Speaker 1: Either to go pull the principle or you don't pull
Speaker 1: the principle. If you don't unap hold the principle, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call you out for not upholding the principle. On
Speaker 1: his epitaph, we'll read forty fifth and forty seven President
Speaker 1: of the United States, he said, a lot of shit.
Speaker 2: Thank story, jurisdictions have lower crime rates. You moved to
Speaker 2: a state that has higher insurance, right, higher car insurance,
Speaker 2: not just home insurance, has higher property taxes many of
Speaker 2: these red states.
Speaker 1: And I think that we should start from a position
Speaker 1: in the United States of gratitude and recognition that we
Speaker 1: live in a free country where the vast majority of
Speaker 1: decisions are your own. This is Gavin Newsom, and this
Speaker 1: has been Shapiro. All right, Ben Shapiro, welcome, Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me.
Speaker 2: I love it all the way from Florida. We'll get
Speaker 2: to that, you know, moment.
Speaker 1: Seem a little bit spicy about it, Yeah, a little
Speaker 1: sot well, you know.
Speaker 2: Texas, that would have been more spicy. But you know,
Speaker 2: especially come on, you're a Hollywood kid, at least Hollywood adjacent.
Speaker 1: You'reeah Burbank, born and bred and born in Saint Joe's
Speaker 1: in Burbank.
Speaker 2: I love that. And well, year nineteen eighty four and
Speaker 2: you went, you know you, And it's interesting because you were,
Speaker 2: you know, in sort of middle class family, grew up
Speaker 2: and I, you know, got a new book we're going
Speaker 2: to get to in a moment, Lions and Scavengers. But
Speaker 2: in that you talk about your your home where I
Speaker 2: think six members of your family living in a two
Speaker 2: bedroom home, one bathroom Burbank, California, and you describe it,
Speaker 2: at least briefly as pretty Bucolic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. It was great. I mean, Burbank
Speaker 1: was a great place to grow up. It was like
Speaker 1: kids playing in the street. And I had the greatest
Speaker 1: privilege of all. Right, I'm an American growing up in
Speaker 1: the greatest country and the history of the world. And
Speaker 1: I've got a two parent household. My parents love each
Speaker 1: other and they take care of us, and they're able
Speaker 1: to make a middle class income. My mom started off
Speaker 1: as a secretary and worked her way up to become
Speaker 1: vice president of a small film and TV company. My
Speaker 1: dad came out here to be a composer, and he
Speaker 1: ended up playing piano at a restaurant on venturable of
Speaker 1: var I believe it was in or actually it was
Speaker 1: it was in across from Universal Studios. It was the
Speaker 1: Mitchell's over there.
Speaker 2: Like a five night a week piano guy.
Speaker 1: A couple of nights a week, you go in there
Speaker 1: and play jazz piano because since he was fourteen and
Speaker 1: so that's that's how I grew up. And you know again,
Speaker 1: I think that that's the American dreams. You start there
Speaker 1: and then you end up making a better life for
Speaker 1: your kids, and they end up making a better life
Speaker 1: for themselves, and that upper trajectory is is kind of
Speaker 1: what America is all about.
Speaker 2: I love it. How many brothers and sisters?
Speaker 1: So I have three younger sisters, three younger sisters, three
Speaker 1: younger sisters.
Speaker 2: Were they music because you were? You were a violinist, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I started playing violin when I was five, and then
Speaker 1: I was pretty good. I mean I was it.
Speaker 2: You were. It was your dad just saying you're going, son,
Speaker 2: you will be. I mean they threw that at you
Speaker 2: and they made you and your crying.
Speaker 1: No, it definitely wasn't there.
Speaker 2: You loved No.
Speaker 1: I I was pretty dedicated to it, for sure. I
Speaker 1: was practicing by the time I was sixteen. Maybe three
Speaker 1: hours a day or something. And then I looked at
Speaker 1: at sort of the life of musician, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: again that upper trajectory is very difficult, particularly in classical music,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, maybe I better shift career
Speaker 1: strategies here. But when I went to UCLA, or I
Speaker 1: went to UCLA for undergrad When I went to UCLA
Speaker 1: extent at the time, my parents didn't want me going
Speaker 1: out of state for school. So I was living at
Speaker 1: home sixteen, and I thought I was going to double
Speaker 1: major in biology and in music. Actually, and I got
Speaker 1: on campus and I found myself drawn to politics. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest is I want.
Speaker 2: To get back to that a little bit more about
Speaker 2: How about your sisters? What where did they end up
Speaker 2: in terms of their professional pursuits and careers.
Speaker 1: So all of us grew up obviously here, only one
Speaker 1: is still here. I still have one sister who lives
Speaker 1: in Orange County. I have a couple of sisters who
Speaker 1: live within a mile and a half of me in Florida.
Speaker 1: So basically the whole family ended up in Florida. My
Speaker 1: parents ended up near me in Florida. My in laws,
Speaker 1: who lived in Sacramento ended up near me in Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there may be some reasons for that, Governor.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that. We're going to get to all
Speaker 2: of that and a lot more. I just want to
Speaker 2: paint the picture a little bit of camptriciated. Not everybody
Speaker 2: knows your child, but also connected. I mean, as you said,
Speaker 2: UCLA undergrad and then your interests.
Speaker 1: My wife went U SA LA Medical School. I mean
Speaker 1: we're very California ambedded.
Speaker 2: I love that. But politics had its calling there. Would
Speaker 2: you remember sort of a moment or issues or was
Speaker 2: politics part of the even your child, it was a
Speaker 2: part of the conversation around the dinner table. Were your
Speaker 2: parents politically active.
Speaker 1: And they weren't super politically active. I would say they
Speaker 1: were kind of Reagan Republicans, and you know, growing up
Speaker 1: we talk politics in the house. But the thing that
Speaker 1: sort of sent me in a political direction overtly is
Speaker 1: I got to college campus at UCLA and I picked
Speaker 1: up a copy of the UCLA Daily Bruin. And this
Speaker 1: is back in the year two thousand. There was an
Speaker 1: editorial from the Bruin editorial board, I believe, comparing Ariol
Speaker 1: Scheron than the Prime Minister of Israel who in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, I guess to Aolf Eichmann, the Nazi,
Speaker 1: and so I walked in and I said, I'd like
Speaker 1: to write a counter to that, and that turned into
Speaker 1: a point counterpoint column that I would write every week.
Speaker 1: That became pretty popular. It turned into kind of a
Speaker 1: normal column. And then I went to my father one
Speaker 1: day and I said, do you think that my stuff
Speaker 1: is good enough to be published in like a normal paper?
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, it might be. Let me
Speaker 1: do some research. So he found this place called Creator
Speaker 1: Syndicate again out of California, and they syndicate a bunch
Speaker 1: of columns to for newspapers around the country. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was everybody from Molly Ivans on the left to
Speaker 1: David Limbaugh on the right. And so I applied cold
Speaker 1: and they called me three weeks later. I was seventeen
Speaker 1: and they said, we'd love you to write a syndicated column.
Speaker 1: So pretty much all of my bad ideas since I
Speaker 1: was seventeen have been public, which is, you know, an
Speaker 1: interesting way to live for sure.
Speaker 2: S seventeen, I mean, that's pretty remarkable that young age,
Speaker 2: you have a syndicated national column. And a few years later,
Speaker 2: twenty you have published what two books?
Speaker 1: So you write? My first book came out when I
Speaker 1: was twenty from It was sort of an expose of
Speaker 1: leftism on college campuses. I think some might say it
Speaker 1: was a little ahead of its time. And then I
Speaker 1: went to Harvard Law School at twenty and I wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of more books while I was at Harvard Law.
Speaker 1: And when I came out, I came back to LA
Speaker 1: and I practiced at a real estate firm or real
Speaker 1: estate wing of a major law firm called Goodwin Proctor.
Speaker 1: I practiced there. I lasted for about ten months, decided
Speaker 1: I hate it quit. I remember walking into the boss's
Speaker 1: office and saying, I hate it here and I want
Speaker 1: to leave. And I remember him turning to me and saying,
Speaker 1: you're never going to make as much mone needs you're
Speaker 1: making right now. And I've been wanting to send them
Speaker 1: some tax returns for now. But you know, it all
Speaker 1: worked out. Politics was something that I was always very
Speaker 1: invested in, and so my sort of political approach generally
Speaker 1: is that I'm much more invested in principles than personalities.
Speaker 1: I care much more about the ideas than I do
Speaker 1: about sort of the the gossip aspect of politics. I
Speaker 1: think that that's unfortunately becoming less common. I think that
Speaker 1: you know, it's great that you're having me on. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that. I like the exchange of ideas. I've
Speaker 1: always liked the exchange of ideas, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: still I hope when animates may when animates the.
Speaker 2: Show love that. What I mean, you're you're obviously known
Speaker 2: as you know, I mean, people have described you in
Speaker 2: so many different ways, but debate brow I mean, is
Speaker 2: there a quick wits I mean, obviously next level intellect
Speaker 2: ability to quickly distill facts and figures. You talk about
Speaker 2: facts over emotion, et cetera. But were you that person
Speaker 2: in high school? Were you that person in middle score?
Speaker 2: Did that?
Speaker 1: That's pretty combative? In high school, I would say I'd
Speaker 1: skipped a couple of grades. So I skipped third and
Speaker 1: I skip ninth. Wow, And so I was much younger,
Speaker 1: and much shorter, and much skinnier, and much more of
Speaker 1: a wise the ass probably in some of the other
Speaker 1: kids in my high school class, and so high school
Speaker 1: was not exactly a joy for that reason. But I've
Speaker 1: said before that obviously bullying is terrible, but being bullied
Speaker 1: can be sort of a make or break situation for you,
Speaker 1: meaning that a lot of the people that I know
Speaker 1: who are very successful went through a lot of adversity
Speaker 1: in that age range, and then you sort of develop
Speaker 1: an attitude, and the attitude is okay, I can either
Speaker 1: use this as fuel and grist for the mill and say, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take all that negativity and channel it
Speaker 1: toward you know, more strength and more positivity and building
Speaker 1: and maybe you get a little bit of a chip
Speaker 1: on your shoulder sometimes or you can kind of let
Speaker 1: it break it down.
Speaker 2: Do you remember, I mean some of the specific instances
Speaker 2: where you sort of you had that kind of exchange.
Speaker 2: Where was it political? Was it? Because I mean the
Speaker 2: fact you're always younger, a little bit smarter, maybe you're
Speaker 2: quick witted. I mean, was do you remember political?
Speaker 1: Interpersonal? But I remember, you know, being the kind of
Speaker 1: kid who when I was sixteen years old, there was
Speaker 1: a program at the UC system that was all about
Speaker 1: affirmative action at the UC system. I remember there were
Speaker 1: about a thousand people who were protesting down in the
Speaker 1: plaza or there, and I believe I was the only
Speaker 1: counter protester interesting and I would show up in and
Speaker 1: do that that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: Did you have you have the was it the confidence
Speaker 2: or was the gumption? What was it? I mean, was
Speaker 2: it something your parents distilled in you just stand up
Speaker 2: for ideals? Striking?
Speaker 1: I think it was more stand up for ideals. But
Speaker 1: but also you know, from the time that I was young,
Speaker 1: I never had any problem with being in crowds or
Speaker 1: being in front of people or yeah, exactly, I played violin,
Speaker 1: and so if if you spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: playing you know, a rigorous sort of set of pieces
Speaker 1: in front of people, and you do that over and
Speaker 1: over and over, it kind of gets rid of whatever
Speaker 1: trepidation you might have in front of people and doing
Speaker 1: that sort when did you.
Speaker 2: Was there a moment when you sort of developed a
Speaker 2: next level confidence you're like, wait, I'm pretty good at
Speaker 2: this or was it the writing.
Speaker 1: That was doing you know, I'm not sure. I will
Speaker 1: say I don't think that it's ever good to develop
Speaker 1: next level confidence, meaning I think you got to prep
Speaker 1: for everything. One of the things that I try to
Speaker 1: do is really over prepare for my show. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to have a debate or a discussion with somebody,
Speaker 1: I really try to dig in and get into what's
Speaker 1: true what's not true. I would much rather be overprepared.
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain level of insecurity that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when you're overconfident, that's when you made mistakes.
Speaker 1: I think in my career, whenever I've made a mistake,
Speaker 1: it's typically because I didn't take a challenge seriously enough
Speaker 1: or I sort of brushed it off. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: see that happen. A lot of people sort of rely
Speaker 1: on their native intelligence as opposed to assuming that you're
Speaker 1: not going to be the smartest person in the room
Speaker 1: all the time. Remember when I was in middle school,
Speaker 1: so some went to Walter Reed in North Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: they had a Magnet school, like a highly gifted program.
Speaker 1: And I remember there was an IQ test actually kind
Speaker 1: of a rudimentary IQ test that was the baseline to
Speaker 1: get in. And I got in, but I didn't get
Speaker 1: in leaps and bounds, and we you know, I remember
Speaker 1: first day of class, everybody's kind of passing around their
Speaker 1: IQ scores and all this kind of stuff, and one
Speaker 1: girl had had above one eighty, really really really high IQ.
Speaker 1: And I remember going back home and talking to my
Speaker 1: father about it. He said, listen, you should assume that
Speaker 1: you're never the smartest person in the room, but you
Speaker 1: can always be the hardest working person in the room.
Speaker 1: I love that, and that I think has been sort
Speaker 1: of the motto.
Speaker 2: I love it. So you went, you know, UCLA undergrad.
Speaker 2: Here you are seventeen national syndicated columnists. A few years
Speaker 2: later he got two published books about issues around the universe.
Speaker 2: As you say, you may have been a step or
Speaker 2: two ahead of most in that respect, and then issues
Speaker 2: around I mean, it was interesting, is the porn industry
Speaker 2: broadly defined it?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was writing books about how the pornography industry
Speaker 1: was going to really carve out, particularly young men's souls
Speaker 1: in about two thousand and five, and at the time
Speaker 1: people were saying, oh, this is crazy. What is he
Speaker 1: talking about now? Of course, I think that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of young men who have fallen prey to
Speaker 1: that industry, who needs less family formation and less general happiness,
Speaker 1: less sex, Actually people who are kind of falling out
Speaker 1: of the social fabric that's necessary to build societies. I
Speaker 1: was calling that out in about two thousand, so to.
Speaker 2: Say, even in my state of the state last week,
Speaker 2: I referenced just one of many different statistics but roughly
Speaker 2: half of young men have never asked a woman out
Speaker 2: in person on a date. So your point emphasis and
Speaker 2: that and we I want to unpack that a little
Speaker 2: bit later as well in the conversation. But you started
Speaker 2: then to not only identify yourself in the context of
Speaker 2: your intellectual pursuits and expressing your point of view through
Speaker 2: writing also sort of gifted capacity to engage in debate
Speaker 2: and speech. But then you found Andrew Breitbart was out
Speaker 2: and about in southern California, and you took a job
Speaker 2: there working at Breitbart.
Speaker 1: That went in twenty twelve. During the twenty twelve election,
Speaker 1: I joined Brightbart. I'd known Andrew actually since my UCLA days,
Speaker 1: so I'd known him already for quite a number of years.
Speaker 2: What did you think of Andrew?
Speaker 1: A lot of Andrews and so I think that there's
Speaker 1: sort of that. I mean, you're in public life, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's for a lot of people that are
Speaker 1: sort of like the private person, there's the public person.
Speaker 1: They're not quite the same. So Andrew, the private person
Speaker 1: in the public person were actually very much the same,
Speaker 1: I would say up until the end. Toward the end,
Speaker 1: I think that Andrew became very frustrated with a lot
Speaker 1: of the political system media coverage. But the truth is
Speaker 1: that Andrew was, for the vast majority of the time
Speaker 1: I knew him, very garrulous, willing to have conversations with
Speaker 1: nearly anyone. I think that if you talk to people
Speaker 1: who knew Andrew really well, they're their best memories of
Speaker 1: him are things like him just rollerblading in Venice and
Speaker 1: then just having like political conversations, taking somebody to coffee
Speaker 1: like a random person. What I used to say to
Speaker 1: people about Andrew is that I knew Andrew for over
Speaker 1: a decade before he passed away, and if you knew
Speaker 1: Andrew for five minutes, you knew him about ninety five
Speaker 1: percent as well as I did, because he was just
Speaker 1: very much there, Like he was just on the surface
Speaker 1: everything that what you saw is what you got with Andrew.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I joined Bright Barton in about two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, who was during the Romney the Romney Obama
Speaker 1: election cycle. I was there for a few years. I
Speaker 1: believe I ended up leaving in two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: like early twenty sixteen. There had been some sort of
Speaker 1: career transitions there in which I was taking other jobs
Speaker 1: at the same time. There's a point again going under
Speaker 1: that sort of working hard rubric. There's one which I
Speaker 1: was working effectively for jobs. I was doing a morning
Speaker 1: show in la where I interviewed you, actually, and then
Speaker 1: there was an afternoon show that I was doing in Seattle,
Speaker 1: so has six hours of radio day. I was the
Speaker 1: editor at larger Brightbart, which meant writing a piece or
Speaker 1: two a day for Breitbart, and then I had also
Speaker 1: taken a job as the editor in chief of a
Speaker 1: website called truth Revolt for the David Horwitz Freedom Center.
