Judging Freedom - A Conversation with Larry Elder - CA Dems & the Woke Agenda

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Author, commentator and host of The Larry Elder Show. Larry's PAC - ElderForAmerica.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here on Judging Freedom. Today I have a very special guest who I am privileged to know as a colleague and a friend for many years back in my Fox days when my guest was a regular guest on Fox. You may know him as the person who almost became in a shock election the governor of California. I know him as a brilliant legal scholar, as a graduate of Brown University and the University of Michigan Law School, who believes that our rights come from within us and not from the government. I speak, of course, you recognize him, of the great Larry Elder. Larry, what a pleasure from the snowy hills of Northwest New Jersey to wherever you are, probably on a beach somewhere in California. Welcome to Judging Freedom.

Judge, thank you so much for having me i appreciate it of course what what lesson did you learn in your almost upset uh in the election in california where you took on a very unpopular totalitarian governor who basically said do as i say not as i do but the do as i say was extremely dictatorial and in your face figuratively and literally. What did you learn from that experience? Well, Judge, I'm not sure I learned all that much other than I have a renewed appreciation for how difficult it is to be a politician. We got into the race late. Eight weeks were left. And it wasn't because I was trying to be strategic. I just didn't know if I wanted to do it, but I was pressured, leaned on, cajoled,

talked into by a lot of people I respect. I wasn't impressed with the Republican rivals. I didn't think they really did. It was down in double digits until I got into the race and then went into the margin of error. And I guess we learned what it's like. I had four opponents in my opinion. Obviously Gavin Newsom, but also the rivals. They took snipes at me as I was gaining in momentum. I became the front runner right away in my campaign.

And I made a decision at the very beginning, Judge, that we would not take shots at any of the Republican rivals because it's a two step deal. The recall was, first of all, the voters had to vote to recall him by 50% plus one, and then whoever got the highest number of votes on the replacement side would become governor. So nothing matters until 50% plus one would have voted to recall him. So during the campaign, anytime anybody brought up any of my rivals, whether it was the two-term mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulkner, or an assemblyman, Kevin Kiley, or Caitlyn Jenner, or John Cox, who ran against him the first time, I always said, this is not about any of these guys.

It's about Gavin Newsom. It's about crime. It's about homelessness. It's about the fact that people are leaving California for the very first time. And the party did not endorse me, not the Republican Party. So it was an insurgency kind of campaign. So I ran against Gavin Newsom. I ran against Republican rivals. I ran against all these special interests that aligned to raise almost $200 million to get this campaign. He ended up,

Judge, spending 50% more per vote than he spent to get his job. He spent 50% more per vote to keep his job. So we scared the bejesus out of him. And the other big rival, of course, was the hostile, and I mean hostile, media. I was called by a columnist at the LA Times, quote, the black face of white supremacy, close quote. Another columnist said that my views were white supremacist views. And interestingly enough, during the campaign, Judge, you know, I'm a small little libertarian like you. I never once said vote for me or against me because I'm black. I never made a big deal out of the fact that if I were elected, I'd be the first black governor of California. But the New York Times wrote a very

hostile, long piece about me during the campaign, never once mentioned that I was black, never once mentioned that I'd be the first black governor of California. And judge, I'm fine with that. Isn't it time we talk about somebody's qualifications or lack thereof and not talk about their race or their gender or their ethnicity? On the other hand, when one report would put the judge, the very same day, however, the New York Times wrote a long article about the first female governor of New York because she has a D at the end of her name. Her first was relevant. I in my name and suddenly I ceased being black. Isn't that amazing?

Now, I'm saying this not because I like you and not because I agree with you, but because it's true. You left the race with your dignity intact. And you left the race with conservative, traditionalist, libertarian Republicans around the country embracing you and hoping that you'll be a statewide candidate again. And since you left that race, the Democrats have been having their problems. Before the show, you were telling me about Mrs. Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Gavin Newsom. What are the voters thinking? Do they have voters remorse already? It's only February. I really think they do, Judge. Look, on the replacement side,

we carried 57 of 58 counties in California. The only one we didn't carry was the county we're talking about, San Francisco, and I lost that by a whopping 149 votes. I got a greater percentage of the replacement votes than Arnold Schwarzenegger did back in 2003 during the first and only successful recall of a California governor. And since then, the electoral landscape in California, very, very different. There are now 5% more registered Democrats. There are 50% more registered independents and independents in California vote Democrats. There's a whopping 33% fewer registered Republicans. And I still got the greater percentage of the replacement votes than did Arnold Schwarzenegger. We got more votes than all the other 45 on the replacement side

