this process and or out of COVID.

And so each county had different approaches because each region of the state is radically different.

Big rural areas didn't have the issues of density that downtown Los Angeles may have.

So you had different rules and regulations.

We probably would have, I'm assured this report will so, we should have started with the flexibility earlier in the process.

But again, we didn't know what we were up against.

So I think those are examples of areas where going forward, we want to inform whoever's in leadership going forward how to approach a novel virus.

But vaccines, man, save lives, period, full stop.

I'm just not.

And by the way, RFK Jr.

It's a friend of mine.

I was with him in the governor's office.

We were talking about it.

He handed me, I think I have six or seven damn books he gave me, just all these attacking big pharma, et cetera.

He's an old friend, one of my environmental heroes.

Guy's next level, wrote some of the best environmental books in this country, connecting to God and Mother Nature, connecting to generations.

I mean, there was a spiritual quality to how he expresses himself and connects to our earth and our speech and biodiversity.

He touches me, man.

His dad was my political hero.

Like the why I'm here.

Bobby Kennedy, man.

His dad, Sarge Shriver, the vernacular of the 60s, solving for ignorance and poverty and disease.

And so his son, his family, I revere.

I was at his mom's funeral.

He was one of the few governors, the only governor in the country at his mom's funeral.

And so I respect Bobby.

But he, he, I mean, he really turned on me early and he flat out lied about some things.

What did he lie about?

He lied about, said, though, because Newsom got some,

I got sick for two or three days, and he said it was because of a vaccine.

And then he lied about what I had.

He weaponized it.

He misled.

I was like, and I was reaching out going, brother, the hell's going on?

And I saw him go down this sort of darker, you know, could people can disagree.

And I'm, by the way, make America healthy, that's California.

I've been leading that cause for decades.

There's no governor again.

I'm forgive me.

That movement started in California.

I did the Skittles ban a couple years ago.

My buddy Marshawn Lynch was all pissed at me because we were going after Red Dye earlier in the area.

And all the folks at Fox were mocking me.

Now they're all jumping over, patting themselves on the back and leading this ever.

But so I've always admired that about Bobby.

But on the vaccines, I think some skepticism, absolutely.

But I think that there's a lot of missing disinformation that has really hurt public health.

It's my humble opinion.

Do you think that some of the

restrictions that you put in place created a

a mental health crisis

by being locked up, by not being able to enjoy the outdoors?

That's devastating.

Come on, man.

Of course.

I mean, it was for everybody.

Kids in particular.

I got four kids sitting there trying to get them on Zoom.

I mean, Jesus.

I mean, you can't, now I can't get them off a damn device.

No,

no one's naive about that.

Come on.

It was, it was, it was, I mean, we're all, and we haven't gotten through it.

We haven't fucking, we haven't, we don't want to talk about this.

We want to, we want to, we want to indict people, but we don't want to talk about it.

We don't want to have a, a real conversation about this.

It's one way, not two way.

Because it's again through the prism and lens of our certainty, this sort of binary, you're right and I'm wrong.

And, but yeah, no, I experienced it firsthand as a father of four, as a husband, as a governor, as a

guy responsible for, you know, 40 million people, trying to keep people alive, working with the president, taking the advice and counsel from his administration, which I think people forget.

Operation Warp Speed was next to the United States.

Well, they definitely forget that.

And I don't understand the mental gymnastics behind that either.

And by the way, to Trump's credit, one of the great triumphs, how many lives he saved because of Operation Warp Speed, because of vaccines.

Now,

you really think that the vaccine prevented people from getting COVID?

I think it prevented the acuity of the symptoms and disease and kept people out of the emergency rooms.

And I think that's universally accepted, at least by 90% of objective experts.

Man, I don't know.

I just, you know,

I wound up getting the vaccine, it's one of the only fucking things I regret.

And I did it.

Which one was it?

Did you go old school Johnson and Johnson?

Pfizer.

So you did the MNRA.

Yeah.

You did the novel,

a different version.

And

I just, I was scared to death I was going to miss the birth of my son.

So I took it.

And then I got fucking COVID like a couple weeks later and they couldn't test.

They kept,

I got the test and it was this one's positive, this one's negative.

And I'm like,

You guys have any idea what the hell you're doing?

Like, you just gave me the same test with

a positive and a negative.

Yeah, there's a lot of false positives, man.

It's look, it's messy, life's messy, public health is messy, and and and there's no experts out here.

And there's again, I back to I just think everybody,

everybody,

I don't know how to best say it.

Uh, Anyone has certainty about what we did or didn't do or could have, I mean,

just bullshit.

A little humility across the board.

All the so-called experts that said, well, just let it rip.

That's Earth 2.

And I'm glad I didn't live on Earth 2.

And, you know,

in vaccines, yeah, there was, we overhyped that somehow this was going to end the pandemic.

So there was some language.

I mean, was that Fauci?

Was that Trump?

Was it, because then again, Trump administration, Buck stopped somewhere.

Can't blame Biden for that.

You know, he didn't, he didn't, I mean, I'm sitting there talking about reagents with him and swabs.

I mean, I remember calls with Trump.

None of us knew what the hell we were talking about.

I mean, Corona.

We were talking about beer back then, man.

People don't even know what Corona, what the hell is this?

M-N-R-A-N-R-A.

You know, literally, it was all, this is all new.

And so you had to count on the experts.

And that leadership is at the top, coming out of the white house and i know you know we talk about bleach and stuff like that i mean i know we mock that but man it wasn't like a master class of leadership yeah ultimately there but it was a master class on operation warp speed and uh and i i grant i grant trump on that it shows that government can do big things when it wants to i happen to believe in vaccines i think it's one of the most extraordinary things that's ever happened in our lifetime because it's extended our lifetime saved millions and millions of people's lives uh and i say that as a guy that's gone after big pharma and has the receipts.

You know, I think

you received a lot of criticism in, you know, kind of where I'm going with this is the rules for thee, not for me type thing.

Yeah.

And so we saw, you know, we saw Nancy Pelosi at the at the hair salon with no mask when California had the mask.

I read somewhere, I don't know if it's true that you had closed all the wineries except your own.

That's such crap.

Is that bullshit?

It's such crap.

It's not even, it's so insulting to your intelligence and to your audience that anyone would fucking believe that.

Are you kidding?

Obviously not.

I mean,

we literally had a map as it relates to percentage of those that tested positive by county.

And as the percentage declined, we lifted restrictions on capacity in restaurants, bars, hotels, monitors, hospitality generally.

And each county, on the basis of an independent analysis, had those restrictions lifted.

One of those counties, many of the counties, dozens of counties, were in Rhine Country, which exists not just in Napa and Sonoma, but Central Valley, Central Coast, and they were lifted.

I have businesses, and I'm proud of the fact that I've created close to a thousand jobs, started 21 businesses

with no trust funds, right out of college, pen to paper.

And I have a number of businesses in Napa

that had the benefit of reopening, had the burden of closing, like every other business in that region these are just questions you know i want to ask i mean we were talking at breakfast you know

i mean i told you i don't i don't watch any news anymore because i think it is i don't i know it's all

and um and so there's yeah there's some things that you know that that i've despised you for i love that that i love your honesty that that i despise me for the shit i read too i want to you know that i want to uh i'd despise me for the french laundry the

this damn restaurant.

That's the rules for thee.

You just mentioned, I'm going to indict myself here.

Biggest boneheaded damn decision I made.

Now, it was a restaurant that was open.

I went to a restaurant

and it was sort of coming out of COVID.

We were in that sort of category that I just expressed where things were lower in that region.

And this was a restaurant that was open.

But it was against the spirit of what I was saying, which is you shouldn't have large dinners with a large group of people, as we did.

And I went to a damn birthday party and I paid the price and I own it.

You know, I'm not perfect, man.

And I, you know, I beat the shit out of myself for that.

And everyone who criticized me is goddamn right.

And I own that.

And, you know, there were plenty of other people making those same damn decisions that weren't on our Fox News every single night.

But that doesn't matter.

I control, you know, I take responsibility.

So, yeah,

those are the things.

I mean, you mentioned Nancy others.

I mean, you know,

life, man, it's

none of us are perfect.

Maybe the president is in some people's minds, but none of us, in my mind, are perfect.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I appreciate you coming clean on that.

And so

when

it seems like you're gearing up for maybe a presidential run.

I mean, you were just in South Carolina, went to a couple different places there to speak.

I mean, are you gearing up for a 2028 run?

No, I'm gearing up for 2016 because from my humble perspective, I think it's existential if my party is not successful next year.

And that's why I was out there on the stump, nine different events, just making the case.

Don't look for the guy, guy, on the white horse to come save the day in 2028.

I think it's the Democratic Party's,

I'm blown away the Democrats' obsession with just that sort of perfect person that's going to say, you know, sort of this John Wayne thing,

this romantic version of that person is going to save the day.

Meanwhile, we're not doing the hard work in between.

2028 is four damn year.

I mean, this guy just got elected.

Been office a little over six months or about six goddamn months.

Why the hell are we talking about 2028?

And so we got to grind.

We got to add these house seats.

That's it, man.

It's to me.

I need a Speaker Jeffries.

People out there love this Speaker Johnson guy.

I don't.

He wants, of course, to tar and feather me.

That's a spiritual term, I imagine.

I didn't see that.

Maybe it's in the

Old Testament, not the New Testament.

But

we're just, we have different, different points of view and world vision.

So you're not going to run?

I'm not.

Well, I'm going to avoid, I'm going to run if he tries to tar and feather me.

But as it relates to the presidency, who the hell knows?

That's fate.

That's, do you meet a moment?

Are you wasting anyone's time?

Do you have a why, a compelling why?

I mean,

I would have to sit in front of you and feel totally congruent that I'm just like, this is the why.

Why are you running?

And just say, this is, you know, and have that burning conviction.

I tell you, the more Trump keeps doing what he does, the more compelled I am to think about it.

I've never felt more outrage, more anger.

towards the actions and often this individual than I do now.

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Well, we'll get into that.

Who are some, if it's not going to be you, who are some leaders in the Democratic Party that you would like to see step up?

I think there's a ton of them.

Look, I can give you the who's who name, the list that everybody knows.

But look, you have the lineup, a lot of folks that ran last time.

They're outstanding leaders in our party.

Again, nine out of ten people listening rolling their eyes.

I get it.

Different parties.

But you have extraordinarily talented people, you have to acknowledge, like Pete Buttigieg.

You have extraordinarily talented governors that are merging from Bashir to Whitmer to Shapiro to Wes Moore, who's a rock star, he's a buddy.

You've got a lot of folks we don't talk a lot about in the Senate, many in the House of Representatives.

I mean, you see Rocana making moves.

Obviously, you see

Chris there.

And

up in Connecticut, you see folks

I think that will emerge out of nowhere, including a lot of brand names, celebrities that folks are trying to mold since we're so into performative politics.

Interesting.

Who?

I don't know.

I mean, just, you know, the sort of, you know, you get the Cuban types that are always being pushed, the rock types, you know, where, I don't know, you know, their party affiliation.

I mean, you know, McConne is always talking about running for something.

You know, and so you just, you have folks.

I think Trump has just opened the damn door.

And, you know, it's style now.

It's narrative.

It's not facts.

It's who can dominate the conversation, man, flood the zone.

And this guy's a master at this.

You know, I think he's a bit of a flim flammer.

He's a carney from my humble perspective, a music man in many respects.

But he's incredibly gifted

at defining the terms of the debate, unlike anyone in my lifetime.

The Democratic version of that?

That may emerge, may not.

Bernie, though, is powerful, man.

Cannot deny the populism of Bernie Sanders, the purity of heart, sort of conviction, the consistency of message, repeats himself over in the vernacular of Marshawn Lynch, over and over and over and over and over again.

Trump does the same.

There's something about that in terms of communication style.

Is it AOCs and the next generation, or is that Rocana in that mold?

I don't know.

But it's,

you know, there's a lot of talent.

And I haven't said, I wouldn't have said that seven, eight years ago.

I didn't sense we had that kind of deep bench.

We do now.

Well, thank you.

You know, speaking of Trump and the presidency, I mean, a lot of people are frustrated on his base with what's going on.

And so I want to ask you a couple of things

that are really hot in the news right now.

And, you know, and I mean,

let's talk about the Epstein stuff.

You know, there was a big...

big push in his campaign, in his campaign about releasing the Epstein files.

When are we going to see the list?

And I mean, he rode that, you know, in a campaign and then

is potentially destroying his entire base by just dismissing it and closing the case.

So I'm curious, what are your thoughts on what's going on?

I mean,

you know,

I don't want to just play into it because the whole thing has always been, to me, a sideshow.

But I thought it got real interesting when Elon put out that tweet.

And then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, what file?

I thought it was really interesting to watch Trump take over for Pam, who's an old friend of mine.

Don't want to get her fired for saying that.

Bondi, the AG, and she was asked a direct question about it.

Trump defensively jumped in.

That was the most defensive I've seen him in a while.

So what do you think is going on?

I don't know what's going on, but I know the rumors.

Was it an intelligence op by Mossad?

Like what?

Well, that was one of the

current.

Look, man, I have no idea.

I just,

I felt I was getting down a little, down the corridors of Pizzagate for a while.

And I'm like,

what is going on?

You know, and by the way, that's manifest in real craziness.

I mean,

about two years of protests where I wasn't getting out of my damn house.

I've had every version of that.

Like, what the hell is going on?

Get in the chemtrail stuff.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff.

I get it.

UFOs are a little more interesting to me.

I'm a little more less on the conspiracy side of that, but that's another conversation.

But the Epstein stuff, man, I couldn't break anything except Trump.

Look, man, the guy,

Epstein and Trump knew each other.

That's not even, there's no fake videos.

Those aren't AI videos of those guys hanging out.

And it would make a lot.

I don't know.

I just, I'm going to leave it to more objective minds.

I have no objectivity.

I don't even, and I'm not going down this rabbit hole except to say what Elon put that out.

I thought it was a big tell.

Something's up.

A lot of weird stuff's going on.

I mean, you know, and,

you know, it just, it sucks because i want to take people for their word and time and time again you know we're we're seeing that word broken and it's it's made me rethink how i choose my leaders and not saying that i'm choosing you to be my leader by you just said but you said you said but you despise me earlier i am extremely frustrated uh with with with with what's going on and so let's move on you know the other hot topic is iran i mean what do you think about that well you know i I really bombed Iran.

I had Leon Padetta on my podcast last week, and it was interesting to have former CIA director, obviously Leon, Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff, with all of his hats that he wore.

And, you know, they were doing, they were gaming out this exact mission back when he was in charge.

And it was executed flawlessly.

Goddamn heroes.

Unbelievable.

It was a masterclass.

You're the expert here, man, but I was proud of how flawless they executed on that, how many years they were working on it, and how

seemingly effective, obliterated or not, you know, whatever.

A lot of bloviation from Trump, but you know,

it seems to have delayed the program and certainly not ended it.

So it's now going to require the hard work of diplomacy.

Well, see, what's interesting to me, and this word may be

it's my understanding that our 18, not one of our 18 intelligence agencies said that there was enriched uranium there.

Now, I'm not a friend of Iran.

I know Iran uses terrorist groups as proxies, but I thought it was interesting that now one of our 18 intelligence agencies said that we had enriched, that Iran had enriched uranium at those facilities.

And then Israel,

Saud, comes along and says, oh, no, it's in there.

And just like that, we're...

Well, they've been saying it for most of my life.

I mean, I can't remember when Bibi wasn't saying it.

We're just a month away.

We're just a year away.

I think I was 40 at the time.

Now

I'm almost on Social Security.

So I get the cynicism there.

I mean, Tulsi was testifying a few weeks prior.

So that's a legit question, man.

That's a legit question.

And that absolutely is a legitimate point of critique as it relates to what may or may not have occurred.

The fact that they did make the decision, the fact that regardless, it's delayed the program

makes me sleep better at night

if we do the hard work of diplomacy because we didn't solve for anything.

We didn't end anything.

And I really worry more broadly with the aftermath of what's happening in Gaza and the devastation of Gaza.

You know, I pray there'll be Abraham II.

I pray Saudi deal.

Israel.

I pray that we can can begin to negotiate for peace.

I appreciated the president immediately pivoting to wanting to negotiate after the successful bombing.

And I think that's critical now.

So this success will be defined moving forward, regardless of the legitimacy of your observation and what has been reported from the intelligence communities publicly.

How do you think the stuff between Israel and Gaza ends?

Bibi is just enough.

Come on.

All these poor children.

Enough.

When's enough?

Enough.

I mean, FOMOS.

I went.

I flew out there.

One of the first flights in.

Had to get to Cyprus.

Could barely get out of Israel.

Flew in to meet with Bibi.

Met with the president just weeks after October 7th.

Sent a field hospital.

Deep reverence for the state of Israel.

and Israeli people.

My family married a lot of Jewish family.

We can get into my history.

And so there's a why there.

I feel always connected to that country.

I was proud to go out there and support country.

I mean, it is a terrorist attack, a Kamas.

But Jesus, I mean, look at these children starving.

You know, and can't, I mean, so enough.

I know we're in the final stages, and as we talk, they're negotiating these 10 hostages, and we're looking for temporary peace deal.

But it breaks my heart, man.

And again, this is someone that reveres the state of Israel

and has its back.

I'm not, you know, Bibi, I remember meeting him in the bunker right after, man.

And it's so interesting

now to hear what he said, not in the moment, but with everything that happened after.

It doesn't surprise me

that his mindset, understandably,

but I mean,

enough.

Yeah, I mean, the last numbers I saw saw 40 000 people dead what man that's a lot of and these are 40 000 families yeah

that are going to have a point of view as they grow and get their lives back about what the hell just what happened and that's uh 40 000 opportunities going forward yep uh where we may not feel so safe in that cafe uh when we're traveling and um and so i you know look i i i applaud president trump uh on the abrupt accords i i I think there's a pathway.

I think the Biden administration is moving down that pathway with Saudi Arabia, which is a big goddamn deal.

And the opportunity now with Syria and everything that's happened there, the conditions have radically changed, and how they have significantly, I think they've just exposed Iran as

not a paper tiger in terms of their proxies, but in terms of their own sort of domestic military capacity, certainly from a defense perspective.

You have this extraordinary moment that could transform the history of this country,

our country, and the world, certainly the Middle East.

And I pray that cooler heads prevail and that they can temper some of the appetite of Bibi, particularly of some members of his coalition in particular, that are rabid on this topic

to, I think, get a pathway, not think, that need to get a pathway to peace and do it so immediately.

Well, let's move into your life story.

You ready?

See, I prefer Middle East politics to my life story.

Come back to it.

We can come back to it.

Where'd you grow up?

I was San Francisco, man.

I know people are booing.

Don't hate.

San Fran, fifth generation.

My dad used to joke, his great-grandfather, he said he didn't know what came first, the Irish cop or San Francisco.

So it's been about 150 years from the Irish cop to

a politician.

And

so I grew up there had pretty significant learning disabilities so struggled in school couldn't read or write severe dyslexia that's why i don't read speeches never seen me read a speech yeah i've read that you you can't even you do not read a teleprompter i the only thing i can do is a teleprompter and it's difficult beyond words but it's but i certainly sure as hell can't look down and read a speech never been able to which is a little bit of a disability in politics.

I imagine I could have picked another profession.

It's been a gift and we can get to that later.

But as a consequence of that, I moved to Maring County for better schools.

My mom, single mom, came from nothing.

She died, left about a $5,000 estate.

No bullshit, which was a mayor.

Amazing because with all the care at the end, she died of cancer.

It was amazing that she didn't have more debt.

And it just puts into perspective, there's a sort of perception of me, some rich kid,

somehow born to privilege.

But she was a teenage.

She was 19 when she was pregnant with me.

Two kids, divorced a few years later.

She's just like hustled, man.

She worked for A to Adoption and Special Kids, the debaut family.

So when it comes to issues around physical and intellectual disabilities, it's been my cause, man.

Special Olympics, back to Sarah Shriver.

And the Shriver, I mean, and just the issues around intellectual disabilities and best buddies and

people,

you know, being bullied.

I don't like bullies.

Goes to why I have strong opinions about Trump, man.

Just is.

It's like it triggers me.

All of us have that.

I I don't like people talking down to people, past people.

I don't like people exploiting weakness.

And so my mom taught me that.

And she was a tough son of a bitch.

And she just taught me hard work, man.

I mean, there was no, you know, I was doing paper roots, working for Jeff Hicks Construction, was doing janitorial work down in the Tundle Loin in San Francisco.

I mean, that was my summer job through college, just grinding.

I was going to go to a community college.

I mean, I got 960 or something on Monday.

I'm SAT.

My mom said, don't even take it again.

It's okay.

I was panicked.

You know, I was just like, that guy.

I remember fifth grade, Mr.

Morris's class.

I started reading.

You know, they make everyone read a little part of a book.

And you're just, you're seeing the clock.

You're like, fuck.

You're like, please, please let's this class end.

And you're like counting the desks.

And you're like, and I remember getting up, people, I swear to God, I'll never forget people laughing when I couldn't even read the goddamn words.

Damn.

And

those are the scars of your life, man.

I identify you.

And so my mom struggled with that.

My sister's smart.

She's going to fancy school.

She goes to Georgetown.

She's getting 13.

I don't remember.

It doesn't even matter.

It was easy for her.

And I'm just, and so for her, I have so much empathy.

I never had kids.

She died years and years, 18 years ago.

So she never got me my kids.

And I never got to say thank you.

Because as a parent, I've got a couple of kids that have been struggling.

And it's so hard on the parents.

I never even thought about that.

