Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central having newsome. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It's good to be back. It's really good to see
Speaker 1: you again. Governor. It's been a while. Um. The last
Speaker 1: time we spoke was over Zoom was at the heights
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Um. Just I mean, obviously we're still
Speaker 1: in it, but just looking at everything that's been going on,
Speaker 1: how do you think California is doing right now in
Speaker 1: terms of the pandemic. We were worried about the winner
Speaker 1: surge last year. Around this time, we saw a big
Speaker 1: spike in the delta cases. In fact, we peaked in
Speaker 1: that first week of January where we were getting body
Speaker 1: bags from outside of the state. We had one of
Speaker 1: the best summers of any state in the country, among
Speaker 1: the lowest positivity rate. In case rates, we start to
Speaker 1: see an increase, but we're now about the fifth lowest
Speaker 1: two point two percent positivity in the country. And for
Speaker 1: one reason. At the end of the day, it's that
Speaker 1: we have led with vaccinations and ministered doses. Now of
Speaker 1: adults have received at least one dose, and the key
Speaker 1: is to continue to promote these life saving vaccines and boosters.
Speaker 1: That's the only way out of this. You, um, you've
Speaker 1: had a a really rocky journey, you know, to say
Speaker 1: the least in around the pandemic. I mean, California went
Speaker 1: through a really tough time, you know, and and then
Speaker 1: obviously the whole country. So the George Floyd protests, California
Speaker 1: saw some of the biggest you know, and then then
Speaker 1: you had the pandemic itself. And then you went to
Speaker 1: the restaurant when people weren't supported the mentor wildfires. I
Speaker 1: didn't mention that I was getting to the wildfires. That
Speaker 1: was your personal wildfire. Yeah that was, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was certain choices we make. You own them, you know.
Speaker 1: Tattoo ookay hardly perfect. And those that are God bless
Speaker 1: and write a book, I hope they do, but I'm not.
Speaker 1: And I made it, made a mistake. But you let
Speaker 1: me ask you this though. Does that mean though, that
Speaker 1: as a governor you would have the same level of
Speaker 1: maybe compassion for people who mess up with when they
Speaker 1: break the rules. I always have, and I mean honestly
Speaker 1: it goes and without even just jump into the book.
Speaker 1: I always have. I'm very humble by the nature of
Speaker 1: the world in life, uh, and my own struggles and
Speaker 1: my own mistakes. And of course when you have dyslexa,
Speaker 1: you have a learning disability. Growing up, you're prone consistently
Speaker 1: to make mistakes. It's an anomaly when you don't make
Speaker 1: them steak. And so for me this notion of resilience
Speaker 1: and grit and determination. But look the key the life,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was Churchill another dyslexics and
Speaker 1: secret of all success moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: You have to own up your mistakes, don't repeat them, uh,
Speaker 1: and learn from him. And at the end of the day, look,
Speaker 1: I get it. We have to model better behavior as
Speaker 1: the leaders. But one thing I'm proud of, we've been
Speaker 1: a model in terms of science and health outcomes. We
Speaker 1: have had a pandemic, uh, like every state has, but
Speaker 1: we have not been shy to lean in take leadership.
Speaker 1: And with that comes a lumps. Let's um talk about
Speaker 1: the book Ben and Emma's big hits. So they told
Speaker 1: me Governor Gavin Newson was gonna come on the show.
Speaker 1: He's writing a new book. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: the last time governor wrote a book, his life didn't
Speaker 1: go so well. I was like this, this could be risky,
Speaker 1: but this is different. You wrote a children's book, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie it was it was really endearing.
Speaker 1: You wrote a book about basically your struggles with dyslexia,
Speaker 1: which I I didn't I didn't know you had. So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: did find it ironic that the way you discovered your
Speaker 1: dyslexia is that you read through documents. But tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about this is I just kept seeing
Speaker 1: my name, and I'm wondering what the stack of documents were,
Speaker 1: and of course wondering why I was going after school consistently.
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize for in struggling in school was struggling.
