The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW "The Newsom Nightmare" & Taking Back Congress from Bottom-Up

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Whether or not Newsom runs for President in 2024 or later, his policies have a massive influence in all of America. And, power has become too concentrated in Congress. But how do we take it back when they won't give it back?John Cox, author, attorney, CPA and former candidate for CA Governor joins to talk about his book, "The Newsom Nightmare" that covers both Newsom and Cox's movement HearThePeople.org, to take back power from the grassroots upFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

well joining us now is john cox as i said he is a cpa he's an attorney and he has been a candidate for california governor and he's written a book about gavin newsom newsom's nightmare and uh so i it's good to have you on john i'm so sorry that you live in california thank you thank you well you know the weather's pretty darn good, David. That's why I stay out there, and that's why there's a whole bunch of great companies that are out there, despite Gavin Newsom. And that's, I think, the message of the book. The book is called, by the way, The Newsom Nightmare. So it's available on Amazon and any place good books are sold. And I hope people get a chance to read it because I think Mr. Newsom is going to make a play to be the president of the

United States. If not in 24, it'll be 28. I agree. People ought to know about his record. They ought to know about his background. They ought to know about what he will do to the country or how he will lead the country. And I think that's very germane. I agree. And of course, we all know that even if he doesn't run for president, and even if he doesn't get elected president or whatever, what he does there as governor of California has a tremendous impact across the country. And we'll talk about that in a moment.

But let's talk a little bit about his possible presidency this year, for example. You know, Biden is 81, and he's not um a young 81 either he's the only full effect of all those years he'll be 86 by the end of the term and so you know people are looking at this i i look at uh even at his running mate lala harris i call her uh but because she's kind of in lala land but. But I look at this, they might replace her. They might replace both of them. And Trump is also getting pretty old. He's 77.

He'll be 81 by the end of this next term. So he would end up the same age as Biden, but he seems to be physically in better shape. And so when you look at this, and if they get rid of Biden, and a lot of people in the Democrat Party are really pushing for that, the likely candidates, I think, to replace Biden would be either Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom. But Gavin Newsom is in office, and he is having an effect as he is. The things that he's doing right now are having an effect right now on everybody across the country. How did you think he did in terms of the debate that he had on, on, uh, with

Hannity and DeSantis, um, uh, on Fox news? I think he did what he wanted to do. And that is he wanted to introduce himself more to the nation, to a different audience, frankly. I mean, he's been on MSNBC and CNN quite a bit, so he doesn't need to introduce himself to those audiences. Uh, the fox audience obviously are different people that don't ordinarily see what he's doing uh they see a lot

of the criticisms but you know newsom came off glib uh came off well spoken uh he came off citing a whole bunch of statistics that sound great uh gee it's no revelation that a lot of great companies have started in California. Salesforce, Apple, Google, all these great trillion dollar plus companies base themselves in California. And who wouldn't? You know, I live in California because I just love the weather and the ocean and the natural beauty. And if you're a smart guy with a great business idea, sure, you're going to want to start your business where you can live the best life you can. And that's the place for the best weather.

But they quickly discover, however, that the government that Newsom leads is nothing short of spectacularly involved in your life. They want to tax you to death. And so a whole bunch of those companies have decided to ultimately leave, like Tesla. But Nestle, Toyota, you know, I could name a whole bunch of companies. And people that have left, they've moved to Tennessee or Florida or Texas, where there's obviously zero tax and where regulation is

not going to strangle their future. And, you know, they may still keep their homes, by the way, in California. I'm sure I'm certain that most of them do. But the government of California does its best to chase productive people out of the state or productive businesses and and also make it very, very difficult for the rest of the people. If you and and also make it very very difficult for the rest of the people if you're not in the top one percent in california you're living a very difficult life uh the cost of living uh shortages of energy water housing homelessness all over the place wildfires crime uh regulation what i think of when I look at the, it's the home issue, right. And the homelessness,

but even the fact that people can't afford to buy a home and this is, uh, it's absolutely amazing. The pictures of people that you see, uh, living out of RVs and just lining the road for as far as you can see living out of their RVs and then the homeless people who don't even have an RV. And all of that is really a function of when you've got a state that is as prosperous as that, and you see that kind of abject poverty contrasted with amazing amounts of wealth,