Never thought about my mom, man.

And all the sacrifices, all the shit she went through.

She worked two, three jobs her whole fucking life.

I mean, that's how I got in the restaurant business.

She was a waitress in doing bookkeeping and part-time real estate, and I was the busboy.

And that's how I kind of got introduced to the business.

And

then she ended up working for me near the end of her life when I started growing my businesses from one little store

with one part-time employee and built that to 20-plus businesses across California.

And so that was my mom.

My dad was,

he kind of panicked.

He

tried to get into politics, lost, went into debt, tried to do it again, lost,

lost the relationship with my mom, and then just moved out of San Francisco and went up to Lake Tahoe area.

And he just, he had a little nervous, he had a little breakdown.

How old were you when he left?

Just a few years old.

Do you remember him?

Yeah.

I mean, I remember him for, you know,

summers.

I remember him sometimes on the weekend.

I remember when I started getting good at baseball and basketball.

That was where we reconnected.

And it's the only reason I got into four-year college, baseball.

And was a pretty good basketball player, better baseball player, and got recruited to Santa Clara.

And that's the kind of...

You kind of snuck in there.

It was a nothing scholarship.

Wasn't even about that.

It was the ticket to a four-year college.

But those high school years, man, my dad started to show up.

He's proud.

It's like the son's.

You were proud?

He was proud.

He was proud.

Yeah, and sort of connected and that.

And I was like, hey, dad, you know, so he kind of started coming back in our lives a lot more.

How did your mom handle him leaving?

I mean,

neither of ever got remarried.

They both, every time they came close, they sabotaged each other.

Did they talk well of each other or each other?

Yeah, there was no abuse.

There was no issues.

There were no affairs.

It was my dad just struggling with his own identity.

And he eventually became a, he was a lawyer, then became a judge.

He was on the Superior Court, California, then the Court of Appeals.

Incredibly bright,

objectively so.

I mean, that was his sort of legendary status.

He was a...

He was at Stanford.

He was doing a little English work there, professor for a brief period of time, or was teaching there, and then became a judge and wrote these beautiful opinions.

And his entire inheritance, he passed, he made it just through my election day as governor, which is a hell of a thing, a wheelchair.

Wow.

Survived just to see his son become governor, man.

And, which is just fucking in hindsight.

I'm like,

good as that, man.

Let's roll it back a little bit.

I mean, did you feel,

I mean, did you feel any resentment or,

I mean, when your dad leaves.

at that young of an age.

I mean, I think

everybody goes through these journeys differently.

And there's so many people that have the same experience.

I never,

you know, you didn't, I didn't know any other pathway, right?

So I didn't experience something and lose something because I was so young.

That's a good point.

So I didn't sort of connect with that other caregiver, the other person being home or around.

I just connected with my mom.

And that sort of, you know, and that was like a jawing thing, man.

Like, I'm the only son, you know, struggling, but I'm like the guy, the boy.

just like,

so man, she just, yeah, I mean, she sacrificed everything for me, man.

Like gave up everything, any ambition, anything else.

How did you receive him coming back into the picture?

His gift, man.

He's my hero.

I mean, he was the, he was, he was the, he was the Bobby Kennedy, you know, he was the, the judge, the politics, you know, he had all these interesting relationships, including with the Getty family, his closest relationships, which opened a lot of doors for me and created a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise have.

And so he was adventure.

The summers were, he was a ravid outdoorsman.

Like, man, we were like, we'd go, I mean, we were all over the world.

We would go, it was one summer trip and it was just always a fucking adventure.

And river trips primarily.

And we'd, you know, go up there and, you know, up there in Manitoba, Winnipeg, and we're out there, Beluga whales in Hudson Bay.

I'm like, this is amazing.

We're doing blue whales down in Baja

or gray whales in Baja.

We would be out doing these river trips on the Middle Fork of the Salmon, American, and Rogue River up in Oregon.

And he was just that guy.

So I'm connected to adventure.

And then he was passionate about politics, but his public service wasn't partisan.

It was like, man, just,

again, it was the feelings around the 60s.

Like it was a noble calling.

And

so you combine the hard work and ethic of my goddamn mom.

Don't complain.

Don't explain.

You have agency.

You're not a fucking victim.

You got to deal with shit.

And that idealism of my dad.

What a gift.

Wow.

Wow.

I mean, any, any, did you ever ask your dad why he left?

Yeah, he said he had a breakdown.

He said, I just was, I was in, I, he said, I, he says he literally had a breakdown.

I mean, we were talking earlier.

He did some interesting stuff.

I mean, I'm getting in different territory here.

He told me he did some LSD experiments at Stanford University.

He said he primarily did it because they paid a lot.

He was just always,

he was on a journey, man.

I think I didn't, you don't think about that with your parents.

My mom, you know, my mom's dad was a prisoner of war in Corrigidor.

He ultimately took his life.

Talk about PTS, talk about veterans.

Don't even get me started either, man.

My mom struggled with that.

I mean, he put a gun to their head

to my mom and his sister

after he came back.

That's how dup he was.

He was a beautiful man, but not when he drank.

And so my mom struggled with that and was very lonely, isolated.

My My dad clearly was struggling more with his mental health than I expected.

Not in an acute way, but in a way that I'm starting to more appreciate.

He said, I had a damn breakdown.

I couldn't face you guys.

I couldn't own up to being a good father.

And I wasn't going to be a good husband.

And so I said, I had to leave.

And he just said, I broke down.

Wow.

And but he was a beautiful man.

And as I say, his inheritance was his idealism and

the sense of adventure and limitlessness, obligation.

You know, he was, you know, he was community, I think, community opportunity responsibility.

He was the responsibility guy.

Like, you have an obligation, brother.

You know, you got to give back.

That's your job.

And he was charitable and he was cause-oriented,

justice, you know, justice newsome.

And so I thought he was a beautiful man in my mind, but terrible, not a great, not the best father, and certainly not a good husband.

I mean, what kind of LSD experiments?

Man, I'm just learning about them, brother.

I'm learning more and more about this.

I'm trying to find out more from other family members.

This is some MK Ultra shit.

Yeah, this is like predates all this stuff that now everybody's starting to understand how powerful and potent and profoundly important

this space is

in terms, not just for the, I mean, for vets next level.

I mean, you're, look, I'm talking to the expert here.

I'm going to mind my words.

But more broadly, man, this mental health crisis was the right question you asked me about COVID.

Goddamn right, man.

Social isolation.

We haven't come.

We're more lonely than ever, more isolated, more distrustful.

Community's been afraid.

That did not help COVID.

Quite the contrary, accelerated.

They were pre-existing trends.

I mean, you had the former surgeon general in Obama that made the point.

So the number one disease in America is loneliness, even before the pandemic, and then it was accelerated.

And we haven't figured that one out, man.

And that's where I want my leadership to speak to those better angels, man, and not divide, take down, separate anymore.

And that's my gripe.

I don't want to get back into politics, but that's my gripe about what's going on at 1600 Pennsylvania right now.

It just, we need to knit things back together, man.

And this guy is uniquely capable of doing it because he has no political mornings.

It's not ideological, Trump.

So his ability to pivot, shapeshift.

What a gift if he would just damn exercise it.

I mean, do you feel like the last administration was divisive?

I think, you know, we got ideological, you know,

failed at the border.

And by the way, I say that as a guy who put 394 National Guard down at the border.

I saw that.

I didn't react.

Years and years ago.

I didn't react to that.

I mean, I invested over a billion dollars, 1.1, almost $1.3 billion into migrant centers in three counties, Imperial, San Diego, and Riverside counties along the border, in order to put a lid on it.

It's why you didn't see on the nightly news.

I know you weren't watching as much as others, but there was a lot of the flooding of the news was primarily around Texas.

But we were able to kind of keep a lid on it a little bit in California.

And trust me.

My friends on the right would have exploited the hell out of California had we seen that flood.

And we were trying to manage it.

And I was trying to manage the politics, trying to have the back of the president, but very, very critical saying, you guys wake up to the hell is going on down here.

I mean, the fact that here's a progressive governor putting hundreds of military at the border and consistently funding that and every but fighting in every budget to keep that going.

Revere those guys in the National Guard, by the way.

Rock stars.

You know,

I read that you put 400, 398.

You just said

National Guard troops down there on the border, but I did do some research and I found that California is the number one state with illegal immigration and Texas is right there behind you.

Yeah.

In terms of people crossing the border, I mean, it's the largest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere.

So you'd expect that.

I mean, just by very nature of it, largest in the Western Hemisphere.

And obviously two-way trade there.

I mean, it's a whole region, that whole entire economic region is connected, Tijuana and San Diego region.

And it's a very vibrant cross-border relationship, which is another issue that, you know, respectfully, we should talk more about the economic side of border policy.

But undoubtedly, it's a very porous border beyond sort of that San Diego sector where the wall has substantially been built, but hardly the ultimate deterrent.

It's a deterrent.

But people, even with double border, they have a legendary status.

I was in tunnels with the Guard not too long ago, and Border Patrol went into the tunnels, and we're discovering tunnels all the goddamn time, which are just next-level tunnels that the cartels are running.

And by the way, that's two-way.

That's folks sending guns, arms down, and cash down south, not just the drugs coming in north.

But no, I've just never been that guy.

I remember there was some Democratic primary, and everybody raised their, a bunch of folks raised their hand, would you get rid of the border?

I'm like, what the hell is going on?

What are they talking about?

Nations need borders.

Question is, what's the most effective approach?

I thought 1,954 miles of a wall.

I thought Trump was a little bit,

you know, come on, man.

He only, by the way, did 85 new miles in his four years.

Little bloviation there about how much he actually accomplished.

He will say 458 because they retrofitted existing fence.

Fine.

But it was hardly a triumph in that.

But I believe in border security and I believe in the work these guys are doing every single day and the lives they've saved.

Our counter-narcotics efforts, our task forces have been next level, not only with National Guard and Border Patrol, but also with our California Highway Patrol that are part of these larger efforts throughout the state.

Look, I'm going to stay with 39% of people that are Latino.

I'm going to stay where 27% of people are foreign-born.

I represent a majority minority state.

We're the largest agricultural state.

When people say, well, he needs to understand the heartland.

Really?

Really?

Telling me that?

Governor of California has more hunting jobs, more forestry jobs, and more agriculture and ranching jobs than anyone else in the country.

Not even close, California.

I'm also mindful of the contributions of immigrants.

Silicon Valley,

over half the unicorn companies in this country are in my state, 57%.

And half of those

are literally owned by immigrants.

42% of our startups in California, immigrants, from Silicon Valley to Central Valley, immigration, hospitality business I'm in, construction workers.

Come on, man.

Going after these people at home depots, day laborers, taking kids or taking parents from kids that don't have criminal records.

That's where I draw the line.

And so California has got more to lose than anyone else in this.

And we've been the beneficiary

of immigrants.

I'm with you on criminals.

11,000, 11,000 plus we've turned over to ICE since I've been governor.

Fact.

11,000.

We work with ICE.

I work with ICE with our sanctuary policy.

We work with ICE as it relates to the release of dangerous and violent criminals.

11,000 that we have notified and worked with ICE to transfer into port.

You know,

I'm a little more on the middle on this than most people think.

I got painted out to be like a MAGA troll or something because a lot of the people that I've interviewed, including Trump himself.

And while I do lean conservative, I am not that far right.

And so I think there's a happy medium here.

And

I'm glad you brought up the economic repercussions of this because, yes, you know, I mean, I'm constructing, you know, we talked at breakfast, I'm constructing a new studio that's been delayed.

You know, a lot of, I mean, I say, you know, restaurants are hurting, construction's hurting, a lot of farming's hurting.

Like, we, you know, we use those people that they fill those jobs.

They just, it just, it is what it is.

They fill the jobs.

Now, I think the border has been a complete fucking disaster.

Agree with you.

And totally agree.

You know, but and so, I mean,

how would you like to see this?

Goes?

I'll hold my.

Look, Benny,

you've been here 10, 15 years paying taxes.

There's got to be a pathway to figure that out.

I know everyone, oh, they're just saying that so they all

vote Democrat.

Well, that's no, can we just disabuse ourselves of that now too?

Look how well Trump did with the Latino community.

So maybe that's a pathway for mega to give.

I don't, it's not about politics, man.

It's about the fabric of our community, all these mixed status families.

Eight and a half billion dollars of tax collection in California every year from undocs, eight and a half billion that we receive just at the state level of taxes.

That was the last Pew estimate.

So it's not insignificant.

Backbone, I mean, it's half of our agriculture workers.

You care about farmers and ranchers, if that's what you're like your number one go-to commitment, then you sure as hell care, should care about their workers.

41% of our construction workers, Texas and California have the highest percentage of their construction workers that would fall into that category.

How the hell do we rebuild Altadena and Palisades?

We're going to need a peak next year.

We estimate about 70,000 workers without that workforce.

Ain't going to happen.

You're struggling here.

You imagine a peak there.

So I think there needs to be a pathway for those folks as we secure the border and we own that issue.

Do you feel that they're taking American jobs?

Not when, not in Tulare County, not in Ventura County.

I don't know many people that want a job.

out there in those packing facilities.

I don't see many people look like me jumping at those jobs.

I just just don't.

Maybe there's some exceptions.

I haven't seen the evidence of that.

I understand what you're saying, but you know, that is the, that is the narrative.

I mean, you had this just, I thought one of the most comical things I've read in a long time and saw was your new Secretary of Ag saying, well, everyone on Medicaid can take those jobs.

That's the Secretary of Ag saying that.

She said that, literally.

So we don't need migrants in this country.

Secretary of Canada.

Yeah, people on Medicaid, that will be the workforce.

It's not even serious,

but she seriously said it, and she said it with Christy Noam and others to the left and right.

They're not, you know, Trump recognized that.

I was down there in Oxnard, California.

God is my witness.

A couple days after he nationalized, federalized the National Guard over our objection.

By the way, these were the heroes, 2,500 of them, that were...

received like rock stars in L.A., in some of the most progressive districts in the country.

People with selfies, their biggest problem is all the food and water people were giving them, thanking them for being there during the disaster and during our recovery.

The same ones now are being massed up,

and now people are protesting.

As we're dealing with that, I get a call.

saying they're running raids in the fields in Ventura County, man.

You got to get up there.

So I left, got there a little late, and they were showing me videos with black hawks and literally agents running through the fields.

Middle of Manchuria County, man.

And I met with six families.

There was a 16-year-old boy.

He couldn't look at me in the eyes.

He's at the end of the table.

He's literally looking like this.

Just tears rolling down his face.

People tell me their stories.

And I said, how you doing, man?

He goes, I'm fine.

Speaks perfect English.

Was born here.

He's literally.

16 years old in school still, last couple days of school.

And I said, what's going on?

Every time he tried to talk, he broke down.

And so someone said he lost his mom and dad yesterday.

I said, what do you mean lost them?

He says, well, they've disappeared.

20 plus years.

They went to the field, drove together, were ripped out of the car in the parking lot of the same place they've gone for 20 plus years.

Mom and dad disappeared.

He didn't even know how to get back in the house.

No family, nothing.

Thank God he connected with someone from the school to connect him to me and others.

Didn't even know how to clean his clothes or cook his food.

The hell is that?

But to his credit, a day later, Trump said, oh, we need to protect those people.

Okay.

Wow.

Thank you for saying it.

But then his actions continue to contradict it.

And they continue to go out randomly on the streets going after law-abiding citizens, including American citizens, literal American citizens, people with green cards.

And I just, to terrorize people, he was in MacArthur Park with these National Guard, these heroes, being used as pawns for theater with, again, damn blackhawks overhead in the middle of the day where kids were in soccer camp.

They didn't make one arrest.

It was just a sign of cruelty.

It was an expression of cruelty just to be cruel.

It's weakness, masquerading a strike, man.

Like, what the hell's Trump do?

He's got 4,000 of your brothers and sisters out there in an American city.

And by the way, 90% of them aren't doing a damn thing, which means they're not at home with their families.

A lot of these guys are police officers and firefighters.

They want to teach summer school and they're sitting there in the damn armories waiting for some bullshit assignment so that he can look tough.

Anyway, forgive me on this.

Border, goddamn right.

And you know what?

To the extent we own this as a reaction to the failure,

there may be some truth to that.

But they'll make what's happening right.

And I just think we can find some balance.

Ronald Reagan did it in 96 or 86, excuse me.

I'm not saying you have to do that pathway, that amnesty bill.

There's lessons learned.

But come on.

I mean, this country is a nation of immigrants.

The economy is going to be wrecked.

Not just, and California's a tenth pole of the U.S.

economy.

You want to mess with us?

You're messing with the United States of America.

It's self-sabotage.

And there is a way of addressing this issue.

Go after the criminals, man.

I'm all in.

How do you determine who's a criminal, though,

when a lot of these people don't have any record?

How do you determine that?

Yeah, well, on the basis, obviously, of arrests.

So you're right.

I mean, we don't know, and we wouldn't know who's a criminal that's not in our system somewhere, have been captured in that system that has any particular record.

I mean, you have some people with little traffic offenses, some misdemeanor things, and that's categorized as a crime.

But for me, it's dangerous people.

It's felons.

It's people that are convicted and have served their time.

By the way, I've vetoed two bills.

I'm on the opposite side of my legislature.

Remember,

it's constitution in California, not just the constitutional republic here in the United States.

And they've sent me two bills I've had to veto where they didn't want me to cooperate with ICE for these 11 plus thousand people.

I just think they're wrong.

My party's wrong on that.

And I think that, again, is aided into the conditions that Trump has exploited politically and is exploiting now with Stephen Miller in a way that, to me, is just so goddamn un-American and is going to create so much distrust with law enforcement.

These fucking rock stars with me today, CHP, where people now just looking at those guys differently.

They don't trust them now.

People run around with masks with no badge and no identification.

I mean, if someone came up to me like that, I mean, I would get into it.

Like, who the hell are you?

Am I being kidnapped?

You know, I think, I mean, I interviewed Holman, you know, a couple, couple, about a month ago or so.

And,

you know, one of the things that he had mentioned, and it made sense to me, was,

and I don't, is Ventura County just north of LA?

Because that's Ventura County.

I think we were.

That's as an Oxnard in Ventura County.

Now, he was saying that he told me that they're just going after the criminals.

It's bullshit.

Forgive me for all this.

What he did say is

that

sanctuary cities, and I don't know if Ventura County has that or not, but that that

by

being a sanctuary city and not cooperating with ICE, that

it was putting a tremendous amount of danger on

the Border Patrol and ICE.

And

I mean, I don't think there's any arguing that.

So how do

I mean, how do cities, how does this fucking work, man?

Like, how do, how, how, how can sanctuary cities work with the federal government to sort through who should be here and who shouldn't be?

So let me acknowledge, I want to acknowledge that point, his point.

I don't want to dismiss that out of hand.

We have a state policy that's very different than the local jurisdictions.

So what I described to you is the state policy with the largest corrections institution in the United States, CDCR.

And that's why numerically, there's no governor who can lay claim to coordinating at the state, their state level with a larger cohort of people that fall in that category of dangerous and violent with ICE.

But at the local level,

each jurisdiction and their conservative parts of the state, not just liberal starts of the state.

I mean, Rudy Giuliani was one of the biggest proponents of sanctuary policy.

Rudy Giuliani.

He said, in many respects, that it keeps people safe, healthy, and educated.

Safe in the context that it led to more trust for law enforcement, if you're a witness of crime or a victim of crime, to come forward without fear of deportation, created trust in the community with law enforcement.

More educated because you're more likely to send your kids to school, young kid, without worrying about a crossing guard turning you in.

And more healthy because you're more likely to get a flu shot at a community clinic without fear of deportation.

Giuliani.

Police Chiefs Association in the past supported.

in the past

sanctuary policy for the same reasons around public safety and relational trust with the community.

That said, this is where I disagree.

And as mayor of San Francisco, I got a lot of shit for this.

I inherited, just as I inherited sanctuary policy at the state, that the legislature wants to continue to change.

As mayor, I inherited sanctuary policy when I got sworn in, and it was too permissive.

And I closed a loophole as it relates to coordinating with ICE upon arrest.

And people are pissed.

When I left mayor's office, they reversed that.

No, sure.

So I've been on this basis, but I support the broader principle.

That said, I'm happy to advocate for eliminating sex rate policy.

And the reason it exists is because of the total abject failure of the federal government to do its fucking job.

It exists because they persist in politicizing this.

I mean, I want that gang of eight back.

I want the old Rubio back.

That's some fucking courage.

Thank you, Marco Rubio.

And And had a compromise that he was promoting.

Bipartisan compromise in this space.

Let's go back to the tenets of that deal.

And then you could start to unwind sanctuary policy.

It exists because of that failure.

And so we can address Hoomin's concerns in that respect.

Not a big fan of his because he's not a big fan of mine.

He won my arrest, which I thought was a little blow, tough guy.

He's that guy.

That said, I was told, to his credit, that he was a pretty thoughtful and good

soldier before he got this sort of performative job, my humble perspective, that apparently he was well respected in his

older roles over there.

So I'll give him some grace in that respect, despite his desire for my arrest.

I mean,

how do we solve it long term, though?

You know, I mean, we see this shit and it's just

subject after subject and it gets fucking batted back and forth between Republicans and Democrats over and over again, with the, you know, border being one of them.

But, you know, I don't see anybody, and maybe I'm missing, like I said, I'll watch the news, but

I don't see anybody trying to fix immigration

other than

we're ripping the border wall down, we're putting the border wall up, we're going to shut the border down, we're going to open the fucking border.

And, and, you know, but there's no pathway.

The pathway for immigrants to come into the country legally is not changing.