Speaker 1: So I was working for jobs simultaneously. And yeah, again,
Speaker 1: my advice to young people particularly want to be successful,
Speaker 1: say yes to doing everything, even if it's for free
Speaker 1: at the beginning, because eventually saying yes a lot gets
Speaker 1: you the power to say no later on in your
Speaker 1: career when you can sort of winnow down what will
Speaker 1: make you successful.
Speaker 2: And people A lot of folks know this, but a
Speaker 2: lot of folks don't. Steve Bannon was down there working
Speaker 2: by Bard at the time you guys got along. Initially.
Speaker 1: I know the beginning, and Steve is not the easiest
Speaker 1: person too. I will say that we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more, just briefly.
Speaker 2: I don't want to over index with Steve, but so
Speaker 2: you left in twy sixteen, but twenty fifteen you more
Speaker 2: formally established what more commonly is identified with the Day
Speaker 2: to call it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was Daily Wires, right, So
Speaker 1: Daily Wire we established formally in twenty so it would
Speaker 1: have been in the middle of the primary, so it
Speaker 1: had been twenty sixteen. That's when we formally launched. Was
Speaker 1: a few months before the election of twenty sixteen. I'd
Speaker 1: been working at the David Horwitz Freedom Center. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a funny story there where we had Jeremy
Speaker 1: Boring and I who are business partners. He'd been working
Speaker 1: there and he basically hit upon what was a social
Speaker 1: media arbitrage plan. He basically saw that you could market
Speaker 1: on social media in new ways and that would bring
Speaker 1: you traffic. And we proposed this to the board. They
Speaker 1: legitimately did not understand what we were talking about, because
Speaker 1: boards of nonprofits are famously, you know, sort of elderly
Speaker 1: and non tech involved, and so we made a presentation.
Speaker 1: Jeremy was kind of fondly known as the as the
Speaker 1: Stupid Whisperer because we'd met with many congress people, and
Speaker 1: I speak quickly, and Jeremy spoke slowly with the Southern accent,
Speaker 1: and so he would very often get across better see
Speaker 1: those congress people who shall remain unnamed. Anyway, we met
Speaker 1: with the board, Jeremy sort of explained the marketing plan.
Speaker 1: They had no idea what he was talking about. They
Speaker 1: turned to me and they said, Ben, can you explain
Speaker 1: the marketing plan? I said, sure, very easy. I was
Speaker 1: frustrated by this point, so I took out a napkin
Speaker 1: and I wrote on it dollar sign arrow, Facebook, arrow, website,
Speaker 1: arrow back to dollars in your book. Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: that was the marketing plan, right. It was that you're
Speaker 1: going to spend money on social media in order to
Speaker 1: gain eyeballs. Those eyeballs would then provide advertising on your website,
Speaker 1: and then you would just direct that money back into Facebook.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of a flywheel. And they fired
Speaker 1: Jeremy the next day. I quit a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: and then we basically took that plan out to market.
Speaker 1: We found a little bit of seed funding, five million
Speaker 1: dollars in seed funding originally, and we launched daily Wire,
Speaker 1: which last year did two hundred million dollars plus in revenue.
Speaker 2: How many how many employees now daily we.
Speaker 1: Have about two hundred and twenty employees. Wow at daily ware.
Speaker 2: And you guys are doing the I mean, well we
Speaker 2: can talk more specifically, but I mean it's documentaries, it's movies. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's all this show. I mean, it's a whole suite
Speaker 2: of Yeah.
Speaker 1: We tried to turn it into a semi major media company. Right,
Speaker 1: it's probably the second biggest conservative media company in the
Speaker 1: country after Fox.
Speaker 2: So at the time, who were your mentors who were
Speaker 2: looking up to at the time? Who did you want
Speaker 2: to become?
Speaker 1: Was?
Speaker 2: I mean Andrew obviously had a big impact, I assume
Speaker 2: in terms of your trajectory. Who else was out there
Speaker 2: you were watching? Was it the limbas of the world?
Speaker 2: Was it the savages of the world? Who? I mean
Speaker 2: on radio?
Speaker 1: So I think it was sort of a different thing
Speaker 1: in every industry. So from a sort of ideological point
Speaker 1: of view, just being a great writer, be people like
Speaker 1: Charles Crowdhammer, Yeah, which, of course I love the writing.
Speaker 1: That's actually my favorite thing that I do because I
Speaker 1: can sit there, organize my thoughts and I happen to
Speaker 1: write incredibly quickly. So that's that's very nice. And then
Speaker 1: you know, from a from a you know, radio or
Speaker 1: podcast point of view, obviously Rush Russia is sort of
Speaker 1: the granddaddy was all in this industry. And so Rush
Speaker 1: was the guy who I grew up listening to on
Speaker 1: talk radio, you know him, Larry Elderly, everybody who's sort
Speaker 1: of in the LA radio sphere when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: And then in sort of social media land, obviously Andrew
Speaker 1: was a major force in sort of showing what you
Speaker 1: could do in the in the new media. And so
Speaker 1: I would say that that triumph, it would be a
Speaker 1: pretty good way of defining.
Speaker 2: What else and were you inspired? I mean at the time,
Speaker 2: just even beyond those examples where there are books you
Speaker 2: were reading at the time, periodicals that really inspired.
Speaker 1: So I read incessantly. I've been reading three to five
Speaker 1: books a week since I was probably old enough to
Speaker 1: read wow. So you know, the books that I was
Speaker 1: reading on economics were things like hyek.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I spent actually less time engaging, I would say, with
Speaker 1: you know, the the non traditional media space that I
Speaker 1: do engaging with books and great ideas. I hope, I
Speaker 1: mean that that's where I'd like to spend my time. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm lucky. From Friday night to Saturday night.
Speaker 1: I can't engage with media, right I'm Northodox Jews, so
Speaker 1: all of the electricity goes away, And so I read
Speaker 1: a lot of books. You know, if you are now
Speaker 1: then I used to because I have four kids now.
Speaker 1: But that means that if I want to. What's great
Speaker 1: about that, for what I do is that if a
Speaker 1: topic comes up in the news, I have a pretty
Speaker 1: good memory bank to draw on in terms of a
Speaker 1: baseline of knowledge that I can then supplement with sort
Speaker 1: of further research. But I have a very strongly defined
Speaker 1: kind of worldview about everything from economics to foreign policy
Speaker 1: to social policy that I hope is rooted in some
Speaker 1: fundamental values, which means that I would say my level
Speaker 1: of political consistency has been pretty high over the course
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades. And forty two, that's turn
Speaker 1: forty two years old this week, and I've been in
Speaker 1: this industry for a quarter century. I started writing at seventeen,
Speaker 1: and if you read stuff from when I'm seventeen, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't highly dumb, which some of it is, but
Speaker 1: if you were to find a column I wrote when
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, and it wasn't one of the
Speaker 1: ones that was like trying to get attention and look
Speaker 1: at me. If it was one of my more serious columns,
Speaker 1: you'd probably look like lot like the stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: saying today.
Speaker 2: What do you make of the current media landscape? I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems to be the sort of dialectic between the
Speaker 2: old and the new, sort of the digital first and
Speaker 2: these legacy media companies and obviously podcasts becoming at least
Speaker 2: part of the normal. It's a conversation. I don't know.
Speaker 2: We can get into the merits to merits of overstating
Speaker 2: or over indexing podcast influence, but so much of what
Speaker 2: you seeded and influenced in terms of the right wing
Speaker 2: media even now in some respects what folks are trying
Speaker 2: to replicate with more progressive media voices. What do you
Speaker 2: make of the landscape today? How would you describe the
Speaker 2: current landscape.
Speaker 1: I'm highly fragmented. I think in some ways that's good.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways that's bad. It's had tremendous
Speaker 1: benefits in the sense that you don't have three networks
Speaker 1: and you have to rely on just those three networks,
Speaker 1: you can in real time fact check things. It's bad
Speaker 1: in the sense that, while gatekeeping is difficult and obviously
Speaker 1: can silo off information that you need to have, if
Speaker 1: you have people who are algorithmically driven or desperate for
Speaker 1: clicks and desperate for attention and don't seem to carry
Speaker 1: very much about the truth, and if there's kind of
Speaker 1: no pushback, then bad information can spin its way around
Speaker 1: very very quickly, and it doesn't take long for people
Speaker 1: to draw extremely hard narratives about I would say, convoluted
Speaker 1: sets of facts. And I think that you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: politicians sometimes have a position in doing this because if
Speaker 1: you're catering to a base, and obviously an everybody has
Speaker 1: to be aware of audience capture. In my industry, in politics,
Speaker 1: you have to be very aware of audience capture because
Speaker 1: you need to win votes. But I mean, just to
Speaker 1: take as a recent example what happened in Minneapolis, I
Speaker 1: think that the enormy response to what happened in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: is this is obviously a tragedy. From a sort of
Speaker 1: legal perspective, putting on my lawyer hat, the intent of
Speaker 1: renee Good is not relevant to the question of the
Speaker 1: intent of the officer. Right if you're going to if
Speaker 1: you're going to prosecute the officer, then you'd have to
Speaker 1: determine whether an objective reasonable officer would have perceived that
Speaker 1: he was being threatened by her vehicle when when he
Speaker 1: shot her. And it seems to me that you could,
Speaker 1: you could voice a fairly strong defense in a court
Speaker 1: of law that an objectively reasonable offster, since he actually
Speaker 1: was nudged with the car at the very least, would
Speaker 1: would have perceived it that way. Now, this immediately broke
Speaker 1: down into two separate narratives, both of which I think
Speaker 1: are untrue. One was a narrative that was immediately pushed
Speaker 1: by the Trump administration and Secretary of Homeland Security Christino
Speaker 1: and that she was a domestic terrorist who's attempting to
Speaker 1: run over officers with her car and was legitimately trying
Speaker 1: not not just this officer, but multiple officers. That was
Speaker 1: the original statement I said at the time. I thought
Speaker 1: that was untrue. And then your press office tweeted out
Speaker 1: that it was state sponsored terrorism, which I mean, Governor,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about that that that sort
Speaker 1: of thing makes our politics worse. I mean it does,
Speaker 1: and our ice officers obviously are not terrorists. A tragic
Speaker 1: situation is not state sponsored terrorism. When it comes to ICE,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll ask you this just generally about policy
Speaker 1: with REGARDIS, because obviously it's become incredibly contentious given what
Speaker 1: the federal government is doing. In states like California, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that there have been a number of
Speaker 1: deportations from red states where there are governors in localities
Speaker 1: working with ICE. California is a sanctuary state, which makes
Speaker 1: it much more difficult for local law enforcement to hand
Speaker 1: over information to ICE about deportation status. What's the purpose
Speaker 1: of that? Wouldn't best policy? You're pragmatic, You talk about
Speaker 1: your pragmatism all the time. Wouldn't best policy be to
Speaker 1: cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases? So
Speaker 1: instead of ICE going to, as you say, hospitals and
Speaker 1: churches to f pike people up, they be going to
Speaker 1: jail houses.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what they do in California, And we have
Speaker 2: over ten thousand that I've cooperated with since I've been
Speaker 2: governor of California. We worked very directly with ICE as
Speaker 2: it relates to CDCR state prison. Californias cooperated with more
Speaker 2: ICE transfers probably than any other state in the country,
Speaker 2: and I've vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come
Speaker 2: from my legislature to stop the ability for the state
Speaker 2: of California to do that. So, when it comes to
Speaker 2: the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to Falon's
Speaker 2: people that are being released from the largest state system
Speaker 2: in the United States of America, California cooperates with ICE.
Speaker 1: Okay, But why is it then? What makes it a
Speaker 1: sanctuary state.
Speaker 2: Well, the broader sanctuary policies that are established, and we
Speaker 2: had a policy it was established under Governor Brown SB.
Speaker 2: Fifty four. You have city sanctuary policies that go back
Speaker 2: quite literally to the time Ronald Reagan was governor, and
Speaker 2: it relates to some of the issues in Central America
Speaker 2: sort of the origin stories. But at bottom line, it
Speaker 2: relates to those policies. This notion that federal law should
Speaker 2: be enforced by federal law enforcement agencies, that we should
Speaker 2: not consign local law enforcement to federal responsibilities and prioritization.
Speaker 1: Right, we shouldn't the states step in with localities and
Speaker 1: tell localities that they ought to cooperate better with ICE.
Speaker 1: Thus to facilitate well, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I have sort of Rudy Giuliani's point of view,
Speaker 2: who made the point as an advocate for sanctuary policy
Speaker 2: when he was mayor of New York. He said, it
Speaker 2: keeps people safer, healthier, and more educated. Safer in the
Speaker 2: context that it allows community members to be more likely
Speaker 2: to participate as witnesses of crime or victims of crime
Speaker 2: in going after the perpetrators, more likely to get an
Speaker 2: immunization shot if they're not worried about the nurse turning
Speaker 2: them over to ice, more likely to go to school
Speaker 2: and get educated if they're not worried about the school
Speaker 2: crossing guard crossing them and ultimately turning them over to ice.
Speaker 2: So it's the tool of pragmatism because of the complete
Speaker 2: abject failure of the federal government. A sanctuary policy is
Speaker 2: unnecessary if we had comprehensive immigration reform and we had
Speaker 2: a federal response that was adequate to the task. But
Speaker 2: in the absen of that, it's grown from the seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties and nineties two thousands, and obviously I got
Speaker 2: here as governor, and we had an established framework before
Speaker 2: I got here.
Speaker 1: It is true that sanctuary policy obviously has had a
Speaker 1: massive impact as a driver of tremendous number of illegal
Speaker 1: immigrants in the state of California.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I mean, you see in
Speaker 2: a lot of states that don't have sanctuary policies, huge
Speaker 2: increase in immigration, illegal immigration, massive increases, even far greater
Speaker 2: than the state of California.
Speaker 1: Just look as in terms of the cost structure. I
Speaker 1: mean you recently, for example, had to freeze the enrollment
Speaker 1: of undocumented immigrants in state health systems to save money.
Speaker 2: Right, That's that's a separate issue. There twelve states that
Speaker 2: provide health care for undocs, and we believe in universal
Speaker 2: health care regardless. Break is a condition.
Speaker 1: The colst structures extraordinarily burdensome.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's in unpacking it. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's a sanctuary policies that are driving that. And
Speaker 2: I give you a proof point. Florida don't have sanctuary policy,
Speaker 2: a huge increase in undocumented community, huge increase in Texas.
Speaker 2: It's not a driver. They're sanctuary policies. They don't have
Speaker 2: sanctuary policies in those states. The State of California's policies,
Speaker 2: I don't think in that respect have invited people into
Speaker 2: our state. And I use those as I think proof
Speaker 2: points of that, and that's a difference. So the notion
Speaker 2: of how do you deal with people that are here
Speaker 2: ten fifteen years, how do you deal with mixed status
Speaker 2: families in this state, and how do you provide for
Speaker 2: health care as opposed to emergency care and stabilized populations
Speaker 2: and community health. It's a different approach. It's one that
Speaker 2: we've been very transparent about it. It's one that's hardly unique
Speaker 2: because in every state they provide compensated care for on
Speaker 2: docks at the emergency room. Many states provide it for children,
Speaker 2: many for seniors. California provides it across the board. I mean.
Speaker 1: The biggest problem though, is, as somebody who left the state,
Speaker 1: is that the cost structure in the state has become
Speaker 1: so birds, not just because of illegal immigration but generally,
Speaker 1: and so the idea that policy has no impact as
Speaker 1: a magnet for particular human behavior or alienating people from
Speaker 1: a state, that's clearly untrue. And when you look at
Speaker 1: the homeless population, for example, friendlier policies toward providing services
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: Point though, but now you're getting a homeless policy, non
Speaker 2: immigration policy.
Speaker 1: Of immigration policy. I want to make it easier for
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants. Let's stick with immigration to what ICE than
Speaker 1: presumably no.
Speaker 2: Look, I appreciate this, so we've established important I appreciate
Speaker 2: the question because I'm glad we've established that we do
Speaker 2: cooperate with ICE in California, in particular this governor, who,
Speaker 2: as I said, on multiple ocasions, vetoed efforts to stop
Speaker 2: me from that coordination for dangerous criminals. And we've done
Speaker 2: that over ten thousand folks.
Speaker 1: So it'd been wrong for us. So when AOC said
Speaker 1: this week that I should be abolished, you disagree, Oh.
Speaker 2: I disagree. When I think a candidate for president by
Speaker 2: the name Maharris said that in the last a cana
Speaker 2: I came out, it was I remember being on Chris
Speaker 2: Hayes hours later saying, I think that's a mistake. So
Speaker 2: absolutely Number two, as it relates to the issue of
Speaker 2: sanctuary policy, I think it's important to establish because it's
Speaker 2: not well established. Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates, lower
Speaker 2: crime rates than non sanctuary jurisdictions. So this notion that
Speaker 2: it somehow increases crime is also I think contradicted on
Speaker 2: the basis of the facts. So this notion that population
Speaker 2: it becomes an attractive nature for population increases. I think
Speaker 2: is contradicted by the facts as it relates to crime.
