Gavin Newsom Joins the Find Out Pod

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

We have a very big show for you.

We've got

a very important guest with us today.

He is a former entrepreneur, former mayor of San Francisco, former lieutenant governor, and is now the 40th governor of California.

Governor Gavin Newsom is here with us today.

Governor, it's really great to have you.

I like this.

I like starting with entrepreneur.

I haven't heard that in a while.

I'm telling you, man, like if you're going to describe me, seriously, that's like for me personal, and it's absolutely kind of explains more things in more ways on more days, that entrepreneurial mindset.

And so I'm not, the only change I'd make is not former.

I still maintain this entrepreneurial energy.

Current entrepreneur, Governor Gavin Newsaw.

Well, thank you for joining us.

I'm still Cuban.

I'm, you know,

shark tank.

Clip that.

You're going to have to sit in the chair, right?

I like Cuban.

I got a lot of shit for it, but I like Cuban.

Yeah, he's a good dude.

Well, we want to start off because obviously you have kicked off a very big campaign in California, this Yes on 50 initiative, which is in response to Texas's illegal gerrymander, gerrymander where they took five seats, Democratic seats, and you have put on the ballot, instead of just doing this behind closed doors, you are putting to the to the voters this November

a gerrymander bill of your own to take those five seats back.

And just recently, we've also heard North Carolina is trying to move and do this as well.

So governor, tell us about Yes on 50, where we stand and how things look right now.

Well, just a quick reminder, and I appreciate the frame.

I'm glad we're having an opportunity to talk about it because we're just three weeks away from the election day ending, meaning we have all mail-in ballots.

Those ballots dropped a week ago.

Our election is all, it was throughout the month of October and it ends in the special election on November 4th.

But look, it's a special and precious moment in American history.

We have a president that did something unprecedented.

There's never been a president of the United States that's made a phone call to a sitting governor saying, quote unquote, he's entitled, entitled to five new seats.

President Trump made that phone call to Greg Abbott, and he did so for obvious reasons.

He knows he's losing.

In every critical category, Donald Trump is underwater.

And he knows that all things being equal, he will no longer have a supine Congress.

He will no longer have the lapdog that is Speaker Johnson.

He will lose the House of Representatives.

And de facto, the presidency as we know it ends.

There'll be fire and fury, sure, signifying a lot less substance than it does today if we finally have real oversight, a co-equal branch of government.

And so that's exactly why he endeavored to change the maps, and he was successful.

But what he didn't expect, and I humbly believe this, he didn't expect the state of California to do something along the lines that we have at least asserted to do.

on November 4th.

He thought we'd write an op-ed.

He thought we'd hold hands.

True, we were candlelight vigil talking about our democracy and its sunset days for 49 years.

And instead, we hit him back.

Fire with fire.

Not one hand tied behind our back.

And we put the initiative on the ballot in a very honest, and I appreciate the frame of your question, and transparent way.

We didn't draw the maps in Mar-a-Lago.

We didn't draw the maps without any consideration of the Voting Rights Act.

We didn't draw the maps in darkness.

We did it in daylight, in a transparent way.

And we're putting in in front of the voters not only transparent maps, but a temporary solution to this crisis of Donald Trump's making, his willingness to rig the 2026 election.

And so we're responding to that in the most democratic way, the first time ever, in closing, that the people themselves will decide for themselves the maps.

for redistricting.

And that's why we are so grateful for the support that we have received from over a million individual contributors with Proposition 50.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really incredible to see all the excitement because it's interesting because generally Democrats are against gerrymandering because it tends to be undemocratic as the as Republicans are showing us.

But this is in this particular case, and this is why we're glad we're talking about this because people need to hear this.

This is about protecting democracy, not trying to steal seats.

And I think that's why it was a really smart move to put this to the people.

And I think we're seeing the reaction from people that is like, no, we understand why we have to do this in this particular case.

And I think it's, it's treating voters like they actually understand what they're hearing, which is exactly right.

So

it's been really, really heartening to see so many people getting excited about this.

No, I appreciate it, including today.

We just launched an ad with President Obama.

You know, and he's, you know, he's...

