Taking On Fox News (Live with Terry Moran!)

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This is Gavin Newsom.

I'm still learning the ropes here.

That's good.

And by the way,

you're in springfield right now i was in spring i just got back this morning i drove back uh and today dhs announced 60 days and they're gone for the haitians so the families that i met with who are

you know law-abiding they're working they fill out w-2s they pay taxes they got social security numbers The mayor wants them, the governor wants them, the city council wants them, business church leaders.

Trump wants them out based on his slander of them.

And they have 60 days and they're hiding in their homes, governor.

They are hiding in their homes.

And the babies, 1,200 babies born since they've been here.

Now the Supreme Court throws their fate into doubt.

It's, you know, and good for you.

Forgive me just selfishly stating it so often.

And it's so interesting just from your prism now, this sort of new alignment with

what you're doing, that you're going back to a story that everybody's moved on from

that was weaponized in a rubric of debates and a political campaign, and now reminding everybody of the human side of all this and the impacts.

But it's what you just said about the mayor and the governor and the community

just only reinforces just the absurdity of this moment.

Yeah.

And now you're

fighting back in a really interesting way.

I read the suit.

I read

the claims, a bunch of questions, but you're suing Fox News.

I assume everybody's watching at this point, and there'll be more coming, know that.

So, why?

What's your beef?

Well, the beef is, you know, you can't maliciously slander someone.

You can't defame someone by altering facts, editing facts, knowingly doing that

without being held to some higher level of ethics and accountability.

I have no problem.

Look, we all know Fox is a propaganda network, but it's under the guise of being a news organization, being journalists.

And there's rules of engagement as it relates to that.

And, you know, he

Donald Trump and I had a phone call on June 6th, early morning, maybe June 7th.

Four days later, Donald Trump lied and said, well, we talked the day before.

I highlighted the fact we never talked the day before.

Fox decided to cover up for the president's lie.

And they knowingly did that in a way that defamed.

And I just think we need to call that out now.

It's one thing to be on the receiving end.

I've been on the receiving end of Fox for years and years and years.

But there's red lines.

And on this red line, they crossed it.

And I want a simple apology.

I just, I'm not looking, you know, you got to file these in

your own individual accord.

It's, you know, the malice is a high bar, but they're dead to right on this.

I mean, they had a Chiron who said, Gavin lied.

about Trump call.

I mean, so they've got to apologize that they don't.

They need to be held to account.

And uh we want to seek damages right you're asking for an apology and 787 million dollars with this you heard that number before where'd that number come from yeah that's the uh that's the dominion lawsuit and this they reacted to the dominion lawsuit with a press release that they put out against this lawsuit that almost was you know you almost could have cut and pasted it uh and uh and they paid a big price there but what they did do is they didn't fundamentally change their practices.

And that's the point.

That's the point of this lawsuit.

This money doesn't come to me.

It's not about any of that.

This is charity goes someplace else.

But this is about changing these practices, these unethical practices.

And, you know, I don't do this lightly.

I got a bunch of calls there.

This is actually why this happened.

I watched Jesse Waters.

I watched John Roberts.

I mean, that's just straight news, John.

And Jesse tries to assert himself in that respect.

And I got a bunch of calls saying, why'd you lie about the Trump call from friends?

I said, what do you mean I lied about it?

Just making that up.

I said, well, that's not what I'm seeing on Fox.

And so I'm constantly battling that.

I'm like, this is doing damage.

It was, you know, not just on the 65 million people that watched Fox and Fox business, but hundreds of millions on social.

And it was weaponized on the right.

And it started to bleed in.

And so that for me, that crossed the line.

And that's why I'm pushing back.

That is the way the system works on that side.

Look, I was obviously in corporate legacy, mainstream media, whatever you want.

I had a great career, loved it, have nothing bad to say about my colleagues.

But it's like they're fighting or they're trying to tell the truth

blindfolded to the reality of what's happening to the truth, is what I would say.