It's not been streamlined.

Nothing's been tuned to what we're dealing with today.

And a lot of these people are, I mean, I'll probably get blasted for saying this, but

I see it first.

I mean, the guy that built the studio

right here, this wasn't here before, he built it and came in on Easter Sunday, worked his ass off, had him do some stuff at other properties that I own.

And now, the last time I talked to him, he's got like 12 different crews.

I mean, he, he has achieved the American dream.

He's a, he's an extremely hard worker.

He does great work.

I mean, I like, I love to see that because I've seen so many Americans,

not immigrant, Americans say, oh, the American dream's over.

I can't buy a home.

I can't do this.

I can't do that.

And it's like, this dude barely speaks English.

built this, built that.

Now he's got, you know, multiple crews running and he's doing amazing.

But you know what

pisses me off is

I do think that we need these people in this country.

And I do think that the economy is going to face some consequences.

I think it already probably is.

And so

why is nobody on the right or the left trying to fix the actual immigration policy?

I think because the politics, I mean, we're rewarded for bad behavior, man.

I think the vast majority of folks in elected office are right where you are.

I really, I honestly believe that.

I think they were primarily where that gang of eight was.

Hell, I thought they were where,

you know, where the Democratic Party even was supporting that bipartisan bill a year ago, which included $650 million for the border wall to reform the amnesty system.

The amnesty program in the United States is broken, as you suggest.

It needs to be updated.

But it's, these guys have a, some, the politics is immigration is a border issue when it's much more than a border issue

and we have an obligation i think to each other if we're going to knit this country back together to own up to that and i i i appreciate to see finally my party move on some more border issues um but we're going to need to see some movement along the lines of what rubio and others were trying to advance in that gang of eight to sort of get back and i don't even think it's the center i think it's just common sense um and and and look Trump says the right things on this.

He wants first-round draft choices around the best, around the rest of the world.

Love that, man.

Let's get the best in the goddamn bright.

You want to talk about AI.

50% of the AI researchers are Chinese, man.

50%.

I mean,

back to California's secret sauce.

It's an economic imperative diversity.

I'm sorry.

I know that offends some people.

There's a business case to be made there.

I know that's woke.

That's me.

That's the business guy talking to me.

I know my customers and I I know my employees.

I will make a damn business case for it.

But I'll tell you, there's a competitive case to be made.

We're toast if we can't get folks around the rest of the world to compete in AI and quantum and the next generation of technology.

We're fucked from a national security perspective.

So I pray we get through this moment.

Trump, you win.

Fabulous.

You got 5,000 troops.

Go home now.

You got me.

You own the lib.

You showed how tough you are.

You've had the display of vulgarity from my perspective or strength from your perspective.

MacArthur Park.

Can we now just go back?

You've arrested 3,000 people in the last few months.

Well done.

Vast majority apparently don't have criminal records.

You made your point.

A lot of people are self-deporting.

We're, by the way, hearing a lot of that.

And I guess that's part of the point.

You got all this new money.

Can we do it to be a little more constructive and advance a bill on amnesty and immigration reform, address those have been here 10 years paying taxes, 15, 20 years.

And by the way, in California, was a survey done, very reputable survey.

69%

of the undocs in my state have been in the state over a decade.

Interesting.

You brought up,

I'm with you.

I would love to bring in the best and the brightest in the world, especially within the tech space, because I also am,

I mean, that's, that's my number one thing is everything that's going on between U.S.

and China.

I think that's the, in Taiwan, I think that's the most important thing that we should be concentrating on from a, from a, from a global standpoint.

But where I'm going with this is you had mentioned 50%.

I think you said 50% of the...

50% of the

world's researchers.

And by the way, I know a thing or two about this subject because that's California, man.

What separates our game from the game played elsewhere is innovation, entrepreneurialism, more patents, more engineers, more researchers, more Nobel laureates in my state than any other damn state, more Fortune 500 companies in my state than any other state.

Look that up because I know people are rolling their eyes and saying, no, it's Texas.

You're wrong.

It's true.

I looked it up.

And we're, by the way, a donor state.

We provided $83.1 billion more than we received from the federal government.

Texas took $71.1 billion.

I'm not saying that to bash Texas,

but you know what?

Pretty proud of my goddamn state.

I saw it.

Much above our weight, man.

But AI.

Can you repeat those numbers?

$83.1 billion.

We provided more to the federal government than we received in the same year that Texas

received $71.1 billion billion more than they provided to the federal government.

You're a net positive.

Net positive.

Nine out of 10 of the donor states are Trump states.

And I don't mean that pejoratively Trump.

Seven of the 10 are Republican states.

But nine out of the 10 dependent states, welfare states are Trump states.

The donor states, disproportionately, the blue states, 71% of the country's GDP.

comes from blue counties.

These same crack up counties with all these crazy liberals that can't get out of their own goddamn way and the world's come to an end.

It's 71% of the economy in the goddamn country, man.

I mean, I think that's changing a little bit.

But before we get into that, I want to go back to the Chinese, the Chinese.

I mean, there's a lot of corporate espionage and just flat-out espionage going on in the tech space.

Understanding.

And

with China stealing our...

our patents, our techs, all of that stuff.

And so how do you combat that?

I mean, if we're going to bring in the world's

best and greatest

AI researchers, 50% of them are Chinese, and then we have to deal with all this corporate espionage.

I mean, how do you navigate through that?

So just

perspective, 32 of the top 50 AI companies in the planet are in my state.

32.

NVIDIA just came out this week, $4 trillion market cap.

We've got, I mean, Elon's company is in California for a reason because he couldn't compete anywhere else in the AI space.

He put his world's R ⁇ D headquarters back into California.

It's back.

I thought he moved everything to Boston.

He put the R D headquarters back at HP Enterprise's old corporate headquarters in Palo Alto because he needed to get the superstar talent.

You can actually Google, there's a good press conference with the two of us that have known each other for 20 plus years where we announced that together.

It's to make a point.

The reason Sam Altman has quadrupled down on San Francisco, he's like, why the hell would I move anywhere else, man?

It's where the talent is.

So the talent resides in certain pockets pockets in the globe and california is sort of the dominant player in this space and we have the best and the brightest minds like jens and obviously sam and others and you got all the anthropic folks which are fascinating they're an interesting part of the larger discussion of course facebook and what they're doing on the open source platform but as it relates to i think china and ai what they're doing and they have an open source model we are primarily more closed source

That open source model wasn't just Deep Six.

You've seen sort of derivative companies that have come from Deep Six because everybody's building off that stack.

The question is who's going to win that damn race?

Is it going to be the American stack,

like the American dollar, or is it going to be stack coming out of China?

And that's why this is perhaps the most definitive race of our lifetime.

And that's why it's absolutely essential.

that we have an immigration policy that encourages the ability for folks to come come to our country to continue to make the investments, not just in terms of capital investments into new business, but also research and development opportunities and develop patents and IP in our country to the extent we can compete as it relates to IP in China and the issues around national security.

And on that issue, Trump 1.0 did some important things.

Biden built on that as it relates to some of the sanctions and tariffs and some of the trading restrictions for national security and chips.

And certainly Trump is building off that again.

And that, I think, starts to answer your question.

But, man, both sides, this is it, man.

I mean,

this is going to define our future.

And I agree with you 1,000%.

As our eye gets off the ball with all the quagmar in the Middle East and everything going on in Ukraine and Russia, that China has the potential to clean our clock.

That's why I'm a big EV guy.

I know not everybody is, but BYD, EV company, it's got a market cap that literally, you look at all the American automobile manufacturers combined, exceeds it.

They're flooding the zone around the world with EVs in Russia, in Europe, in Brazil, in South America.

They're dominating this space.

The technology platforms that these cars provide, the AI components of that, the autonomous autonomy that comes from that.

They're just, I mean, GM's toast.

Mary Barr has sold her soul.

They literally ceded to China one of the next great economic opportunities, and that's in the space.

Elon's always understood that.

And thank God we've had him.

I'll be his biggest supporter at Tesla.

No one's been a bigger supporter.

But China's clicking our clock on that and these technologies of the future.

If we don't get our ass in gear gear and get serious again about economic industrial policy, not just tariff policy, it's a tool, but worker-centered industrial policy, but immigration reform is foundational in that respect.

Sorry, I get all

these important topics, brother.

They are.

They're very important.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll pick up with your college.

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All right, yeah.

By the way, you gave me a damn gun when we started the show.

So as we move to part two, here's the bear.

Oh, nice.

Be careful when you wear that.

But that's a good-looking hat, though.

Thank you.

Legit.

California bear.

I love it.

I love it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I mean, I know it's not, you know, sidearm.

Hey, that's all right.

I got plenty of those.

So

I got plenty of sidearms.

But I want to move into your college experience.

But before that, we were just on the topic of China.

You met Xi

a couple of different times.

Yeah, well, yeah, a couple of different times, once in California, and then, of course, over in Beijing.

It was a hell of an experience.

I've been to China for many, many years.

It's interesting, just people that know this.

San Francisco, the city I represent as mayor, had the first Shanghai sister city, the first sister city relationship in the United States.

And China was established in San Francisco.

And

that sister city was really important to the people of China.

And so you have visitors all the time coming to San Francisco to celebrate it.

And there's a sister city committee.

And so as mayor, I would go back every couple years.

We'd celebrate milestones and moments in trade and exchange and particularly MOUs on environmental stewardship and the like.

As governor, I hadn't gone.

Of course, COVID, everything shut down, et cetera, but no governor had gone over there in years and years and years.

And I just started to see things really starting to fray.

And it was both parties.

I mean, this is when there's bipartisan consensus on something, that's when I get a little more cynical about it and want to sort of stress test.

When everyone's rushing over there and everyone's, it's sort of sacrosanct that it's this, that's when I'm like, hold on.

And so I wanted to stress test that a little bit.

And so I reached out and I said, would you guys be willing, particularly at a time when we were sort of pulling back on the world stage a little bit on some environmental issues, which I care deeply about.

I asked if they were interested in updating some of our MOUs, memorandum understanding, and they accepted, but she wasn't on the list.

I was going to meet at the sub-national level with other governors, I was going to meet with the vice president, I was going to meet with the premier, meet with other foreign dignitaries, but I didn't expect to meet with she.

We got there and immediately sensed this thing is organized at a whole nother level.

And four four or five days in, started in Hong Kong.

This was, by the way, I took the

flight from,

got into Israel, went to Cyprus, went to Athens, landed in Hong Kong the next day, and then went to mainland China for six days.

This is that same trip.

Four or five days later, I'm starting to realize, where's the traffic?

I mean, they were shutting down freeways.

The experience was so curated, it was beyond surreal.

And I started noticing every time you turn on the TV, I'm like, well, there's that guy from California.

And how organized this was.

And it kind of led up to a meeting.

They said may or may not happen, but if you're in Beijing in two days around this time,

we may make the president available.

and or vice president.

And so we made our way there and they said, well, President Xi will happily greet you.

He's got 18 minutes tops at this time in Beijing.

And

we met.

I made the diplomatic faux pas.

Apparently you're not supposed to smile.

So there's a photo of us smiling because I just have to be human.

I can't stand that pageantry of BS.

To me, at the end of the day, I mean, like...

human beings, okay?

I mean, we can disagree on a million, just like human beings.

So there's a smile.

And all of a sudden it was, and that conversation went on and on and on.

We're talking about Kobe Bryant.

We're talking about Steph Curry.

I mean, which I assure you was not on the agenda in this bylat.

And other very substantive things on Tibet and the Uyghurs and issues around human rights.

I actually had a detainee that I specifically requested be released.

That's a Californian.

We talked about fentanyl and precursor chemicals.

They haven't, but it's interesting.

There's some progress there.

On the fentanyl, it was very meaningful because we had a substantive conversation about fentanyl and precursor chemicals and how it was disproportionately impacting border states, notably my state.

And we put a human face on that.

And we officially, it was sort of an official invite to come to the United States for the APEC summit that was being hosted in California.

And so it was, from my perspective, an incredibly important trip to show respect.

open hand, not a closed fist,

and establish, I thought, a platform for the engagement that came out of APEC a few weeks later with President Biden.

That was a successful meeting they had as well.

And of course, all the foreign leaders that we hosted that week.

As I said, divorce is not an option.

China is competitive beyond words.

They play by a different set of rules.

And we are going to have to step up our game in profound ways.

But we can't just turn our back and deny the existence

or try to stifle, I think, and stuff out their existence either.

I think it will happen at our own peril.

I do not want to live as I lived as a kid growing up in high school and college in this Cold War mindset, worried that I have to

put my hand under a desk because I'm worried about some nuclear weapon.

I don't want my kids to grow up like that either.

What were the discussions like about the fentanyl with them?

It was interesting.

The most substantive thing that came out of that were conversations that we had quite literally with the ambassador a couple days later and some agreements that were codified in the actual documents that were signed by President Biden a few weeks later in the Bay Area when the two of them met.

And it was an interesting acknowledgement of his growing understanding.

And again, everyone can roll their eyes, say he knows exactly what he's doing.

He's dumping.

They're intentionally dumping all this in American streets, et cetera.

But it was a not only recognition, it was an appreciation for how devastating and impactful the drug had become in the United States.

And he acknowledged hearing it from a number of other people.

And the fact that it was overly emphasized in our meeting, particularly because of the impacts in our state,

it was, I thought, for me, the most substantive.

part of this where I can actually connect the dot to follow-up to cause and effect.

I don't want to overstate it, but it certainly became, there was a sort of connection to what was said, what was done in between, and what the president signed, mean Biden and President Xi a few weeks later.

Hardly perfect.

A lot of enforcement questions, a lot of issues as it relates to how they even enforce some of those sort of non-governmental actors and other bad actors within their companies, a country, as well as

more sort of directly connected actors that may or may not be participating directly.

What was your impression of Xi?

You know,

when you see images on TV all your life, you see, I mean, I was in the exact same place that everybody, you see those photos with all these folks.

And these rooms are just outsize and absurd.

Not a good old Stalin type building or Lenin building.

I mean, it's like these are just gigantic hallways, you know, the bands, you know, their thing, red carpet, and it's like a 50-yard walk,

all designed for power, showcase intimidation.

These grand rooms, two giant seats,

and then people sitting on the side, everybody very stoic and serious.

Everything's very formal.

And

I just decided pattern interrupt, came in, smiled, told me not to smile.

I'm like, that's not who I am.

Shook his hand, walked in, smiled, picture, and then I start talking right when we sit down,

which was not the protocol.

And I just say, I'm just, you know, I've really had, you know, just was being human.

And it broke a little bit of ice.

I don't want to, look, I don't want to over, I don't want to be polyash about it, but, you know, that meeting went a lot longer than anyone anticipated it going.

It was followed up with subsequent meetings because we met with the president again when he landed in California.

And it's just, it's about

relationships, man.

Just at the end of the day.

I mean,

by the way, I compliment President Trump.

He talks

in complimentary terms about President Xi.

Like, I have a great relationship with the president.

We completely disagree.

I'm going to tariff him on this, tariff him on that.

145%, 50%, 25%.

We're going to...

And I think you can have that, but you also have to have a foundational relationship of trust.

And so that's the approach I take as it relates to meeting with Bibi, meeting with any foreign leader.

People we agree with, people they disagree with.

Look, I think I admired what, and now I'm getting a lot lot of trouble with my party, even what Trump tried to do with Kim Jong-un.

I mean, love letters aside, all that, you know, that just awkwardness.

The fact that he was willing to try, did you do what you've done, you'll get what you got.

And, you know, I don't begrudge that kind of diplomacy.

I didn't like how Trump and Putin handled each other in that first press conference where he basically took side of his intelligence over the United States intelligence.

And I've never understood the relationship between Trump and Putin, and it raises as many questions as the Epstein files does.

And forgive me, and I'm not suggesting anything there except to say, I don't understand it.

It's very curious to me.

And I'm glad he's finally getting a little tougher on the guy.

What more evidence do you need than what he's doing in Ukraine right now?

But I think any new approach to foreign policy is a good approach because

we've got a lot of messes out there.

Did you find him to be genuine

these guys are they're they're another level of sort of tacticians there's a precision that's what i was gonna ask if you said yes i was gonna ask if you thought it was it was no i mean look i i'm not george w saying you know i saw into his soul or something you know putin i mean he's fucking kgb okay come on these guys aren't these are i don't want to say trained assassins in case of putin perhaps literally uh

uh but uh yeah i'm not naive man.

But there's a precision.

Everything is, there's an organized construct, and

it's top-down.

And every single meeting had a cadence for eight days.

It was all connected to the final meeting.

Talking points.

Everything.

Interesting.

I mean, these guys, it's a different discipline.

And that's why you cannot underestimate

the power of their intentionality and the seriousness to which we must win the AI race and the quantum race.

And we must win the race for talent and create conditions where we are the essential player.

And that is a national security issue as much as an economic imperative.

Do you think we're doing that?

Not right now.

You don't?

I think we're vandalizing relationships,

alliances.

I think we're material approach to everything.

I think it's completely, it's not just unorthodox, which I appreciate.

There's a strategy

in uncertainty.

But it's to me,

it's impulse.

I mean, I don't know.

I think there are,

I've been interviewing a lot of tech people from your state, a lot of innovators, fascinating.

just genius human beings.

And, you know, the one thing that they are all excited about about the Trump administration is getting rid of some of the bureaucracy so that people can innovate and not have to navigate so much around all the red tape.

And so it's...

I appreciate that.

It's nice to.

I appreciate that.

It's nice to see that.

And I think it's motivating the next generation to become innovators.

And

I think we're getting new

and

some of the best innovators in the world because of the motivation, you know, that Musk is,

I mean, he's he's revolutionized it.

And all these guys look up to him, and they all model their businesses after how he's modeled his.

And they're jumping in on, you know, to

his mission to Mars.

And

it's fascinating.

But yeah, the one thing that they all say is that the Trump administration is getting rid of a lot of the red tape to enable them to become the innovators that they need to be.

I appreciate on one level.

On another level, that's come at a huge price.

What's that?

The law of Don.

If you cross him, he'll cross you off the tariff exemption.

Do his bidding.

As long as you're doing his bidding, we'll let you play.

I mean, that's just,

that changes the game.

That's not free enterprise.

That's a different system.

And that's what I'm very concerned about.

Because Tim Cook can make a call to Trump.

He gets exempted on the iPhones.

But none of these small businesses in South Carolina Carolina that I was with are exempted because they can't make that call.

I don't know if that's good for an economic, for sort of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

I think that's folks that could pay to play.

I think that's,

I think on the tariff, the exemptions are people

that

make contributions or contribute to the larger cause, literally or figuratively.

I worry about that.

Seen all my friends and half of them were my friends, not half, three quarters of the folks that were standing there during the inaugural my friends known them forever decades

that was pretty sure i know who you're talking about it was you know

and uh they were there i mean look and no one's naive everyone's in a sort of transactional mode at that level and you have to be regardless the administration that was something totally different man

that this is this is cronyism not capitalism.

I'm worried about it.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

You know, I never meant to dive into politics, but, you know, I watch what a lot of these big guys do, and they fucking play it smart.

They bonate to both parties, and then when they find out who's got the majority lead,

that's when the big donation comes.

And it's, you know, and I didn't realize that, you know, until actually until this election cycle, I didn't realize that.

That's how the game.

The game.

Look, that's money in politics, man.

We don't even get to that unless we publicly find it.

To me, it explains more things in more ways on more days about everything that's goddamn wrong in this country.

And now it's just obscene.

It's obscene.

Elon, God bless him, could write a $300 goddamn million dollar check, start his own party now and can spend billions if he wants, limitlessness.

It's gross.

What do you think about him starting his own party?

I think it's going nowhere.

You think it's going nowhere?

Because I don't think he's going to have the...

Come on.

You think he's going to

take the time and energy?

to build a grassroots movement over the course of the next year, two, 10, 20 years?

That's what will be required of it?

I don't know, man.

I mean, the guy's built,

I know.

He's impressive.

He's an impressive.

Like I said, man, I mean, I have one of the first Teslas, literally the first numbered Tesla.

The first three that came out.

I was with Elon.

I had an old TV show on current TV.

Don't even look it up.

Elon and I driving into the studio together with the first Model S.

And we were showing it off on the show.

I got one of the first Roadsters.

I've been his biggest advocate and fan and supporter for decades and decades.

He's a different guy, man.

Something's changed.

Why do you?

Something's changed.

And as a consequence, I don't know that he is as committed as it may appear to this cause in particular, the third party.

That's my humble opinion.

Interesting.

I mean, why would you...

So you're against a third party?

I'm all for it.

I just don't think Elon.

You just don't think he'll pick up the business.

I just don't.

I think if his stated intention is to pick off a few senators and a few members of the House so he can leverage

party, that's one thing.

That's not a new party.

That's just picking up a few seats in a divided Congress.

That's interesting.

That gives him outsized power and influence.

If it's about building a grassroots party, we've seen this from Ross Perot.

We've seen this with no labels.

We've seen this in the past.

It just takes a lot of reps, man.

That's bottom-up.

That's years and years of organizing.

That's not top-down.

You don't buy that.

You build that.

That's creating a movement.

And that means you have to be on a mission.

And it's

as tough as it is to be on a mission to Mars, man, the mission here on planet Earth, building a new party with the sort of duopoly of these two parties.

I mean, you saw what happened here, you know, and he was probably sitting right here, RFK, as it relates to just trying to compete in the lane of our party for a nomination.

and how difficult that was objectively for him.

These guys, you know, neither party screws around in that respect.

I mean, Trump completely.

I mean, that's a different, but he's a unique, unique.