He's still, it's amazing.

We just ran and not surprisingly, a bunch of numbers.

I mean, how popular he still remains,

not just in our state, but across the country, but particularly for this

demographic, and that's independence, declined to states.

And that, at the end of the day, that's going to be the playing field.

I think people understand what's at stake, Republicans, because they put a stake in the ground and they want to put a stake in the heart of our democracy and the enduring

principles of our founding fathers, the best of the Roman Republic, the Greek democracy, co-equal branches of government, as I said, but popular sovereignty, the rule of law.

And increasingly, anyone that's got their eyes open, their ears, and they're listening can see for themselves what's going on.

It's not the rule of law.

It's increasingly the rule of dawn.

And so we are

asserting ourselves in a very formal way, but we're doing it with some moral authority as well, because to your point,

we recognize what's at stake.

If they're successful in Texas, they've already redistricted five.

They're successful in Indiana, where the vice president had his second visit.

If they're successful in North Carolina, which they appear they will be, they already were in redistricting in Missouri, likely next will be Florida.

And we'll see what happens in Ohio and Utah.

And California votes no.

And we lose this opportunity to push back and neutralize what happens in Texas.

We may not have a country as we know it today.

And I know that sounds ridiculous and almost almost bloviating, but I really believe that in my core.

I mean, I think the stakes are really different at this point.

Like, I feel like we've spent so much time saying stuff like that and people go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we're reaching that point where it's like, no, this is actually becoming a thing because I'm one of those sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, people.

Like the boy who cried wolf.

Right, exactly.

But at this point, it's sort of like when they're putting functional changes into action like that, if we can't respond, we're screwed.

I mean, that's the end of it.

So I'm so glad that you're leading the charge on that because we need people to fight.

And that's you're leading the charge on the fight for sure.

Yeah, it's not an existential threat, right?

It's it's happening.

It's actually happening.

We spoke existential threat for 10 years.

It's not existential and it's not a threat.

It's just reality and we have to fight back.

And let me just sort of, if I may, just color in a little bit more that reality.

Just very briefly, I just remind everybody that we had a kickoff of this campaign with two U.S.

senators, a dozen members of Congress, 100 community leaders at the sacred site of the Japanese Museum, which is at the Democracy Center in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles.

That's the same site, by the way, we were bussing and interning the Japanese.

It's a site that defines the essence of this moment.

And so we thought we'd kick off the Yes on 50 campaign there, only to have border patrols show up, mass men surrounding the event.

This poor, poor, poor soul, he was just released, by the way.

This poor soul was arrested who was selling strawberries nearby, hardly a hardened criminal.

He was quote-unquote collateral damage.

These guys will go to the ends of the earth to win.

They're not screwing around.

Wake up.

We said it when they started the process of federalizing our National Guard.

4,000, not 300, not 400, 4,000.

And then he took 700 active duty Marines.

He didn't send them to the Middle East.

He sent them to East L.A.

He sent them downtown in the second largest city in America.

Active duty Marines, almost 5,000 military to an American city.

We still have hundreds of Federalized National Guard in L.A.

today.

You're paying for it.

They're doing nothing.

They're sitting around in the armory.

They tried to send them up to Portland and a federal judge said no.

And they sent 14 of them to train.

And they currently are training in Chicago, in Illinois,

despite some lower court rulings.

This is a remarkable moment.

And we said that was a preview of things to come, the federalization.

You saw it not just in Chicago, Portland.

We obviously seen it in DC.

And I assure you, masked men, ICE and Border Patrol, watch that space around polling booths and voting places around not just this November election, but next November elections.

This is serious and sober moment.

So, Governor, I just want to follow up on that because you guys,

when Trump sent the National Guard in, you were essentially everywhere.

And you were standing in front and saying, this is not how we would do things in California.

This is illegal.

Now we're starting to see

them trying this in other places.

What would you tell citizens of Chicago, of Portland, potentially New York City where I live, next year?

They've been talking about it, especially if Mamdoni wins, which he likely will.

What should Americans be doing if they see this happening happening on their streets?

Well, they've lost their country.

Founding fathers talked about that.