Speaker 2: It's contradicted by the facts. But there's unquestionably, and you're
Speaker 2: right about this as it relates to an expansion of services,
Speaker 2: but not just for sanctuary jurisdictions, for population diverse populations. Yes,
Speaker 2: there are states like California that have chosen a different approach.
Speaker 1: And that approach I mean means that when you came
Speaker 1: into office, for example, the budget was two hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 1: and your proposed budget last year or this year is
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 2: The general funds two hundred and forty eight billion. We
Speaker 2: have forty two point three billion dollar additional revenue structure
Speaker 2: then we anticipated. By the way, another two point eight
Speaker 2: came in in December, and California is now replenishing its
Speaker 2: reserves twenty three billion dollars, paying down pension obligations eleven
Speaker 2: point eight billion dollars. There's no question there cost pressures,
Speaker 2: its rates to medicate are medical and medical in California,
Speaker 2: and those pressures are going to be made worse because
Speaker 2: of the big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I think that the main pressures in
Speaker 1: the state of California in terms of kind of future
Speaker 1: cost looks like some of the programs that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: mainly if we're going to look at it, CalPERS cost hours,
Speaker 1: the fact that you have perhaps five hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: in unfunded liabilities going forward, well.
Speaker 2: In which we've substantially improved in the last seven years.
Speaker 2: I just mentioned the eleven point eight billion dollar commitment.
Speaker 2: We've highlighted that in the state of the state to
Speaker 2: pay down long term pension obligations stirs and purrs. Their
Speaker 2: funded liability has been improving over the last five or
Speaker 2: six years, can make up for the last thirty years.
Speaker 2: You may recall a decade plus ago we did reforms
Speaker 2: for new employees moving in. We dealt with spiking and
Speaker 2: other issues and abuses in that space. We're hardly unique
Speaker 2: in this country as it relates to unfunded liability.
Speaker 1: But there are fraud issues obviously, and fraud issues.
Speaker 2: Let's we can talk about fraud all day. I'd love
Speaker 2: to talk about that, and we could get back to
Speaker 2: that because I think it's incredibly important topic in California
Speaker 2: has been actually out front on a lot of these
Speaker 2: anti fraud efforts, and you know, I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, a lot of bs in this
Speaker 2: space as it relates to sort of targeted assaults and
Speaker 2: offense that obviously are big pentapolgects. But I want to
Speaker 2: go back because we're going to get all of this.
Speaker 2: I know everyone came here for all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Of course, before we do, they just want to ask.
Speaker 1: There's sort of a general take that I have, and
Speaker 1: that is I heard the podcast Theater with Esra Client.
Speaker 1: I think Ezra is wonderful. You know, he and I
Speaker 1: disagree about nearly everything. And I think as was really
Speaker 1: really a fascinating person with a lot of really interesting
Speaker 1: and heterodox ideas. And he talked with you a lot
Speaker 1: about sort of governance, and you talked with him a
Speaker 1: lot about how you were trying to remove regulatory barriers
Speaker 1: to for example, building units, right because when you came
Speaker 1: into office you wanted to build I believe it was
Speaker 1: three point five million units that was that was.
Speaker 2: The stated need.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Then we created a legal framework a two and a
Speaker 2: half million.
Speaker 1: And it will come as shorty to that, but it's
Speaker 1: like twenty thirty what is it about one hundred one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand units that are being.
Speaker 2: Little little less thane hundred and fifty thousand. You're right
Speaker 2: about one hundred and eleven hundred and eight thousand.
Speaker 1: And this isn't this isn't rip on you.
Speaker 2: I mean, because it's going to have major national issues,
Speaker 2: you know in the Mauth economics of this with interistrate
Speaker 2: environment sort of post COVID environment made this housing crisis across.
Speaker 1: Although to be fair that the housing crisis in California
Speaker 1: is particularly bad. I mean their places like Phoenix or Austin,
Speaker 1: or there's.
Speaker 2: The original said yesterday and last week in the state
Speaker 2: of State. It's the original sin our inability to get
Speaker 2: out of our own way and all the regulatory thinks right,
Speaker 2: and we blew through those in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Sixty one housing reform bills we just passed, and Ezra
Speaker 2: was highlighting that interesting in New York just moved in direction.
Speaker 2: I think finally we Democrats broadly are moving now finally
Speaker 2: in the right damage direction after decades and decades Democrats
Speaker 2: and Republicans in California neglect in this space, right.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the problems that that people
Speaker 1: see and you know, there's been a big question You've
Speaker 1: asked you. You've talked about it a lot, actually about
Speaker 1: the frustration that people have with politics and the disenchantment
Speaker 1: that people have, and the feeling that no matter what
Speaker 1: they do, they can't get ahead, and that's manifesting into
Speaker 1: a lot of political polarization. And this gets too, I think,
Speaker 1: a sort of broader issue. It's not just you, So
Speaker 1: I don't mean this to be a specific critique of you.
Speaker 1: I think it's a critique of a lot of politicians
Speaker 1: that I have left and right, and that is you
Speaker 1: look at the system. You realize as the governor, how
Speaker 1: complex the system is, how difficult it is to get
Speaker 1: things done, how much gridlocked there is in the system.
Speaker 1: But politicians, in order to get elected, have to make
Speaker 1: a lot of promises about how much things are going
Speaker 1: to change in the future, and they usually are talking
Speaker 1: about using the power of government in order to facilitate
Speaker 1: and make that change happen, particularly on the democratic side
Speaker 1: of the aisle. And it seems to me that that
Speaker 1: is a recipe for disaster for the American body politic,
Speaker 1: because if you make promises that cannot be fulfilled because
Speaker 1: the system does not allow for it to be fulfilled.
Speaker 1: People inherently end up frustrated. And you know, I have
Speaker 1: relatives who still live in the state of California. I
Speaker 1: visit it routinely, and they're making a very good living.
Speaker 1: I have a sister in law and brother in law
Speaker 1: live in LA. They make a combined excellent living, and
Speaker 1: they're barely making their mortgage. And the housing costs are
Speaker 1: too high. The cost of living is too high. I
Speaker 1: believe the poverty rates in California on a cost adjusted
Speaker 1: basis are some of the highest in the nation.
Speaker 2: Right there with Florida. When you look at the supplemental poverty. Next,
Speaker 2: when you look at poverty broadly, to find it's slightly
Speaker 2: above average supplemental Florida and California a right.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at real estate costs in particular, are
Speaker 1: extraordinary in the state of calif As you say, you know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to remove regulations. But the problem is that
Speaker 1: unless we are willing to recognize a fundamental reality, which
Speaker 1: is that the relationship of the American people with their
Speaker 1: government needs to change. And what that means is that
Speaker 1: we need to radically, radically remove the regulatory structures that
Speaker 1: allow for more building. That we need to radically stop
Speaker 1: perverting markets when it comes to how we make housing policy.
Speaker 1: That we need to stop wasting money in taxpayer funding
Speaker 1: on things like, for example, a gigantic once called the
Speaker 1: boon Zago high speed rail that is going to cost
Speaker 1: an access of one hundred billion dollars in this state,
Speaker 1: you know, the guarantee. And again I see it rising
Speaker 1: on the populist right too, which is sort of a
Speaker 1: big government right, which is something I object to on
Speaker 1: a sort of classically conservative level. The promises that are
Speaker 1: made that if you give government more power and more
Speaker 1: tax payer revenue, that suddenly these problems are going to
Speaker 1: be alleviated, and the actual result, which is less ability
Speaker 1: to move to do what my parents did, to move
Speaker 1: from a two bedroom small house in Burbank to a
Speaker 1: four bedroom, slightly larger house in North Hollywood, and then
Speaker 1: for me to go to a great state school like UCLA,
Speaker 1: and then for me to go to Harvard Law School,
Speaker 1: and now to have a really really nice house. You know,
Speaker 1: I did have a nice house in California before before
Speaker 1: we left. Obviously, you know, those obstacles need to be.
Speaker 2: Well, you sound like me. I couldn't agree the more
Speaker 2: I mean, we get high speed rail aside, you made
Speaker 2: my speech in my argument last three years in terms
Speaker 2: of the housing reforms we pursued, could not agree more.
Speaker 2: I highlighted the sixty one bills just last year. I
Speaker 2: didn't highlight the forty two secret reform bills. The origin
Speaker 2: you talk about process and regulatory thickets those environmental rules
Speaker 2: that were established, ironically by Ronald Reagan himself when he
Speaker 2: was governor of California. So we've been in the process
Speaker 2: of doing precisely what you're suggesting we need to do,
Speaker 2: and we've been doing it very meaningfully and been nation
Speaker 2: leading reforms in this space. Now, of course, the private
Speaker 2: sector needs to catch up in the context of interest
Speaker 2: rate environment becoming more favorable. But now we are cities
Speaker 2: and counties we put on notice. Maybe recall when I
Speaker 2: first became governor, I sued Huntington Beach, the first city,
Speaker 2: because they were out of compliance with their housing element.
Speaker 2: We established a legally legally binding goal of two and
Speaker 2: a half million units. We talked about the stretch goal,
Speaker 2: what needed to get some equilibrium in our prices, the
Speaker 2: supply demand imbalance, but we created a legally binding goal
Speaker 2: of two and a half million.
Speaker 1: So what we've done to make that happen in not
Speaker 1: Hunting Beach, but La San Francisco.
Speaker 2: Was Well, we've we created a housing of accountability unit.
Speaker 2: We pursued forty six actions we've unlocked.
Speaker 1: I guess the question is from like the common man perspective,
Speaker 1: right from my perspective where I left, I took my business.
Speaker 1: Right from that perspective, how do we get to the
Speaker 1: material change? And if we cannot, then perhaps that requires
Speaker 1: a complete rethink. Come over to my classical libertarian economics.
Speaker 1: Here the owner is I guess I'm what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and maybe recognize that the amount of tax revenue that's
Speaker 1: taken in in the state perverts the market incentives. That
Speaker 1: what's been generated in the state is a middle class
Speaker 1: that is really struggling, vast social services for people who
Speaker 1: are at poverty line or below and slightly above. And
Speaker 1: then you know a group of people who are either
Speaker 1: so wealthy they don't care, or so wealthy now that
Speaker 1: now they're leaving right because of the perspective wealth tax,
Speaker 1: which I know you oppose, right, you understand markets. So
Speaker 1: that's why I'm always a little bit bewildered when their
Speaker 1: measures taken by the state legislature that end up perverting
Speaker 1: markets in fairly serious way.
Speaker 2: Well, we can get into the corony capitalism, state capitalism,
Speaker 2: and the tithings from Nvidia and AMD and what's going
Speaker 2: on with Intel and what's happening with the Trump administration
Speaker 2: in that respect. But I agree with you broadly in
Speaker 2: all this. I mean, the fact is we've been tackling
Speaker 2: all I can make up for fifty sixty years, and
Speaker 2: you're talking about literally a fifty year trend line as
Speaker 2: it relates to the issues of cost of housing and affordability.
Speaker 2: But I can talk in terms of the substance of
Speaker 2: actions we've taken, tripling their income tax credits for working families,
Speaker 2: creating a child tax credit, foster tax credit, doing more
Speaker 2: as it relates to predistribution opportunity.
Speaker 1: About radically lowering income tax.
Speaker 2: Rates in the California has a tax. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: sixteen states right now, let's talk about those sixteen states.
Speaker 1: Why don't we talk about California.
Speaker 2: That's why we're going to the tax. They're low wager
Speaker 2: earners more than California taxes. It's highwag earners. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about those lowering those tax rates in those sixteen states.
Speaker 2: How about the middle class. Forty percent of the middle
Speaker 2: class in Texas pay higher taxes than they do in California.
Speaker 2: The tax we have the highest tax rate for the
Speaker 2: one percent, but the overall tax burden, and there's been
Speaker 2: independent analysis after independent analysis, is marginally higher than the
Speaker 2: national average. Okay, so the tax rate for the one percent,
Speaker 2: you're in that bubble, but ninety nine percent empyeriodically.
Speaker 1: And a person who who grew up in Californians but
Speaker 1: my entire career in California, I paid every single tax
Speaker 1: rate in the same California I started off making when
Speaker 1: I when I first got out of school and i'd
Speaker 1: quit the law firm, I was making maybe sixty grand
Speaker 1: a year.
Speaker 2: So you started out paying less than you would in
Speaker 2: a dozen plus other.
Speaker 1: States, and I didn't.
Speaker 2: It's a progressive tax.
Speaker 1: I understand it's a progressive tax. Date the problem is
Speaker 1: that when I left, I also took eighty employees, and
Speaker 1: there's somebody who's got to pay the bills for those employees,
Speaker 1: and that's typically not the state. The person who is
Speaker 1: paying the bills for the employees and the person.
Speaker 2: That's the guy who, by the way, you're talking to
Speaker 2: a guy who started to right out of college pen
Speaker 2: to paper and started twenty three small businesses, literally twenty
Speaker 2: three created almost.
Speaker 1: As so you know, as a person who round small business,
Speaker 1: you wanted to pay salaries to your people, aren't well, right?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not about the greed of the one
Speaker 1: of the person.
Speaker 2: I hated a lot of the regulations, and I've been
Speaker 2: fighting against a lot of.
Speaker 1: Them, and having to fire people because of that stuff
Speaker 1: is awful, I agree, And losing your profit margin, which
Speaker 1: allows you to hire more people is a bad thing
Speaker 1: when you were seeing I mean, I've talked to major
Speaker 1: tech founders who say today that they would not if
Speaker 1: they had to do it over again, they would not
Speaker 1: found in California specifically because of the regulatory and text rules.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about the largest startup in world history
Speaker 2: could have chosen any place to open its headquarters. Just
Speaker 2: recently Open AI and the folks there decided to open
Speaker 2: in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Story of the talent is I mean, there's no question there.
Speaker 2: In lies the formula for success. Californ has more fortune
Speaker 2: five hundred companies than it's ever had in twenty plus years, to.
Speaker 1: Be forty million people who live.
Speaker 2: Oh, hold on. But four years ago that wasn't the case.
Speaker 2: Today it's the case. We have fifty eight fortune five
Speaker 2: hundred companies. When I started was forty nine. We're the
Speaker 2: sixth largest economy. Now we're the fourth largest economy. You
Speaker 2: look at the three point one million jobs that are
Speaker 2: being created since I've been governed. You can look across
Speaker 2: the spectrum. I'm not denying its challenges, but those persistent
Speaker 2: exist in every other state. You moved to a state
Speaker 2: that has higher insurance rate, higher car insurance not just
Speaker 2: home insurance, has higher property taxes. Many of these red
Speaker 2: states they've hired a murder rates, lower wages, lower productivity,
Speaker 2: less innovation and entrepreneurialism. They're less contributory to the GDP.
Speaker 1: Of this country. So I mean not not to defend
Speaker 1: my current state Florida. I mean obviously headed debate with
Speaker 1: Governor DeSantis where you guys had had this discussion, but
Speaker 1: will I will say that some of the statistics that
Speaker 1: you use with regard to California are aggregate statistics, not
Speaker 1: on a per capita basis. So I've heard you say,
Speaker 1: for example, that California is the top innovation state because
Speaker 1: it has the highest number of new businesses founded on
Speaker 1: a per capita basis, that isn't true.
Speaker 2: You talk about on a per capita basis, more Floridians
Speaker 2: moving to California than Californians to Florida.
Speaker 1: I mean that's per capita base. That's fine and on appy.
Speaker 2: I just want to know it's established a per capit
Speaker 2: per cap at a murder rate. Let's look at infant
Speaker 2: mortality per capital.
Speaker 1: You can look at look at violent assault rates. We
Speaker 1: can look at property crime rate.
Speaker 2: I don't know, that's not I mean, I mean Jacksonville
Speaker 2: versus San Francisco.
Speaker 1: California, outside of immigration has had a loss of population
Speaker 1: for the past several years. Immigration.
Speaker 2: It's part of the secret sauce of California, going back
Speaker 2: to its its origin.
Speaker 1: I understand. But if you lose people like me and
Speaker 1: the EDI employees I took with me, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not happy about anyone leaving the state. But population has
Speaker 2: grown three years in a row. Last time it declined,
Speaker 2: it went down with eleven other states, and we lost
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty one people.
Speaker 1: If you're talking not about immigration. If you're just talking
Speaker 1: about people who lived in California horle leaving, that number
Speaker 1: is high. And again I'm not blaming that on you.
Speaker 2: You give be the case in many many states, as
Speaker 2: you know, across this country, by the way, a lot
Speaker 2: of red states, which I'm surprised you guys don't talk
Speaker 2: more about. What about the last few years all these
Speaker 2: red states losing folks. California hasn't been the last few years.
Speaker 2: These red states are Louisiana, Mississippi. Let's talk about those states.