I mean, this was, he was sort of an invasive species and took over the Republican Party.

It's no longer, it's a vestige of itself.

It's MA now.

That was unique.

But I don't see how Elon ultimately will really break through over the long period.

I just think he has too much going on, man.

I mean, he's competing with some of the best and the brightest for the best and the brightest in AI.

I mean, in many respects, I think they see these guys as competitors as zero-sum, the winners and losers in that space.

That alone is going to consume you.

He's now merged X with that organization, fired the CEO, or she resigned of X.

He's got SpaceX.

He wants to take Public, which is an extraordinary company.

Proud of the support that he has provided the people of our state and this country, not just in terms of the technology, but the resources and investments he's made, the jobs.

And of course, he's got Tesla, which is on life support, man.

It's on life support.

The brand has been destroyed.

Now both parties can't stand it.

And I just don't know how you then build a party with all of that that's devoid of your personality.

It becomes the Musk party, not a third party.

That's difficult.

Yeah, you know, I don't know.

I'd love to, I just think that the left has gone so far left and the right has gone so far right.

It's, it's, you know, for the people that are kind of in the middle or, you know, at least close to the middle, middle, like myself, I mean, it's just

there's a large number of people that don't feel like they're represented properly.

Totally agree.

And it's, it's.

No, look, you know, Ross Perot was a phenom.

I mean, thank you, Bill Clinton's the happiest person in the country to talk about Perot.

And the consequences of that.

I mean,

so it shows that lane.

You know, no question about that.

And And look, I mean, all these elections come down, at least from the national prism.

It's, you know, it's about those swing voters and swing states, about independence, or at least independently minded Democrats or Republicans, if not literal independents.

And so I do agree.

So

I get the desire for that.

I just think building an actual, the apparatus of a new party, just the difficulty of getting on the ballots in each state to build that party.

It's an exercise of commitment, not interest.

And I think within that is the distinction of success and failure, interest versus commitment.

I'm doubtful he's that committed to it.

I think he's more interested in it.

And that's my sense.

I may be wrong, but I completely understand the common sense you're bringing to it, which is a desire to see something like that succeed.

So it's more representative of all of us and can pull the parties back into a position of some sort of commonwealth or more community.

You You got a lot of shit when Z came to California.

Yeah.

And, you know,

the big narrative was, and I tend to believe it, is, you know, we hear a lot about San Francisco and the homelessness and

pooping on the road and all that kind of stuff.

And it seemed like

all of that was cleaned up when G came to town.

Yeah.

Is that true?

Complete bullshit.

That's complete bullshit.

The city, which, which, by the way, I'm no longer mayor,

was organizing for dozens and dozens of foreign leaders, not just she,

to arrive for APEC.

And the city, over the course of the last year, had finally started to step up its game to address what's happening on the streets and sidewalks.

And there was no question when you have a major international conference.

that there was investments made to prepare the city, as any convention and any city would.

And so there was certainly a lot of aggressive intention for weeks and weeks in preparation of this major international conference in San Francisco.

So the city led that effort.

The state always supports the efforts, as we're doing for the World Cup, as we're doing for the Olympics, as we do for large conventions, as we do for other delegations that come in.

But APEC

had dozens and dozens of leaders over the course of an extended week, many in the front end, many in the back end.

But this notion, oh, it's just the Chinese president coming in and Newsom somehow as the dictator magically has cleaned up San Francisco, but he didn't care about his own citizens was not even laughable.

It was so absurd.

It's difficult to even respond.

But I saw it weaponized, particularly with my friends on Fox.

Why wouldn't the city want to just clean it up

for its citizens?

Well, they were.

They were finally getting their act together and no bigger critic of that than me.

I was coming down hard on the city.

I mean,

I've been threatening to sue cities,

sued a number of cities in California on housing issues and homeless issues.

I've been very aggressive.

I've rejected money.

We're holding these guys more accountable.

But remember, I run a state larger than 21 state populations combined, hundreds and hundreds of cities, independently elected boards of supervisors, city councils, city administrators, and mayors.

And so as much as I would like to run every city and dominate every block in terms of my desire to see these tents and encampments cleaned up, I have to create the conditions where we can leverage state support and sanction better behavior.

And we're finally seeing some real progress in that space.

I'll just give you a proof point.

I mean, San Francisco, I love everybody running about crime.

But, you know, Speaker Johnson's district has six times the murder rate as Nancy Pelosi's district.

Doesn't really.

Yeah.

I mean, why the hell is that not on nightly news every goddamn day?

I mean, you have parts of Florida, substantially higher homeless than parts of California.

California's homeless growth last year of unsheltered homeless was 0.45.

It was close to 9% in Florida.

I mean, almost 10x.

Well, I have that California has the highest homeless population in the country.

Since about 2000, 2004, for 20 plus years, it's been the case.

We had the highest homeless count, 188,000, in 2004.

When I was mayor, Schwarzenegger

was governor.

And we have the highest housing costs.

The original sin is housing, the supply-demand imbalance, Econ 101.

That's why we just passed the most significant housing reforms in our state's history just a few weeks ago.

And I actually locked the budget.

I said there'll be no budget unless these housing bills get passed.

They wouldn't have passed otherwise.

And it was a huge breakthrough on the regulatory side of housing in California, what we call CEQA.

It's been the issue that has defined more of the problems in our state than any other.

How do you solve that?

Well, we're doing it.

NIMBYism has been the number one problem.

What is not, no, no, it's NIMBYism.

People, not in my backyard, I'm good.

Love my views, love my backyard, love my community.

Why are you building that affordable housing down the block?

Why are you doing two stories?

It should just be one story.

Why are you doing four stories?

It should just be two.

Well, that's going to be more traffic.

No, no, no, more parking.

Not in my backyard, NIMBYism.

And we're shifting now to a YIMBY mindset.

Yes, in my backyard, in order to address the supply and demand imbalance.

The abuse, litigation,

lawfare.

It's been our biggest damn problem.

People using CEQA, which is signed by Ronald Dam Reagan.

which is our environmental rules, and just holding up projects for years and years and years and years.

And that has significantly slowed down housing construction in our state.

And that's why you see these prices that continue to go through the roof in California.

By the way, on the other side, you see places like Austin where prices are collapsing.

because they have an overabundance of supply and that supply demand has a completely different set of problems because the regulatory market is so permissive there

that they can tend to oversupply during times of growth.

And so we're trying to right-size that.

And I've signed 42 seeker reform bills.

I've been playing in the margins, chipping away, pounding, pounding, pounding.

And we finally, this was sort of the holy growth.

This was what we were after all these years.

Politics never worked.

This was a year.

It's been an abundance agenda, mindset.

We went, we delivered it.

And I think it will be the most significant thing.

It's happened in housing in decades.

Yeah, you know, I found that.

It's another thing I found interesting is, you know, we hear all this complaining about how the Palisades, how the reconstruction has been held back quite a bit.

And, of course,

everything gets blamed on you, but that was a policy that was put in by Ronald Reagan, correct?

That you're actually trying to undo.

Yeah, CEQA.

I literally did an executive order suspending CEQA and suspending the Coastal Act.

Neither suspect.

Coastal Act is, I mean,

this is where President Trump and I had some interesting conversations because he seems to know more, much more about the Coastal Commission than

many members of the damn Coastal Commission themselves because of some experience he's had as a developer working in California.

But any developer or anybody doing housing or any kind of projects along the coast or even proximate to the coast have to go through another layer of bureaucracy with our Coastal Commission.

So by the way, Elon and I, who've been going at it, This is the one area we agreed.

He sued the Coastal Commission on some of SpaceX flights.

And I said I joined him in that loss.

I said, I'm all in suing our own state coastal commission.

He was right to do that.

And I hope he's successful because what the commission did was wrong.

And they played politics with him on some permitting issues that impacted space launches out of California, disproportionately impacting SpaceX.

It's a way of saying this.

We got a lot of clay layer, man.

And we sort of stacked up, you know, it's like, you know, coral reefs over years and years and years.

And we've just got to sort of

knock through those regulatory thickets.

And Democrats need to own that space.

I need to own it.

And I've been pounding on it.

Homelessness, housing, did the biggest mental health bond in American history.

Just got it passed.

One year, got $3.3 billion out the door, unprecedented.

Changing all of our rules in order to site

20 plus thousand new units of mental health housing in California to rebuild a broken mental health system.

$1 billion for our veterans.

We just got that passed.

But with it were all the regulatory reforms.

So the mindset is not just about spending money.

The mindset's now about performance.

High-speed rail in California, man, goes back three administrations.

Everyone thinks Newsome's high-speed.

Everything's Newsome.

I get that.

But I carried the baton.

We just did seek reforms on high-speed rail two weeks ago.

Finally, moving in a different direction.

We're finally laying track.

Texas completely failed in their high-speed rail system.

They started theirs one year after ours.

It was 4X over budget.

They didn't lay one inch of track.

They couldn't procure any of the sites under eminent domain.

Biggest delay for us was taking these sites, 2,270 parcels that we're going to bring in, litigation, CEQA, delay.

That's been the challenge of our high-speed rail.

Now we're on the other side of it.

Of course, Trump wants to kill it.

As we're just starting to lay track, we built 50 structures already.

How much is it, I mean, where I'm going with this is I heard, I can't remember who I interviewed, somebody in the tech space.

They were talking about how much the high-speed rail in California

costs versus Elon's SpaceX program, which can put a rocket into space every day.

Yeah.

Well,

$13.4 billion is the answer.

$13.4 billion.

Well, $13.4.4 billion.

for

what will be the nation's only high-speed rail.

DeSantis is just wrong when he says he's got the bright line, his high-speed rail.

It's a medium-speed rail.

It's not by even international definition, a high-speed rail.

And we've done 50 large structures, size of three Golden Gate bridges.

We have procured those 2,270 parcels.

We're going to do the first phase, which is 119 miles.

We're doing it in the fastest growing part of California, Central Valley, disproportionately Trump voters, rural part of our state, to connect that part of the state, eventually to the rest of the part of the state, Silicon Valley, the Central Valley, and then the Central Valley down to Los Angeles.

Phase one, 119 miles.

And that first phase of track, after all these other structures have been done, finally will start being laid.

So we're finally on the other side of decades of lawfare litigation delay.

And again, I contrast that by what Texas didn't do.

If Texas is the great example of know-how,

they didn't deliver on their high-speed rail.

They just abandoned it.

Trump just cut some federal funds from them that got no attention.

Just like the murder rates in these other red states that get no attention.

It seems to be the only attention on housing, homelessness, crime, problems, any issues, critiques, California, California.

Derangement syndrome, I argue.

Is there, I mean, with the homelessness problem.

I mean, so it sounds like you're building affordable housing for them.

Is there

I feel bad for homeless people.

I also think that they need to be incentivized to get back to work.

That's where I think some of the immigration stuff comes into play where people are like, well, you know, we have all these junkies and homeless people and all this stuff that they don't want to be, they don't want to go back to work because, you know, because

welfare, free housing, stuff like that.

I mean, how do you incentivize the homeless to get a job, become productive in society, and get back to work?

So let me give you a, I'll give you, I won't even virtue signal by broadly describing a response, but I'll tell you exactly what I did as mayor of San Francisco, which saw a 33% decline in street homelessness when I was mayor.

produced real results.

We initiated a program called Care, Not Cash.

We were providing up to $400, $330, up to $400 of cash every single month for county welfare recipients.

I converted the cash to housing and guaranteed services.

We saw a significant decline in the caseload because people didn't want to access the services.

They wanted access to cash.

Every two weeks at the K-Day lenders, we saw a huge number of overdoses.

On the first and 15th of every month, emergency rooms were overwhelmed.

We were literally killing people by handing out that cash.

I mean, this is mayor of San Francisco.

I did a panhandling ordinance, anti-panhandling order, aggressive panhandling around ATMs and median strips.

I did time, manner, and place restrictions called a sit-lie ordinance that I got passed by the voters when I was mayor.

We were very aggressive in the spirit of what you just described.

I've been very aggressive, including as governor, filing an amicus brief for the Supreme Court to overturn the grant's pass decision that was used to limit our ability to clean up encampments.

A Democratic governor for California supporting a conservative-led lawsuit to a conservative United United States Supreme Court, and we were successful in that.

So now there's no excuse for cities to address encampment.

But instead of just playing whack-a-mole and throwing people into another county, we do encampment resolution grants, which means you have to address the underlying issue in the first place, provide the support and services, and then you move in to clean the encampments.

$100 plus million dollars we put out in the last couple of months in that space, $700 million in the last couple couple years in that space.

We're flooding the zone with a new court called Care Court, which allows for people that have behavioral health issues, that are self-medicating with drug or alcohol addictions, people with bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, paranoia, people that can't help themselves, that need to be conserved, but want to do so in a way that still protects their civil liberties.

We created a whole new system called Care Court.

Worked on this for three years.

Over 2,000 people have already participated in that.

The Mental Health Service Act reforms that we're doing, next level, man.

And those go into effect next July will be over a billion dollars every single year to address not just homelessness in the context of addressing one part of it, which may be someone's drug addiction or housing insecurity, but what we call whole person care and integrating substance abuse, meaning alcohol, drug, addiction, mental health, and housing together and flooding the zone with annual appropriations of a billion dollars a year.

So counties have predictable money, plus the $6.38 billion in that housing bond that I talked about that has zoning reforms that allow them to actually site the housing.

I'm doing everything I damn can, man.

And I'm going in personally, you can, I mean, if anyone can look this up, just Google me cleaning up damn encampments all over, not just in San Francisco when President Xi comes into town.

For literally years and years and years in every city of San Francisco, of my state or many cities, cleaning up encampments when no one was coming into town in the spirit of what you say for our citizens.

I've been grinding on this, man.

When I came in, there was no homeless strategy, no homeless plan.

Not a dollar was invested by the state.

When I was mayor, I never looked to Schwarzenegger to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.

No one criticized Schwarzenegger.

Sean Hannity wasn't criticizing him every single damn night.

Apparently, the homeless problem became my, all of a Newsom's homeless problem.

I agree.

It is my responsibility, and that's why we've provided unprecedented support.

Homeless strategy, homeless plan, hitting on all

cylinders.

And it's accountability, responsibility.

It's not just handouts.

I want to see reforms.

I want to see these mayors do their job.

State visions realize locally.

I'm not abdicating responsibility.

I'm taking it.

And I agree with everyone that criticizes.

Every time they come into this, my state and they see these encampments, they're right to criticize that.

Goddamn right.

As they should be criticized in Jacksonville, Florida, as they should be outraged of what's happening in Austin, Texas.

As they were, I was driving through Nashville last night and there were some parts of town.

I'm like, this is not unique by any stretch.

You had an 18.13% increase in homelessness last year.

In California, it was just a few percent, three,

18.13%.

Unsheltered, 0.45,

9%

in places like Florida.

So California is finally stabilizing.

And I got in, it was 50% growth in the prior four years when I became governor.

It was like this.

And now we're finally starting to stabilize.

And it's not good enough.

People are right to be critical, but don't think for a second

that we're neglecting to try to address this issue.

We're trying to solve it and we're trying to do it head on.

When it comes to the mental health crisis that's going on, not just in California, across the nation,

we had had an off-camera discussion about psychedelics

and

a lot of the benefits.

I mean, I'm one of them, haven't drank for three years.

It's like a light switch when I did ibogaine in Mexico.

And I mean,

Stanford did some studies on traumatic brain injury and how traumatic brain injuries are just, I mean, the black spots in people's brain are just disappearing

from

the use of ibogaine and

doing a medically

supervised

journey with ibogaine.

I mean, and we saw what about a month ago, Texas did a big

push to

their credit.

Yeah.

Are you going to.

We're all in.

Look,

it's how we land this.

And what you said was very significant.

Talk about medically supervised.

And

it's in that where the policy debate is occurring and how we can, there's, look, I did the cannabis reform I mentioned earlier.

And a lot of folks, you know, still have strong opinions, whether or not it was a good idea, bad idea.

We believe in a regulatory market.

We still haven't killed the black market.

And tax issues create a lot of raw feelings.

People feel like our taxes are still too high, even though they're lower in most states, and that black market persists.

And there's still issues that we need to address.

So there's a little more caution now if we look at the psychedelics and look at more of a permissive attitude or creating a regulatory framework where you could see more recreational as opposed to medically supervised uses.

So if we can land the plan on the medically supervised, man, all in.

The anecdotal evidence, I mean, the actual science coming back is one thing, but I cannot tell you how many people have come to me.

Like, I mean, when I was talking to you earlier, I was just fascinated.

All these proof points out there of just lives radically changing.

I mean, it will cure an opiate condition in 12 hours, done, because it replenishes the receptors in your brain that cause the cravings.

Yeah, as opposed to being on methadone the rest of your life man

yeah and and you know so i i look i've been out on harm reduction for years and years and years uh but but look there's this

you know you're always looking for the holy grail and but i'll tell you this seems to be for a lot of folks particularly in the vet community it's amazing the emotional stories folks have come to me come in my office and i'm like you don't even need to do it anymore you've convinced me it's just now landing the plane on exactly what the language looks like the downside for me is I have a lot of entrepreneurial friends

that are eager to get in this space.

I'll bet you do.

And that's where I'm like,

that's a lot of my valley friends.

And I'm like, okay.

So I just, I'm cautious because I can see capitalism move this in a very different direction than where we want to move it.

So I'm hopeful we'll get something meaningful done in this space.

Let's move into college.

What did you go to college for?

Santa Clara, and you'd be shocked as a political science major, man.

Barely got through, though.

Again, I'm, you know, there was no Rhodes Scholar.

You're not talking to one here.

Back to my 960 SAT.

My mom,

she disputed that.

She said, I think I got 980.

It's one of the two.

But I think she may have been wrong.

When someone discovers it, it will hardly be a gotcha moment.

So I'd rather share it with folks.

So just look, it wasn't like

I can't compete like others.

I had to find my own path, man.

And one thing with dyslexia is you tend to be, and it's interesting, some of my closest friends, people I admire the most from afar, people I've always admired and never even knew why I admired them, all have dyslexia in common.

Just tend to be a little more creative.

And I remember opening my first business when I opened it out of college.

And I named it Plump Jack, which is like different.

It was branded.

It was designed differently.

And I took a different look at how the business, other businesses like it were run.

And I was willing to take risks.

I had a failure award in my business where I awarded the person who f ⁇ ed up the most.

I mean, it became a huge thing.

You never awarded the person that was.

Oh, yeah, if you, if you didn't, yeah.

So we, and we'd have an annual failure award with the biggest screw-up every month that we'd parade him on the stage and say, January's fuck up with Bobby.

And it happened, by the way, no Volsha, just very brief story.

So I have a little hotel up in Lake Tao,

old Squaw Valley now, it's called Palisades, but the Squaw Valley Inn, it was called the time, it's still around.

And I had this crazy nightclerk, you know, these nightclerks, you know, people that come in at 11 o'clock, allegedly stay up until four of them, five in the morning, till the new crew comes in.

And it's an old inn built in 1960s or 59 for the 1960s Olympics, for the delegates

of the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley.

So it's an old motel.

So just imagine an old motel, no air conditioning.

So in the summer, got to keep the doors open, the windows open.

We have all these ponds outside, these, and mosquito problems all the time.

And this guy at night was getting complaints about the mosquitoes.

And he was, you know, night guy's like, I'll tell him in the morning.

So one day he says, okay, I'm going to actually try to fix this.

So

he goes down and

he gets a bunch of catfish.

He buys them himself, his own money, and dumps them in the ponds where all the mosquitoes were being hatched.

And I get a call at four in the fucking morning.

I'll never forget it from Ludo, this guy, like old Serbian guy who was our engineer.

Never goddamn heard from the guy.

I'm in the Bay Area.

I'm far away.

He lights me up on the phone.

I'm like, Jesus Christ.

Ludo's like, hey,

Gavin, this is a goddamn disaster.

I said, what's the problem?

He goes, I mean, I said, the place burned down?

What the hell happened, Ludo, man?

He's like, no, no, there's goddamn fishtails everywhere.

There's fins.

There's eyeballs everywhere.

I said, what the hell are you talking about?

He goes, that fucking guy,

and I can't even remember the kid's name now.

That son of a bitch bought catfish.

I said, who?

What the hell are you talking about?

He said, the goddamn raccoons.

They went in and they had a feeding frenzy and went down the hallways and they were throwing the fucking fish everywhere.

And I'm like, and I started laughing.

He's like, why the fuck are you laughing?

I said, this is amazing.

I said, I got to give that guy a raise.

He said, he's, you know, because he wanted to, it was an initiative, man.

He wanted to solve a fucking problem.

that's all i want man i want ownership i hate victimization so one thing about trump i don't like blaming everybody else take some goddamn responsibility man you're not a victim you you have agency you can shape the future decisions not conditions so the fact this guy tried something he got the first i remember i gave him 500 bucks And then I sent that around to all the other businesses.

And then I'm like, this is a great idea.

I'm going to create a failure award.

And my sister, she took over the businesses after I got in politics and she called it magical moments.

She didn't like the frame.

Magical moments.

But I like, I mean, for me, you got dyslexia, man.

It's moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm, right?

I mean, that's Churchill's old line.

You miss 100% of the shots, you know, take, you know, Gretzky.

I mean, this, this notion of iteration.

And I think if there's anything that defines me in politics, it's I'm willing to iterate, willing to try things, see what works.

Got an entrepreneurial mindset, not ideological, open argument, interested in evidence.

Seriously.

And, you know, if you got a better idea, I'm all for it, man.

Let's go.

And I think that business background, having dyslexia where you're used to failing, you got to be resilient.