I mean, by the way, someone sent me the 27 articles in the Declaration of Independence.

One should read them again.

You should read them.

I mean, but do it in the morning because I want you to get to bed that night.

You'll need a little time to recover.

Read them.

Read the

grievances, the list.

Taxation without representation.

What the hell is this tariff regime?

The Bolsonaro tariff, your coffee increase 20.9%

here to date.

that 50% tariff in Brazil for what?

I mean, the founding fathers saw this coming.

And they, I mean, that's the whole framework of the Posse Comitadas Act.

I mean, you know, people are rolling their eyes.

What the hell does that mean?

They were having a hard enough time at the gerrymander.

It sounds like a salamander.

I mean, this is complicated.

But this idea of using the military for domestic police enforcement, it's happening.

That's not what the founding fathers lived and died for.

It's literally not what they lived lived and died for.

And so this, this is why we're, you know, I just want folks to wake up to the fact that we're in, we're that frog in the boiling water right now.

Wake up.

And every day, it just, we're getting more and more socialized, more and more normalized.

We're more and more distracted, more and more exhausted.

It's just this erosion of consequence.

So every day,

and it adds up to something profound and significant.

And so we're just, we're doing our part, but people across the country are doing their part as well.

And I'll just, on that point, just want to say thank you to folks out there that haven't given into that cynicism, that haven't given up to that negativity, that are showing up and turning out in this week's No Kings Rally.

It's profoundly consequential that they do so again.

Yeah,

that's the theme I'm hearing in my comments.

And I think in all of our comments, I mean, the people on the left, especially the people who maybe are consuming a lot of news and spending a lot or too much time online, they have become almost paralyzed with fear.

And so, you know, helping them navigate, like, what is the Insurrection Act?

What does it actually do?

What could actually happen next?

What can't happen next legally?

Like, he's finding all of these ways to manipulate the gaps between laws and use emergency powers.

He's still

trying to do it like legally, but only where there's enough gray area to navigate and get the courts to kind of go along with him.

And so, you know, trying to help people find hope or at least hang on to a shred of hope has been a really,

it's been difficult, but it's been a top priority because if people start giving up, then that's when we fail.

And that's where I think your pushback, your fight, you fought on every front fearlessly.

And so,

how do you find that?

Like, where does that, where's that fight coming from for you?

Oh, man.

I just, I, I do.

It's funny.

I,

I, I,

This crying wolf,

it's the fact that you guys said it in this set of sensitivity.

I was one of those folks.

I feel like, you know, I was out the look.

I was making this case on the Harris campaign.

I was making this case on the Biden campaign.

I think it was one of the last men standing for Joe Biden.

And, you know,

I really was.

And, you know, and I was worried about, you know, I saw this president of the United States.

try to light democracy on fire January 6th.

He tried to break this country.

He dialed in for for those votes just like he dialed up Greg Abbott for those seats.

And I'm like,

is this just me?

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

And I also saw his comeback and I was deeply concerned about it.

That's why I was out there for Biden.

I said, look, unless this guy taps out, he's our guy.

So I'm not here to hand-ring about this.

This is existential.

It's darkness and daylight.

You know, it's America in reverse.

This guy wants to bring us back to a pre-1960s world.

And at the time, it was around voting rights and civil rights but now you're seeing it at scale with lgbtq rights and women's rights etc and he's doing it i'm thinking now it's not 1960s it's 1860s in some respects

i mean you just brought up the courts the shadow docket

it's a chaos presidency but it's also emergency presidency yeah he's extending he's at the extreme edge of those emergency powers and he buys time with that.

And we don't have time for timidity to your question.

And I guess that's what I'm calling out.

There's a preciousness of the moment.

Because if we miss this moment, we will never get it back.

He's trying to wreck this country.

There may not be another free and fair election.

It will be a Putin election where the question is it 87% of the vote?

Or is it 87.3% of the vote?

And so the Insurrection Act, he throws that out.

He's not screwing around.

There's no posse comitatus.

That doesn't apply then under the Insurrection Act.

He buys time with the Supreme Court.

I talked about a supine Congress.

How about the supine Supreme Court?