Speaker 2: But let's talk about the murder rate. Adding a top
Speaker 2: ten murder rates in America are in red states. I
Speaker 2: think there's some real probably the most regressive taxes in
Speaker 2: the country are in these red states. Who are you for?
Speaker 1: I mean the question really again, you're the governor of
Speaker 1: California and not the governor of Louisiana. If I'm speaking
Speaker 1: with the governor of Louisiana, I'd be very happy to
Speaker 1: talk about just never hear.
Speaker 2: Anyone and talk about the governor Louisiana in the population day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the last I'm aware of the governor of Louisiana,
Speaker 1: you know, probably wasn't running for president. And also everyone
Speaker 1: else to be running for president.
Speaker 2: Were running for president. By the way, let's get back
Speaker 2: to that Bannon is running for president. He said, Oh.
Speaker 1: Goodness, you don't buy that. No, I bet that Steve
Speaker 1: would run a vanity campaign in order to garner a
Speaker 1: few dollars and some more attention from self. Sure, why not.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get back to all the California bashing
Speaker 2: here in a second, because I know everyone wants to
Speaker 2: tune in on that, but I want to talk. I
Speaker 2: want to keep going a little bit, and just in
Speaker 2: the interest of you coming all the way off from
Speaker 2: that red short floor, because it is interesting just in
Speaker 2: terms of just as you laid out the framework of
Speaker 2: the media environment in this country, and how fragment it's become, etcetera,
Speaker 2: this notion of trust and truth, and how things are weaponized,
Speaker 2: and how everybody, you know, society becomes, how we behave
Speaker 2: and how you and diet a little bit my press office,
Speaker 2: which I appreciated the direct point you made on that,
Speaker 2: and I'm not naive about that. I think about that
Speaker 2: all the time. When we put up a mirror to Trump,
Speaker 2: we've become more like him. And I'm complicit in that,
Speaker 2: not unique.
Speaker 1: You obviously we've had things in our company that have
Speaker 1: been said. That's not unique. I will say that I
Speaker 1: think that for elected politicians who are hoping for a
Speaker 1: better future or we all come together, it is a problem.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't like to catastrophism. I've criticized
Speaker 1: it on the right too, the sort of catastrophism that
Speaker 1: you see in a functioning democracy, which is what the
Speaker 1: United States is. It is a functioning republic. You know, when,
Speaker 1: for example, when the president decided to push for redistricting
Speaker 1: and then you push back with your proposition. I actually
Speaker 1: didn't have a problem with that. I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that is a that is a normal use of the
Speaker 1: political mechanisms in order to fight back by one side
Speaker 1: against another. What I do have a problem with is
Speaker 1: if you go on Stephen Colbert and say you're word
Speaker 1: there won't be a legit election in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: I die. But I feel that. I mean, if I
Speaker 2: believe it, do you really believe that?
Speaker 1: I really believe that, But then why are you running
Speaker 1: or why would you consider it?
Speaker 2: I want to make sure those because we have agency,
Speaker 2: we can shape the future. It's not something to experience.
Speaker 1: But I didn't believe when President Trump said it's a
Speaker 1: President Trump said in.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty, he wants I believe in it.
Speaker 1: He tried to truly believe the preident Trump is going
Speaker 1: to try to run in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: No, I believe that I'll try to wire the outcome
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: I really see. This sort of stuff is very dangerous
Speaker 1: to me. It really because I heard it from the
Speaker 1: right in the aftermath of twenty twenty, and you'll recall
Speaker 1: I was one of the few on the right who
Speaker 1: said this is not true, right, that Joe Biden was legitimately,
Speaker 1: legitimately elected in twenty twenty, and that if someone could
Speaker 1: provide me evidence that he was not, that was sufficient
Speaker 1: to overcome the Burgin. What Trump tried to do well,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the thing that you think many
Speaker 1: dialing up.
Speaker 2: For twelve thousand votes in Georgia you end up partying.
Speaker 2: I mean, where you signed, I'm not justifying, I'm not
Speaker 2: justifying and trying to democracy, not justifying what he said
Speaker 2: to Brad Raffinsburg or over over in Georgia, Brad.
Speaker 1: Raffis wat Mike Pens did the right thing. By the way,
Speaker 1: and sortifying the election. But my point is that when
Speaker 1: it comes to if you want the country to continue
Speaker 1: to work together, then if you set the predicate if
Speaker 1: I lose, it was rigged and I can't stand that,
Speaker 1: and then then we need some objective metric on that.
Speaker 1: Then then if you're going to say that we need
Speaker 1: some objective metrics by which we can adjudicate whether or
Speaker 1: not the election will be fairly decided. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that just in terms of how elections are
Speaker 1: conducted globally, and again I'm in favor of many of
Speaker 1: these sort of election reforms that have been proposed. For example,
Speaker 1: voter I d I think it's kind of silly to
Speaker 1: argue that you shouldn't have to show idea when you vote.
Speaker 1: But do I think that we are at high risk
Speaker 1: in the United States a full scale national elections with
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty million voters being stolen, and then
Speaker 1: that the the elective leadership is then fundamentally illegitimate, which
Speaker 1: leaves you with no choice, presumably but to go to
Speaker 1: the mattresses, which is what you don't want. That sort
Speaker 1: of language I think is really ray and I.
Speaker 2: Don't see it. But back to the point you were
Speaker 2: making earlier about the aggregate. We're talking about a few
Speaker 2: thousand votes here and there that ultimately determine that election
Speaker 2: for the nation on the basis of the electoral map.
Speaker 2: So I think it's more prone to concern than you may.
Speaker 1: Suggest specific problems that we can actually agree on the
Speaker 1: specifical I'm.
Speaker 2: With you, and that's why I'm calling it out now
Speaker 2: and I've been I try to provide evidence to back
Speaker 2: up my point as it relates to the Department of
Speaker 2: Justice and how it gets weaponized. And I've seen it
Speaker 2: from my party as well, sure as hell's seen it
Speaker 2: from Trump's part. Some perspective what they try to do
Speaker 2: with the bord tag teams the day of the election
Speaker 2: here under Prop fifty, where they send folks out and
Speaker 2: these guys are all dressed up to try to chill
Speaker 2: free expression and free speech on election day, where Trump
Speaker 2: tweets out that morning saying this is a rigged election.
Speaker 2: The fact that he's out there suggesting that all the
Speaker 2: vote by mail is illegal, and a bunch of immigrants,
Speaker 2: illegal immigrants are out there doing all of these things.
Speaker 2: You start stacking them, including trying to MiG term elections
Speaker 2: as it relates to changing maps and what he tried
Speaker 2: to do on January sixth, Yeah, I start getting a
Speaker 2: little big one.
Speaker 1: I don't want to look about those things in together
Speaker 1: because I don't. But I think they're saying.
Speaker 2: They're not all the same, but they stacked together from
Speaker 2: my perspective, not one action to some total of all
Speaker 2: of those things, including sending out ice.
Speaker 1: But it is very target targets. Here's the thing, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to argue over intentions because now I'm in
Speaker 1: the business of mind reading, which I can't do. I
Speaker 1: can well, Joump's not.
Speaker 2: He's telling you what he thinks.
Speaker 1: I know, and but he when he says what he thinks,
Speaker 1: all criticize. So for example, when he said twenty twenty
Speaker 1: was a rigged election, he said, you'll recall in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: On the night of the election, he said I won
Speaker 1: before all the results were in. I came out before anybody.
Speaker 1: And I said, that's wrong. The election is not over yet,
Speaker 1: all the votes have not been counted, so so that
Speaker 1: so I tried to I try, and I think the
Speaker 1: responsible thing to do is and I don't always do this,
Speaker 1: but I think that the responsible thing to do is
Speaker 1: to try and hone in on the specific behavior. So
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned that it would be election rigging.
Speaker 1: You know, if President Trump is pushing for jerrymandering and
Speaker 1: in Indiana, I don't think that's election rigging. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's election rigging when you jerrymander in California. I
Speaker 1: think that is a long practice part of American politics.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that you did anything wrong actually
Speaker 1: in pushing fort in California, as much as it does
Speaker 1: not benefit the party that I tend to vote for
Speaker 1: and of whom i'm a member of which i'm a member.
Speaker 1: So you know, when the general tenor and this is
Speaker 1: what I see in democraphic, in democratic crises that you
Speaker 1: see around the world, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: see is both sides saying if the other side wins,
Speaker 1: it was Ray.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you on that, though I want to
Speaker 2: make a double down on being crystal clear. I can't
Speaker 2: stand that anymore than you can stand that. I couldn't
Speaker 2: agree with you more. I'm concerned about the inputs between
Speaker 2: now in twenty twenty eight, including concerned about folks that
Speaker 2: you know well, Steve Bannon and others saying there'll be
Speaker 2: a third Trump term. The fact that I was in.
Speaker 1: The he's totally full of shit. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think that people should stop giving Steve attention for
Speaker 1: saying things that are complete horseship, and.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. But should I give attention to Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: When I sat there in the Oval office for ninety
Speaker 2: minutes and he tells me to turn around and there's
Speaker 2: a picture on the wall or painting on the wall
Speaker 2: of FDR and I look at him and I smiled,
Speaker 2: and he goes, I said, oh, here's the third term.
Speaker 2: He goes, what about four terms? Should I take him seriously?
Speaker 1: Okay? Soorry?
Speaker 2: I take him literally? Will I? Will? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just a question, you know, and my my general
Speaker 1: the president and my general answer to this is if
Speaker 1: we've watched Donald Trump for ten years, ten years and
Speaker 1: we're still doing the thing where we all take him
Speaker 1: explicitly literally, I think that did so people has Okay,
Speaker 1: it turns out should But you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I remember I would get this critique about
Speaker 1: President Trump a lot, is President Trump, who, as I've
Speaker 1: said multiple times on his on his epitaph, it will
Speaker 1: it will read forty fifth and forty seven presidents of
Speaker 1: the United States. He said, a lot of shit, you know,
Speaker 1: like the the thing that I.
Speaker 2: I take my presidents a little more seriously.
Speaker 1: I don't see I don't think you do. And this
Speaker 1: is this is the thing where I really, I really
Speaker 1: doubt it. I see a lot of people who will
Speaker 1: Trump will will fire off a random tweet and everybody
Speaker 1: kind of laughs because it's President Trump. If I'm to
Speaker 1: pretend that that is coming from the same thought process
Speaker 1: as whatever comes from Joe Biden's press office, which went
Speaker 1: through seven layers and maybe not the president very different,
Speaker 1: then I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pretend that's the
Speaker 1: same thing, because I'm not an idiot, you know.
Speaker 2: Side look, and by the way, I could not agree
Speaker 2: the more. And that's I think reflected in the humor
Speaker 2: I'm trying to put back in on my social idiot.
Speaker 1: And actually, I think it's a problem for you because
Speaker 1: I think that, frankly, the stuff that you're doing is
Speaker 1: more thought out than the stuff that President Trump does.
Speaker 1: Meaning I think the President Trump is waking up at
Speaker 1: three in the morning if you want to sleep at all,
Speaker 1: and he's firing off stuff on truth social right, and
Speaker 1: so am I supposed to take that as seriously as
Speaker 1: you in a methodical fashion and saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to prank him back. And I think that
Speaker 1: people on you know, people who are your supporters, do
Speaker 1: take you in that way more literally then they would
Speaker 1: be apt to take president.
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, a lot of my support has
Speaker 2: been offended by by what we're trying to do. But
Speaker 2: but no, look and and a lot I think appreciate
Speaker 2: the humor that we bring to it, and I do
Speaker 2: think it. I think it's reflected, and I think a
Speaker 2: sense of agreement that we have in that respect a
Speaker 2: really so what Trump puts out all the time.
Speaker 1: But like, if you win the twenty twenty eight election,
Speaker 1: I will call you presidents of the United States, right
Speaker 1: because that election will be legitimate.
Speaker 2: And if it's I was, you know, as an American
Speaker 2: called Donald Trump president ed States, mister president, I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, And so I'm with you on that, But
Speaker 2: that doesn't suggest that I believe for a second, and
Speaker 2: you haven't respectfully convinced me that I'm wrong or errant
Speaker 2: that he won't do everything in his power to manipulate
Speaker 2: the outcome. Do I expect. I think it's time of life.
Speaker 2: If he was twenty years younger, I absolutely believe he'd
Speaker 2: run for a third term. But at time of life
Speaker 2: suggests that that's not going to be the case. But
Speaker 2: I do think he's going to try hard.
Speaker 1: This also implicated that you see the reason I'm concerned
Speaker 1: about this because it also implicates the guardrails. So, as
Speaker 1: you've talked about in your state, there's a lot of gridlock,
Speaker 1: right There are a lot of various moving parts when
Speaker 1: you're trying to get something done at the state level.
Speaker 1: You've got local governments that can impede you. You've got
Speaker 1: a legislature that can say no to you. You've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of be judiciary that will that will tell
Speaker 1: you no in in certain areas. You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: a ruling a couple of weeks ago that I that
Speaker 1: I strongly agree with from the judiciary with regard to,
Speaker 1: for example, school districts and what they can and should
Speaker 1: tell parents about about their kids.
Speaker 2: That'll get but but you know what decision, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: when when it when it comes to you know what
Speaker 2: President Trump is or is not trying to do.
Speaker 1: The problem is when we say that he will try
Speaker 1: to he will try to steal iss will the election
Speaker 1: be stolen? That relies now on a an opinion about,
Speaker 1: for example, the Supreme Court of the United States, or
Speaker 1: an opinion about the various state legislatures and courts, and
Speaker 1: and so now you're not just implicating what President Trump
Speaker 1: might try to do, You're now implicating pretty much every
Speaker 1: major institution that is electoral in nature.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of evidence, and I know both
Speaker 2: sides have argued a lot of evidence as relates the
Speaker 2: weaponization justice and the bias that's expressed in a lot
Speaker 2: of these federal judicial opinions. And and it's, uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a little arming. I mean, as a father of
Speaker 2: a judge who revers thes and you know, as someone
Speaker 2: that I was very proud my father may have been
Speaker 2: accused of being an activist judge, but many occasions call
Speaker 2: in balls and strikes, and you know, I revere that
Speaker 2: sense of justice. That's that's where justice is found with
Speaker 2: an objective analysis. But no, I do worry about the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. You may not. I'm concerned about the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court of the United States. I'm concerned about what Donald
Speaker 2: Trump did after January sixth, the degree that he went
Speaker 2: to ultimately try to stay in office. Yes, I'm concerned
Speaker 2: about the actions he's taken, not any one of them
Speaker 2: from the midterm redistricting, but the sum total of many
Speaker 2: of them. And yes, I'm concerned. If we don't take
Speaker 2: back the House of Representatives and we have no oversight
Speaker 2: and we continue to have the Supine Congress, we may
Speaker 2: not have a country that we recognize. I really believe
Speaker 2: that I do.
Speaker 1: And it's fine to believe all of those things. I
Speaker 1: will say that to articulate them as though they are
Speaker 1: all of equal levels of alarm, or that the sum
Speaker 1: total of them is that if we don't win the
Speaker 1: next election, the country's over, which again is something that
Speaker 1: you hear very often from the right too. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that that sort of alarmism is quite bad for
Speaker 1: American politics. And I don't think that anyone who's in
Speaker 1: electoral politics actually believes that, because I promise you that
Speaker 1: if a Republican wins in twenty twenty eight, a Democrat
Speaker 1: will then run in twenty thirty two, and if the
Speaker 1: reverse is true, the same thing will happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that. Look, I do. I just
Speaker 2: the level, and I.
Speaker 1: Think the American people should know that because it gives
Speaker 1: them a sense Okay, I didn't win this time, but
Speaker 1: I might win next time. And once American people start
Speaker 1: to believe they can never win or their side is
Speaker 1: always cut out.
Speaker 2: Then that's what you're starting to get. I despaired of
Speaker 2: what you're saying. What you're saying, I completely concur with.
Speaker 2: I just I have a different level of anxiety based
Speaker 2: upon my own direct experience, not just indirect, direct experience
Speaker 2: with Donald Trump, my concern about the rule of law,
Speaker 2: this notion of co equal branch government. In your book,
Speaker 2: you talk about sort of the fundamental Judeo Christian values
Speaker 2: in this country with the best the Greek democracy. I
Speaker 2: worry about.
Speaker 1: Those classes are fab checks and balances too. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: by the way, I think that the best way to
Speaker 1: do that actually, and this benefit is governor of the
Speaker 1: state is devolution of more authority back down to the
Speaker 1: state's evolution, more governmental authority back down to the local levels,
Speaker 1: and more robust checks and balances.
Speaker 2: Your lips to God in the White House's ears. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a little and I hope you remember that this
Speaker 2: notion of federalism and Tenth Amendment. Yeah, I remember, I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, the Red States. We're arguing for that during
Speaker 2: those obomba years. God bless you. No back to your
Speaker 2: being more consistent, and I respect that, and that's why
Speaker 2: we're here, and I respect you, and I appreciate this
Speaker 2: opportunity to engage even though obviously we have fundamental disagreements
Speaker 2: on a lot of these issues. Maybe not fundamental, just
Speaker 2: disagreements on a lot of these issues. Let me go
Speaker 2: back to some of the disagreements. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to paint too much and color this in because as
Speaker 2: a Democrat it's in my interest to do so. But
Speaker 2: you got a lot of attention for going recently to
Speaker 2: America Fest turning Point USA. You made a terrible decision
Speaker 2: of being the first speaker. That's just me saying editorially, what.