It was frustrating being in there because Trump has this power of bending reality.

for people.

And Fox assists his whole ecosphere assists him in doing that.

And kind of both sides or the kind of vocabulary that you can use is very difficult to serve the people with still.

And it's

look, it's,

and that's not newsworthy in and of itself, what you said.

It's spot on, but it's really eroding trust and it's hurting our democracy.

And it's, it's code red.

And you'd think Fox, who's just the most blatant and, you know, just notoriously the most most blatant as it relates to being a propaganda network, would have learned that lesson with that $787 million settlement with Dominion, but they haven't.

And they continue to cover up for the folly and the lies of this.

president.

And it's one thing for the president to lie.

He did it just a few moments ago, quite literally, about water in California again and his obsession.

But you don't cover up for that.

You don't willfully and knowingly and maliciously cover up for those lies, edit information, and alter

what you present as fact and defame people.

You can't do that.

Is there something about the past few months in this second term?

And I don't want to post facto rationalize what I did.

I wasn't thinking it's too much.

It's the straw that breaks the camel's back.

I thought I was describing accurately a public figure in America.

By the way,

few words rung more true than those words.

Forgive me.

That's just

my editorial opinion.

All right.

And I actually, what's worse is it wasn't like a drug tweet.

I actually looked at it and I read it and I thought, yeah, that's true.

It's in.

There you go.

But my point is that there is this hammer blow, this daily bludgeoning of the body politic with cruelty, right?

And lies at every point.

It demoralizes people.

And I've seen you over the past couple of years, it seems.

One of the things I really respected and enjoyed you doing was crossing over Golda Fox and debating Hannity,

taking him on and having a good debate with DeSantis.

People appreciate that.

But is there something about the past few months and the Democrats crying out for someone to do something?

that is part of the background to you pulling what is in some ways a stunt, right?

This lawsuit?

Yeah, look,

back to the lawsuit, but let me go back almost three years ago to today, because we just celebrated and not celebrated.

We lamented the anniversary of the Dobbs decision three years ago.

And I remember being at Plain Paradox in Southern California, in LA, saying, where the hell is my party?

And it wasn't indictment of individual leaders.

It wasn't even indictment of the, you know, the DNC.

It was sort of, frankly, it was indictment by my own lack of accountability at this moment.

That the other side was dominating the narrative on CRT and DEI, ESG.

They were censoring historic facts, rewriting history, quite literally rewriting social studies books in places like Florida.

And I was watching the weaponization and the propaganda coming from these networks, not just Fox, Wan American News, Newsmax, and how they're able to shape-shift the conversation and how my party, the Democratic Party, was consistently on the defense.

And that's where I woke up.

I said, you know what?

The world we're living in has happened on our watch.

Society becomes how we behave.

Take some responsibility, man.

And so I decided I needed to actually not just complain about something.

I needed to do something.

And that's when I started to reach out and went on Fox.

And I had Hannity.

I said, let's go.

Let's go into Ronald Reagan's old

building, the old governor's mansion where Reagan was.

Ask me anything you want.

Let's do an unedited hour, hour and a half interview.

And we did that.

And I started to go back on Fox.

And that's why I ended up.

And I appreciate your reference to the debate with Ron DeSantis.

And so I think that's healthy.

I thought it was important.

A lot of my members of my party were critical saying, why do you even indulge those guys?

It's all fake news, et cetera.

But I thought it's important to meet people where they are.

So I say all that in the context of this lawsuit.

I have a high threshold for the bullshit on Fox is the point.

All right.

I wouldn't do this unless I felt they really did cross the line.

And I don't, it's not about money for a nonprofit.

It's about accountability.

I really did hope and expect after that Dominion lawsuit, they would stop, but they haven't.

And right now, if you're covering up for the cruelty, God bless you, that's the right word, not just the chaos, for the

abject lies and mistruths of this administration, you can't lay claim.

to being a news organization any longer.

That's what this lawsuit's about.