Speaker 1: I was doing speech therapy. In fact, you look at
Speaker 1: these I looked. I hadn't looked in twenty years at
Speaker 1: these old files. I mean literally doing speech therapy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Learning disability that including an inability to read completely, an
Speaker 1: inability uh to spell uh. And I still struggle. This
Speaker 1: is a lifelong issue, and of course it's not unique
Speaker 1: to me. I mean it's jaw dropping. At least we
Speaker 1: estimate twenty percent of Americans people around the globe have
Speaker 1: some form of learning disabilities, and think about that numbers
Speaker 1: usually it's tens of millions of Americans, hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of people around the globe, many that have been diagnosed,
Speaker 1: many that gotten intervention support, many that haven't. And so
Speaker 1: I just want to destigmatize this. I just met with
Speaker 1: a bunch of young kids, all of them that had
Speaker 1: learning disabilities and differences, and the number one thing they
Speaker 1: all common self esteem. And they feel demoralized. They feel
Speaker 1: that they're stupid. And I had terrible self esteem and
Speaker 1: I was in the back of the classroom and I
Speaker 1: had terrible grades. And I can't read speeches even today.
Speaker 1: So what do you do then? Before? How do you?
Speaker 1: How do you? What do you do if you want
Speaker 1: to read a speech? I don't have a speechwriter. I
Speaker 1: it's all extemporaneous. So you just remember, you just you
Speaker 1: just got to go up no your material. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing you learned. And just like you gotta work
Speaker 1: ten times hard as anyone's using parts of your brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other parts of brain. It's awkward to admit all these things,
Speaker 1: right because you want to be the guy. This is
Speaker 1: my book about how great California and I am. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had a few setbacks. But let me
Speaker 1: tell you how the best is yet to come, and
Speaker 1: it's the opposite. This is a composite of me. It's
Speaker 1: my mom, a single mom whos passed away almost twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and she's missed Kim, and how she didn't
Speaker 1: give up on me even though she struggled. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you it's heartbreaking. I got four kids, A couple
Speaker 1: of them are struggling when learning differences as well. And
Speaker 1: as a as a parent, it's my to worse, trust me,
Speaker 1: than being a kid with the slack is experiencing your
Speaker 1: own kids with a learning disability. What's the word that
Speaker 1: freaks you out the most? There's going to be like
Speaker 1: a word. That's an interesting question. I ever thought about that.
Speaker 1: I think perfection it's a losory doesn't exist and we're
Speaker 1: we're consumed by it. And uh, I just I hate
Speaker 1: our education system that doesn't incentivize mistakes. It really is damaging.
Speaker 1: Beyond words, what we need is the creative, We need
Speaker 1: the innovative. If you don't make mistakes, you can't find
Speaker 1: a new way of doing things. In politics, I mean,
Speaker 1: we destroy people from making mistakes. We do and and
Speaker 1: so as a consequence, well, there's a different store between
Speaker 1: I think destroying them and holding them accountable. Right, you
Speaker 1: always gotta found that balance. You've gotta find that balance,
Speaker 1: because I don't think you've been destroyed. You're here and
Speaker 1: you're still the governor. You know, some could say, you
Speaker 1: know your actions are French laundry. Meant that now you
Speaker 1: were taken to task, and then the people voted for you.
Speaker 1: I mean you what thirty points, So clearly people like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, government, you said we're gonna roll
Speaker 1: with you. But I think there is a balance sometimes
Speaker 1: in terms of like destroying politicians versus holding them a
Speaker 1: comunortable Could they have power over people's lives and and
Speaker 1: and and not only are you right? Let me make
Speaker 1: a distinction about the point I was making, because I
Speaker 1: didn't say it effectively enough. It's not being held to account.
Speaker 1: You need to held us to a higher level of
Speaker 1: accountability because of our unique positions. We have not just
Speaker 1: formal authority, but we should have we should have some
Speaker 1: moral authority. So I could not agree more. But I
Speaker 1: think about in terms of policy in terms of good
Speaker 1: intentions gone awry, not the failings, but trying new things,
Speaker 1: being willing to take risks as it relates to it.