Speaker 1: The he that is not? That is not my decision. Right.
Speaker 1: They invited me, they gave me a lot. That's just
Speaker 1: your luck because then every speaker can come on and
Speaker 1: that's you know, I got to say what I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, and the picture what did you say?
Speaker 2: So people tuning in don't know what the hell we're
Speaker 2: talking about you went in and a pretty somber time.
Speaker 2: You know, Charlie's widow was there. He had a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, the sort of branded celebrities in the right,
Speaker 2: and Candace Owens was there and not there but became
Speaker 2: part of the conversation, part of the conversation, and Bannon
Speaker 2: and Megan Kelly, O, there's so many others, uh, certainly
Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson. So give a sense what did you say
Speaker 2: and why did you say it, and why did you
Speaker 2: choose that moment to say it.
Speaker 1: So the reason that I chose the moment to say
Speaker 1: it is that Candice Owens, who has some issues of
Speaker 1: her own, she has been saying since Charlie's death that
Speaker 1: there was effectively a conspiracy to kill him. She's implicated
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody ranging from believe it or not, French
Speaker 1: intelligence to the Israelis, to various friends and family members
Speaker 1: possibly of Charlie in his work. And there have been
Speaker 1: an enormous number of people in the influencer space on
Speaker 1: the right who have gone along with this, who have
Speaker 1: massaged it, pretended not to notice it, tried to defend her,
Speaker 1: tried to pretend that it was an aspect of that
Speaker 1: questioning her was an aspect of free speech, which of
Speaker 1: course was a violation of free speech, rather which of
Speaker 1: course it isn't you know, criticism is not a violation
Speaker 1: of free speech. It's a form of free speech. And
Speaker 1: so I got up on stage and I basically gave
Speaker 1: a speech saying our responsibility as people with influence in
Speaker 1: the public space, we have some responsibilities, and those responsibilities
Speaker 1: include truth above all. We ought to give you. We
Speaker 1: ought to be clear about what we believe. We should
Speaker 1: not hide the ball. We should not allow quote unquote
Speaker 1: friendship to trump what is true. Just because you're friends
Speaker 1: with someone does not alleviate the responsibility for you to
Speaker 1: say when they're doing something that is wrong or immoral.
Speaker 1: We should not engage an audience capture. Just because our
Speaker 1: audience wants us to say a thing doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: we ought to say it. And we ought to ensure
Speaker 1: that we are held responsible for the things that we
Speaker 1: say and also the people that we have on and
Speaker 1: how we question those people. So, of course, anybody has
Speaker 1: the right to have anybody on their show who they want,
Speaker 1: and then they should treat those people how they want
Speaker 1: to treat those people. I mean, if if I were
Speaker 1: to have on somebody who's, you know, in a deeply
Speaker 1: adversarial position. I think what's great about this conversations you
Speaker 1: can see how adversarial we are with regard to some
Speaker 1: of our positions, but at the same time still have
Speaker 1: the discussion. You know, if you are if you are
Speaker 1: going to have on, for example, as Tucker Carlson did,
Speaker 1: Nick Flentes, who is a self stated Nazi apologist, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to treat him with kid gloves, then
Speaker 1: you ought to be held responsible for that in the
Speaker 1: court of public opinion. And if we as influencers do
Speaker 1: not do that job, if we if we lie to you,
Speaker 1: if we fibb to you, if we make predictions which
Speaker 1: we are then not held responsible for, if we hide
Speaker 1: behind quote unquote just asking questions. This is one of
Speaker 1: my buggaboos. I hate it. You hear this a lot
Speaker 1: in the influencer space, mostly on the right of someone
Speaker 1: on the left as well, this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not putting out a theory, I'm just asking questions. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a difference between seeking answers and just asking questions.
Speaker 1: Seeking answers, that's what questions are for. It's to get
Speaker 1: better information, more clarification. You know, I actould have a
Speaker 1: better idea after the question of the answer than I
Speaker 1: did before. Just asking questions is usually a guy's for
Speaker 1: willful ignorance and for positing a theory without having to
Speaker 1: carry the responsibility for positing that theory. So if I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just asking questions about whether you have
Speaker 1: peculiar sexual proclivities, and I'm having evidence, I'm just asking
Speaker 1: the question, and then you say, well that what you
Speaker 1: were said, even coming from listen, I'm just asking questions.
Speaker 1: I'm not asking questions. I'm obviously attempting to impute something
Speaker 1: to you. And so this is what this speech was about.
Speaker 1: I named names in it. I mentioned I mentioned Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Megan Kelly, who had sort of gone out
Speaker 1: of her way to massage Candice Owens in her pursuit
Speaker 1: of bizarre conspiracy theories about about Erica and Charlie's murder.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Steve because I think Steve has been doing
Speaker 1: many of the same things. And so that was that
Speaker 1: was the speech at antheisy.
Speaker 2: And that you felt it was necessary to name names
Speaker 2: as opposed to imply he just felt it was important.
Speaker 1: Because because I think that I think that people should
Speaker 1: know exactly who they are listening to, particularly since they
Speaker 1: were going to hear from some of those people at
Speaker 1: the same event. And so I thought that people should,
Speaker 1: you know, be forewarned about the people they are going
Speaker 1: to hear about. Then they can make their own decisions
Speaker 1: and determined whether my assessment of those personalities is accurate
Speaker 1: or inaccurate.
Speaker 2: Uh. And the reaction was exactly as you anticipated.
Speaker 1: I think that the reaction in the in the in
Speaker 1: the room was I think overwhelming because a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people were very upset that people had
Speaker 1: been saying this about Charlie's murder, which again was carried
Speaker 1: out by all available evidence by a person motivated by
Speaker 1: hatred of Charlie's position on transgender issues in particular. And
Speaker 1: you know, all the evidence points to Tyler Robinson as
Speaker 1: being the person who shot Charlie Kirk. And so I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of people in the audience were
Speaker 1: deeply offended and upset, correctly so, at the kind of
Speaker 1: specious conspiracy conspiracy theories that are promoted by this group,
Speaker 1: by the group of folks, The sort of blowback that
Speaker 1: came afterward was really interesting. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who obviously we're very upset, and many
Speaker 1: of the people who had named I'm not surprised came
Speaker 1: back and you know, fired back. I will say that
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them actually argued with the
Speaker 1: point that I was making. They seem to make collateral attacks,
Speaker 1: imputing intents to me, suggesting that my speech had something
Speaker 1: to do with Isral, which is funny since I didn't
Speaker 1: mention Israel one time in the entire speech, and I
Speaker 1: found that sort of bizarre. And then obviously you've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the influencer war is going on.
Speaker 1: But the whole point that I was making is here's
Speaker 1: a principle. Either to go hold the principle or you
Speaker 1: don't up hould the principle. If you don't uphold the principle,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call you out for not upholding the principle.
Speaker 1: And it really is quite simple. It's not about friendship,
Speaker 1: it's not about whether we go fishing together. None of
Speaker 1: that has anything to do with the principle that's at stake,
Speaker 1: because if we want to have an honest discussion with
Speaker 1: one another, then we actually should be honest about the
Speaker 1: principles that we hold and if we disagree, we disagree,
Speaker 1: but clarity before agreement. As my friend Donis Prager says.
Speaker 2: What were you close with Charlie?
Speaker 1: I don't want to pretend that we were best friends
Speaker 1: or anything. One of the things I said in the
Speaker 1: speech is I think that it's pretty rare actually in
Speaker 1: politics for people say that they're friends in politics, these
Speaker 1: are usually not well, you're going and hanging out with
Speaker 1: on the weevenings. It's not real, okay, Like whenever you
Speaker 1: hear politicians, oh, we're best for them, it's such bullshit.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, bullshit. There may be a couple of exceptions.
Speaker 1: They're rare, okay. The reality is that they are business
Speaker 1: colleagues and associates in the same way that most people
Speaker 1: have business colleagues and associates that they see at the office.
Speaker 1: We see each other rare, more rarely than you probably
Speaker 1: see your business colleagues or associates at the office.
Speaker 2: You respected how he organized on the campus level. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, Charlie, all the echoes of things you were doing.
Speaker 1: Charlie was incredibly gifted as an organizer. I won't say
Speaker 1: that we agreed on everything politically, because clearly we didn't.
Speaker 1: But I think that you know Charlie as a as
Speaker 1: a person who was willing to go into fraud spaces obviously,
Speaker 1: and he was killed doing this, and to and to
Speaker 1: speak his principles to people who disagreed and do so
Speaker 1: in what I think overwhelmingly was sort of an honest
Speaker 1: and decent fashion. I think that was a very good thing.
Speaker 2: What Tucker Carlson in you history? Do you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure that we have a history
Speaker 1: so much as Tucker seems to object to my politics
Speaker 1: and I object to his.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I think Tucker tries to personalize this. I think Megan
Speaker 1: has tried to personalize this. I don't believe in personalizing
Speaker 1: these things. I was asked by somebody, you know, would
Speaker 1: Tucker and I ever before I'd go fishing with Tucker.
Speaker 1: I don't care. I mean, that doesn't matter to me.
Speaker 1: The question is his principles and the things that that
Speaker 1: he says. I think that Tucker. I gave a speech
Speaker 1: right before TPUs a Heritage Foundation where I pointed out
Speaker 1: that the Tucker is not an advocate for conservatism in
Speaker 1: any way that I can identify conservatism. He is he's
Speaker 1: not in favor of a more limited government of checks
Speaker 1: and balances. He's come out in favor of feudalism fairly recently.
Speaker 1: He's not in favor of traditional institutions. He seems to
Speaker 1: think that they have lost their way. He is, he's
Speaker 1: in favor of what appears to me a sort of
Speaker 1: horseshoe theory. No, I'm Chomsky foreign policy, where America is
Speaker 1: always the bad actor in the world. And so I
Speaker 1: think I read surprised, and I think that you know
Speaker 1: when when the biggest thing that the Tucker engages in
Speaker 1: and the just asking questions, which which he's very fond of,
Speaker 1: is And this is something again that is a both
Speaker 1: sides problem, and that is a general conspiracism about the world.
Speaker 1: The worst thing happening in our politics is a grievance
Speaker 1: based politics that is being set up by actors on
Speaker 1: both sides, which basically says, the failures in your life
Speaker 1: are generally speaking, not your fault. You have no responsibility
Speaker 1: for them, and you need to and you need to
Speaker 1: shift the burden of your own responsibility over to systems.
Speaker 1: And so those systems could be the free market is
Speaker 1: responsible for your failures, or the systems of history are
Speaker 1: responsible for your failures. And listen, there are real conspiracies
Speaker 1: out there. They exist and usually can provide evidence for them.
Speaker 1: That's the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: But if they you're going theory is that the reason
Speaker 1: that you are lacking in life is because the most
Speaker 1: successful people in your society have rigged the system on
Speaker 1: their own behalf, and therefore they must be brought low
Speaker 1: in order for you to succeed. First, you need to
Speaker 1: show me that that's actually evidentiarily the case. You can't
Speaker 1: just make that claim and then abdicate all responsibility for
Speaker 1: doing the right things in your own life. And the
Speaker 1: number one message that I would that I constantly am
Speaker 1: trying to give to what I would now call young people,
Speaker 1: since you know I'm of the older generation now and
Speaker 1: I exactly is get off your ass and do the thing.
Speaker 1: I hear people complaining I can't get married. It's just
Speaker 1: so hard to get married, and no one can get
Speaker 1: married these days. Bullshit. I'm sorry, that's not true. You
Speaker 1: absolutely can find someone in You absolutely can get married.
Speaker 1: Your grandparents are way poorer than you, and they got
Speaker 1: married and they had more kids. Hey, this is just nonsense.
Speaker 1: You are the richest, most privileged people in the history
Speaker 1: of the world living in the United States today. Just
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, doesn't mean everything's perfect because I'm not comparing
Speaker 1: it to perfect. You can't compare anything in life to perfect.
Speaker 1: What you can say is that if you are sitting
Speaker 1: around in a country that has a GDP per capital
Speaker 1: among the highest on planet Earth, and open jobs and
Speaker 1: the ability to move to those open jobs, and the
Speaker 1: ability to vote on your leaders, and I get shot
Speaker 1: in the streets like people are getting shot in the
Speaker 1: streets in Iran, you should consider yourself pretty damned fortune.
Speaker 1: And maybe you should start with what can I do
Speaker 1: to make my life better today before you figure that
Speaker 1: it's the system. Now, that doesn't mean they're on problems
Speaker 1: with the system. And this is why I like these conversations.
Speaker 1: And we can get very specific about policy and how
Speaker 1: we fix a policy. So it's to make it easier.
Speaker 1: But I think that the biggest the American dream is
Speaker 1: you can make it. You can right, get government out
Speaker 1: of your way, get everybody out of your way, Let
Speaker 1: let people succeed. And we do need, obviously a functional
Speaker 1: social fabric, right which is why you've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of the institutions, like I would say churches, synagogues break down.
Speaker 1: That social fabric breaking down is a massive problem because
Speaker 1: that's your safety net when family breaks down, that's your
Speaker 1: supportive safety net for when for when things go wrong.
Speaker 1: We need to, we need to, you know, on a
Speaker 1: social level, help restore all of that. But the desire
Speaker 1: by politicians to say I alone can fix, which is
Speaker 1: something President Trump said but has also been said by
Speaker 1: you know a lot of that Zarmmdani talking about the
Speaker 1: warm embrace of collectivism, which is insane by.
Speaker 2: The way nature of campaigns. The campaign promises you may
Speaker 2: on day one, right on day one and the crane
Speaker 2: Russian War.
Speaker 1: Day one, or give me more power, and I will
Speaker 1: solve the affordability crisis. Or give me more power and
Speaker 1: I will ensure that you have a good paying job
Speaker 1: and you can buy a house on a single income
Speaker 1: the way that your grandfather could in nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: And I mean, first of all, let's just be real,
Speaker 1: the heusard grandpa was buying in nineteen fifty two, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to live in. They're kind of crappy, Okay,
Speaker 1: it was like a brick It was like a brick
Speaker 1: box in Detroit, and your grandpa was working on a
Speaker 1: ford line riveting. Okay, now you're not how many people
Speaker 1: are riveting today? The answer is none. The machines are
Speaker 1: doing the riveting. Right. We should recognize the reality of
Speaker 1: our situation as opposed to creating either a false promise
Speaker 1: of utopia or a false utopian past that wasn't really
Speaker 1: existing in nineteen fifty two. The reason the United States,
Speaker 1: the reason we in the United States were able to
Speaker 1: survive on one on a one parent's income, two tax
Speaker 1: versus one hundred and four, it's because it's because the
Speaker 1: entire rest of the world did not. It had been destroyed.
Speaker 1: Every place on Earth had been destroyed. As of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two. United States was basically left untouched in the
Speaker 1: homeland by World War two, and literally every place else
Speaker 1: had been destroyed. And so that was all in export
Speaker 1: market for the United States. So much so we had
Speaker 1: to prop up our export markets by doing things like
Speaker 1: the Marshall Plan so people would actually have money to
Speaker 1: buy things. Right, And then it turns out that, you know,
Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties, reality was setting in many of
Speaker 1: the union contracts that had been negotiated weren't sustainable, and
Speaker 1: we were being out competed by foreign sources. You know,
Speaker 1: like let's just again, ignorance of sort of economic history
Speaker 1: and how people have actually lived throughout history leads to,
Speaker 1: I think, on the right of nostalgia for an economic
Speaker 1: time that didn't exist, and on the left to a
Speaker 1: sort of utopianism about what is possible that is also
Speaker 1: not possible. And I think that we should start from
Speaker 1: a position in the United States of gratitude and duty
Speaker 1: and hard work and virtue and recognition that we live
Speaker 1: in a free country where the vast majority of decisions
Speaker 1: are your own. And then if you and then let's
Speaker 1: and then let's seal what the problems.
Speaker 2: And you laid all this out on line. Since Scavengers
Speaker 2: in detailed with historic context and traveled the globe, I mean,
Speaker 2: each chapter begins in different places of place from you know, London,
Speaker 2: Oxford and Aaron, Poland. Which is interesting that that section
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk and others. But let me ask just
Speaker 2: a little bit. It's interesting the politics and nostalgia and
Speaker 2: I tried to paint this forgive me keep going back
Speaker 2: to the state of the state I just gave. But
Speaker 2: we talked about the politics in nostalgia, try to put
Speaker 2: America in reverse, but try of selling this notion of
Speaker 2: this utopian notion. And it's interesting you cast some critique
Speaker 2: not just on the right, but also on the left
Speaker 2: in that respect. And I imagine you weren't a big
Speaker 2: fan of Elizabeth Warren's speech yesterday. No, on the basis
Speaker 2: of what you just said.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth Horne was much more interesting when she was
Speaker 1: a professor at Harvard Law. I was there at the time,
Speaker 1: and she's writing The Two Income Trap, which was a
Speaker 1: much more interesting book.