I think that is exactly exactly the conundrum that

my former colleagues and across the establishment, legacy, corporate, what mainstream media, whatever you want to call it,

they are doing their best.

I love them, I respect them, they're doing great work, but there's something that's changed in this moment.

It is a moment in history where it requires a different response, I think.

I'm discovering that in myself.

And I do think that I wonder if one of the things you're trying to do is give heart to people who see this, who are bludgeoned and either on the sidelines, I don't want to get involved, they may have even voted for Trump, don't like it, or certainly the people who didn't vote for Trump feeling in despair.

He is all-powerful, controlling the narrative, and now just bringing the hammer down in every walk of life.

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I wish I could show you a video I just got right before we went on from a friend of mine down in San Diego.

And this young woman, torn away from her car by massed men, screaming and yelling, turns out to be a housekeeper at a well-known hotel in Southern California, a member of Local 11, Unite Here, just ripped off the streets by mass men.

This is a moral moment.

This is happening in America.

You have 5,000 federalized troops.

You have the U.S.

military in the streets of Los Angeles in 2025.

Today,

I mean, this is, this is, to your point, things have radically changed.

You can't operate with the old constructs.

People talk about, I heard, you know, there's been some punditry, you know, we're moving towards authoritarianism.

And it depends which lens, which set of eyes you have.

How about to that young woman on the street?

We're already there.

For some of us that have more privilege, we're not there yet.

And so I want to speak for those folks, to your point.

Yeah, for things to change, you've got to change.

It's not what happens, it's what we, how we respond to what happens.

And I need to be held to a higher level of accountability.

And so I appreciate the frame of your question.

Yeah, I've changed.

I've changed.

You know, I changed when those National Guard were federalized.

I changed when I started to see members of our community torn asunder, terrorized by these raids and people in masks and things that I've never thought I'd see in this country.

To see people deported, disappeared.

I was with a 12-year-old boy, same age as my kids, crying, who lost his mother and father.

They disappeared.

They went to the same job site they've been going to 20 years in Oxnard, California.

And he had no one.

He didn't even know how to get back into his own house.

That's Trump's America.

So when you say those words, Terry, about Stephen Miller, you are goddamn right.

Excuse my language.

You were right.

And he is wrong.

And it's wrong for us to operate under the old rules.

Forgive me for being intense about this, but a lot of people are counting on us to do more and be better.

I respect that intensity.

That's where we have to find our courage, right?

We have to find it there.

And I appreciate what you're saying about that.

I will say that having just gotten back, one of the things, if you don't mind a personal note, the outpouring of

people signing up for this and actually very, very kind and genuine support for some I didn't, you know, from one perspective, really screwed up, right?

This is not the way I'd recommend leaving a job.

But as I say, I'm kind of exhilarated and excited by the possibilities and by the work ahead, the good work that you're talking about ahead.

But I do feel that it became for a lot of people

a galvanizing moment, right?

A sense that, okay,

whatever you think, what he said, including some of my neighbors, I live in a...

kind of a purple neighborhood in Frederick, Maryland,

closer to Antietam and Gettysburg than to Washington, D.C.

And a lot of my neighbors voted for Trump.

And one of them in particular,

you know, very strong for Trump.

He told my wife, he said, tell your husband, you know, I really respect him.

I know what he did was brave.

And, you know, look at his social feeds.

He loves that.

It was very encouraging for me.

I feel very encouraged.

But the point of it is, I think the point, the cruelty is the point, to dishearten people, make them amenable to more and more authority.

And just one more note in Springfield.

One of the young Haitian men that I spoke with, he had a brain tumor in Haiti.

They couldn't help him.

Came to the United States, started working, got on Obamacare,

got

the brain tumor operated on, but they had to remove his pituitary glands.

So he needs to regulate his hormonal system.

If they send him back, he'll die.

And he said, I don't go out of the house because anyone can wear a mask.

Remember, he's from Haiti.

Anyone can wear a mask and put ice on them.

I don't know if they're kidnappers or if they're the law.