rivals combined. I got three and a half million votes. And in seven weeks, I raised $22 million. That's more than all the major Republican rivals combined, including John Cox, who when he first ran against Gavin Newsom, put in $10 million of his own money. So we really, really did well. And out of the 150,000 individual donors, half of them came outside of California. These are people who never lived in California, didn't have businesses in California, but they cared about California because it's the fifth largest economy in the world. And so goes California, so goes the nation. So all these issues we were talking about, about crime and about homelessness and about the fact that for the first time in our state's 170-year history, there's a net migration

of people out of California. And the schools, don't get me started on the schools. 75% of Black boys in third grade before the pandemic could not read at state levels of proficiency. Half of all third graders cannot. And 80% of the kids educated in government schools, I don't call them public schools, I call them government schools, 80% of the kids are black and brown, and they were denied a whole year of in-person education while Gavin Newsom was sitting up there at the French laundry restaurant with the very people who drafted the mandates, not wearing masks, not even social distancing. His own kids were enjoying in-person

private education. So for all those reasons, I think I galvanized the base and we scared them. And the good news is what Gavin Newsom did judge was simply say, Mary Elder is leading a Republican takeover and Barack Obama cut a commercial for him. Stop Republican takeover. Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, stop Republican takeover. Joe Biden flew in and campaigned for him and with him and said, stop Republican takeover. Not one word about whether Gavin Newsom has done a good job for the people of California. The good news is they employed that same strategy in Virginia and it blew up in their faces because the Virginia media was not nearly as hostile towards Glenn Youngkin, and Youngkin and McAuliffe had to debate each other. Gavin Newsom was able to avoid debating me

because he knows he would have been destroyed. So they employed the same tactic when they did have the debate. I think Terry McAaul invoked Donald Trump five times in 20 minutes and Glenn Young can call him out on it and it backfired. What happened to the management of the government schools, a phrase that you and I have both used for many years, and by the way, it rankles people in New Jersey when I say that like you wouldn't believe. What happened to the management in government schools in San Francisco? Was there just some sort of a bombshell election there the other day? There sure was. There were three board members facing recall election, and boy, were they involved. At 70%, all three of them were recalled. And there were three major issues. The most

prestigious, the most successful high school, public high school in California is called Low Life. They've always had an admissions test. And because of that, over 60% or so of the student body is American. Well, that's not good enough for the diversity, inclusion, equity, wokeness on that board. So they've gone to a lottery system and it cheesed off the parents in that district, many of whom were Asian-Americans. The second issue was during the pandemic, they spent all the time trying to decide to rename 44 public schools, get rid of the oppressor names, you know, people like Abraham Lincoln and the other people on Mount Rushmore. And finally, of course, they shut down the schools for a whole year when the sign suggested that with proper mitigation management, they could reopen the schools. For all those reasons, they were recalled. So they were even too woke for the woke voters in San Francisco. Wow. Wow. What are your thoughts on Eric Adams, the former New York City Police Department captain, who's now a bit of a revolutionary as the mayor of the city of New York.

And he's a Democrat. And he understands law and order. I wish he were really a revolutionary. He's been in office for about a month and already the race card has come out. He had a press conference yesterday where he complained about his coverage. It was awful. And come on, this is a guy who got endorsed by the New York Times. The New York Times did not endorse the Asian-American candidate, Yang, endorsed the white candidate. They did not endorse Curtis Sliwa. They endorsed this guy. And here he is whining about his coverage. And he's whining about the coverage because he ran, as you pointed out, as a law and order kind of guy,

promised to reinstate the anti-gang unit and then backed away from it, and has now kept the same face mask vaccine mandate policies that de Blasio had employed and besides for, and he's not bringing back broken windows. He's not bringing back a stop, question, and frisk. So I'm not sure whether he really is a law and order kind of guy. Seems to me that once he got there, he became your basic soft on crime Democrat. So I'm not impressed. Are we in a hopeless situation? I mean, we have governors and mayors acting like they're totalitarians. We have them making up their own laws, all these mask and social distancing and vaccine laws.

None of them, not one, was enacted by a legislature. In our system, the legislature writes the laws, the governor or the mayor enforces them. They don't make them up. Is it hopeless, Larry? I don't think so. Look at the polls. Joe Biden is underwater in every state other than four. He's even underwater here in California. A growing number of people are

saying, look, everybody in the high risk groups who wants to be vaccinated has been vaccinated, can be vaccinated for free. And that's the risk group that we need to be concerned about. Young people who are healthy, who don't have other comorbidities, are not likely to get really sick, not likely to be hospitalized, and certainly not likely to die. And there's a growing recognition of that, which is what I said during the campaign, and I got hammered as an anti-vax guy. Whenever I gave a speech, Judge, I would always say, I've been vaccinated. I've been double vaccinated. They didn't have the booster at the time, and I was still called in ads anti-vax. But a growing number of people are fed up with this. And what happened in San Francisco, I think, is an example of that. And the poll numbers of Joe Biden is an example of that. Kamala Harris is at 30 percent here in California.