Speaker 2: Interesting, let me just talk about it. And I appreciate
Speaker 2: the trap of promises being promoted in politics and the
Speaker 2: nature of politics both political parties and Trump sort of
Speaker 2: trapped now on this affordability question. As we tape this,
Speaker 2: he's in Michigan. He's part of this affordability tour you've
Speaker 2: been in and again just to your credit, calling balls
Speaker 2: and strikes. You know, it goes back even your Brightbart days,
Speaker 2: as you had some issues with the early aspects of
Speaker 2: Trump in terms of this sort of just the character
Speaker 2: personality issues. But you've been a big supporter of him.
Speaker 1: More broadly, Yeah, I did not vote for either candidate
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. I voted for a President Trump in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and I actually campaigned on behalf of a
Speaker 1: bunch of centate candidates and and did some events for
Speaker 1: President Trump.
Speaker 2: And you've been very forceful in your support of what
Speaker 2: he did in Venezuela. And I think more broadly, just
Speaker 2: in terms of looking at the picture across the across
Speaker 2: the globe, but back here in the United States, it
Speaker 2: relates to tariff policy you've very critical of. You've been
Speaker 2: critically tariff policy on other domestic issues. How do you
Speaker 2: score the first full year of Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: So I think that when it came, I think the
Speaker 1: number one domestic issue for President Trump was closing the
Speaker 1: southern border A plus, right, I mean that I think
Speaker 1: put the law to the Democratic proposal that you needed
Speaker 1: comprehensive immigration.
Speaker 2: You also acknowledged for about six months it was substantially
Speaker 2: eighty seven eighty ninety percent closed when Biden decided that he, ultimately,
Speaker 2: to your point, could do something about it, which they
Speaker 2: suggested they couldn't.
Speaker 1: Right, And the fact that they basically lied about that
Speaker 1: for several years, saying there's nothing we can do. We
Speaker 1: need congressional action in order to shut the southern border.
Speaker 2: We have more areas of agreement on this. That's put
Speaker 2: almost foreigner national guard down on the border going back
Speaker 2: to twenty nineteen. So I've been pretty consistent on that basis,
Speaker 2: And of course, California I do absorb a lot of
Speaker 2: that on our own with migrant facilities in three major counties,
Speaker 2: five migrants that working for Jewish family services, Catholic charities
Speaker 2: that did God's work. But at the same time try
Speaker 2: to put a lid on what was, you know, an
Speaker 2: unacceptable commission.
Speaker 1: So that's that's that's a big win for presidents for sure,
Speaker 1: so much so that it's not even a top issue
Speaker 1: for voters anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, he seems to forget about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I don't think he's forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: I think that he made again. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of promises with regards to mass deportations that in practicality
Speaker 1: are probably not fulfillable. And what you see is, you know,
Speaker 1: Tom Homan, his orders are, who's being a little bit
Speaker 1: more meticulous about his.
Speaker 2: Life and word the temperance come from home and jeez, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know we're.
Speaker 1: Going to go out, We're going to go after criminal
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants. Those are the people who are mostly going
Speaker 1: to deploy resource.
Speaker 2: They said.
Speaker 1: And I think that overwhelmingly by the numbers that that
Speaker 1: has been the case as far as I'm aware. But
Speaker 1: when it.
Speaker 2: Comes to questionable but I appreciate but still.
Speaker 1: Different data on that As a general rule, I think
Speaker 1: that's a win for President Trump. Obviously, I agree with
Speaker 1: the extension of the current tax rates and not allowing
Speaker 1: them to rise.
Speaker 2: You don't agree with I mean, I hate to bring
Speaker 2: up Steve Banner. I mean this notion of a more
Speaker 2: progressive tax rate for corporations and the wealthiest among us,
Speaker 2: I mean no.
Speaker 1: I think it's a bunch of I think it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of nonsense. And the reason I think that, yes,
Speaker 1: and the reason I think that it's a bunch of
Speaker 1: nonsense is because if because corporations are just legal entities,
Speaker 1: those legal entities are comprised by people. If you tax
Speaker 1: a corporation, that is still money that in the end
Speaker 1: is coming away from the people who comprise the corporation.
Speaker 2: Sounding like Romney when you were covering them in with bridepart.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that this is just like basic black
Speaker 1: letter econ one O one. Corporation doesn't like a magical
Speaker 1: existence or whereby it hires people. It's not how there's
Speaker 1: there are people who make those decisions. People get paid
Speaker 1: by the corporation. Most people in the country are getting
Speaker 1: a paycheck.
Speaker 2: You know, we have established you like the big beautiful
Speaker 2: bill is where they the tax structure. You don't give
Speaker 2: a damn about debt, But that's another conversation.
Speaker 1: No, I definitely give a damn about debt, but I.
Speaker 2: Do not think I don't appear too does he.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone seems to care very much about that.
Speaker 2: Government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to be fair.
Speaker 2: Well, we balance our budgets just for the record, just
Speaker 2: for the right.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of one.
Speaker 2: Hundred percent legally statutorily required, talked about by reserves. We
Speaker 2: talk about pandemic that's totally.
Speaker 1: Required that we are running. You know, the last several
Speaker 1: years the budget is run what a twenty billion dollars
Speaker 1: do No.
Speaker 2: We just I just submitted a balanced budget, and I
Speaker 2: mean a dominumous two billion dollar, two point stuff billion dollar,
Speaker 2: which is a rounding error in the state balance budgets.
Speaker 1: I mean, period and half a billion dollars unfunded liabilities,
Speaker 1: increased tax rates.
Speaker 2: Well, we have increased taxes since twenty eleven. I haven't
Speaker 2: increased any taxes. That's just factually untrue.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm not saying that you increased axes.
Speaker 2: You but your friends continue to believe Newsome's tax rates. Anyway,
Speaker 2: let's go back to Trumps. I appreciate when you go
Speaker 2: down the rabbit hole California, but I want to talk
Speaker 2: about in interesting so we established from your perspective, he
Speaker 2: fulfilled his promises on the border, mastery, importations of work
Speaker 2: in progress, and good people can disagree as it relates
Speaker 2: to whether or not he'll achieve that. I think it's
Speaker 2: apples when it.
Speaker 1: Comes to when it comes to when it comes to
Speaker 1: dismantling structures inside the federal government. On DEEI, I think
Speaker 1: that's a very good thing. I think a meritocracy is
Speaker 1: what ought to be about the economy.
Speaker 2: What about the quality of our lives in the context
Speaker 2: of what we deal with day in and day out,
Speaker 2: just your typical family, What his Trump done that has
Speaker 2: significantly benefited us and less.
Speaker 1: So this is where I'll go back to my funds
Speaker 1: I'm not getting right.
Speaker 2: That's a big text.
Speaker 1: This is this where I'll go back to my sort
Speaker 1: of fundamental point, which is that I think that the
Speaker 1: government guaranteeing that your life is going to be enormously
Speaker 1: better based on what our at best marginal changes to
Speaker 1: the structure of the federal government. I think that's an
Speaker 1: over promise. So I think that how our lives better. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, inflation is obviously down. It started to drop
Speaker 1: under the late Biden and then it started to.
Speaker 2: I just saw the numbers today. I mean you saw
Speaker 2: the food was up eight percent. You saw grocery groceries
Speaker 2: up eight percent, and food was up seven percent.
Speaker 1: I mean the overall CPI is running about two point
Speaker 1: six two point seven percent. That's the way down from
Speaker 1: where it was two years ago.
Speaker 2: Still now that goes to that too, I agree, but
Speaker 2: stuck where it was a year ago.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm not in favor of, for example,
Speaker 1: luring the interest rates. I think that the Federals the.
Speaker 2: Worst job market in sixteen years, manufacturing factory jobs down.
Speaker 1: Tariffs have not helped the manufacturing.
Speaker 2: I average person's paying more for Halloween.
Speaker 1: We paid a little more than they were last than
Speaker 1: they were last year on a margin, sort of sort
Speaker 1: of on on a low rate. I mean, the I
Speaker 1: think that.
Speaker 2: Can get rid of those terriffs, that would be significant. Pause.
Speaker 1: I've been a big advocate of getting rid of the
Speaker 1: tariff since literally day one. The biggest, you know, issue
Speaker 1: that I see with the Trump administration on the economy
Speaker 1: is that the promise that Trump thought he was making
Speaker 1: is not the promise. I think that it actually came
Speaker 1: out latorically so rhetorically he was saying, everything's going to
Speaker 1: become affordable again. And what people mean by affordable is
Speaker 1: I want twenty nineteen prices. Yeah, okay, no one is
Speaker 1: getting twenty nineteen prices much. We can do it, so
Speaker 1: we get in exactly if we get into a recession stagflation,
Speaker 1: would know, you need actual stagnation, right, you need you
Speaker 1: need like an actual thing, depression or recession stand correct.
Speaker 1: And so the the sort that that promise is not
Speaker 1: a coherent one. It's why I actually had some sympathy
Speaker 1: for one. He said, you know, affordability is you know, nonsense.
Speaker 1: I think what he meant by that actually is that affordability.
Speaker 1: When have you ever thought, hey, everything is affordable?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Pretty rare in anyone's life to say things are just
Speaker 1: affordable because a dollar store, right, it's a comparative.
Speaker 2: To me, now it's a dollar twenty nine at the dollars.
Speaker 1: And so specifically saying and specifically speaking, I think it's
Speaker 1: good that inflation is down. I think it's good that
Speaker 1: the stock market is up. Fifty percent of Americans hold stocks,
Speaker 1: and when the stock market is robust, that means there
Speaker 1: can be more investments in, for example, infrastructure projects and
Speaker 1: data centers and all the rest.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I'm a believer that there is in fact a bubble
Speaker 1: that's going on in the stock market because there's an
Speaker 1: enormous amount momentum at the top end, and most of
Speaker 1: the games in the stock market are happening in stocks.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that a I won't be an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I think it is an amazing thing. But I do
Speaker 1: think that there will be a winning at the top
Speaker 1: end of the market. When that happens, then there will
Speaker 1: probably be a depression of some sort. Not a great depression,
Speaker 1: but I mean, like the depressed prices in the markets.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of these stocks are trading
Speaker 1: at unsustainable pe ratios. So you know, I'm concerned about
Speaker 1: all those things. That the main critique I have for
Speaker 1: President Trump on the economic front is that investors what
Speaker 1: they are really looking for is number one, less regulation
Speaker 1: is an investment, but number two consistency and the lack
Speaker 1: of consistency at the federal level is incredibly difficult for
Speaker 1: investors to navigate. And actually I think that if the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court steps in and says no to the tariffs,
Speaker 1: you'll actually see a rather large economic boost because of it,
Speaker 1: because the Supreme Court will place the limitation then on
Speaker 1: the executive branch records so.
Speaker 2: That he can oppose with other means, though that's going
Speaker 2: to be the one the other and then that the.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court will you know, will likely step in at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 2: Six months here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Probably Again, I'm very critical of the Terran.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I appreciate the consistency, yes, just but on
Speaker 2: Trump generally, I'm curious just the.
Speaker 1: On foreign policy, which you put it to the side.
Speaker 1: I think Trump has been the greatest foreign policy president
Speaker 1: in my lifetime. I don't think it's close. I think
Speaker 1: he's been spectacular and foreign policy and that's with and
Speaker 1: that's with many of my critiques with regards to, for example, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: where I'm significantly more hawkish than the administration has been.
Speaker 2: And did you feel that way in his first term?
Speaker 1: Yes, I thought yes, I was very much an advocate
Speaker 1: of his foreign policy. I thought that that in terms
Speaker 1: of his foreign policy, he is, as he said before,
Speaker 1: he has not got us into any major wars, which
Speaker 1: is a good thing.
Speaker 2: Do you use the military sixty seven significant.
Speaker 1: Time he has used the military, and I think targeted
Speaker 1: and pinpointed ways that do not reinforce the Iraq war
Speaker 1: syndrome that you know, we need to put hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of troops on the ground. I think the President
Speaker 1: has a very good feel for The thing about foreign
Speaker 1: policy is it kind of works like the New York
Speaker 1: real estate market. It actually is a sort of zero
Speaker 1: s winner lose game, and President Trump actually is quite
Speaker 1: good at those. And I think that on domestic economics,
Speaker 1: the President tends to bring a zero some approach sometimes
Speaker 1: to his economic issues that I don't agree with because
Speaker 1: I think that you can expand the pie for everybody.
Speaker 1: But I don't think the same thing holds true generally
Speaker 1: in foreign policy, where when it comes to geopolitics, there's
Speaker 1: a winner and there's a loser, and it's all about
Speaker 1: relative power and power dynamics, and the President seems to
Speaker 1: get that on a very gut level, which is why
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. I think he did the right
Speaker 1: thing with Gaza. I think he's done the right thing
Speaker 1: with the Iran strike on Photo nuclear facility. I think
Speaker 1: he did the right thing in extraditing Nicholas Maduro. I
Speaker 1: think those are all good things. I think that he
Speaker 1: has found ways to continue the funding of Ukraine via
Speaker 1: this sort of Jerry Rignato NATO buying weapons and funding.
Speaker 1: I think that he has gotten a bunch of countries
Speaker 1: in Europe to increase their defense spending, which is something
Speaker 1: that even Mark Rudy over at NATO has said is
Speaker 1: generally a good thing. I think all of that.
Speaker 2: I don't argue with that. I mean, we can, boy,
Speaker 2: and people are looking for us to unpack that. We
Speaker 2: can spend hours and hours on every single one of
Speaker 2: these specific examples. Let me ask you, and just before
Speaker 2: we get off the foreign policy, I am curious Greenland.
Speaker 1: Come on, I don't I don't understand why we are
Speaker 1: we are attempting to make Greenland our fifty first date.
Speaker 1: It seems to me, we already have defense agreements.
Speaker 2: In well established in nineteen fifty one, we were the
Speaker 2: ones that pulled back. We can re enter and inn
Speaker 2: theah of the week.
Speaker 1: And I think that that Greenland. I think that that,
Speaker 1: you know, despite the desire to rename it trumplin, I
Speaker 1: think that I have ever heard that.
Speaker 2: But it's not trying to deal with the Donni or
Speaker 2: whatever it.
Speaker 1: Is, you know. I think that's I think that's only
Speaker 1: I think that the the you know, attempts to strengthen
Speaker 1: our bases in Greenland would be good thing. But I
Speaker 1: think that's an.
Speaker 2: Interest thing to do tomorrow, which they've already agreed to agree.
Speaker 2: I agree the whole things seems folly, but it not seems.
Speaker 1: It is invading Canada. That's it.
Speaker 2: I want to just because you write about it in
Speaker 2: lines in Scavengers, you talk about this notion of free enterprise,
Speaker 2: You talk about markets. What do you make of of
Speaker 2: Trump's interventionist attitudes, not just overseas, but as really to
Speaker 2: corporations and companies so many disproportionately based out here, including
Speaker 2: MP materials, which.
Speaker 1: Is I don't think the federal government should be taking
Speaker 1: stakes in private companies. I don't believe in what has
Speaker 1: been called the crony capitalism or stake capitalism really is
Speaker 1: just corporatism. I'm not a fan of the idea that
Speaker 1: the government ought to, you know, be involved in command
Speaker 1: and control economics with with regard to private companies. So
Speaker 1: I've opposed that pretty much every step of the way.
Speaker 1: I think it's a mistake. I think that the market
Speaker 1: has a magical ability to make things better and cheaper
Speaker 1: over time if left to its own devices, and that includes.
Speaker 2: By the way, not interfering in the independence of the FED.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm an Austrian school of economics guy. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a good case to be made that the
Speaker 1: FED really should not have control over inflation rates in
Speaker 1: the first place. I think the target inflation rate should
Speaker 1: be zero, not too and I think that we should
Speaker 1: allow interest rates generally to free float because I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes one of the great problems with the
Speaker 1: American economy is artificial bubbles that are created by loose
Speaker 1: monetary policy. I think that's what leads to the Great Recession.
Speaker 1: I think it's what also led to the inflationary spiral.
Speaker 1: Andro Joe Biden, what.
Speaker 2: Do you make of Donald Trump, and forgive me, this
Speaker 2: is you know, zigging and zagging around a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I still can't get over the fact that he
Speaker 2: sat down and had dinner with Nick Flins.
Speaker 1: So I think that that was a bad thing to do. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I think that Nick Flinn, says, is a scumbag. I
Speaker 1: think that the president has, you know, an unfortunate tendency
Speaker 1: to make nice with people who want to make nice
Speaker 1: with him. He did come out this week, by the way,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the New York Times said the
Speaker 1: Republican Party wants nothing to do with people like Nick Flints,
Speaker 1: doesn't want to do with anti Semites. I'll continue to
Speaker 1: be critical of Republicans who who flirt with this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. I whish that the Democratic Party were as
Speaker 1: critical of sitting Congress members who not only flirt with
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, but overtly traffic in this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll ask you about Zoramum Donnie Ormum Donnie
Speaker 1: literally in the campaign. In the campaign, he was asked
Speaker 1: on Fox News about from Austin. He refused to announce
Speaker 1: it as a terrorist group.