And the Shadow Docket has allowed him to racially profile American citizens.

Not just people here without documentation.

You, me, anyone that speaks a different language, that congregates at the wrong place, not just on the basis of their skin color.

That's what was sanctioned by the United States Supreme Court in the shadow docket.

Forgive the long-windedness, except to say,

I don't know that we have much time

if we don't reconcile what is happening in real time.

And that's why the stake in the ground with Prop 50, and that's why a little more assertiveness from me.

So I can look my damn kids in the eye and say,

you know, I didn't, you know, I'm not in peril of not living at this moment.

Right.

Well, let me, I'm going to push on that a little bit because, I mean, I think we all feel the same way, that like, this is a moment to stand up and fight.

And you were really the first one that started doing that.

And I think after the election, people were sort of like, we don't have leader.

Like, who is the leader?

Who are our leaders right now?

And there was a bit of an absence in a vacuum.

And you've stood up and you've, you know,

I'm sure you don't want to talk about popularity numbers, but like your number, you have done very well.

And, you know, your audience, you know, your digital strategy with your, the social strategist is brilliant.

I love it.

But, but, like, but like,

why aren't more Democrats doing this?

Like, I guess that's one question I don't understand.

Like, you've kind of put a stake.

And some are starting to come along and we're seeing some progress.

But this feels like this should have been

the positioning from the beginning.

That this was an existential threat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look,

society becomes how we behave.

We are our behaviors.

And, you know, I'll be candid with you.

I'm sitting there, I was pointing fingers.

Where the hell is my party?

I was saying a few years ago after Dobbs.

And then I realized hey brother wake up man what what what you sitting there preaching how about practice you son of a

you're the governor of california stop complaining get your together honestly i literally had to come to jesus with myself it was like damn i'm having my own intervention here and

and and that's when i started literally i you know i i started you know i i took sean hannity's call man i i said all right sean fine stop calling me i'll sit down with you

but it's got to be unedited and let's do an hour, hour and a half.

How much time do you need, man?

Let's go.

End up, you know, doing a debate with DeSantis.

Started to go out on the road only to red states and Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas.

I'm like, where the hell is my party?

You're right.

We haven't been showing up in places like this, helping the Democratic Party pay off debt, 10 grand.

And they're like, thank you.

I'm like, Jesus, this bar is low.

We got to get our shit together.

And then I'll be honest, after the chaos in LA and the fires, the National Guard, I'm like, you know what?

Our social media needs to dial up.

We need to put, you know, we got to put a mirror to the face, you know, this guy who's putting himself in, you know, as the Pope.

And he's up there putting his picture on Mount Rushmore.

I'm like, and people are like, this is not normal.

It's a true.

My seventh grader doesn't, he would not be allowed to do this.

This can't be happening.

Wait.

I'm iterating, man.

I'm just trying to iterate.

I'm trying.

I just, and I'm not, I'm not trying to be the guy on the white horse.

I'm not trying to be the pipe.

I'm not, I'm not, I have grace and humility, man.

I've been on all sides of all this shit for years and years and years, getting my ass kicked, you know, members of my own party, the whole thing.

All right.

I'm not, but I'm just, you know, just trying to be accountable and trying to see what works.

And, you know, and to the extent success leaves clues in some areas, you know, try to rep it, make it better.

Go to the next level.

Deal with your own unique expression.

If it doesn't work, say, wow, fuck Newsome.

You know, that was, go ahead, eat it.

It's stupid.

Here's my way.

Great.

Do it.

Yeah.

So you're telling me the

it's that's normal here.

Uh, you're telling me the the image I saw of you and like a camo tank top where you're jacked riding an eagle with like a tank.

Well, that was

the real thing.

Okay, you know, that one was good.

Okay, well, I mean, are we going there?

Yeah, no,

I'm just creating it.

We'll close with that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that'll be our lead.

Yeah, but well, it's interesting you say that, like, and I think a lot of people need to understand that, like, there isn't a white horse coming, and that's partially why we started this too, because it was like we saw that like we're getting killed with men and we're like well wait a minute there's plenty of rent room for men on this side in fact we have all been liberal progressive i mean zach is a convert over the last few years but but you know stay on his record

we forgave him for the other stuff it's been a while i didn't just survive

i've been here for a while but anyways but like i i think it's what's been really interesting is seeing people jump like like the different groups have been popping up and different new people are stepping forward and that's been really exciting as well.