Nancy Pelosi at 30 percent here in California. California is a deep, deep blue state. So I'm cautiously optimistic going forward that come November, we're going to have a sea change in the House and hopefully a sea change in the Senate. When is Dianne Feinstein up for reelection? Because I think her numbers are just down there. Even you're being charitable. Her numbers, I believe, are worse than Mrs. Pelosi's. Well, the House members are up every two years in November.

So she's always up for re-election. Got a big, big... Senator Feinstein, when is she up for re-election? I think she's up, not this time, but the next time, two years from now. I don't think she's up right now. But I'm telling you, I haven't seen her. Have you? I haven't seen her publicly anywhere. What I understand is her condition, her cognitive condition might very well be worse than Joe Biden. And it became an issue during the campaign because I was asked in the event that Dianne Feinstein steps down or God forbid something else should happen to her, what are you going to do? I said, appoint a Republican. And of course, what do they expect you to do?

Exactly, because that would switch the power in the Senate. And when one of my opponents, a Republican, said he would leave it up to the voters of California, which was a dodge. I said, I'm a Republican. I'm going to appoint a Republican just as a Democrat governor. I would support a Democrat governor to succeed her in the event that she steps down. So should Donald Trump be the presidential nominee in 2024? Or is he a drag to many voters, even those who voted for him two years ago and six years ago? Well, I voted for him twice. I'm a fan of Donald Trump. I campaigned with him and for him the first time he ran. And if he runs again and gets a nomination, I will enthusiastically support him. But I'm not wedded to him. I'm wedded to his policies, strong on

national security, strong on the borders. The three judges that he appointed to the Supreme Court, they were all home runs, low taxes. And I think he doesn't get enough credit for reducing all the regulations that he did. So as long as people pursue his policies, I'm fine. I'd be fine with Ron DeSantis. I'd be fine with Mike Pompeo. But I think Donald Trump is the 800-pound elephant in the room. He's got a lot of money, not just his own money, but also money from the donor class. So if he runs, he'll be formidable. Does he have baggage? Absolutely. But anybody he runs against is going to have baggage. Joe Biden has baggage. Kamala Harris certainly has baggage. And I don't see them getting rid of Kamala Harris. The most loyal part of the Democratic base are Black females, and they love, love, love them some Kamala Harris. And if it is perceived

that she's been kicked aside by somebody else, the wrath of the Black female voter will be something to behold. The last question for you, and this wasn't going to be my last question, but I sense in you a certain joy in espousing your views as articulately as you do. And I also sensed in you during the campaign a certain joy. Now, a lot of politicians are angry. You're happy. Will you do this again, Larry Elder, in California? Well, for now, I've set up a political action committee called Elder for America. I'm asking people to throw a little something in the tip jar so I can help Republicans take back the House, take back the Senate, and I can do more to get these woke school board members out of here, get these soft on crime DAs out of here,

and campaign against things like critical race theory. So that's what I'm going to do in the intermediate term. But beyond that, I've left the door jar. I'm not going to run against Gavin Newsom this November for all the reasons I mentioned. We're out number three to one. But I am leaving the door open for a future race for some other time. But yeah, I was joyful. I did have a good time, but the media did not. And during my campaign stump speeches, and I spoke often with crowds, people told me were largest in those of Donald Trump. And I cracked joke after joke after joke. And then I cut on television and they never showed any of the jokes. They just showed me being strong and being serious

because that's the face that they wanted. They wanted this angry guy. I'm not an angry guy. I'm a happy guy. And I really thoroughly enjoyed campaigning. I had never run for anything before other than third grade class president. And I found that I was good at it. And I found that I enjoyed it. And I found that I missed talk radio

a lot less than I thought I would. So you're right. I am a happy guy because my goodness, look at me. My dad was a janitor. I went to an Ivy League college. I'm a lawyer. I've now got a talk show in 300 markets. I'm a New York Times bestseller. I have a star on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Touch me. I cannot believe things have happened to me.

God would be upset with me if I were unhappy. Larry, I love you. Larry's pack is elderforamerica.com. I hope you'll come back and visit with us again. It's a pleasure. Judge Paul Tano, Judging Freedom. You know where to find me. Thanks, I appreciate it.