Speaker 2: They are terrorist group and they should have been announced.
Speaker 2: I was there, as you know, a few weeks after
Speaker 2: October seventh, met with BB. Not a big fan of BB.
Speaker 2: This is where we have fundamental disagreements. Quite the contrary in.
Speaker 1: Fact, but it stay in semester politics for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems to be have become a sort of Debrigore
Speaker 1: requirement for Democrats who are running for office to now suggest,
Speaker 1: for example, Scott Wiener just did this, he's running for Congress,
Speaker 1: that Israel committed to genocide and Gaza. That is, forget
Speaker 1: about anti simitism and discussions of it, because I think
Speaker 1: that those have become really loose and people don't have
Speaker 1: a consistent definition of anti Simmitism. Let's just talk about
Speaker 1: what's true.
Speaker 2: That's true. I think it's true about the definition. I mean, we,
Speaker 2: as you know, been struggling with that in California as
Speaker 2: it relates to a lot of laws.
Speaker 1: And anti simitism is a fundamentally different cat than, for example, racism.
Speaker 1: It's basically a conspiracy theory about Jewish power in the world.
Speaker 2: But and it makes me sick to my stomach. And
Speaker 2: I say that clearly, but not just of course. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've we've tried to lead in terms of our response,
Speaker 2: and we've called out and called balls and strikes terms of.
Speaker 1: The outrageous without I would you know, in my own
Speaker 1: framework of anti semitism, I think that's saying overtly false
Speaker 1: things about the Jewish state is a form of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that that is really important as
Speaker 1: much as it is is it true or not? So
Speaker 1: Democrats have now been dragged into this conversation, some drags,
Speaker 1: some run with you know, flags waving into the conversation
Speaker 1: of geneside.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, look at.
Speaker 1: Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza. There is
Speaker 1: no standard by which is Reel committed to genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Just then a factual level.
Speaker 2: A legal and factual level.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, what is your opinion of this?
Speaker 2: My opinion is I understand the tendency for people to
Speaker 2: make that, to assert that why on the basis of
Speaker 2: the images and the proportionality genocide? No. No, And by
Speaker 2: the way, I agree with you, and.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that if you kill my child and I
Speaker 1: then kill seven criminals, that I've been disproportionate.
Speaker 2: I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think the But
Speaker 2: I understand that tendency on the basis of trying to
Speaker 2: reconcile the proportionate nature of how the war was ultimately.
Speaker 1: Conduct to question, why do you feel the need to
Speaker 1: create a permission structure for that sort of stuff? I mean,
Speaker 1: meaning it's not true? Why not you say it's not true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I don't know the definition or I don't
Speaker 2: know the legal threshold. That's not my opinion, so I
Speaker 2: don't I don't share that opinion. This relates to genocide,
Speaker 2: not I do not agree with that notion that you.
Speaker 1: Do understand that if you accuse Israel of committing a genocide,
Speaker 1: that now puts Israel in the position of it should
Speaker 1: be a pariah state, because states the commit genocide should
Speaker 1: be pariah states. So granting legitimacy to that position inherent.
Speaker 2: I'm not granted legitimacy. I'm just saying the devastation in
Speaker 2: Gaza at the human level you've got four of course,
Speaker 2: it's terrible, No, but I think it's also important to
Speaker 2: absorb that a little bit more just as it was
Speaker 2: sick and we were clear in our condemnation of these
Speaker 2: people like me, as it relates to what Hamah did
Speaker 2: in that act of barbarism and terrorism.
Speaker 1: That was christroism and wartime collateral damage of wars, and
Speaker 1: if we refused to acknowledge that reality, then we end.
Speaker 2: Up collateral damage. I just I have stronger opinions. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just collateral, you know. I think some of the
Speaker 2: double tapping issues I have. I have a lot of
Speaker 2: issues without Babe ultimately conduct the war, I personally do,
Speaker 2: and I have a lot of issues that are also
Speaker 2: painted on the basis of the conversation I had UH
Speaker 2: a few weeks later after October seventh, the way he
Speaker 2: talked about the Palestinians. I kept talking about a moss.
Speaker 2: He kept talking about the Palestinians. I kept coming back
Speaker 2: to a moss and then ultimately how the war was conducted. Uh.
Speaker 2: Not saying it was a genocide, I'm not, but I
Speaker 2: have issues. What is the thing that he said that
Speaker 2: that you particularly, there was a dehumanization. I didn't like
Speaker 2: the way he talked about the Palestinian people. I just
Speaker 2: didn't What is the specific they can't govern them? I
Speaker 2: didn't specific. I don't want to get into the details.
Speaker 1: Because when it was that he is conflating Hamas and
Speaker 1: the Palestinians he wasn't does lead to the conclusion they were.
Speaker 2: If it wasn't. No, no, no, it was. I'm just
Speaker 2: saying the way he ultimately conducted it. I look back
Speaker 2: at that conversation, I reflect on rather that conversation, it
Speaker 2: doesn't surprise me. And uh and I did not think
Speaker 2: it was proportionate, Okay, and I thought I was overwhelming.
Speaker 2: And the devastation instruction breaks my heart.
Speaker 1: Okay, So your President of the United States, somebody invades
Speaker 1: from Mexico, they take several thousand American citizens, get it,
Speaker 1: and by the way, they hold them all the way
Speaker 1: until the end of the war, until the end of
Speaker 1: the war, their hostages being held.
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong on any of this. I'm with
Speaker 2: you in terms of the ultimate accountability and bringing the
Speaker 2: hostages home. I like the clarity and conviction as it
Speaker 2: relates to getting all the hostages dead and alive home
Speaker 2: and all of that. I'm not denying that.
Speaker 1: And by the way, still has not been extra paid
Speaker 1: in the areas where we're.
Speaker 2: Is and and there's and and clearly this truce, uh
Speaker 2: and detente is still a work in progress, has been
Speaker 2: a lot of destructions.
Speaker 1: Was supposed to be armed look, there's no crystal clear.
Speaker 1: The point is that they're still clear about it. But
Speaker 1: the point is that I think clear my love.
Speaker 2: For Israel and my condemnation of BB. And there's a distinction.
Speaker 2: I condemned Donald Trump. I love my country.
Speaker 1: And listen, anyone is free to disagree with Prime Minister
Speaker 1: naithania Who any time that they want. I will point out.
Speaker 2: That they're not anti Semitic when they say, of course not.
Speaker 2: And that's also important because some people like that there's
Speaker 2: don't you don't know, but others do.
Speaker 1: I've critique b B myself, mainly for not being right wing
Speaker 1: enough in my opinion on many issues to master actually
Speaker 1: but when it comes to but when when it when
Speaker 1: it comes to the the I mean, we can get
Speaker 1: into perceptions of Ninia, Who's leadership and all this. I
Speaker 1: will say this, I know every major politician in Israel.
Speaker 1: Just I know many of major politicians in Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Hungary and in a wide variety of places in Israel.
Speaker 1: I happen to know the last several prime ministers. If
Speaker 1: anyone outside of the State of Israel believes, then I
Speaker 1: tally Bennett or yeah, you're Lapede's on the left in
Speaker 1: response that is not that's not it's not true.
Speaker 2: No fair point.
Speaker 1: And look, hey, and the and the IDEAF, by the way,
Speaker 1: operates largely independently in some ways of the Prime Minister's office.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a strange duel system that they have
Speaker 1: over there. And I know too many soldiers who I mean,
Speaker 1: I talk about one in the book who had three
Speaker 1: limbs blown off going door to door in Gaza. Not
Speaker 1: not using trom not using overwhelming air power to eviscerate
Speaker 1: millions of people.
Speaker 2: I was in the hospital meeting victims on October seventh
Speaker 2: in Israel. So I look, look, you know and been
Speaker 2: the memorials, and I.
Speaker 1: Want to be clear in the terminology we use about
Speaker 1: all this stuff because right now, for example, but the
Speaker 1: gener the protests, where the protest Where are the members
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party protesting and wearing pins for the protesters?
Speaker 1: And ron we're getting mowed down maybe by the tens
Speaker 1: of thousands this week.
Speaker 2: I know where I am. I put out a pretty
Speaker 2: clear statement.
Speaker 1: This week and see more Democrats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't disagree with you, By the way, I
Speaker 2: also thought it was I thought it was the right
Speaker 2: thing to do that strike and I thought it was
Speaker 2: unbelievably effective and efficient and had no problems saying that
Speaker 2: during the strike, not didn't wait for the outcomes. So yeah,
Speaker 2: in March to beat a little bit of a different drum,
Speaker 2: a little bit more nuance here. But there is Look,
Speaker 2: it's everything's so black and white. It's just there's nuance here.
Speaker 1: I mean, for sure, But I think that that's point
Speaker 1: that I'm making back to sort of where he originally
Speaker 1: departed here, was that, you know, I'm trying to call
Speaker 1: out what I see as bad behavior, untrue and moral
Speaker 1: behavior on my own side. I'd like to see that
Speaker 1: more from a Democratic party that seemed to be perfectly
Speaker 1: willing to wrap an arm around Armandani the minute he
Speaker 1: got a little bit of momentum, the same man who
Speaker 1: had said that whenever the NYPD boot is on the
Speaker 1: throat of Americans, the IDF is lacing the boot, that's
Speaker 1: sort of nonsense. Is terrible.
Speaker 2: No, I don't associate with those comments at all. I mean,
Speaker 2: and look.
Speaker 1: For me, be in the mayor of New York.
Speaker 2: That's that's for people in New York to make that decision.
Speaker 2: That's not for me. Tom out here in California, and
Speaker 2: thousands of miles away. Well that that directly impacts me,
Speaker 2: I mean New York may indirectly, but I mean it's
Speaker 2: a little bit of different question. We'll see how he
Speaker 2: ultimately does. Thought he ran an incredibly effective campaign. I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of interesting attributes that he has.
Speaker 2: Incredibly bright, it'll be capable.
Speaker 1: I delivered a lot of terrible people who say brighton
Speaker 1: and capable.
Speaker 2: No, I get it, but and I absolutely disagree with
Speaker 2: them on a lot of those comments. And I was
Speaker 2: also I also maintained that posture pretty consistently over a
Speaker 2: great period a long period of time. And no, I
Speaker 2: was not a Cuomo fan. Uh so just for the record,
Speaker 2: uh and sorry, yeah, And I say this with respect.
Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, the Cuomo family is a
Speaker 2: good democrat. You know his father, and there's some members
Speaker 2: of the family I like a lot. But look, these
Speaker 2: are these are tough issues, and they are tough issues,
Speaker 2: and I look, look, I appreciate your willingness to call
Speaker 2: balls and strikes and a lot of folks, you know, frankly,
Speaker 2: a lot of folks in your world as we sort
Speaker 2: of castigate the right wing media ecosystem, your willingness to
Speaker 2: call this stuff out and this.
Speaker 1: Is the well, you know, I think that in general,
Speaker 1: this is the the way if we want to have
Speaker 1: a way forward in American politics, just to get a
Speaker 1: little generally, yeah, it has to be predicated on certain
Speaker 1: basic premises about truth. And that's why I keep saying,
Speaker 1: forget about you know, categoriesmic is it true or is
Speaker 1: it not true? I think one of the major failings
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party in the last election cycle is
Speaker 1: the unwillingness to say whether it was true untrue that
Speaker 1: a boy could become a girl. For example. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people looked at that and they said,
Speaker 1: excuse me, how is this. Forget about the political ramifications
Speaker 1: or the policy ramifications for just a second, can you
Speaker 1: say a boy is not a girl?
Speaker 2: And we can go down And I feel like a
Speaker 2: year ago, as with Charlie having this conversation, which is remarkable,
Speaker 2: I'm cured, did you And this is I'm just honestly
Speaker 2: curious when I'm asking this, I'm not even it's not
Speaker 2: not a loaded question. Did you or others in the
Speaker 2: right condemn the Trump policies as it relates to gender
Speaker 2: affirming care for including a reassignment surgeries in the federal
Speaker 2: prison system under the Trump administration's first term.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'd been aware of them, would have
Speaker 1: condemned them. My company was the only company in America
Speaker 1: I believe that on a media level refused to use
Speaker 1: preferred pronouns for anyone. We use only biological pronouns since
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, since we launched the company.
Speaker 2: And I say that because it's just not well known.
Speaker 2: But the Trump Administration's policies allowed for general assignment general
Speaker 2: uh firm and care. I've been a hormone treatment. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think that's change the operations. I mean, yeah, it was,
Speaker 2: it was in federal policies.
Speaker 1: Listen, and I think that's wrong. And then I wish
Speaker 1: that frankly, you you would go further. You've talked about
Speaker 1: the unfairness in sports, But for me, the bigger the
Speaker 1: bigger question is not in fairness in sports. The bigger
Speaker 1: question is whether we should be allowing the administration of
Speaker 1: chemical or surgical mutilation of minors based on generativesphoria.
Speaker 2: Well, we're gonna, I mean, Trump administration has long opinions.
Speaker 2: They've they've sued states like California, many ch other states
Speaker 2: twenty plus states. Yes, And my position is that's between
Speaker 2: the physician, it's between the family member and UH and
Speaker 2: and these these patients themselves.
Speaker 1: Why are there and are there there are there any
Speaker 1: surgical or chemical interventions that you would oppose even if
Speaker 1: the patients.
Speaker 2: Here, We go. I mean, I know exactly where this
Speaker 2: debate goes.
Speaker 1: But I'm asking. I mean, it's it's it's a real,
Speaker 1: it's a real just because it does have public policy implications.
Speaker 1: Meaning in the state of California, there is a judicial ruling.
Speaker 1: We referenced it earlier.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a different That judicial ruling was ridiculous on
Speaker 2: this basis. Any teacher, and what you're talking about is
Speaker 2: a law that I signed as it relates to this,
Speaker 2: this idea that school you can that you can fire teachers,
Speaker 2: that you can fire someone for not telling on a
Speaker 2: child and saying that they're talking about being gay, not
Speaker 2: just trans issues, any LGBTQ issues, that you can be fired.
Speaker 2: There's nothing in the law. The law that I signed
Speaker 2: does not preclude these teachers from telling.
Speaker 1: The parents, school districts from.
Speaker 2: Mandating and firing someone for not but but it allows
Speaker 2: the teacher to make that judgment. On the basis of
Speaker 2: seeing someone that's being bullied and the requirements they have
Speaker 2: under the law to keep people safe.
Speaker 1: As a parent, don't you believe that a teacher should
Speaker 1: facilitate information to you?
Speaker 2: Why would that on every basis? I mean, I mean
Speaker 2: that they should somehow.
Speaker 1: Teacher is going to call you. I meant safety about safety.
Speaker 2: The law is pretty clear and is it about, and
Speaker 2: the teachers have that ability, and the teachers maintain that ability.
Speaker 2: We didn't deny that. We didn't say to the teachers
Speaker 2: you cannot no, quite the contrary. This is critical because
Speaker 2: it's been a lot of misinformation. I mean, the school,
Speaker 2: you should fire someone and in many cases, look, anyone
Speaker 2: that's members of the LGBTQ community. How many stories, uh
Speaker 2: that you've heard of people that say, I went to
Speaker 2: my parents with my teacher that was a safe place
Speaker 2: for me in school. There's a lot of grace in
Speaker 2: this space. There's a lot of testimony in this space
Speaker 2: that I think should just provide a little bit of
Speaker 2: grace and humility. It's not a black and white issue.
Speaker 2: Teachers can still quote unquote turn in a child. They
Speaker 2: just can't be fired.
Speaker 1: I mean, but my question on that and again this
Speaker 1: is a subset of a broader issue is why does
Speaker 1: the parent not have an absolute moral ability to receive
Speaker 1: that information and require is there not a requirement there
Speaker 1: should be a requirement for teachers to turn over that information.
Speaker 2: Health and safety.
Speaker 1: Health and safety are if a teacher truly believes that
Speaker 1: a parent is a threat to a child, they can
Speaker 1: report it to child services.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so health and safety is still the standard, so
Speaker 2: that you maintain that standard. That standard is the law.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of wiggle room for a teacher to apply.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also but it's a lot of law in
Speaker 2: terms of the way of that law and that responsibility
Speaker 2: to take care of it, make sure your kids are safe.
Speaker 2: But this idea that people are going to public schools
Speaker 2: and coming back having surgeries and coming back the next
Speaker 2: day is absurd.
Speaker 1: But there are certainly cases in which in which kids
Speaker 1: are being quote unquote socially transitioned to school without parents
Speaker 1: knowing about it. I know some of the parents to
Speaker 1: whom this has happened. I mean, this is the fundamental
Speaker 1: question that lies at the root of all of this
Speaker 1: is the question that you're not wanting to answer, which
Speaker 1: is whether boys can become girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't. Well, I think for the grace
Speaker 2: of God, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I appreciate the sympathy. I always I also
Speaker 1: feel terrible for is it anybody who's suffering with any sort.