You've got a creative energy because you recognize you can't do what other people do.

So you got to look at things from a different angle, do things a little differently.

That's a superpower, man.

And the thing, the great gift for me was I mentioned earlier.

wanting to say thank you to my mom, which I never got a chance to do.

But I did by writing a children's book called Ben and Emma's Big Hit.

And it was just a composite of me, Ben, number 17, which I was as a kid, lefty,

in

Joe Wagner Field, little book that's about Ben's struggle with reading.

And above the door, there's a number of the door in the teacher's room, which is the date of my mom's passing.

And it's a composite of a teacher,

which was my mom, sort of working her way through my dyslexia.

And it was a picture book I did because I was looking for picture books with my kids that can describe what dyslexia was and there wasn't one.

And so I decided to do my own.

And it was a way of thanking my mother and also acknowledging the grace which other parents are out there trying to educate their kids, but the gift.

of dyslexia at the same time.

And there's a letter at the back that literally is a letter to my mom,

which was sort of a low, you know,

which, you know, you can get emotional.

I, you know, if I ever read it, I'd get, I'd get emotional about it.

So it's all those, all those parents out there struggling.

All those kids that are sort of, they think they're stupid.

They're not stupid, man.

They just learn their brains are wired differently.

And it's a goddamn gift if you can just work your way through it.

But it's, you know, it's the reason I still have all these different anxieties in life, you know, because you're still that kid.

And,

but, you know, that's, it's helped the businesses grow, man.

That's the only,

I'm nothing naturally gifted.

I mean, I had restaurants and a few hotels in the past.

We have four wineries now, Plump Jack, Cato, Debt, the 13th Vineyard, which is the 13th Bonded Vineyard in Napa.

And I'm proud of that, man.

I know people say, oh, he's a wine guy, elitist.

Well, you know what?

Fuck you.

I started with nothing.

Got 13 investors, borrowed five grand from my dad, $7,500 each.

Just grinding, man.

I was the delivery person.

I was a marketing person.

got bought all the wines just struggling year and a half in i finally was able to hire a full-time employee got lucky with a little restaurant i was grinding working the wine stop the restaurant was doing all the bookkeeping and accounting i mean don't tell me about p ls don't tell me how stressed it is to see a tax increase or a small business regulation took me almost two years to open the wine store because of bullshit regulations a mop sink that i had to put in a wine store where there was no there was a carpet i'm like what am i going to mop Fuck San Francisco.

Tough place to do.

So I get all that.

And I have passion for entrepreneurs, man.

People that put everything on the line for risks and take all the risks.

And, you know, and that's why COVID, I get it.

People are saying, fuck you, you shuttle.

I get it, man, including all my businesses.

I get it.

That's why I just, you know, working through all that and understanding all that.

It's fair game for objective review, critique.

But I have real passion in that space, man, and will continue to always be that.

You can't be pro-job and anti-business.

But businesses also can't thrive in a world that's failing.

So my whole mindset is growth and inclusion.

And that's why I'm proud, man.

I did the highest minimum wage in the country.

And I know people say, well, you know, but you, goddamn states out there, $7.25.

Come on.

I mean, two-thirds of red states, $7.25.

I provided $25 in the health care, highest in the country, $20 in fast food.

I know people are pissed at that, but two-thirds of these fast food workers are not teenagers anymore.

They're moms, man.

It's full-time jobs.

And I was proud to give them that wage increase.

And yeah, burger's a few cents more.

I get it.

But businesses can't thrive in a world that's failing.

And right now, the haves and have-nots, why I hate this big, beautiful bullshit.

Bill, it was the biggest transfer of wealth in our lifetime.

$3.5 trillion of debt stacked on my kids, your kids, our grandkids, all for tax tax cuts for vast majority of my billionaire friends that don't even give a shit.

Last thing they needed was a tax cut.

Corporations that have never done goddamn better.

Markets never doing better.

The hell is this?

And you're cutting millions of people off Medicaid.

3.4 million are going to lose it in my state.

Nothing about it, it's a betrayal.

I was in South Carolina.

There are five world hospitals.

They're on the brink.

I mean, it's in Trump Country, Pickens,

in Pickens County, one of the most conservative counties in the country.

I had 25 more protesters than I did people in the room the other night.

And I'm like, man, do you know what this guy just did to you?

Come on, man.

So I just, you know, for fiscal discipline, we balance budgets.

These guys don't know how.

I don't know what the hell happened to that.

But I don't know.

I'm gone off.

But

business mindset.

Bottom line.

College, that was, I just wanted to get out.

Started right out.

I was a delivery boy for prolab orthotics, living with my mom.

She moved out of her room.

It's not going to have her 15 rico away, the marina district.

And she's like, you got to do something more than deliver orthotics for a podiatrist.

It's not why you got a four-year degree.

And I'm like, yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do.

And then she said, well, why don't you get this real estate license and you can make show homes?

I'm like, all right, Anthony's School for Real Estate.

I was like, fine, I'll do that.

Got that part-time.

And then got a weird job downtown, nine to five.

The Schorenstein company, I lasted like nine months.

And then my boss, Craig Edwards, said, bro, you're not a nine-to-five guy.

And he inspired me to open the wine store and he helped me negotiate it, my boss, to get me out of there.

Not because he wanted to fire me, but he's like, don't become me.

You're sitting there smoking, drink five

jugs of fucking Mr.

Coffee every day, seven cigarettes, packs of cigarettes.

He's like, you don't want to become me.

Oh, you got to get the hell out of here.

You're an entrepreneur.

I was like, man, I appreciate that.

Kind of gave me confidence.

So you started a wine store.

Started a wine store.

And then when a restaurant opportunity came and it was goddamn 15 years, just a huge hit.

Sold all the wine at retail because I had a retail wine store.

I'm like, well, why would you mark it up?

So it was the best wine list in the city, cheapest prices.

People were like, this is amazing.

Got three and a half out of four stars.

Guy Arnold Rossman was my chef.

And everyone thought I was a goddamn boy wonder genius.

So much so that Willie Brown, the mayor, said, I'm going to appoint you to the Parking Traffic Commission because I was bitching about doing business in San Francisco, the mop sink and everything.

You were pissed because it was a $27,000 mop sink and a carpeted business.

I want the city to pay me back, motherfucker.

God damn it.

Yeah.

And so that's what got you into power.

I was pissed.

Yeah.

I'm trying to create jobs and you're telling me I have to put a mop sink for a carpeted business.

The hell am I mopping?

Well, they said it's an under-the-restaurant cut.

I said, change the code.

And Willie was, I was in the news yelling and screaming about him.

And he called me up, said, I'm going to make you part of the problem.

He said, I'm going to shut you up, Newsom.

I said, what are you talking about?

He goes, you're the next president of the Parking and Traffic Commission.

What the hell is parking and traffic?

Exactly.

He said chair.

I remember he said chair.

I'm like, what the hell is a chair?

Like, I could sit in them.

And it's actually worse.

He told me I was going to shut me up by making part of the film commission.

And I'm like, man, that's awesome.

Film Commission.

26.

Have a restaurant and a wine store.

I'm the man.

And now I'm going to be in the film commission.

Life is good.

Get down to be sworn in.

That son of a bitch goes around the room.

There's like 12 people being sworn in.

And he goes, Newsome, this motherfucker's tacking.

Willie Brown's a legend.

Old, I mean, the best of the best.

Just back old school politician.

And he talks like this.

And he's like, News, I'm out there bitching about doing business today.

And now back to, I'm going to make him, I'm going to shut him up.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm going on the film commission.

He goes, he's the next chair of the parking to traffic.

I'm like, and I literally had a news reporter, Cron4 4 News, goes, what's your vision on parking and traffic?

I'm like,

there's like a VHS tape out there.

You want a hit piece on me?

It's not the French laundry or sitting there with my ex-wife for the bizarre magazine piece.

It is this piece of me trying to explain my vision for parking and traffic at 2627.

That was how I got in politics.

Wow.

But business,

you know, entrepreneurialism.

Now, that's it.

That's when I'm done with this stuff.

How did you develop the business?

Just grind, man.

Reading books, struggling to read, but reading books.

Anita Ruddock, Buddy Shop, learning about Southwest and its history.

Richard Branson inspired the hell out of me, man.

That's why I was inspired by Elon.

I was spending time with Sergei and Larry at Google, it was early days.

What a time to be mayor.

I became county supervisor after parking in traffic.

And it was right when all these guys that are now brand names, Travis came along with an app.

I ran that taxi task force to fill out taxis.

And this motherfucker comes along with an app and disrupts the entire taxi industry with Uber.

I mean, I remember doing Twitter Day with Ev and Biz and it was like, and they were so excited that I did Twitter Day and I gave them a little proclamation.

There was like 10 employees.

I still have a little Twitter shirt.

Wow.

And I was like, I'm like, how are you going to monetize this?

This thing will be a, I always was like, you guys.

So I was like, this Twitter stuff.

And, you know, Jeremy is topple in all these guys and starts doing reviews differently.

And then, but it was Larry and Sergei.

And I'm like, you know, I got to know them really well.

And that's how I met Elon.

And, and what a time, man.

Just like the golden age.

It was like Florence.

And, you know, you imagine the 1500s and the Renaissance, you know, the Bay Area, San Francisco and late 90s, early 2000s.

All these guys were starting to form.

And there was a sense of optimism and limitlessness with technology at the time.

We didn't see the downsides, the peril.

We only saw the promise.

And we didn't really know what we now know, particularly platforms like Facebook.

And so it was a hell of a time, man.

And just fed to my entrepreneurial.

I think

they were attracted to my entrepreneurial energy as a mayor.

That was the pro-business, small mayor, small business mayor.

And I was certainly attracted to their entrepreneurialism, energy.

And,

you know, I'm proud, man.

That's California.

That's at our best.

That's our country.

And that's why you got to nourish that, man.

You cannot take that for granted.

Almost appointed to the Film Commission.

Yeah, it could have been somebody.

I mean, the adult film industry was kind of born in California, correct?

I think it was until I think we passed some condom law and it basically killed it.

And it pushed it to Florida.

Yeah.

Was that you?

No.

Everything else is me, so I might as well.

Jesus Christ.

Did you push it?

No, that was before my time.

Was it?

I think it was.

I recall it was.

Yeah, that's

would not have been an issue that I,

yeah, again, I'm blamed for everything else.

Let me double check.

I don't think that was.

I haven't been governor for that long, man.

It's only been six and a half years.

It feels like a lifetime.

I'm everyone's favorite piñata now.

Would you have done it?

Done what?

Would you have made that rule, the condom rule, the push?

Oh, I don't know.

It's interesting.

I get why I was, you know,

I thought it was a little earlier with sort of HIV and AIDS and some of the concerns in that space.

And we were sort of, had some sort of flare-ups in that respect.

From a public health perspective, I don't know.

Honestly, it's interesting, like, of all questions, man, in a million years, I didn't expect to hear you ask that question.

I didn't expect to ask it.

So I'm not trying to

deflect.

I just, I want to hear, it'd be interesting to hear the debate on that again.

I just, I think that, I mean,

I told you, I have little ones.

You have kids.

This shit is so accessible.

It's a problem.

It's everywhere.

And

it's ruining kids' minds.

And

now we're,

you can find anything you want to find out there on the internet as far as sexuality and

people model that.

They think that's what relationships are about.

And for our young men, man, we got a crisis of masculinity, a crisis with young men.

It's a big goddamn issue.

Suicide rates, deaths of despair.

I mean, in every category, our men are just getting crushed.

And I'll tell you, as Democrat, we better own that space, man.

I mean, if this was happening in any other group, we'd be yelling and screaming about it.

It's interesting.

And I'll tell you, to Trump's credit, he was able to use that in many ways politically to his advantage.

And I worry, and I mean, that's why I had Charlie Kirk on my first podcast and guys in this space that, you know, are really, to me, fascinating, interesting, successful in terms of their capacity to communicate and organize and address these concerns and these grievances.

As a Democrat in our party, we need to really dive deeper to that.

But as you suggest, the issue around pornography is part of that issues around relationships, the lack of relationships.

In fact, most of these kids, many of them not even having any relations, sexual relations with other women.

They're so socially awkward.

And so

it's a a real issue.

And again, it's a tough issue to talk about because, you know, it's not

child care, health care issues, et cetera, but it's about the mental health of a whole generation.

And we're losing these young boys.

To me, my wife did a documentary called The Mask You Living on This years and years ago, way ahead of its time.

And I appreciate Richard Reeves.

A lot of interesting folks are on this topic again, doing some really good work.

Scott Galloway has been phenomenal on this.

And it's something that I think my party really needs to address,

and that's a component part of it.

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What would you like to see happen?

Well, look, I think you can't be what you can't see.

And I think you see it with teachers.

I mean, vast majority of kindergarten teachers, elementary school, middle school teachers are women.

I mean, these young boys don't even attach themselves to, there's those relationships, the mentorships, big brothers, this connection.

that support.

They don't have it.

The gaps begin there.

I think you really have to start there.

In fact, I got a big executive order I'm about to put out in this space that talks about actually recruiting more men to the teaching profession,

that highlight just the glaring gaps as it relates to mental health, substance abuse, high school dropouts, college attainment.

It will be two to one in a few years.

Women compared to men.

This is serious stuff.

And how that crisis manifests politically to me is also just fascinating.

You saw those young men shift to Trump multicultural.

It's not about white boys as across the spectrum.

Moving, finding some identity with Trump that I think is interesting.

I think Democrats are quick to dismiss that at our peril.

And so I've been trying to mine this on our podcast, trying to understand it.

But I also realize I got a day job, what a gift, that I can actually do something about it.

And so we're going to, in a couple of weeks, announce a series of reforms in this space and really challenge people, particularly Democratic leaders in California, to start focusing on the needs of our young men.

Do you know what the number one searched thing in porn is?

God, don't tell me, man.

Incest.

Fuck that.

Brother does sister, brother does stepmom, brother does mom.

And then, I mean, it's ripping families apart.

Sick.

Absolutely.

And

it's making

shit that should not be normal normal.

And now you're seeing all these problems.

I mean, you know, there's a large population of rape that's, it's from a, a sibling or a father.

Yeah, man, doubt me.

And I think that derives directly from the shit that's accessible on the internet to kids.

Ubiquitous.

I mean, you, you can Google White House.

I mean, I remember my son, no, no bullshit, literally.

He

came to me.

It wasn't, it was, it was our house phone.

He goes, dad, look at this.

And he was literally googling something related to the White House and got this porn site because he had spelled it wrong.

And he was kind of ashamed.

I'm like, brother, it's totally cool.

He said, you have no idea what you're about to experience.

And that was just a couple of years ago.

And I'm like, and I remember my wife, she just, she went, she, she, I wish she was sitting in this seat because she, you guys would have a conversation for hours on this damn topic.

It's a big deal.

It's a big damn deal.

And so I look, I, it's why I'm just social media generally, you know, don't mess with our kids.

You know, I passed some pretty aggressive child privacy laws, nation-leading stuff.

And these are my friends.

They're suing us.

Like,

I call them, I call the CEOs.

I'm like, the founders, what the hell are you guys doing?

Well, we're making progress.

I said, you're not making progress, man.

You know, you're on with your own goddamn kids.

Bullshit.

What you're allowing them to do and see the abuse.

So every time you even pass those laws, they litigate.

They often get thrown out.

But this is serious stuff.

And it goes to our politics too, man.

We're just these algorithms.

You know, every time I flip through something, now I'm just seeing more of it.

And you're nothing but a mirror of your consistent thoughts.

Whatever you focus on, you find more of.

So people that hate California, hate San Francisco, seems like the only feed they got is reinforcing that.

So they can't believe they're not right.

When I say their murder rates are high, they're like bullshit.

I'm telling you, look at my feed.

Look at my feed.

That's how we're so goddamn divided.

I mean, speaking of sexuality and divisiveness, I mean, I think one of the things, and I don't think, I know one of the things in the last administration that really divided people was

gender-affirming care, LGBTQ.

I also know that, you know, I think that I read, it's in my outline that, you know, one of the one of your proudest achievements is same-sex marriage.

Yeah.

Well, proud because it's about love.

It's about humanity, about people, about people that have been together 50 plus years.

Faith, love, devotion, constancy, the manifestation of what marriage is supposed to be about.

And so, yeah,

I married 4,036 couples in what we call the winter of love in 2004.

I mean, and I was completely just

crushed by my own party, outraged by what I'd done.

So I assure you, this was not politically correct or just something, oh, you're from San Francisco.

It was not supported back then.

And I thought it was the right thing to do.

And I'm proud of that because I saw the human face of mothers.

I just, how many people, you know, if you look back at those images in San Francisco in 2004, there wasn't one image anyone could exploit.

It was literally doctors and lawyers and fighter pilots and fucking vets and real goddamn people.

And they came from 46 states and six countries.

for one month just to be seen with their kids, with their parents.

The emotion, emotion, the intensity was beautiful, man.

But you just made a point that's important, and it's a point that I want to acknowledge that's really,

I think, significant.

And that is when you get to the issues around sports, trans issues,

that's now no longer about celebrating your rights.

It's about denying.

other people theirs.

Marriage equality was about everyone's rights.

Your marriage was not diminished because a couple that had been together 30 years got married and happened to be the same sex.

But your child may not have that same opportunity again on the podium

if a trans athlete is competing for that limited spot.

And two years ago that came to me in a very different way.

I looked at it, and I'll be candid with you.

I looked at that issue and I said, boy, they're just exploiting this.

It's a handful of people.

What the hell is this?

It's being weaponized.

It was sort of the new CRT thing.

I was like, oh, God, here we go.

We went off CRT.

Everyone even forgot about that.

And now it's all about transports or banning books or whatever it might be.

It was just another cultural issue.

I remember Donald Trump was saying, I have no problem with same-sex restroom or restrooms for, you know, Caitlin Denner or whatever.

You know,

he had no issue with this years, a few years ago when he was even running for president.

And I didn't really think about it in that respect either.

I didn't have an issue.

I remember the governor, Republican governor of Utah, said it beautifully.

He said, never so much attention been focused on so few people.

That was Republican governor of Utah said that.

And so that was my prison to see the world until two years ago there was a state track championship.

And we had a trans athlete that was successful.

And

there was a video of the girl that lost and she was devastated.

And that video went around everywhere.

And it was very emotional.

It was very real.

And you felt for the girl that she's not, she's not going to get to those state finals.

And the finals were a few weeks away.

There was a lot of energy around it.

Like people are like pissed, understandably.

And I remember calling my team and I said, you know, is there a compromise?

What can we do here?

Like, this is legit.

And we actually, there was Olympic,

someone.

that advises the International Olympic Committee who happens to, I think, live in California.

And they came in to say, well, what's the right stage for a woman, man, who is pre-puberty, et cetera.

They said, it's incredibly nuanced, incredibly difficult.

And I remember being just amazingly frustrated by it.

And the worst thing is the two girls, instead of us being able to figure it out, they both dropped out.

The trans athlete and the girl that lost.

They both didn't even play the files.

I'm like, man, hell unfair.

I said that to my team.

I remember at the time saying it to my team.

Then I started showing up on my kids.

soccer games, everyone else.

Every parent coming up said it's so unfair.

Like, whoa.

Like everywhere I went.

Progressively minded people, not bigots, that are champions of trans policy, like I am, but didn't like the sports.

It's like, come on, man, you got to do something.

And I just sat there sort of quietly trying to figure this out.

And my feelings were well known by my staff.

And I did this podcast with Charlie Kirk.

And Charlie was the first one.

It was my first podcast on my new show.

And Charlie showed up.

And

unsurprisingly, he brought it up.

And he said, tell me that's not fair.

I said, it's not fair.

You're right.

And I said,

it's also not fair that these people feel scapegoated and all they want to do is just goddamn survive.

I didn't say goddamn, but I said something along those lines.

Well, it blew up.

People were pissed.

My party was pissed.

LGBTQ caucus, I'll never forget that meeting with my friends, furious with me,

because I don't think it's fair.

It's not.

The challenge in California, and it's all over the news the last 48 hours, and I got it with protests in South Carolina, is there's a law that was signed by the last governor, 2013 or 14,

that is the law in the state of California.

There were two efforts a few months ago to change it after I said it wasn't fair.

They didn't get out of committee.

We have a constitution.

The governor doesn't get to decide to change the law by fiat.

It has to be done with the consent of the legislature.

They didn't move forward.

So now, of course, Trump is having the time of his life.

And I assure you he is because we've had conversations on this topic.

So I know exactly.

He says, you got abortion.

I got this.

He told me that.

My mother's grave.

Politics.

Politics.

And now he's suing and threatening us.

And they're just, and it's, you know, I'm the poster child.

But I do think we have to address that issue.

And I do think the legislature should address that issue, but with grace, with humanity, with respect to someone different than yourself.

And, you know, I get that the kids, I get all that.

I mean, it's that's, it's deeply emotional and complicated, but I wish people wouldn't weaponize it the way they do and demean people the way I

the way some people do.

But because you oppose sports does not make you a bigot, doesn't make you homophobic.

And my party needs to stop

saying that.

There are certain people that cannot stand the community and you know that's different.

But the vast majority of the folks I come into contact that think it's unfair are good human beings and I think we should treat them accordingly and we got to own up to that.

So I went on a journey on this and I'm firm that I just it's not fair.

And we had another example just a few weeks ago in California, just reinforced it.

You know, triple jump and it just,

you know, just not.

And I'm trying to figure out,

we came up with some compromise.

It's not me.

Something called the CIF in California, which is independent of the governor.

But they came up with what they thought was a compromise, which was allowing two medals.