So there are thousands of people hiding in their homes from the federal government who are until a couple of weeks ago here lawfully, good employees.

You go ask the businesses down there, the dole plant, the auto machining plants.

You ask the mayor and the city council.

These are good people, the vast majority of them.

And they're hiding from our government.

That's, to me, a disgrace.

It is a disgrace, but you've reinforced this point.

and I want to amplify the point I think you're making, that the cruelty is the point, but the point being that that demoralization just completely neuters us and we become numb

and we no longer are active.

We're inert.

And that is exactly what he wants.

He wants to crush us into submission.

He wants to overwhelm the shock and awe is about overwhelming us.

And so we cannot maintain neutrality at this time.

It was Dante said the hottest place in hell is reserved in a time of moral crisis for those that maintain their neutrality.

This is not a neutral moment.

And I think, look, this lawsuit, I hope, represents just an expression of that.

I want both to know we're not just going to roll over.

that that we're going to have people's backs people that may not have a voice people that may not have the privilege that you and i have to even be able to go on sub stack to be able to have this conversation to reach a few people that are kind enough to take the time to listen, to know that they matter and we care.

There are people out there that give a damn.

You gave a damn to go back to Springfield and check in with people

that were used purely as a political,

you know, political fodder, that were used as subjects, not human beings, and to humanize them.

That's important.

And it's more important now than ever.

So, look, I think it's in that same spirit that we initiated this lawsuit and same spirit to which we're pushing back against these authoritarian tendencies

in Trumpism.

Can I ask you

before we move on,

the New York mayoral primary,

with Momdani winning and Cuomo going down to defeat, a lot of Democrats are seeing that as a signal of a new direction.

A lot of other Democrats are saying, now this is maybe New York City, but it would not work in other parts of the country.

How do you read that politically?

I think

my experience in this respect is we tend to

overstate in the short term

lessons learned or we extrapolate lessons that frankly just reinforce our own pre-existing biases of what this means or what this doesn't mean.

But

to

the credit of Mandani, this was a hell of a campaign.

I mean, you know, you could distinguish the message from the messenger, but his ability to galvanize and to organize, to use the tools of technology, new media, to

create a,

I thought a personality that even if he disagreed, you kind of had a little more trust

in was rather extraordinary.

And so from that perspective, the power of emulation, success leaves some clues.

Now, what this means ultimately for the Democratic Party, was this really a repudiation of Cuomo came out with a lot of baggage?

Was this more parochial politics in the context of just one American city, though, the largest, is to be determined.

But I think it's one thing I think it is, is a giant wake-up call that democracy is still alive and well, bottom up.

And if you're looking at this for the prism,

I think particularly, Speaker Johnson,

You're recognizing you got 18 months left.

And if you're looking at this as Susie Wiles, the chief of staff of the president, your administration ends in 18 months.

We're going to take back the house.

We're seeing young people reawaken here.

They haven't gotten the message about the cynicism yet.

They're still engaged.

And for me, that was really the most compelling takeaway from what occurred last week.

Well, that is a great.

positive hardening end because people people are looking for something to look forward to the good hard work of saving the country right?

Saving the country.

Look, you know,

one cannot overstate

that simple statement that you just made.

And the Supreme Court made it more challenging today.

Look, we just cannot live in the divided states of America any longer.

You know,

I'm sort of paraphrasing, Bill Clinton.

You can't, you know, divorce is not an option.

We're going to have to define the terms of the future to live and advance together across our differences.

And

I think, you know, one thing people need to see is other people's courage.

And for those people that turned out and voted,

that's an act of citizenship.

And the office of citizen right now is the most important office of all.

And I think for all the assaults on institutions, that's the institution that will endure.

And that's what gives me hope and optimism.

All right.

Well, great.

Thanks very much.

This was fun.

This was fun, Terry.

Thanks for having me on.

And congrats on everything.

Keep doing what you're you're doing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good luck.

Good luck in court.

Thank you.

Be honest.

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