Speaker 2: Of I mean, I think it's the case generations for
Speaker 2: the time and memorial you know, God bless I just
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's hard one. I just don't understand because.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. Why is it such a I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I understand the political potency of its politically, but it's
Speaker 2: just how it's so few. We're talking about so few people.
Speaker 2: It's not about that that are that are struggling with
Speaker 2: with with with with gender ident issues. A lot of
Speaker 2: remarkable people, a lot of wildly successful people, and they've
Speaker 2: gone in their life, have credible lives. I just I
Speaker 2: don't know. There's so much hate and bigotry, so much condemnation.
Speaker 1: Much This is the part where I start to object. Okay,
Speaker 1: the idea that you.
Speaker 2: May not be spealing it no like some others. Trust
Speaker 2: this is the business.
Speaker 1: There there are lots of terrible people who say lots
Speaker 1: of terrible things. But yes, it is not an act
Speaker 1: of bigotry to say that a boy cannot become a girl,
Speaker 1: nor should my children be taught in K through twelve
Speaker 1: public schools that a boy can become a girl. That
Speaker 1: is not an act of bigotry. That's an act of
Speaker 1: rationality and biological simplicity.
Speaker 2: I respect your point of view, and you know, but people,
Speaker 2: good people disagree on this, and a lot of states,
Speaker 2: not just California, well established rules, by the way, that
Speaker 2: predate me. Again, this is not where I started campaigning
Speaker 2: and advocating on these issues, as some suggest. And uh
Speaker 2: and look, I'm with the governor, Governor Spencer Cox, who
Speaker 2: said about many of these issues, never so much attention
Speaker 2: been placed on so few people.
Speaker 1: And the problem is, I do think that on the
Speaker 1: electoral level, to go to the politics, it is a
Speaker 1: barrier to entry for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I agree with, boy, you can become a girl. And
Speaker 1: then just I do agree and realistic and.
Speaker 2: By the way, and I respect if that's your barrier
Speaker 2: to then listening to people on myriad of other issues, Uh,
Speaker 2: so be it.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. I just find it. I
Speaker 1: find it strange that even if you wish to have
Speaker 1: a public policy that pursues something different. We cannot just
Speaker 1: admit that boys and girls are two different things and
Speaker 1: that a boy cannot become a girl. Why is this
Speaker 1: so difficult?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand your point of view, and you know,
Speaker 2: and I also respect Caitlyn Jenner, you know I do and.
Speaker 1: Not respect for individuals. No, I can tell you a story.
Speaker 1: This is there's the way I speaking at university.
Speaker 2: This is a harder thing for me too, as you
Speaker 2: may know, I probably do. That's God's son, and it
Speaker 2: just it's, uh, there's a little more. I just I
Speaker 2: find the humanity. I find different aspects of this a
Speaker 2: different layers. This goes back to my sort of truth,
Speaker 2: trying to know your facts.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the story. So I was, I was
Speaker 1: speaking at the University of British Columbia. This must have
Speaker 1: been now five years ago or so, and a person
Speaker 1: who identified as Trands got up at the microphone. And
Speaker 1: obviously I do a lot of these things on campus.
Speaker 1: I used to do more of them and this this
Speaker 1: issue came up. But the person started talking about his
Speaker 1: family's biological mail. Again, you can use whatever pronouns you
Speaker 1: shoes use a free country, but you can't force me
Speaker 1: to use pronouns that I believe are grammatically incorrect.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'm not sitting here, you know, trying to.
Speaker 1: Anyway. So this so this, this person gets up and
Speaker 1: starts talking about his family and how they how they
Speaker 1: treat him, and I said, you know, i'd really appreciate
Speaker 1: if we're going to have a conversation on sort of
Speaker 1: a general and philosophical level about this issue, if you
Speaker 1: didn't invoke your family, because I don't want to be
Speaker 1: in a position of having to talk to you about
Speaker 1: what your family thinks or believes. And the person and
Speaker 1: continue to invoke their family said, well, you know, my
Speaker 1: family keeps saying that I am a woman, that I'm
Speaker 1: a woman. And finally, after about seven eight minutes of this,
Speaker 1: I said, listen, you've now forced me to the corner
Speaker 1: where I have to give my opinion. My opinion is
Speaker 1: that your family is treating you with sympathy, but they
Speaker 1: don't actually believe that you're a woman because they care
Speaker 1: about you and they love you, but they will fib
Speaker 1: to you because they believe that it is better for
Speaker 1: you or or that you will not hurt yourself if
Speaker 1: you say this thing that is that is not true
Speaker 1: the person, I'm very upset, rushed out of the room. Now,
Speaker 1: normally that's the kind of thing that ends up online
Speaker 1: as a you know, destroys video kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: went to the people who are in charge of the event.
Speaker 1: I had them cut it from the tape because I
Speaker 1: was worried about the person's mental health status. I appreciate.
Speaker 1: I called up a person who I knew, who knew
Speaker 1: the person because they'd mentioned it to me, and I
Speaker 1: actually had breakfast with the person the next morning to
Speaker 1: make sure that he was okay, good, free. So my
Speaker 1: only part way is not what a wonderful person I am.
Speaker 1: It's that sympathy does not preclude truth telling. And when
Speaker 1: you're making public policy, it is very important that sympathy
Speaker 1: not preclude truth telling. And I think that again, it's
Speaker 1: not just the trans issue.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: If the idea is that I have to protect my
Speaker 1: friends and I have to attack my enemies and politics,
Speaker 1: things get really squirrellly, really quickly, because again, public policy
Speaker 1: is for everyone. It is not just for subgroups.
Speaker 2: Ah, I hear you. We just see the world with
Speaker 2: a different set of eyes on this. I appreciate you
Speaker 2: of intellectual argument and the sort of soundness and the
Speaker 2: firmness in that space. I can't help but unpack the
Speaker 2: relationship to families and people and lives lived and and
Speaker 2: and the grace and you know, people's lives that are
Speaker 2: lost and and people that are struggling and going through this.
Speaker 2: I I just, uh, that's that's that's how and and
Speaker 2: to me, that does shape the way I make policy
Speaker 2: because it is it's it's it's it's not just science,
Speaker 2: it's art. It's it's lived experience. It's reality. And it
Speaker 2: goes back to sanctuary. Think there's certain lived realities and uh,
Speaker 2: and and one has to sort of deal with the
Speaker 2: cards that are dealt as imperfect as things are and
Speaker 2: life is.
Speaker 1: And as you know, you know, but you're you're you're.
Speaker 2: One of these. That's why you got one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty IQ. What was it?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: Jesus? And you can read your book to learn more.
Speaker 2: By the way, when I was listening to reading Lines
Speaker 2: and Scavengers, this notion of victimization and envy, the scavenger mindset,
Speaker 2: I thought you were writing about Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean when I was on with azro As,
Speaker 1: I said, it feels like you're talking about a lot
Speaker 1: of people on both sides, And I said, that is true.
Speaker 1: I am talking about a lot of people on both sides.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, one of the points I
Speaker 1: make in the book, you know, is that the model
Speaker 1: of lines and scavengers, it's really about kind of peopleho
Speaker 1: build versus people who wish to destroy. And the point
Speaker 1: that I make is that's actually an internal battle inside
Speaker 1: of all of us. If you go back to the
Speaker 1: Book of Genesis and the story of Cain and Nabel,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating story, obviously for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: which is why it's lasted for several thousand years. But
Speaker 1: what happens is that that Caine actually initiates the idea
Speaker 1: of let's let's give sacrifices to God. And then God
Speaker 1: takes able to sacrifice, but not Cain's and say in
Speaker 1: the Bible, why that is? That's just what happens. And
Speaker 1: King gets angry and God actually goes to Candy. He says, listen,
Speaker 1: you have the ability to fix yourself right, send crouches
Speaker 1: at your door. But in the word in Hebrew is
Speaker 1: tim shall you can overcome that. You have the capacity
Speaker 1: to overcome that, And so in every human heart is
Speaker 1: the capacity to be the person who builds, makes things
Speaker 1: strong or makes makes you know, if you're a politician,
Speaker 1: better policy makes the country stronger in terms of its
Speaker 1: social fabric. Or the person who's going to grift, or
Speaker 1: the person who's going to engage in conspiracy theories, or
Speaker 1: the person who's going to tear things down because they're
Speaker 1: unhappy with their life and therefore of decided false lee
Speaker 1: with no evidence that the system is to blame for
Speaker 1: all that. I see politicians who do both of those things.
Speaker 1: I think that that sometimes I look at what President
Speaker 1: Trump says and I think, you know, that's a real
Speaker 1: lion thing to do. I think that that's sending the
Speaker 1: sending the b twos to Florid, Oh was a lion
Speaker 1: thing to do. I think that that grabbing Maduro is
Speaker 1: a lion thing. And then sometimes he says things and
Speaker 1: I'm like, that is a scavenger thing to do. So,
Speaker 1: you know, this week, for example, you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: doing some populous things on economics thatrobably some members of
Speaker 1: the left woul would agree with that credit card. I
Speaker 1: think that that's silly. I think that that is that
Speaker 1: is again it's externalizing people's debt problem to a place
Speaker 1: that does not solve the problem, and in fact, is
Speaker 1: more likely to lead to people not being able to
Speaker 1: get credit cards. Because obviously, if you.
Speaker 2: Sound like the head of JP Morgan, what about rolling
Speaker 2: up all the corporate purchases of private single family owns.
Speaker 1: I think that that's I think that that is a
Speaker 1: ridiculous misdirect. Okay, that the fact is that in the
Speaker 1: state of California, for example, exorbitantly low percentage.
Speaker 2: Relative to other states.
Speaker 1: Yeah relative does this for sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, And guess what real estate here really really expensive.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, if you go over to Charlotte, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: where the real estate prices actually have been diving, you
Speaker 1: actually do have pretty significant corporate ownership. And you were
Speaker 1: talking about large corporations, not like small mom and pop
Speaker 1: operations where you own a second home to rent it out.
Speaker 1: Typically speaking, when a corporation invests in an area like
Speaker 1: say Phoenix, and then builds up an enormous number of
Speaker 1: rental units, because that's what happens. They buy let's say
Speaker 1: a single family home, now they rent it out. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they just increased the stock of rent right, which
Speaker 1: means that the rental prices go down, and then corporations
Speaker 1: typically are investing in areas where it's easier to buy
Speaker 1: and easier to renovate and easier to build. Like renovating
Speaker 1: is very difficult in places like New York and in
Speaker 1: certain parts of California, it's a lot easier in say
Speaker 1: Austin or Phoenix or Florida. And so what you've seen
Speaker 1: is actually there is not only zero correlation between corporate
Speaker 1: ownership of real estate assets and price of rent. For example,
Speaker 1: in many cases, there's a reverse correlation. And so trying
Speaker 1: to refocus on look at this terrible it is in
Speaker 1: black Rock. Blackrack does an own real estate assets in
Speaker 1: this fashion. But if you're doing at Blackstone and then
Speaker 1: it's Blackstone's fault that the real estate prices are going up, No,
Speaker 1: it isn't. And again I think that that's.
Speaker 2: Why is he pursuing two policies that you vehemently disagree with,
Speaker 2: because I think that it is failing on the issue
Speaker 2: of the economy.
Speaker 1: With the Americ governor, I think that that it is
Speaker 1: politically beneficial for politicians to tell people that their problems
Speaker 1: are easily solvable with the stroke of a pen and
Speaker 1: by blaming somebody who's richer than they are. I think
Speaker 1: that is a very easy way to get away with
Speaker 1: really bad public policy.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about it when we're a limited
Speaker 2: time here. Then, my gosh, we've covered.
Speaker 1: So much and I know everyone's it's been fine.
Speaker 2: Wait, haven't we gotten into politics and Nigeria? We can
Speaker 2: talk about Somali land and we can get into some
Speaker 2: more interesting, nuanced issues and you know, we didn't even
Speaker 2: get to Shi And there's there's a legitimately a lot
Speaker 2: of issues that I think are fascinating that we'll define
Speaker 2: more things in more ways on more days. But what
Speaker 2: do you make of I mean, uh, Republicans have no
Speaker 2: chance in this midterm right.
Speaker 1: I think that they are in for a world of
Speaker 1: hurt right now in the midterms. I mean, they're the
Speaker 1: they're the incumbent party. They have a bare majority. Uh,
Speaker 1: that alone would put them behind the eight ball. There
Speaker 1: are not a lot of swing districts that are that
Speaker 1: are kind of left because of all the redistricting, But
Speaker 1: the swing districts that that are left seemed to be
Speaker 1: trending more blue. President Trump isn't on the ballots. He
Speaker 1: doesn't really have coattails among the low propensity electorate. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that Republicans are gonna are gonna have a
Speaker 1: rough ride.
Speaker 2: Scale one to ten. How big a mistake was not
Speaker 2: expanding the healthcare subsidies or extending them.
Speaker 1: So I have made the case that on just a
Speaker 1: raw political level, and again I will say that what
Speaker 1: I do is different than what you do, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you're in the podcast space now, so this is my ballgame,
Speaker 1: But the reality is that you're in the policy making space.
Speaker 1: And I've said this to Republican and Democratic politicans.
Speaker 2: That's why I have to bring the human element into this,
Speaker 2: the human elements.
Speaker 1: See, this is where I would say, you never removed
Speaker 1: the human element, governor, But you know the I would
Speaker 1: say that the one of the things that I hope
Speaker 1: that people appreciate about the difference is that in podcast
Speaker 1: space you can be a purist, and in the political space,
Speaker 1: you get you try to get seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: buy and so when you are looking at, for example,
Speaker 1: extending the Obamacare subsidies, it is a political loser obviously
Speaker 1: for Republicans, and not to extend the Obamacare subsidies and
Speaker 1: to let it hit a cliff. Clearly, then the question becomes,
Speaker 1: what can you do that shortens the duration? If you're
Speaker 1: a conservative, if you're a Republican, what can you do
Speaker 1: that that creates a soft a softer landing for people
Speaker 1: who are reliant on those subsidies in a transition to
Speaker 1: policies that you believe will in general bend the cost
Speaker 1: curved down in the meantime, because if you have kind
Speaker 1: of a hard stop, then that's going to affect a
Speaker 1: lot of people. There's a reason why Purple state Republicans,
Speaker 1: Purple district Republicans are trying to cut deals right now
Speaker 1: with Democrats in order to extend those healthcare subsidies. Hopefully
Speaker 1: in return they will get some provisions on fraud, maybe
Speaker 1: some release of certain regulations around Obamacare. I think the
Speaker 1: healthcare system is so complex, it's so mixed. You know.
Speaker 1: Let's put this way. If you and I were sitting
Speaker 1: and designing a healthcare system there was none, then I
Speaker 1: think that we might have very differing ideas of where
Speaker 1: it goes. But trying to extricate ourselves from what is
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult situation, I think that the easiest and
Speaker 1: dumbest way to do policy is to just keep tossing
Speaker 1: money at it. But I also think that on a
Speaker 1: political level, if you never have the power to do
Speaker 1: better things, then you never have the power to do
Speaker 1: the better things. You got to get as much of
Speaker 1: the pie as you can. And that's the nature of pragmatism.
Speaker 1: As you are constantly talking about.
Speaker 2: Well said, well, I agree, rather as sentiment, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: On the issue of subsidy, it's an important point. I mean,
Speaker 2: we'd have to lower the cost out care. It's why
Speaker 2: very proud of California we created our own insulin branded
Speaker 2: drug under cal r X. We're just lowering costs, not
Speaker 2: subsidizing costs, which means socializing that cost on the rest
Speaker 2: of the rate payers more broadly, or premium payers. But
Speaker 2: on the issue of Vance and Rubio Vance or Rubio Ben,
Speaker 2: I mean in terms of whom twenty eight was, I mean,
Speaker 2: so I think that look, JD.
Speaker 1: Vance has already you know, sort of been deemed by
Speaker 1: Marco Rubios as the presumptive nominee barring some sort of
Speaker 1: cataclysmic circumstance. In terms of who I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with more politically, obviously, I would think that the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Rubio on foreign policy, I tend to be
Speaker 1: more aligned with. Yeah, I think that that the Vice
Speaker 1: President obviously a very high IQ guy. There are certain
Speaker 1: areas of policy I agree with him on. There are
Speaker 1: certain areas of policy I strenuously disagree with the Vice
Speaker 1: president right now, if you have to lay odds, then
Speaker 1: then JD is the most likely nominee. Things can change. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's very early.
Speaker 2: Who leaves first, Hexit or Pam Bondi.
Speaker 1: You know again, Yeah, in terms of this is where
Speaker 1: you get in this sort of the personality side of
Speaker 1: the business that I care less about. But I think
Speaker 1: that is significantly more likely the Pam Bondi is out
Speaker 1: before the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Thanks for coming all the way out.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you, Thanks for having me. I appreciate it's
Speaker 1: been fun.
Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro, You're always welcome back home.