But that kind of pissed everyone.

It worked-ish,

but it's not the answer to this.

And so we got to address it because I really worry about LGBTQ rights getting rolled back.

Even marriage support for marriage equality is declining now.

And I think this issue is really, they've been very effective weaponizing it, very effectively expressing their anger about it, not even weaponizing, but legitimate anger, people that disagree.

And it's hurting the broader movement.

And as a guy who's been a champion for the movement,

I hope we wake up to that.

And I think this is, it's a much bigger issue than I fully appreciated a few years ago.

It is a handful of people, yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not fair.

I mean, do you think that in your opinion, that the whole

LGBTQ agenda went a little too far?

On this?

I mean, in my opinion, it went way too far.

And, you know, I'm a person, I don't give a shit.

You want to get married?

Fine, cool.

Well, yeah, I'm curious to see.

And just out of curiosity, 20 years ago, did you feel that way about same-sex marriage?

I mean, 20 years ago, I was 22 and in the SEAL team, so I didn't really care.

Wasn't really on my radar.

But yeah,

there was definitely a time that I was against it.

But it's, you know, I've always been kind of a person that's, you know, you do you, I'll do me.

I don't need to see it.

You don't need to push it on me, I guess.

I don't even care if I see it.

It doesn't fucking bother me.

None of it really bothers me.

It's when

it's like I'm forced to, it just gets pushed in my face all the time.

All the companies turn into rainbow flags.

You know, we saw the, the, the party at the White House, you know, was it two years ago, maybe?

Maybe it was last year.

I can't remember.

And, you know, we have people showing their boobs on, trans people showing their boobs on the White House lawn.

And, you know, I'm like, well,

but I, I, I could appreciate it if that was the case.

Yeah.

And, and then, you know, in the major thing with, that I hear the most is, is the kids, you know, and, and, and, I don't know if California is one.

I know Washington's one where, you know, the state can come in and basically take your kid if you're against gender affirming care.

There's some, it's a, yeah, there's some, there's some nuanced language

around that.

There are about 21 states, by the way, just on the, on that, California is hardly, again, it's not the only, everyone.

Back to California, but about 20 other states, 21 states that tend to operate in this space similarly with sort of variants of along the same rules.

And obviously, California is one of them.

But no, look, I didn't even mean to cut you off except to say

there's no doubt this issue, I thought it played

a very significant and outsized role in the last election.

I thought that had, and by the way, I told Chris that and Susie when I was at the White House.

Susie, while I was the chief of staff, and Chris, who ran the campaign and a lot of the media, when I was over at the White House earlier this year,

we had a conversation around the trans issue, which is fascinating.

I wish that one was recorded.

And

then I met with the president right after, who was in the middle of a press conference as we were talking on the topic and began a 90-minute meeting I had with him in the Oval talking about this very issue where he said what I just said about you got abortion.

And I was like, come on, man, it's not politics.

This is, there's human beings here, but I get it.

I get the politics, but it's also about human beings.

But

that ad, that trans ad,

you know, he's, she,

Commonist for they, them,

Trump's for you or something, that was powerful.

And

it was

an unforced error of the

Harris campaign, not to push back on it.

But they had little move, they have few moves to push back because it was what it was.

That gender-affirming care was afforded under a lawsuit when she was AG

and part of the settlement compelled that the state had to move forward to allow for it.

And it was a circumstance with an undoc

person that was incarcerated that got the gender-affirming care.

Everything about it just met the political moment.

And the fact that she defended it on a video only reinforced the vulnerability.

And so they kept running the ad over and over and over again.

It was incredibly impactful.

And

as just, again,

removing the humanity, right versus wrong, the morality on either side, politically, it is a major problem for the Democratic Party.

What about for your values?

I mean, is eight years old too young?

Yeah, I mean, look,

now that I have a nine-year-old, just became nine.

Come on, man.

I get it.

So those are legit.

You know,

it's interesting.

Just the issue of age, I haven't,

as I, and

as someone that's been so focused on equality broadly, LGBT rights, particularly gay marriage, the trans issue for me is also novel.

It's over the last few years.

I'm trying to understand as much as anyone else.

Whole pronoun thing, trying to understand all of that.

Well, you know, that was like the hell, I mean, all that stuff.

I get it.

All this stuff started to collapse on us.

I joked with Charlie about Latinx.

You know, I remember walking into my staff.

I used, I started using the word Latinx a few times.

And then my chief of staff, who happens to be Hispanic, goes, would you shut up?

I'm like, what?

She goes, who uses that word?

I said, I don't know.

She said, my whole staff said, do not ever use that word again.

I'm like, what's going on?

I was like, okay.

And they literally, society, literally style, I'll never forget.

I was like, whoa.

We were on this sort of Zoom conversation.

And she, I I mean, literally, my Hispanic team of staff, like, shut up.

And so I'm like, we were all kind of like, I never, I mean, those meetings were my pronouns and everyone goes across.

So this, all this was sort of, I think, post-George Floyd, post-COVID, we kind of came out.

And there was obviously this rights movement post-George Floyd, which you got to understand, I mean, on the basis of what occurred and all the social unrest.

And there was a natural inclination then to try to course correct.

But it was across the spectrum of issues, including increasingly on the issues of how we talk, communicate, how politically correct and sensitive people started becoming, use of language, pronouns, and then issues around the trans community

and this notion of gender-affirming care for children.

That's tough, man.

And the science on that,

I haven't dove that deep into it, but I read one report and then there's one that's slightly contradictory.

And then they said, there's no contradictory.

Here's what the UK just came out with.

You're full of shit.

It's absolutely scientifically sound that it's outrageous.

And so

it's intense.

And then I meet with families, literally, meet with families,

save my child's life.

And they're thriving.

I mean, it's just, I mean, you can't serve the country until you're 18.

You can't buy a gun.

You can't buy a kid.

alcohol until you're 21.

And I mean, to make that big of a decision as a

kid, I mean, you could also be destroying a lot of lives as well.

I mean, their brain isn't even fully developed.

Yeah, well, until 26 plus.

Yeah, so it's even further with the brain.

Look,

I come to this

very

much

more open-minded than I've ever been, more receptive, because a lot of the pushback came from folks, candidly, that I didn't respect, that never respected the gay.

community period.

There are people who are opposed to just basic rights that have been going after.

So I think the natural inclination was sort of dismiss.

And

now

I recognize more fully and deeply, and I think the sports issue really opened that door for me,

the nuances in this space.

That said, I'll take a back seat to no one in terms of anti-discrimination laws against the community.

I just don't.

That's where I take a backseat to no one.

And I've signed some of the most progressive legislation on that, and I'm proud proud of that.

That's who I am.

Stand up for ideals and strike out against injustice.

And I think it's injustice to attack vulnerable communities and discriminate against people.

That said, on the issue of children, this is a tough, tough issue.

Do you think it's unjust to push

Do you think it's unjust to push those values on people that don't want that?

Where I'm going with this in schools.

Yeah, I don't know, but

I don't know who's pushing.

I mean, I hear this all the time.

Well,

people were promoting.

I mean, Donald Trump says kids come to school one day as a boy and they come the next that afternoon as a girl.

I'm like, what the heck is he talking about?

Well, I mean, I'll tell you what he's, I don't know what he's talking about because I'm not familiar with that conversation or when he said that.

But I mean, just here in Tennessee, for example,

in, I think it's Cookville.

They had these.

kids that showed up and they're called Furbies or something.

And they're showing up in school in a kennel, which, you know, 10 years roll back.

You put your kid in a kennel, you're going to fucking prison.

But you know what I mean?

And then they're shitting in a kiddie litter box.

And it's, it's like,

this is a little,

that's not a little too far.

This is too far.

This is disrupting the rest of the class.

Yeah.

I mean, that's stuff like that's absurd.

Come on.

And by the way, that's been so overhyped and exploited.

There's, there's a few instances of that.

But, and I've read that, I've seen that.

I'm like, geez, you think that stuff's happening every day, everywhere.

Those are extreme examples.

And yeah, that's absurd.

Couldn't agree more, man.

Come on.

I mean, cat litter, it turns out most of that turns out most of it's bullshit.

But if that had occurred,

that's ridiculous.

Like, that's crazy with perspect.

Maybe on Halloween.

That's what I think.

I just wanted to see.

No, no, no, no.

That's, that's, come on.

I mean, I am, yeah.

I mean, that's stuff.

I've seen some of that stuff online.

We track some of that stuff down, even my own state.

And it turns out a lot of that was just bullshit.

And then it gets weaponized, exploited, surround sound on social media.

And my friends, Jesse Waters, and everyone at night running up and down saying Democrats want to turn out their kids into furries.

And now we've got to do accommodations and anti-discrimination for kids that need cat litter in their cools.

I mean, come on.

They're red lines.

That's one of them.

All right.

God bless.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I needed to hear that.

I needed to.

I get caught in the surround sound.

No, I,

and

and on the sports, we're going to have to figure that out, man.

I just wish there was a space to do it.

That's not this space.

And in this space, you know, it's like state of California had to

do a countersuit against Trump on this because it's state law

on the issue of trans sports because they're looking to defund the state.

with congressionally appropriated dollars over this,

which is just, it's political theater.

It's the weaponization of the issue.

But it's an issue I'd love to resolve, but I need my legislature to resolve it.

And it can't just be done by an executive order or fiat.

That's why we have a state constitution longer than the U.S.

Constitution.

And that's the conditions we're in in this country right now.

And Donald Trump's a mastered exploiting that.

What do you think Trump's doing wrong right now?

Well, 5,000-damn military in the streets of an American city, sowing chaos, fear, and anxiety intentionally, purposely, ripping communities apart, taking kids, not even going to summer school now because they're scared to death.

Just had the diocese down in San Bernardino say you don't have to come to church.

Not even faith leaders now, members of their own congregations are scared to death to show up to church.

I mean, this is a chill.

And the tariffs, I mean, this guy is, there's a recklessness.

The tariff, 50% on copper, that's going to cost every every single person listening.

That just happened.

Pissed off because he has a guy who's a buddy of his, Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Well, I'll do 50% on that.

We have a trade surplus with Brazil.

Give me a goddamn break, theory of his case about onshoring.

I mean,

it's madness is an economic policy.

I get tariffs as a tool, but now they're just a political weapon.

So across the board, I think he's been, you know, 90 deals in 90 days.

There were two vague deals in 90 days.

Keeps moving the goalposts.

I'm not impressed at all.

We had contraction in the economy in the first quarter.

His last quarter, last year, was 2.4% growth.

Hell, the Biden administration created 16.6 million jobs.

That's eight times more than the last three Republican administrations combined, 1.9 million.

You talk about jobs, by the way.

You go back to the end of the Cold War.

I sit at Ronald Reagan's old office when he was governor.

The end of the Cold War in 1989 until last year, there's been 52 million jobs created in America.

49, almost 50 million of them were created under Democratic administrations.

96 plus percent under Democratic administration.

The idea that we're losing on the jobs issue is beyond me.

And now we're seeing GDP contract.

We're not seeing prices significantly decline.

We've got significant reduction in trade and port activity impacting my state disproportionately.

Got an immigration policy that's going to to impact workforce and our global competitiveness with allies and trade policy.

I mean, I'm not impressed at all.

And this big, beautiful bill, I'm with Elon Musk on it.

I think he described it better than anybody.

I mean, I think that the I think the job numbers are a little bit botched.

I mean, because also during Biden's administration, you know, everybody went back to work after being laid off and fired for COVID.

And so we had, as businesses reopened, that created a lot of jobs.

And so that inflated the numbers more than normal.

Yeah, but we blew past the pre-pandemic numbers in 18 months.

And all the jobs subsequent were net new jobs.

I mean, our GDP was the envy of the world.

We had the lowest uninsured rate in U.S.

history, the lowest black unemployment in U.S.

history, lowest unemployment for women in U.S.

history.

I mean,

an industrial policy with the Chips and Science Act, that was about bringing jobs back to the United States, disproportionately benefiting red counties and red districts.

I was in South Carolina.

The governor there last year in the state of the state was waxing on about the $2 billion investment in South Carolina in an EV

company because of the IRA and

the other investments the administration was making.

I know people, you know, the inflation scars were real, going from 9.1%,

but we were moving in the right direction, basically stuck right now.

And you saw the Feds delaying reducing

the Fed rate because of the potential inflationary impacts in the back end of these tariffs, which haven't been fully absorbed or felt.

So I've just not been impressed.

And I was very depressed about this big, beautiful bill, which is apparently the big victory.

And maybe the other victory was a sense of strength that was expressed in the bombing in Iran.

I thought day one, we were going to solve Ukraine.

That ain't happening.

The flip-flops on the Patriot missiles and the defense package to Ukraine is just a masterclass in inconsistency and or incompetency, depending on perspective.

Was that Pete who said no?

And now Trump's saying yes day to day.

It's just,

I'm not inspired.

Well, Trump told me on my show when I interviewed him that he would have that war wrapped up before he ever even took office.

That just obviously did not happen.

In politics, you're supposed to under-promise and over-deliver.

But so you look at the promises made, I just, it's just an over.

I just, look, I'm the wrong guy to ask when I've got a city that feels under siege and a state that he's just trying to wreck.

So how did that happen?

Why do, I mean, we saw riots.

I'm sure they're probably over-embellished,

you know, in L.A., you know, when understatement.

With the ice stuff that happened.

But I mean,

there are videos and lots of stuff.

Yeah, they were a bunch of assholes that ordered Waymos

and they're jumping up and down.

down and there have been hundreds and hundreds of arrests and we're continuing to get the videos to get subsequent arrests.

There were thousands of officers surrounding those guys

going to be moving in.

It didn't need the National Guard to be called in.

The guy, Trump trumpets the National Guard calling and said we've solved for.

They hadn't even been deployed.

Come on.

LAPD, mutual aid, 88 cities in the county, mutual aid system, second to none.

One of the most, we have 616 LEAs, local law enforcement agencies in california there's few places more robust i've had a thousand chp i'm a big champ i was never one of those defund police guys quite the contrary i was the first mayor in san francisco history to meet minimum staffing of our police officers point of pride and intensity

have their back.

We support these guys.

They do an amazing job.

CHP does an amazing job supplementing and supporting those efforts.

Needing the National Guard.

Those were our guys that were out there, you know, out there at every single intersection during the fires.

These guys were exhausted.

And now they're being told to mask up.

I mean,

there was no masks.

I told you, they're getting selfies out there where they're beloved in Santa Monica.

Now, man, all that reputational damage that's being done as they're sitting there on horses with American flags running through soccer fields, scaring kids that are playing soccer in the middle of the day at a summer camp.

For what?

Just toughness.

It's a weakness masquerading as strength.

That's what I don't like about this son of a bitch.

I don't.

And forgive me, I know he's the president of the United States.

Forgive me.

I didn't, you know,

he calls me new scum.

You know, come on.

How do I explain that to my kid?

Now he's got, I have my kids' friends calling my kids new scum.

That I get, because I was called that in seventh grade, but not by a 79-year-old.

Model better goddamn behavior, man.

Forgive the goddamn.

It's what I don't, you ask what I don't like about him.

Is that resolved?

It will be resolved when he...

Look,

when it doesn't get any attention,

then it will resolve itself.

But what they're doing is testing the boundaries.

They knew we'd litigate.

We won at lower court, appellate court.

We lost.

We now are updating the litigation.

We filed 27-plus lawsuits against this guy.

I didn't want to do one.

Honestly, I remember I did this special session.

I met him in the Oval Office, and I left the Oval Office right at the end of the meeting with Trump.

I said, and we had a great conversation.

No bullshit, great conversation.

Just had a great conversation the night before he put in the National Guard.

Didn't give me any heads up.

No heads up.

No kidding.

Not one fucking word on the topic.

He wanted, we talked about,

we talked about everything about what was going on in L.A.

He completely lied about that conversation.

Totally surprised me with the National Guard.

And we were in contact with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, back and forth.

Let's work this out.

What do you need?

We've got supplemental support.

We had hundreds of guys down there.

We'll have hundreds more.

Obviously, we want to protect your guys.

Give me a break.

Of course.

Protect your folks.

We don't interfere in federal law enforcement, federal resources doing federal work.

Never have.

That's not the state's role.

Period.

Full stop.

Period.

We're clear about that.

Their responsibility to do federal work.

We're not going to get in the way.

You do that.

I just don't want you to co-op our guys that are doing all kinds of other work.

That's not their job.

That's your job.

And he decided to do this because they're testing it.

They're using this as a petri dish.

They're testing executive boundaries to see how far they can go across the United States.

Now they're so resourced that Donald Trump will have one of the largest private armies in the world.

Well, you know, that's what came to my mind.

And, you know, I'm a little torn on it.

I mean, you know, all I see,

I didn't go there.

I didn't see it for myself.

But I mean, on social,

the shit coming out on X, I mean, it looked fucking horrible, like really dangerous.

And so, but at the same time, I mean, when you do that, I mean, there's, I mean, we're skirting the line of martial law here.

You know,

I'll get probably get blasted for this by my audience, but I mean, we're, we're treading a thin line here between martial law and states' rights.

And it's something that I'm concerned about because, like you said, they're testing boundaries.

How far is this going to go?

Where else are they going to go?

And

I personally think it's a real concern.

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We had to protect the National Guard.

Really?

They're surrounding the federal building, which became

the attractive place to protest.

You're talking about a couple blocks, by the way.

I saw the map.

Okay, in one of the largest counties and one of the largest states in the world.

Okay.

You're talking about a couple blocks.

You have thousands and thousands of police surrounding the place.

So you could see in the images, you just see three blocks.

You're like, oh my God, all of L.A.

I was up there in helicopters.

I was driving around.

I'm in the Reagan building, my office, literally a couple blocks away.

You don't even hear anything.

You don't even know what's going on.

And the National Guard are there, but they can't engage.

So our guys are arresting the protesters that are protesting the guard.

We're protecting the guard.

That's how absurd things got.

God is my witness, literally.

Our CHP guys, these guys are, a lot of these guys are Trumpers, man.

They love this guy, all the law enforcement.

And And they're like, what the fuck is going on?

Like, what is happening?

All these National Guard men and women, these great kids, like, I actually used to work for that law enforcement agency.

Now they got me doing this.

Why the hell?

I want to go back to work.

Paramedics, firefighters.

Trump took hundreds of people off the lines, our rattlesnake teams, doing vegetation and force management to prepare for wildfire season.

In his force, we were raking his force.

Took hundreds of them off.

National Guard.

I use use the National Guard.

I deploy them, not just on the border and doing counter-narcotics, anti-fentanyl interdiction, but we use them to deal with forest and vegetation management with our Conservation Corps and others.

Love these guys.

Love these guys.

Told you, 2,500 of them I deployed during the fires.

They were there before the fires occurred in L.A.

I pre-deployed 110 engines.

Pre-deployed.

The National Guard was part.

of the pre-deployment.

All our ARIS assets, bought them from Northern California, Southern California.

They were part of that team, integrated in.

Proud of these guys, man.

And to see these guys abused, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted at Tax Brother.

They're sitting there in armories.

And then a few of them get to be paraded around.

And they're like, what the hell are we being paraded?

What are we doing?

To run into a park when there wasn't one damn arrest in MacArthur Park on the sixth month anniversary of the fires.

intentionally doing it the day of our press conference, just to rub it in.

No acknowledgement of the 40, 30 people that lost their lives in L.A.

or his successful recovery efforts.

He's been our partner.

I complimented Donald Trump at our press conference as he was sending out our National Guard behind my back at the same damn time

in this vulgar display of cruelty in MacArthur Park.

And I was saying thank you to the U.S.

Army Corps.

Thank you to Lee Zeldin.

in this historic debris removal effort in six months, unprecedented in U.S.

history.

the fastest debris removal ever.

And

this guy, President of the United States, decides not even acknowledge that work that we partnered with him in, but sends these guys out to completely terrify the community.

So when does it end?

It's when he decides to need to stand or we're successful in court.

And I'm going to keep coming back hard.

And, you know, I'm on the other side of this now.

As I said, I had a great conversation with him.

We always do.

I was out there in the tarmac with him down there

worked well with them during COVID.

Back to if you're going to criticize governors, you need to also criticize the president on COVID.

And

I want to work with them, man.

When it comes to emergency preparedness and safety, I was, you know, Hurricane Helene, that's why I was in South Carolina.

I was talking about the recovery efforts.

They're still not fully recovered.

We have to be there for each other.

I want to be there with the folks out there in Texas, man.

No politics.

I can condition aid.

Greg Abbott, you get every goddamn dollar you need.

I mean, you're a 13-year-old girl clutching the hands of an 11-year-old found dead downriver, man.

Oh, what age of my kids.

It's not politics.

I don't care who's to blame right now, man.

Find anyone that's alive.

Let's have that conversation.

And if they need aid, provide it.

I sent search and rescue teams that Friday morning, sent out, said, whatever you need.

I was proud to support Speaker Johnson in the recovery in the hurricanes in Louisiana.

But they want to condition aid in California because they disagree with a water faucet or somewhere that he's made up in water policy or saying I'm not raking his forests.

57% of the forests in California are federal.

3% are California.

I spent $2 billion raking all our forests.

He's spending nothing.

Interesting.

I didn't know that.

It's just a lot of crap.

Billions and billions of dollars.

And we've 10xed.

our investments in that space, 10xed it.

From the day I got in, the first executive order I signed as governor of California was around vegetation and forest management.

Waived CEQA again, did an emergency order to fast-track these efforts, unprecedented investments in this space.

And he just demagogues them.

We have a big federal fire on his land in California.

Our folks are the ones that are the vast majority of the incident command.