Speaker 1: And that's where people say, so what, that's you know,
Speaker 1: they try to make that investment the basements complete and
Speaker 1: embarrassment and failure. And then it's you know, attacking your
Speaker 1: monofor And that's where in privacy, I have twenty businesses
Speaker 1: I started as a as an entrepreneur. Restaurants, hotel, wineries.
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of pend to paper myself. No no, inheritance,
Speaker 1: no no. And you know all I did, I actually
Speaker 1: did at every month. Gave an award to the person
Speaker 1: who screwed up the most. We had a failure award.
Speaker 1: We've worked in your company. It's never too late, never
Speaker 1: too late. And the reason you did this is an
Speaker 1: incentivized initiative and responsibility. We're not victims. Be accountable. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you this then, using your entrepreneurial spirit and
Speaker 1: mind combined with your leadership, let's look at California. And
Speaker 1: California is not the only place. Please don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but you know, we've seen a spate of like you know,
Speaker 1: shoplifting and like these mass things where they drive in,
Speaker 1: they steal a bunch of stuff and they go and
Speaker 1: then we see some police chiefs now I take what
Speaker 1: they say with a pinch of salt. But some of
Speaker 1: them say like, oh, it's because people know they can
Speaker 1: go and steal three dollars worth of things. And then
Speaker 1: because there is you know, no bail anymore for shoplifting,
Speaker 1: no matter how big the scale, people understand the risk
Speaker 1: versus reward ratio of what they're doing. So how do
Speaker 1: you find a creative way to create a safe estate
Speaker 1: for people whilst also not jumping into the you know,
Speaker 1: the industrial prison complex and then punishing people who shouldn't
Speaker 1: be punished because they can't afford to pay bail. How
Speaker 1: do you find that balance using that entrepreneurial mind. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm in any position to answer that for two reasons.
Speaker 1: When I come from California, which led the nation and
Speaker 1: the lock them up three strikes in around or the others.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were on the forefront of that, and
Speaker 1: we saw prisons increase hundred seventy five thousand people a peak.
Speaker 1: We had opened dozens of prisons and actually only open
Speaker 1: up one new you see, in that process, and yet
Speaker 1: crime kept going up and up and up. We advanced
Speaker 1: reforms and we saw crime go down. Let me be specific,
Speaker 1: these folks particularly on one of those networks. Every single
Speaker 1: day it's talking about something called Prop. Forty seven in
Speaker 1: California that was a reform in two thousand fourteen. As
Speaker 1: it relates to the issue of shoplifting and property crimes,
Speaker 1: it would be a felony if it was a crime
Speaker 1: that was committed that was nine dollars of goods, whereas
Speaker 1: different four hundred dollars roughly four fifty. The reality is,
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, property crimes went down, larceny went down,
Speaker 1: shoplifting went down fifteen eighteen nineteen, So if it's the
Speaker 1: cause of the spike, it must have been the cause
Speaker 1: for the decline. Now what's happening with the detail theft
Speaker 1: is unacceptable. We have to hold people to account and
Speaker 1: we're doing that, and these are crimes well beyond the
Speaker 1: n thresholds. So it's it's rather specious these arguments. Plus
Speaker 1: thirty nine states thirty nine Republican states, not just democrats
Speaker 1: state did the same thing that California did. Thirty one
Speaker 1: states today have higher felony thresholds in the state of California. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: Texas has higher violent crime rights in California and property
Speaker 1: crime rights. Why isn't Fox talking about those states? They
Speaker 1: are scapegoading these reforms because they don't support the reforms.
Speaker 1: I'm open argument, interested in evidence. If we find that
Speaker 1: these reforms are not producing as they were intended, then
Speaker 1: we will own that. Same time, we have to own
Speaker 1: the responsibility to dress these organized criminal rings and these
Speaker 1: retail thefts are being done at scale Minnesota and Shas,
Speaker 1: not just California, and that's a whole different paradigm and
Speaker 1: challenge and we are responsible again accountable to addressing that
Speaker 1: issue and we're doing that well. Thank you for the time,
Speaker 1: Thank you for writing a really fun book, and I
Speaker 1: hope to see you again on the show. Great to
Speaker 1: see you. Ben and Emma's Big Hits is available now.
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