But I think, you know, on top of that, just to pivot a little bit, you know, we talk about raising the alarms, you know, and the crisis that we're in, but we also have to lead by example, right?

And I think one of the biggest questions or one of the biggest topics in the United States right now is prices.

and affordability.

And Donald Trump said he was going to lower prices.

He's not done one single thing.

In fact, tariffs are just taxes on the American public and making everything more expensive.

But another one that he hasn't even come close to talking about is housing and the scarcity of housing in the United States across the country.

And I want to talk about this bill that you just signed into law, and I want you to sort of walk us through a little bit of it because I think it's one it's very important to call out all the bullshit and the nonsense that Donald Trump's saying, but it's also very important to show the successes.

So, I'd love to hear a little bit about this bill that you signed because it sounds like it's it's it's something that all states should be looking at in order to speed up the process and get more housing to help make it more affordable.

Well, I love that.

And let me just acknowledge, you know, the self, let's set the table you just said.

And I'll just, you know, I'll put a tablecloth on the table you just said.

And that is, this is a guy who said he was going to make us wealthier and healthier.

And now we're poor and sicker.

Period, full stop.

And you see that reflected in all the data, including the data that...

didn't come out

last Friday because of the government shutdown, which we can get to in a moment.

But the issue that defines more issues in more ways is the issue of housing.

And it's the issue that defines so much of the stress and struggles of Californians.

And I'm among them.

I'm not just the governor.

I'm a guy who grew up here, fifth generation Californian.

I think about my kids.

And I think about those 30-year-old kids out there, many watching us right now, listening to us, that are the first generation in U.S.

history that are not doing better than their parents.

This is code red.

This is a crisis.

There's a crisis of affordability.

And I think if I look back at, you know, I was talking about Last Man Standing and being out there for Biden and others, the mistake we made, the mistake I made when I was going out there is,

you know, what Bill Clinton said better than anyone, you know, I feel you're paying.

And we didn't start with that.

We started, you know, with world-beating GDP growth and, you know, lowest unemployment for blacks and women's, lowest unemployment in 60 years,

16.6 million jobs at the time.

Now it's down to 15.4, but it's still seven times more than the last three Republican administrations combined.

All that.

And people are like, that's in the aggregate, man.

My kids can't afford rent, let alone housing.

I got three roommates.

And what the hell is the party doing about that?

And so Kamala tried to address some of that in terms of her messaging.

But, you know, with 107 days and not enough time to really, you know, distill the essence of what that vision was outside of a policy here or two, it is the issue that we need to address.

And so back to this notion, society becomes how we behave.

All this has happened on my watch, your watch, our watch.

And I've I've watched over the years great bills to streamline and address the time value of money on housing, make it more affordable, make it more predictable, address the issue of zoning laws and NIMBYism, not in my backyard, which is the original sin here, the imbalance of supply-demand.

It's Econ 101, after all.

I've seen all those efforts

thwarted from the last governor.

to the first four years I was in office.

A lot of good things happened, but not a lot of great things were happening in this space.

And my mind started to shift a couple years ago where we said, you know, first of all, I had a sell-by date, you know, not just my recall, which was sobering, but also as it relates to my second term, I'm like, I got to get my shit together

and I got to use more tools in my toolbox.

And so this year it started with the budget.

And I did something unprecedented in California.

No one's ever attached housing policy to the budget.

And it was high risk, high stakes.

And I put a stake in the ground and we went for it.

And we, you know, it was sort of a holy grail of seeker reform, the world we invented now competing against us, where there's so much abuse, you know, sort of this, you know, sort of,

you know, you know, abundance mindset that that we asserted, but we weren't necessarily advancing as it relates to lawfare and process.

And we weren't producing.

And so we were able to get two significant and profoundly consequential bills done because of the relationship of those bills to the vote for the entire budget.

And then we picked up with that momentum to the bill.