And, you know, he just cut goddamn workforce at the U.S.

Forest Service.

Damn.

So I just, look, I just want a little bit of, you know, consistency, a little less hypocrisy, a little less politics.

Otherwise, he's fine.

To your question.

I mean, with those wildfires, you know,

I did an interview on that with Tim Sheehi, senator out of Montana.

And, you know,

one of the things, the one thing that stuck with me the most was him telling me about houses.

that were burning down that were next to next to ponds, next to lakes, and that, you know,

the

Hilos that were carrying water that fill up in lakes, double it, could not dump, could not fill up their tanks or their buckets or whatever the hell they call them in those lakes because of an endangered fish.

In Montana?

No, this is in California.

Oh, he's full of shit.

He's full of shit.

Full of shit.

Don't know what the hell he's talking about.

What crap?

Just made up.

That's so stupid.

I can't even believe he said that.

I'm embarrassed someone told him that.

And I'm sorry someone told him that and he had to repeat it.

Well, Trump said it on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Yeah, Trump is, it was laughable.

He said he sent water down to LA, completely made it up.

He was trying to show me maps and convince me at the resolute desk in the Oval Office.

I started laughing.

I said, I can't convince you.

I said, you literally show, you're making this up.

And I don't know what else to tell you.

And then I finally said, okay, you win.

You've solved for the problem.

You've made.

California abundant with water again.

I said, can we just stop this nonsense?

It's like

it's like when he said he had another conversation with me he never had.

Just made up.

And you were able to access those lakes and ponds.

I mean, I got

dozens and dozens of these things, and they're pulling water and running these figure eights, these goddamn rock stars 24-7, using the assets that I invested in as governor, allowing us the night drops 24-7.

Yes.

So

do you think that they are not...

What's bullshit?

Do you think they're not?

By the way, Senator, I'm sorry, Senator.

Boy, that's embarrassing.

And I'm sorry someone told you that.

And I guess it was the president.

I would encourage you to stress test what he says.

Do you, I mean, when you're saying that you're the one that's cleaning out the federal forests and that's the federal government's...

Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars we've invested doing the work of the federal government.

57% of the state's property is in federal hands.

3% are in state hands.

These fires, campfire, the most deadly in California, started in federal lands.

And this guy comes in and talks about raking, and he's serious about raking.

He actually believes in, it's insane.

It's like actually, honestly, just think about that, raking the forest.

If he's talking about forest and vegetation management, he's talking about defensible spaces.

We have significantly, I told you, 10xed.

the investments in this space.

I can't make up for 100 years of Smokey the Bear in suppression strategies that predate my existence, but I can take responsibility for historic investments in my state in moving heaven and earth and changing rules and regulations that were slowing that process down, including another executive order I did a few months ago on this topic.

I mean,

when he's talking about

raking the forest, I mean, he's talking about getting the dead debris.

No, he's talking about raking.

John, I'm just telling you, man.

After he said raking the forest, I was down in the Woolsey fire.

I flew with him in the Air Force One.

Was with him in the car.

I was with him on Marine One.

Spent the day with him.

Northern California.

I went to Southern California.

He talked about, you know, Newsom needs to rake the forest.

And everyone kind of laughed.

He wasn't laughing.

And he called me, I'm not kidding.

A couple days later, I'll never forget, I was at my house up in Fair Oaks.

And President's online, I'm like, he goes, hey, do you follow up on raking the forest?

I said, oh, yes, sir, Mr.

President.

We're doing the vegetation forest management.

He goes, no, raking the forest.

You got to call the president, I don't know, Finland or something.

I can't even remember which way.

I said, well, no, I said, no, we're definitely doing all the vegetation management.

He said, no, rake it.

When he says it, he's not kidding.

I'm just telling you.

Why are they not sending federal aid?

At least send some rakes.

He didn't even send a damn rake.

I may make some hats, make America rake again.

Sell some goddamn merchandise on my podcast, not just yours.

Thank you for the gummies.

You're welcome.

There's bread dye in those, by the way.

Jesus.

See?

RFK Jr.

and Newsom are shown to be illegal soon.

Both of us.

At least we agree on that, Bobby.

So look,

it comes to emergency preparedness and management, man, just we got to get along.

I mean, we're the billion-dollar disasters.

I mean, this bankrupt this country.

And he wants to eliminate FEMA.

He's, you know, he's certainly vandalized NOAA and the weather chat.

I don't know if I've had any impact in Texas.

I don't even want to go there at the moment.

I think people eventually have to look at that.

But man, in the West, hots are getting hotter, dries are getting drier, just objective facts.

You know, there's no Democratic or Republican thermometer, man.

And if you don't believe in science, you got to believe your own eyes.

Towns being literally turned off the map.

Greenville, California, Grizzly Fats, California, obviously campfire and what happened in Paradise, California.

It's serious.

And we have unprecedented resources.

We have the largest firefighting fleet, aerial firefighting fleet in the world,

my state.

I've invested unprecedented dollars, not just in vegetation forest management.

I've doubled my state CAL FIRE budget.

I mean,

there's no bigger.

I told you I put 110 engines and pre-deployed them.

I was on the fire in L.A.

within hours as governor.

of

a county fire and initiated on federal property, multiple fires that were occurring at the same time, most of them on federal property where they initiated.

And we had 100 mile-an-hour winds attached to fire or a fire attached to 100 mile-an-hour winds.

I was up there in the hills with these guys, and we all turned around when my hair literally burst on.

There's a video of it, and they threw me in the car.

The guy hits my hair and throws me in the car.

He says, get the fuck out of here.

And these guys, there's no hose in the world attached to a thing that mattered at that point.

It was a life safety mission.

And that was just a few hours in.

Those were 60, 70 mile-an-hour gusts before it hit it peak at 100.

all our helicopters had to be grounded all the the big c-130s we had down there um grounded

and then these guys blamed i mean they just blew us up

contrast that to how they're celebrating texas why do you think you're the target uh

i in some ways i'm humbled by it must mean something they're not you know but no it's i'm definitely i'm one i'm the favorite i'm glad you're not watching fox because you'd be a little bored with with me.

It's 24-7, man.

I don't know.

I appreciate it if I can unite people in some ways, but

I just, I don't, I don't, I don't dislike those people protesting me everywhere.

Man, they love their families or they love their kids.

We all want to be protected, connected to something bigger than ourselves.

We all want to be respected.

Man,

I don't want to talk down.

I don't talk down.

It's not about you.

I respect you, man.

You care about, yeah, I care about this country.

You care about this country.

I told you, I have a big Republican family I'm married into.

Love my father-in-law.

My guy's a rock star.

Well, he's a hero.

Came from nothing, man.

Built this unbelievable business.

And he's the most amazing father.

Had five kids, lost one, his oldest daughter, the tragic accident, changed everything in his life.

Man of values and principles and faith.

In fact, he's the grandfather of my kids, man.

And

he

lives and die for this fucking country.

Big gun owner, hunter.

He's an incredible role model.

And he's a Republican.

God bless him, man.

Good.

We have different points of view.

I don't hate him.

I don't think he hates me.

He likes some of my politics.

We've had the conversation we just had about trans

issues.

It's tough.

I get it.

But he knows my heart.

I know his.

And I think, you know, man, that's 99.9% of people out there.

Good goddamn people.

And I just wish Trump would play to that as opposed to, you know, I feel like the stars and stripe, there's going to be only 25 damn stars up there, 26.

He wants to eliminate the rest.

He's deciding if you're blue or red, if he's just going to support disaster aid, man.

I have 6 million Trump supporters in my state.

That's more people than live in South Carolina.

Six million.

I'm one of the reddest rural parts of the country.

I live in that district, by the way.

There's Trump signs right across my, literally out.

I drive out of my home right there, big-ass Trump sign.

Love, I mean, my neighbors, man.

Yeah.

Defunding the police.

No, terrible.

They just, I mean, what idiots.

616, I mentioned, local law enforcement agencies.

I think there were six in California that had any adjustments in their budget.

All six within 12 months had significantly increased their damn budgets.

I read that

the budget was cut.

You were cutting, I mean.

Not me.

Opposite.

It wasn't you.

I added 1,000.

My law enforcement is California Highway Patrol.

I'm the governor of California.

not the mayor of California.

And you had cities that decide their budget, their own,

I mean, you have a lot of charter cities.

And there were a number of cities I said, I at the time was very vocal saying I do not support defund the police.

And this is a big mistake.

Remember, when I was mayor, I was moving in the opposite direction, got first-time minimum staffing.

By the way, San Francisco has never recovered on the staffing levels they have in terms of historic crime reduction.

However, even L.A.

now is on pace

to have the lowest homicide rates in 60 years.

They're down 20% year to date.

The state was down 11.9% last year, year to date, year year over year.

I invested $1.1 billion in vertical prosecution grants, in supporting DAs, supporting police retail theft, most comprehensive retail theft, organized retail theft laws that we know of in the country.

That's not my word.

That was the head of the retail association saying that.

It was a model for the rest of the nation.

There's a lot of mythology because there are some mayors.

that have a very different point of view than the governor.

And there were some mayors, most of them are no longer mayors,

that moved in that year after Floyd to mostly modestly cut their budgets and immediately regretted that.

Or the new mayors came in and fixed that.

But the state has significantly increased that support.

And anyone who says otherwise doesn't come with the facts.

They come with opinion.

Did you say we need to reimagine the way police police?

I said the idea of looking at how we address policing in modern construct, particularly as it relates to issues of social policy, where police officers are increasingly becoming paramedics, addressing issues on the streets and sidewalks like encampments and homelessness, where we're pulling people off for inebriation and two cops are sitting there getting overtime, wondering why the hell they're not back out on the street, waiting in the emergency room to transport the guy once he comes after the ER.

I said, absolutely, that's an area that we should look at.

And we did do police reforms and we worked with our law enforcement agencies.

They agreed to a number of them, disagree with a few as it relates to keratic holds and some other things.

And we adjusted some of those rules.

And to me, that was,

I don't, I mean, pro-police.

I mean, All my guys make the same point.

We can't stand the bad apples.

These sons of bitches make us all look bad.

And

so,

yeah, but I never, I just think it really hurt this notion that the Democratic Party defund, defund.

Like, fuck you.

Never said that.

Well,

where did the law come in?

What is the law?

You can steal up to $900 and something dollars worth of goods.

Well, you can steal $2,500 in Texas.

You can steal $2,500 in Texas.

I mean, there's something to this because I agree.

Went to California.

You go to Texas.

You go to Walgreens,

everything's locked up.

Can't even buy a damn thing of deodorant without it.

Yeah, it's a broad.

California is the 10th toughest threshold in America.

There is something to that.

10th toughest.

This is not even in dispute.

It's just a fundamental fact.

You can steal up to $950 in California.

That is true.

Before it's a felony.

You can steal up to $2,500 in Texas.

before it's a felony.

Texas is weaker.

It's the weakest in the country.

Oh, shit.

There are 40 states where you can steal even more than in California.

40.

40 were number 10 toughest.

10th toughest.

It got made.

I mean, I love it.

I just sat there and the press got so goddamn lazy on this.

It wasn't even just right-wing media saying this.

It was even just what thoughtful press saying, well, you know, the 950.

I'm like, really?

It's a little more complicated than that.

But 10th toughest in America.

It's a fact.

Look it up.

I know people are out there going bullshit and doing, and before you send a little thing on YouTube saying he's full of shit, look it up.

10th toughest.

Don't embarrass yourself by posting that.

You tried to fix that, didn't you?

I was the one wanting to fix and reform our retail theft issues and work with the retail association of grocers and did a package of 12 bills.

And I also did a a crime package three years prior, anticipating.

I was like, guys, pay attention to my legislature.

I'm like, guys,

we're not paying attention to what's going on.

Right after COVID, and we started to see, you're right, quality of life stuff, streets, encampments, like, come on.

And what was happening, organized retail theft.

These were organized operations going on third-party platforms, selling all this stuff for half price.

You may have even bought something, going, wow, what a deal.

Not knowing that this was part of these rings.

And

we started to build support for a new approach.

And these grants, these vertical prosecution grants, have been a big part of the success.

CHP ran these task forces with local DA sheriffs.

Mass majority of these sheriffs can't stand me, wanted to recall me.

Like I'm on the seventh recall against me as we speak.

One went to the ballot, you may recall, that Trump and others supported.

Gingrich, who just was on my podcast, supported, still had him on my podcast.

And

because

we were slower to act than we should have, there was a ballot initiative to address the issue that purported to address the issue as a retail theft issue, when in fact it disproportionately is a drug issue, possession of drugs.

And I fear that that will

set us backwards and it does not push us forward.

So I opposed it.

Public overwhelmingly supported it.

I was on the wrong side politically.

But I think on the substance, I was on the right side.

And you're seeing crime even before that's gone into effect, just went into effect in January or late last year, late last year, very late last year.

But the crime rates are dropping across the spectrum in every category except arson last year.

And we're seeing back-to-back years this year, even faster, even predating this initiative.

But they never changed the threshold of $950 because they knew it was the temp toughest.

They used it as a talking point, even though they knew they were full of shit.

Wow.

That's how effective narrative is.

But they're right about organized retail theft.

They're right about these punks coming in and smashing and grabbing.

Every single one of those sons of bitches should be arrested.

I've been saying that consistently.

I'm a merchant, man.

You smashed my window?

No.

No, no, no.

I don't care about your childhood.

I care about my damn deductible and my insurance rates.

How dare you?

You've violated me.

It's not even the money, too.

I mean, you've created a vulnerability, man.

You're hurting the community.

You got to get a rest.

So I'm for accountability, period, full stop.

Yes.

But I just think, and so

we recognize we need to do more in retail theft.

That's why the package of 11-12 bills.

But on drug policy, I have a different point of view.

I just, I don't want to go back to the war on drugs.

I don't want to go back to the 1980s.

And good people can disagree.

I just have strong opinions on that.

Why are, why, I mean, let's move into some good stuff now.

You know, the Silicon Valley and

all the tech giants are there.

It's amazing.

All the innovators are there.

Yeah.

All the talent is there.

I mean,

that's what these guys say that I interview too.

They go there because that's where the talent is.

Why is so much talent drawn to that area?

We've had a formula for success.

It's not by accident.

It's not even a complicated formula.

What is the formula?

Best research and development.

We're 18% of the world's RD, the world's RD.

Wow.

China and Germany are slightly above as nations, 21 and 22%.

California at 18%.

So pushing out the boundaries guys.

That's why we have more patents, more venture capital, more scientists, engineers, and researchers than any other place.

We have conveyor belt for talent, education, UC, CSUs, Caltech, the ecosystem around Stanford, man, come on.

Second to none.

Connected to the R ⁇ D, Lawrence Livermore Labs, Cindy, and others.

There are partnerships.

I mean the whole stuff in the quantum space, partnerships with Google we just announced in Southern California.

I mean this is where the future happens there first, where America's coming to traction every way, shape, form, good and bad, by the way.

Housing prices are an issue now all across the country.

Homelessness is growing everywhere else much faster than even California now.

Number three,

back to this notion of first-round draft choices.

We had an immigration policy where we were able to get the first-round draft choices because people felt included, seen, heard.

It's a majority, minority state.

You go around Silicon Valley, man, you could be in India, you could be in China, you could be in Taiwan, man, you could be anywhere.

You just feel at home.

You look around like, it's amazing.

Just feel included, you feel heard, you feel respected and connected.

And number four,

infrastructure.

I mean, we built out the kind of infrastructure in the 50s and 60s, we dominated the space and this big issue for us.

So we neglected that.

And I put out a $180 billion 10-year plan on infrastructure investments, the most in California history, because we frankly neglected a lot of it.

But it was part of what made California great.

That water system that Trump loves to hate was designed.

It was one of the great feats of the world in the 50s and 60s.

And it allowed water to move, allowed Valley, Silicon Valley, and the Central Valley to see that water flow and the state grow and thrive.

And so in all of these areas, California sort of maintained that, built the middle class.

And I think in so many ways, that formula needs to be reinvigorated.

And I think that formula also is a nerd to the country's benefit because the world in many respects, California invented, is competing against us.

You know, I was talking,

get a little out of school, but one of the things Trump actually, because I may have been,

let me, forgive me, I may have misled you a little bit when Trump called me right before he nationalized or federalized the Guard.

I said he didn't want to talk about LA.

He did, in this case, about the film tax credit.

You want to talk about tariffing films.

I said, it's just a terrible idea.

What the hell?

You could tariff Hollywood.

I said, everything's a damn tariff to you.

I said, I'm doing a film tax credit.

He goes, well, you're losing everyone.

I said, you're 100% right.

World, we invented is competing against us.

That's what I told him.

And that's why I doubled the film tax credit, just signed that bill last week, literally just announced in Hollywood.

We rested on our laurels.

We put up our feet.

And I think he could say that about our country as well, but notably about California in certain areas.

So what I'm trying to do in the last few years of my administration is really reinvigorate.

You got to invest in your lead.

If you want to do well in the future, you got to invest in the future.

And I recognize now, and I think COVID really sobered us up.

We had a year and a half there where people were going to Austin, people were flying out here.

You started that in the interview.

I appreciate that.

And that was a big wake-up call, man.

But how many people are now moving back?

Like, I have all these fancy friends of mine, engineer people like, nah, I'm cool with Miami.

I'm going to keep my house, but we're coming back home.

Glad we didn't sell it.

Same thing with Austin.

That's why Elon, you know, that's that, I mean,

if you're not in AI right now, you ain't even in the game.

And if you ain't in California, you ain't in AI.

And so it's kind of exciting, but same time, that's why higher education, with all due respect, Mr.

President, is not an establishment plot.

It's foundational to the nation's future and our ability to compete.

Yes, it needs to be reformed.

I'm with you on reform, but you don't gut the NIH and NSF

in the process of advancing reform.

I mean, these guys are reckless.

You ask me what I don't like about them.

It's all this stuff.

And Elon understands that.

That's why I was so disappointed by some of the Doge stuff, taking a sledgehammer stuff as opposed to scalpel when he understands he's the biggest beneficiary of that.

By the way, biggest contributor to his success was California.

It was our regulations that created Tesla.

Had we not done the tailpipe emission regulation, he would not have had the certainty of investment.

And it was our tax policy that flooded him with billions and billions of dollars of subsidies.

That guy was losing money, but making money, reselling tax credits.

Wow.

That was what a gift it was for him.

I mean, he's a bloody genius.

I'm with you, man.

And we were going at it on a bunch of stuff, but I admire the hell out of his entrepreneurialism.

But I'm very proud of my state for making the investments in that company.

It's one of the world's most extraordinary success stories.

And I'm proud he's created this whole space.

I'm just, again, worried that we're going to completely get our asses kicked by China.

And we're going to regret it.

And we're going to never get it back.

Same with clean energy, man.

We're raising the prices for average utilities by eliminating all these damn green energy tax cuts.

That's what Elon said.

He was right.

We're doubling down on the past, on subsidizing coal and more oil and gas and eliminating...

investments in the future, which is cheaper, greener, more abundant energy.

Speaking of energy, I mean, you know, I hear about the rolling blackouts in California and stuff.

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on nuclear?

I extended the life of the last remaining nuclear plant in California.

Took a lot of shit.

So that's my position on it.

You're pro-nuclear.

I was the guy who kept the lights on because I extended the life of about nine, almost nine and a half percent of our baseload in California with the last remaining nuclear plant.

And I think it is absolutely critical moving forward if we're going to help decarbonize and change.

It's the only way, the only path I see to get us where we're going to need to go.

Man, you got some great innovators working on it over there.

I just had Isaiah Taylor on.

He's making

the mini nuclear reactors.

We had Scott Nolan on talking about enriched uranium.

Look, the challenge is it's a generational thing.

Three Mile Island sort of generation.

that sees this in that perspective.

And then you got this next generation, this tech generation, that sees AI and data centers and sees energy consumption going through the roof, sees a transition or the duck curve and issues around battery storage, maybe not getting to the scale it needs to be with solar and wind and needing to accelerate that transition.

And they see nuclear as a significant part of getting us to where we all need to go, both economically, national security, and from an environment.

So I see just win-win-win with the new technology, safety protocols, and standards.

So, no, I'm there.

And look, the blackouts in Texas have been significantly worse in California.

And they're getting better because they're investing in the future, batteries.

Our largest power plant in California is installed batteries, second largest jurisdiction in the world, China and California.

It's been a point of pride.

I had 770 megawatts when I became governor.

It's over 15,700 now.

I'm very proud of the work we've done in that space.

And that's allowed us to capture, we're running the fourth largest economy at 100% green energy for the majority of this year.

Think about that.

Fourth largest economy in the world has run at 100% renewable energy for the majority of this calendar year.

Don't tell me we can't do this in the future.

Absolutely.

And by the way, these are cheaper.

Batteries are expensive in the front end.

Once we figure that out, cost curve continues to come down in the storage side.

But solar and wind, man, it's more more competitive.

Well, I mean, I don't, I don't,

I disagree with you and agree with you on some aspects.

I mean, we just had another guy on that was,

what is it?

He's he's building satellites in space that are going to beam solar energy into.

All right.

Well, there's always that.

God bless, man.

I love the innovators.

It's fusion in California, too.

We're leading fusion.

Really?

I mean, California is the only one.

We're the closest in the world.

Wow.

Happened right in our backyard in our state.

You're right.

I mean, look, on the other side of this is unbelievable innovation.

But if we don't continue to push out the boundaries of that innovation, man, if we're just doubling down on coal, I get it.

But when like literally doubling down on coal,

we're going to get our ass kicked by the innovators around the world.

It's just a simple question of just where do you want to.