And I'll close, forgive the long-windedness,

but it deserves, I think, a little bit more

nuance.

We followed up with outstanding leadership in our state senate, Scott Wiener and others, Buffy Wicks, sorry, our leaders in housing, with this notion of density, density around transit corridors, upzoning, zoning,

where we can connect the jobs housing linkage.

We can address costs, we can address permitting, we can address inspections.

And it was sort of the next phase of this multi-phase process.

And I'll tell you, we just passed the most significant and consequential housing laws in our state in decades.

I think by objective measures, that's the case, that I really do think are models for other parts of the country to address this affordability crisis.

But the problem is, that's just changing the rules and the laws.

Now we have to see the fruits of these efforts in terms of actual housing starts and production.

Governor, I think that's such a good topic.

And

I've looked at all the data around California because it's such a microcosm of the country.

And so,

but I think it's something that people don't understand outside of California.

I've been there a whole bunch of times now over the past five or 10 years, and I've just really come to appreciate the state.

You have prosperity and wealth at scale, but that also brings challenges and problems at scale.

That's something that the rest of the country doesn't know how to even talk about or think about.

Something I've noticed that you do, though, is instead of apologizing for coming from California or apologizing for what you guys are doing over there, you have...

you have tried to flip it.

How do you finish that conversation so that we can show the country that California is actually a case study in progressive policies and how they can solve big problems and not something that we need to fix or clean up or apologize for.

Well, I don't like the question.

I love it.

Oh, don't butter him up, Governor.

Please.

We're never going to hear the end of it.

No, man.

You know, I said this when I was taking a shot back, not

the opening shot, but responding to Joe Rogan and these guys.

They got California derangement syndrome.

That's crazy.

They do.

They're just obsessed

with focusing on what's wrong and not what's right.

Look, I represent a state larger than 20, the populations of 21 state populations combined.

It's a majority-minority state.

We practice pluralism.

We're a universal state.

27% of the state is foreign-born.

Why do I say that?

It's because of that.

that we're the fourth largest economy in the world.

$4.1 trillion of economic outputs.

Eat your heart out, Florida and Texas.

And by the way, we're number one in manufacturing.

Everyone says, well, you need to, really?

We're 41% larger manufacturing footprint than Texas.

We're a donor state, $83.1 billion versus a taker state of Texas at $71.1 billion.

You look across the sector.

There's not a major part of the U.S.

economy where California isn't the dominant.

Not one.

You simply can't find one.

I mean, one-third of the vegetables in this country, you talk about farmers and ranchers.

you talk about the heartland, that's California.

Talk about rural America.

That's California you're talking about.

Deep respect for the folks out there.

Three-quarters of the fruits and nuts, United States, my state, home state, California.

It's our state of mind, our quality of imagination.

Dreamers, doers, entrepreneurs, innovators.

Future happening here first.

America's coming attraction.

More scientists, researchers, more Nobel laureates.

Did you see the new list that just came out?

Dominating on all the new Nobel laureates.

America 5, Trump 0

on that Trump on this week.

UC, CSUs, Caltech, Stanford, 18% of the global R D, global R D is in California.

Only two jurisdictions in the world, Germany and China, 20 and 21%.

California is 18%.

I'm sorry.

There's this thing called AI.

AI?

Where is artificial?

It's California, guys, 32 of the top 50 market cap companies.

We are flooding the zone, dominating in that space, including Elon Musk's AI company, include Elon Musk's Neuralink company, including his green company, where his billions were conceived, California, because of our regulatory policies.

But I'll end on this.

It's not just about growth.

It's about a state that recognizes that's to do more and better on inclusion.

And that's why, you know, I took a lot of shit, but I'm really proud.

First state to provide $20 minimum wage for fast food workers.

You know, I was very proud, first state in America to do $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers.

You know, I'm proud of that.

The largest EITC, 200,000 new subsidized child care slots, a brand new grade, so no one has to pay for preschool for four-year-olds.

Fully implemented.

Fully implemented after school and summer school, nine hours of enrichment.

Community schools model.

It's leading the nation.

You saw every student, every cohort, every category, two years back to back, student achievement growth, one of the highest in the country.