I mean, are we going to dominate the future or are we going to double down and try to recreate the 17th, 18th damn century?

I'm just with, I I think Elon's sort of, I thought it was great.

I thought it was, I know it was such a farce and all my friends, like, it was a vulgar display of sort of corrupt capitalism, the manifestation of coronary capital.

I would see the fire sale of Teslas there with Elon and Trump.

At the same time, I was sitting there telling my friends, man, this is what we've been at.

You guys should shut up.

We've been saying we needed this the whole time, man.

We needed this to not just be a green movement.

It's about competition.

It's about national security.

And now Trump Trump is advancing that.

It's helping us by promoting the technology and Teslas and going, damn, look at this.

I was like, this is good, man.

Now it's all come crashing down and everyone's pissed at goddamn Elon.

But I,

no, I just think the batteries, batteries of the future, solar, just we're there.

We're already the dominant under the Biden administration.

We were never more energy independent.

It's just the fact we were doing 13.4 million barrels a day.

In 2024, we peaked in terms of our energy independence.

Trump continues in that path.

He's hardly creating that path.

Biden administration, we were leading in renewables and in oil and gas.

I kind of like that approach more than the let's eliminate the green energy transition and just continue to dominate in oil and gas.

I think that's just a major strategic mistake.

I mean, you're concerned about China.

I'm concerned about China.

Does it concern you that the majority of the

solar panels, windmills are all produced in China?

Yeah, well, now it's not even, it's over.

We just, we're killing a damn industry here.

There was a chance with the IRA.

There was a chance with the infrastructure bill that had a component part for green energy.

There was a chance when the biggest beneficiaries were red states and rural parts of those states that were seeing the benefit of these green energy investments.

I gave you an example of...

specific example of $2 billion just in the backyard here

in South Carolina.

And now, I mean, they just locked this stuff down, man, to pay for tax cuts and sell our kids with $3.5 trillion of debt so they can cut health care to rural communities across the country and cut food for kids in schools.

By the way, in vets

that are Medicaid, vets' families, Medicaid, four plus million.

Breaks my heart, man.

I mean, the vandalism was just done to this country.

And they know better.

They just couldn't do better because failure was not an option.

I mean, I know the narrative is, you know, drives pretty much everything.

And I mean, it's just fuck, it's hard to believe.

It's hard to know what to believe.

I mean, even with the, with the, was it last winter when Texas went out, they had the blackouts and all these people were freezing to death down there.

They blamed it on, they blamed it on green energy.

It was the opposite.

What it was, was it was the oil and gas that's created the narrative because the gas froze in the fucking pipes and they blamed, they blamed wind and solar.

I'm going to personally ask for a clip of what you just said.

I can't take it, man, because I said no one believes it.

What you just said is goddamn fact.

California had modest little blackouts for a few minutes.

It was two days.

It was peaked a couple years back.

It was a big wake-up call and I extended the life of some of our older gas plants and peakers.

And that's when I said enough and

enrolled because I don't want to get worked with the legislature, said, guys, we're keeping this nuclear plant up.

Let's wake up.

If we're going to have a transition, we have to have a just transition.

I'm dealing with that with refineries closing in my state.

We've got to own that.

We got to address that.

And we are, as a crisis in the making, if we don't address it, we've got to be sober about the transition.

But Texas, to their credit, the markets have moved their transition, not their regulation.

They're actually addressing it by moving down the path that California was on as it relates to installed batteries.

and more renewables that are more resilient than the old fossil fuel infrastructure that they had.

They've had significantly worse blackouts in Texas.

Again, not a fact you get on Fox News.

You think it's only California.

Back to China.

A lot of people are concerned about all the Chinese that are buying up U.S.

land.

Is that how much is that happening?

It's funny.

I've seen some of that.

I know Sarah and others in Arkansas, we're banning, you know, of course, any opportunity for my friend DeSantis to flex on that stuff.

I just haven't seen that level.

And by the way, you know, we have 150% larger ag footprint than any other state.

So I'm about the largest manufacturing state, I told you.

So in that respect, I look from the manufacturing infrastructure.

I look at the industrial infrastructure.

I look at the land amass.

I see more investments from Saudi Arabia in many respects, which are more interesting than me.

And looking at water issues and water rights there, some other stuff that's happening with foreign ownership.

So I just haven't seen it at that level.

I remember we had a little bit of scare in the 80s.

I remember China, Japan is buying everything up, you know, and buying Rockefeller Center.

I think it was literal or figuratively, I remember that.

And then we went a little through that with China, but we're not, I'm not necessarily seeing that in my state.

And I'm not seeing it at the scale that other governors are stating.

I see it as virtue signaling.

And I do see a lot of conspiracies in this place in my state around all these rumors that always seem to pop up around military bases of Chinese ownership moving in.

And in every instance, it's turned out to be completely bogus.

But man, oh man, it drives the narratives for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And last year, we had a perfect example of that.

That if I was watching some of these networks and I literally started being convinced, I'm like, come on, guys.

Must be true.

Look at everybody saying it.

And we're finding out these shell companies turn out to be some folks from Silicon Valley who are not from China.

No shit.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you look at it case by case, but I'm, you know, I, and one should be concerned about, look at the Confucius.

There's a lot of, look, there's a lot of stuff.

I mean, no one's, I'm not naive.

Again, I come from San Francisco, and we've been at this longer than anyone else in terms of those relationships.

And there's been, you know, Senator Feinstein or a key member of her staff.

No one's not, no one's naive, by the way.

We're doing the same damn thing over there.

It doesn't excuse it.

I mean, we're, you know, I mean, you'll understand that better than anybody,

the world you've been living in.

But

there are no doubt, man,

this is it.

This is the moment.

And again, I don't begrudge other people's success.

I say that also as a Democrat.

I'm not one of those Democrats that want to tear other people down.

And I'm not one of those people who believe everybody should have some automatic outcome bullshit opportunity.

But at the end of the day, it's about, as you said, that young entrepreneur that's hustling, barely speaks English, man.

That's just like you get emotional around that, man.

It is the American dream.

And it's still alive and well if you want to work your ass off.

Same time, a lot of people start behind.

They're not, they don't just let, they're not just left behind.

And I also think we have to recognize that.

And that's why we have to make targeted investments.

We have to do things that do acknowledge that.

So everyone has an opportunity.

But as it relates to other countries, as it relates to other people, I don't begrudge success.

I admire it, man.

Success leaves clues.

And the power of emulation.

So I want to learn from folks.

That's why I sat down with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon.

That's why I'm meeting with people that disagree with me, can't stand me, quite literally hate me.

Like literally hate me.

Say it still, even after I interview them.

Because I want to learn from them.

And

the Steve Bannon interview was fascinating to me.

I thought I was listening to Bernie Sanders.

It was wild, man.

Just was

His ability to connect from populist narrative and understand that,

his deep understanding of the emotional attachment to industrial policy in the heartland,

this connection to class, elitism, his understanding of that, his willingness to break out of the mold and promote higher taxes on the wealthy.

I joke with him.

I said, Steve, you sound like a...

You sound like me with a progressive tax policy in California.

I said,

by the way, California is not a high-tax state.

We have the highest tax rate.

We're not a high-tax state.

What does that mean?

That means 1%,

and I have evidence, is not 99%.

1% pay the highest tax rate.

But 80% of Californians pay about average taxes.

40% of Californians pay lower taxes than they do in Texas and Florida.

Texas and Florida tax their lowest wage earners more than we do our highest wage earners.

So who's the high-tax state?

Is it California or is it Texas?

If your only constituency are rich people, then I understand we're a high-tax state.

My point is Bannon was actually making the case, and as you know, was part of the debate with Trump in this new bill.

And Trump showed an openness which would have killed the Democratic Party.

Best damn thing Trump did for the Democrats is not taking Bannon's advice on tax policy.

He would have gutted us.

We have the right talking point because it's right and it's politically popular that he's given away the largest transfer of wealth in U.S.

history by giving away billions and billions of dollars of tax cuts to the richest as he's cutting programs to the poor.

That would have been taken away if Bannon's tax policies went in effect, where we would have had

more intense cuts to the middle-class taxes and working folks and increased modestly taxes to the rich.

I was fascinated by that to hear that from Bannon on the podcast.

I didn't come on to talk about January 6th.

I think he's full of shit on that.

That's well established.

And Trump's completely full of shit on that from my humble perspective.

But

Charlie Kirk, man.

Guys just crush.

That son of a bitch is in every goddamn campus, progressive parts of the country, hundreds hundreds and hundreds of people coming out takes on anyone on on a debate uh is organizing hustling we're sitting here bitching complaining this guy's just working it and you know and i admire that democrats should learn something about it i can't i don't agree with them on nine out of ten damn issues

and uh

and i just i think it's important I mean, I even had Dr.

Phil on for Christ's sake, you know, and two weeks later, he was out there as they're doing raids in my backyard with the National Guard.

Like, come on, Phil.

Oh, man.

He was embedded as the, you know, the Geraldo of his time or something.

I told you, the Maha stuff, I mean, I just, I learned from these guys.

And I just, you know, it's like you, man, I'm learning from you.

Appreciate you.

Appreciate your service, man.

Thank you.

Next level.

The stuff that you've experienced, it's in your brain, relationships, makes you patriotic, man.

Love this country.

Thank you.

Sacrifice, not just service.

What do you think the Democratic Party is getting wrong?

That we're not talking like that a little bit more?

Goddamn,

you know, got to show our pride and patriotism a little bit more, not be shy about it.

You know, celebrate this goddamn country.

And I think one of the problems of the Democratic Party is we're so good at celebrating, as Bill Clinton would say, our interesting differences.

And we've forgotten about focusing on our common humanity, what binds us together.

And so we celebrate all this, but we don't celebrate what unites us.

United States of America, these enduring principles of our founding fathers, taking the best of Greek democracy and the Roman Republic.

Three independent, co-equal branches of government, the rule of law.

What a gift.

They were imperfect, but man, what a goddamn gift to this country.

We're about to celebrate 250th anniversary.

So this notion of, yeah, the lexicon of Clinton, community and opportunity, but back to responsibility.

And that's your service and sacrifice.

And I think all of us have a responsibility in that respect.

That's why I believe in,

I absolutely am committed to universal national service.

That's back to my Sar Shriver thing.

Peace Corps.

I have the largest, California is the largest service corps in America.

Yeah, I've read that.

It's bigger than the Peace Corps.

Spiritual, man.

Republican, Democrat.

I don't give a shit.

Black, white, first generation.

Just people fucking common cause.

What is it?

Is it the college?

Did you call it the California Corps?

Yeah, it's California volunteers, and it's just different cores.

It's college corps.

We do, this was the biggest, not biggest, but I thought it was a big mistake of the Biden administration when we did those student loans and we asked for nothing in return to give them back.

I was like, what?

In California, we ask, we'll do $10,000 grant to college, but I want 450 hours of service in your community.

You decide, man.

That's a good goal.

And

I thought we should attach that.

I just, again, responsibility, not just opportunity.

So I think Democrats can do better than that.

I actually fucking love to hear that.

I like that a lot.

You got to earn it.

Yeah.

God damn it.

I've never enjoyed anything I've been given, but hell, I've enjoyed every goddamn thing I've earned.

Seriously, it means something different to me.

Treat it like that.

Treat it like I earned it.

You give away.

I remember, I know there's a mayoral candidate wants to do free public transit.

You'll treat it like it's free, man.

I had an opportunity to do that.

I was mayor.

We did an analysis, said

we could justify doing free public transit.

I said, no, no.

Got to have some skin in the game, man.

Good for you.

Good for you.

No.

So I think Democrats need to find that a little bit more.

I think we just need to emphasize certain things more, de-emphasize other things more, man.

Don't dial it up on some of these issues that are so, you know, that have created these culture wars.

Just dial this down.

You don't have to back away.

Good people can disagree.

They can vehemently.

I was in no bullshit last night at an event in Nashville.

Members of the trans community came up to me, pissed about, obviously, the thing.

But I said, still, you know, I still have your back.

It's what we're, it's like, and the point being,

well, I don't know, there's broader points I'm trying to make, except to say we need to scale back some of the things we emphasize and start to invest more energy in things that we support, but people don't believe it because we're not expressing it.

We're not showing it as much as we should.

I mean, I think you could say the same about the Republican Party.

The thing is, I mean,

how would that even come to fruition?

Because, you know,

when the mainstream media creates the narrative on both sides,

because it's the same issues over and over and over again.

And if you don't talk about those issues or if you talk about something else that is important, then the

population finds that boring because it's not at the forefront of the media cycle.

Man, I'll give you a per example.

Right after Trump won, it wasn't intentional.

It happened to be wildly coincidental, but it was also very opportunistic.

I had just finished a three-year process to do a career master plan for California.

California has an infamous higher education master plan that created the three systems, the finest university system in the country, which is our community college, our CSUs, and the fabled 10-campus UCs.

And I decided to do one for career education.

And it was about taking the skills that you learn in the military.

And if you wanted to extend that academically, you wouldn't have to take all the basic courses in a community college or a CSU.

That your skills mean something and they are automatically then credits towards your degree.

So you don't have to waste time with those basic courses because you already had that skill.

So using your resume to connect with opportunities for lifelong learning, we did with apprenticeships, et cetera, as well.

And we require, we took hundreds and hundreds of positions in state government.

So you don't have to have a damn four-year degree for this bullshit.

You don't even have a two-year degree.

You just have to have the skill set.

So we did a civil service reform.

And I rolled that out in nine counties, all red counties and Trump counties, right after Trump won.

And

literally, press after a couple of days was like, oh, they're just rolling their damn eyes.

And I kept seeing all this, the same press saying, we need to focus on why we lost this election.

We need to connect to rural parts of our country.

Democrats need to spend time in rural parts.

We need to focus on people that are not getting four-year degrees.

And all it was about was transports.

Because Trump said something that flared up and everybody rushed over there and oh, Newsome,

went in doubt that Newsome.

And here I am just grinding county after county after county, rolling out details of a plan.

We had 10,000 people worked on it.

No bullshit, actually 10,000.

But hundreds of millions of dollars.

So it wasn't just a plan sits on the desk.

It was grants going out.

It was a community-led process.

And again, people are born damn interested in these cultural issues

and just blow up and it consumes us.

And then people start thinking that's all we're talking about because I'm responding to something I disagree with.

I wasn't even having a press conference on it.

I'm just saying I call bullshit on that.

I think that's wrong to talk or demean someone like that or good people on whatever topic.

So that's

this, we're getting our ass kicked on there.

DeSantis was very effective.

That's why I ended up doing that debate with him, God help us,

with Hannity.

It's a two against one debate.

Which is fine.

So I went on with Sean and did an hour and a half interview with him, started going on Fox, went on News Max.

Trying to meet people where they are, man.

Hanging with you.

I don't know.

I'm just trying, iteration, it's entrepreneur in me.

I got no,

I had no particular insight on all this shit.

Well, this isn't a debate.

This is just a discussion.

Yeah.

So I'd like to see more of this, which hopefully this interview helps.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, I think people, there's sort of blood sport, take everybody down, own the lib.

Same thing.

I mean, look, Trump and I, I ain't timid, brother.

I'm flooding the zone.

I'm heading back on Trump.

I mean, I'm not scoring.

I mean, I'm like all in on that.

Same time, if he called, pick up the call phone.

I bet if I called him literally right now, he'd pick it up.

No bullshit.

I think that's healthy at the end of the day.

I do too.

I got a personal question for you.

Jesus Christ.

Boxers.

I got to ask.

I've always wondered this.

What's that, man?

How did your ex-wife wind up with Trump Jr.?

How do you go from Gavin Newsom

to Trump Jr.?

First lady of San Francisco.

Crazy, right?

She was over.

Yeah, it's fucking crazy.

No,

she always had a prosecutorial mindset and a great immigrant dad from Ireland.

was sort of a rock star back to sort of bootstraps, great guy, huge supporter of mine, until the day he passed away.

And just always had my back, even after the divorce.

And

so, and she lost her mom early, and he kind of shaped her and shaped her up.

I mean, had to toughen her up, man, you're on your own.

We're on her own.

And she always sort of had that sort of mindset.

And again, as a prosecutor, a prosecutorial mindset.

So she leaned in that direction.

Definitely more progressive, moderate values.

And I don't mean this as a pejorative.

I don't mean this as a cheap shot.

I hope it's not considered.

But when Roger Ailes hired her to go on Fox, just changed.

I think in some ways, if you go on Fox, you have to put a mask on and your face grows into it.

Otherwise, you're not going to last on Fox.

And that was sort of my sense.

But her face grew into it, meaning she became, in many respects, really started.

You know, she was a real believer in Trump when she was on the five.

I remember talking to Trump in the Oval.

He brought her up because she's been appointed as ambassador or has been appointed.

It's about to be confirmed.

And he brought her up out of nowhere.

We're sitting there.

And he said, she was my biggest supporter back then.

I mean, he was very loyal in that respect, which I appreciated.

And she has certainly, in return, been loyal to him.

And that sort of developed trust with the family and long-windedly, I guess, the relationship with Junior.

But man, you know,

that's,

well, I wish she drank because we'd have a few beers and talk more because I ain't going to get in trouble talking about any more of this goddamn stuff.

This is the uncomfortable version of Newsom as he squiggles around you.

Well, we're wrapping up the interview, and so I just have one question left for you.

As a father of four,

what advice do you have for fathers?

We got to step up, man.

I mean, women, just, yeah, there's a, my wife did a documentary called A Fair Game, basically just talks about roles of gender, not from a cheap shot, not trying to tear down men, not all that bullshit,

but just the responsibilities that are placed on women in the household in particular.

And

there's actually a card game they have.

And it says, who does the dishes?

Who walks the dog?

Who's doing the birthday presents?

Who's scheduling uh the kids for play dates uh who's and and you do the cards and you finish and the stack is here with my wife and i had like three or four cards man and i swear to god the game starts with you estimating quietly what percentage of the household working in i'm like okay i know it's not 50 but man it's like 45.

at the end it's down to like three

percent 97 to three

So for all the three percenters out there as dads, we got to step our shit up.

I'm serious, man.

We all bitch and complain about the stuff we have to deal with.

Imagine being a hardworking goddamn mom dealing with our shit.

We come home acting like we're all like emotionally stressed and we need to be listened to and hugged and heard.

So I got a rock star wife, man.

I'm so blessed.

And four of the most, you know, I know everyone says this about their kids, but man, still my little duchy, nine years old.

When I was on this, man, the coolest thing, I swear to God,

if there's a photo, I asked you when I came in here, man, what would you take?

There was a fire.

I'd probably take this, and I hope they put it in, when I pass, they put that photo.

When I got sworn in as governor,

and I'm in the middle of my damn speech, and my little boy,

he's three years old or something, and he's got a little passing in his thing.

He's on my wife's lap, and he just jumps off her as I'm speaking, runs to the podium as I'm giving my inaugural speech and he's literally people are laughing he's standing there I am reading the teleprom I'm terrified right I can't read the teleprompter so I'm like I have to concentrate I can't even look at him because then I'm just gonna be this is a disaster and then I'm like looking and he's hugging me he's grabbing me and I couldn't help I just picked him up and I put him in my arms man pacifier and he puts his head down and tries to fall asleep.

Oh man.

And I finished the fucking speech, man.

I didn't finish the entire thing, but I kept speaking.

No one remembers a goddamn word I said.

I don't remember what I said, but everyone felt something.

And it was just love, man.

Kids.

Fuck.

Life.

And I swear to God, you know, I'm the future goddamn ex-governor, and there'll be someone else to beat the shit out of.

You know, tear someone else down and bitch and complain.

But that's all that matters, man.

It's all that matters.

That's beautiful.

I love that.

I love that.

If you had three guests that you want to see on the show,

who would they be?

My show?

On my show.

Motherfucker.

Not my show.

Well, you got to come on my show now.

I will.

I'll come on your show.

I will fly my ass to California.

That's right.

You got to do it in person, you son of a bitch.

I don't do Zooms.

Good.

I'm with you.

I've only done one with DeSantis and it didn't go great.

Never doing it again.

Yeah, I'm glad we're not talking about Ron, but I wish him luck, though.

He's a father.

Three guests for you.

I wonder just, you know,

I swear, I would be a hell of a thing to see a guy like you with Joe Biden.

I know that's insane.

I would love to do it.

Dead serious, man.

I would love to do it.

He's a, I'm just telling you, and I'll take this to my grave as well.

I know I get a lot of shit and I know it's politically correct as Democrats kind of turn their back on him.

He's a good and decent man.

I know we can...

criticize him for this or that or other things, but I think you'd find that just as an interpersonal, just in a way that would surprise you.

And I think honestly, no bullshit surprises your guests, even if you disagree on 100 fucking issues.

As a father, I've had some really amazing conversations with him, talking about his kids.

And, you know, that's that.

Anyway, I think that'd be a hell of a guest.

Oh.

Jesus Christ, man, you've had everybody else.

I couldn't even go to Trump now because you already had him on.

Who else should you get on?

Maybe you can connect me with G.

Well, that would be a hell of an, now you're talking uh i mean he'll be coming out soon right mar-lago for a second visit i don't know is he well i mean they're going to get together sometime this year or if not late this year early next year maybe trump flies out there um but he'll eventually get back out here that would be a hell of an interview give him john hund is the the go that's your guess brother

All right.

I mean, he's got a new resort out there in North Korea.

He really want to visit it.

Right on.

Well, Gavin, good to see you.

Like I said, I really appreciate you coming.

And just being totally honest, a lot of my opinions about you have changed.

And

thank you for coming.

I'm grateful to you, man.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

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