We're really proud of that.

We just announced that again last week because of some of these reforms.

I'm proud of our progressive policies on the environment.

We're the only game left in town.

But man, we are the tentpole of the U.S.

economy.

And so when they're attacking California, they're attacking this, what makes, I think, the...

this country so special and so unique.

I couldn't agree more.

And my wife's family is from California.

So

we are very aware of the power there.

And I'm just glad

and all of the success and what a wonderful place it is to live.

And obviously you have challenges as well as being a big state.

But overall, it's like if you look at all, if you compare California to, say, Florida,

I would pick California 10 times out of 10.

No question in my mind.

I think I actually live in the ninth circle of hell.

That certainly seems to be the way that the Republicans portray it.

Yes.

You know, it's amazing.

You look at deaths of despair.

You look at life expectancy.

You look at wage and productivity.

You look at the gun death rate.

You look at the murder rates.

All red states compared to blue states.

You look at taker states versus donor states.

Overwhelming majority are blue states.

The economic output in this country are blue metros dominantly.

I mean, it's just, it's inconceivable that we allowed the Democratic Party, as Democrats, we've allowed the Republican Party to shapeshift this.

What the hell is wrong with us?

How in the hell are they winning this messenger war?

What bullshit.

I'll give you affordability.

Yes, we own that.

And yeah, the byproduct of that has been a homeless crisis for 30 years in this state.

Hell, when I first became mayor, we had a record number of homeless out on the streets and sidewalks.

It was 188,000.

In 2004, 2005,

it's hardly a new phenomenon, but it's interesting.

It's now a dominant phenomenon all across the country.

18.13% increase in homelessness across the country.

You saw most red states leading in that growth.

California was just 3% last year.

I'm not satisfied with that, but we're lower than 40 other states.

Our unsheltered population, we were lower than 44 states.

We're finally making progress.

Finally making progress.

But that's a preview of things to come across the country.

Homelessness and housing.

It's hardly unique to California.

So when everyone's acting holier than thou, they may want to start to reflect on their own performance, their own realities in their own states.

Forgive me.

I got a question for you, too.

As the former Republican, I wholly admit it.

I do know because I can think like a Republican.

So I'm going to ask you because a Republican would hear all that, even a swing voter Republican, somebody independent leaning right, they'd hear all that and go, That all sounds great, but I care about gas prices and I care about taxes.

How do you capture that person?

Because that is a huge group of people who like, they hear that, that all sounds really nice and they believe pieces of it, but those are those stumbling blocks that they just want to.

Kevin should be disgusted about the tax rates in red states.

You're 100% right.

I agree with you.

I love

I mean, they're screwing middle class and working folks in red states.

Your taxes are higher in Texas and Florida.

If you're working folks, the bottom 20% pay higher taxes than the top 1%.

Just think about that value proposition for a second.

Seriously, just think about that.

Who the hell are you for?

Who's the high-tax state?

When you tax your lowest-wage workers working full-time, my mother working two and a half damn jobs, you tax her more

than Elon Musk was being taxed when he said I had to leave the state because he wanted to avoid any taxes whatsoever.

So he gets more of his.

Life is real hard.

They're regressive taxes.

Yes.

Regressive tax states.

We're a progressive tax state.

And so no one's naive about the top 1%,

but no one's naive about the opportunities that present themselves here in terms of getting in the top 1%.

And so, you know, I don't begrudge other people's success, but don't don't sit here and tell me that I'm a high-tax state and Texas is not, and Florida is not.

They screw people with regressive taxes.

And that's something you should be outraged as a Republican, a working folks out there, manufacturing out there, working in your hands every single day, and they're taxing you more than states like California.

So, on that issue, I couldn't agree more.

And then, look, on the broader issues of

gas tax, I'll acknowledge going back 25, no, excuse me, to 1967, when Ronald Reagan was sitting right where I'm sitting here in this seat as governor, they created the California Air Resources Board.

And the air quality in California made it almost unlivable.

The smog in L.A., legendary in the 60s and 70s.

Oh, yeah.

And Ronald Reagan, the business community came to him and said, we can't take it, Mr.

Governor.

We need to do something about the air.

and the water we're drinking in this state.

And he began interesting the modern environmental movement.

movement.

Started here

in the California recently, where we started to regulate tailpipe emissions, addressing the issue of what kind of gas we're putting in the car, looking at energy efficiency, looking at appliances.

And it allowed us to have nation-leading environmental rules and regulations.

Again, that led to Elon Musk being the wealthiest person in the world.

Okay.

I mean, the regulations did.

Let's not forget that.

It was the market signals that we created, the industries that we helped create in this space.

And yes, as a consequence, a byproduct of that was the low-carbon fuel standards, was the work we're trying to do as it relates to changing the mix of our fuels to create new industries, new opportunities, and to detoxify our air and clean our water.

And so that is a legitimate byproduct.

It goes back decades in California as it relates to gas prices.

But it's also a fact, and I'll close on this forgetting the long winded.

You get me going, guys.

Keep going.

Get me going.

i love policy but it's also a fact that we crushed last month we just announced last quarter 30 of all new vehicles are alternative fuel vehicles we're dominating this space and china is going to kick our ass

if we don't wake up to what's going on and it's not just about electric vehicles it's about technology stack it's about autonomy it's about mobility and it's about dominating the future and these guys have doubled down on stupid they're putting their head in the sand trying to recreate the 19th century.

And they're trying to dig their way out of this stuff.

Meanwhile, places like China are leaping into the future and are going to dominate the supply chains and dominate consumer choice in this space.

And that's why we're not going to give it up here in California because we believe that's the future.

I don't know what Fox and Samuel.

Well, I love it.

So, Governor, you've been very gracious with your time.

I have the two most important questions

in this entire session that we're going to ask you now.

And one, people might have missed, but one, can you do that Bill Clinton impersonation again?

Because that was actually very spot on.

I was like, wait a minute.

One of the coolest things.

I'm going to close my eyes.

One of the coolest things for me was being there for the 20th anniversary of CGI

and getting the call from the president saying, would you,

I want to open up the conference with the conversation with you.

And I'm like, I was pinching myself because I was there 20 years ago, like sitting back, my hands all sweaty, nervous, taking notes,

snuck in the back of that first session when he kicked it off 20 years ago.

And I was writing down community, opportunity, responsibility.

And, you know, I was, you know,

it was just, you know, I was obsessed with,

you know,

I love success.

Democrats, Republicans, I'll reach out to people I disagree with.

But Clinton was so successful at getting our party back into power.

And success leaves clues.

And I remember as a young guy, you know, really admiring what he was able to accomplish in that administration.

And so for me, it was cool sitting there.

And I almost started, you know, when he was leaning over, and he's, you know, I've got as much gray as he does now.

So I'm not going to talk about getting a little, but it was just, I was so close on stage to doing a little Clinton in reverse

a little bit.

I almost felt like I was starting to slow down as I was, you know, beginning to talk.

You know, it's like,

you know,

you got a lot of Conahey in there, too, I think.

A draw.

That's southern charm.

All right, well, governor, this is now this will be the most important question.

And this is Luke is our youngest co-host.

He's our gamer.

So maybe you'll know where this is going.

But, Luke, I want you to ask the governor this point.

You know, you said earlier, Governor, that you've been given a lot of shit.

And as the youngest person on the panel, I feel obligated to give you a little more.

Was there not room in the budget for a Fortnite coach?

Clearly, you're a hell of an order.

Wow.

You and West Side Delta, you asshole.

Yeah, I heard that.

Yes.

Exactly.

He was so embarrassed, man.

Apparently, that stuff's still on YouTube.

And he was like, he re-watched it.

He's like, this boat

was walking around in a circle.

It's a hard game.

You know what?

It is hard.

It's a hard game.

I can't edit it.

Well, on that note, Governor, thank you very much.

We are very appreciative of your time.

And we're also very appreciative of you standing up and fighting and showing the way forward.

And, you know, we're there with you.

And we hope that we can have you back on again sometime soon.

But, Governor Newsome, thank you very much for joining us today.

It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Appreciate you.

All right, take care.