that happens because of government policies and because the government is doing that. That's not a natural situation. I'm, uh, I'm in the housing industry, David. Uh, that's my business. I build and manage apartments. Uh, I don't own anything in California. Uh, right now I'm building about 12,000, 1200 units outside of Indianapolis. India, Indiana is a great example of a state that treats business well, that isn't owned by trial lawyers, that doesn't have huge deficits or pension deficits. And I can build wonderful apartments in Indiana for under $200,000 a unit. Just gorgeous granite countertops, beautiful appliances. Those same units in California, David, would be five, $600,000 in most of the state. And, you know, that's a very big difference in terms of your

lifestyle and what you're able to afford and how competitive you are in the rest of the country. It's just so sad. And it's mostly, as you said, government that drives up that cost difference. And, you know, lumber and windows don't cost a whole lot more in Indiana than they do in California. It's the other things. Yeah. And it's stuff like fuel, right? Fuel is more expensive in California than it is in other places. They got their own special. It's like having your own special wood or something. Right. They have to have bespoke gasoline, so they've got some refineries that only produce the special blend

that California demands. And so between that and the really high taxes, as I've reported on the prices of gasoline going up and everything, California is way ahead of even the number two. And so it's even more than the taxes. It's also the regulations that he has on the formulation of the fuel there. This gets to the essence of Gavin Newsom, and that is he appeals to people on a gut level

on some very high emotional issues, like abortion, guns, and climate change. It's part of this whole thing to scare the bejesus out of people you know the gasoline formulation that california uses david makes the tiniest little bit of difference in the total pollution of the world i mean it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction yeah in india and china are spewing carbon into the atmosphere like nobody's business these days. And the tiny little difference that California makes is ridiculously small. Yet, this is what drives Gavin Newsom.

And this is what the media loves. The media loves to herald this stuff. And why? Because it gets clicks and it gets eyeballs. And this is the essence of Gavin Newsom's entire political agenda. And that is focus on these emotional scare tactics and highly emotional, social and other issues ignore the stuff that truly makes a difference in people's lives like energy, water, housing, safety, cleanliness, homelessness,

all these things that really have an effect on people's lives. And he's able to roll to electoral victories because so many people just pay attention to these highly emotional issues, and they don't think that you can do anything about these other bread-and-butter, meat-and-potato and potatoes issues and that's what I talk about in my book and what I'm also proposing in my book David is a way to get the electorate to finally pay attention to these things and get involved in the process so that they they really pay attention to who they're voting for and why they're voting for

these candidates. It is so hard to get people to focus, though, on their policies and on their records. And I beat my head against the wall trying to get Republicans to do the same thing. It's like, OK, yes, you hate this policy. You hated the lockdown, but you're supporting the guy that did the lockdown. What is going on with all this? And of course, you know, with Gavin Newsom, he's very telegenic. You know, he looks like he came out of central casting there in Hollywood. And, you know, he and his wife.

And yet, you know, when you start looking at what he did, it's like, whoa, I was so disappointed to see, you know, in California, the people voted him in again, even with everything that had happened there. And yet it's not surprising because the Republicans are doing the same thing. They don't want to hold anybody accountable for anything that happened the last three years or even before that and why is that david the reason is is that most voters don't watch your podcast they don't get any kind of a glimpse of the detailed issues that they ought to be focused on. All they get fed is a diet, a steady diet of 20 or 30 second ads or memes on social media. They never have a chance to have a conversation like you and I are having right now. They just sit there and they mindlessly look at their phones

and they see something and they say, oh, gee, I don't like that. And they vote for a guy based upon what his opponent says. They don't get a chance to actually discuss issues. So what I'm proposing in my book, and this is really important, David, is a revolution in how we elect our elected leaders. I'm proposing that we change, that we tweak our election processes with regard to Congress, especially, to get people more involved in getting to the essence of a lot of these issues, where it's more than just a 30-second TV ad and it's more than just a meme. It's an actual conversation that every voter can have with their representative which they don't get a chance to now yeah that's the key thing because you lay out the problems but you know

unlike and we we've got to get past the point of just laying out problems we've got to have some solutions because things are changing very quickly so that's one of the reasons i wanted to talk to you about that you got an organization hearthepeople.org. Tell us your vision for how that would change the electoral process. The essence of this is the people's house, David, the Congress. It was intended by our founders to be the people's house. But because they limited the number to 435 about a century ago, the average congressional district is 750,000 people now. It's just impossible for people to actually know their congressman. And they don't. They only see him on TV.

That's right. Let me just interject. Even 35 years or so ago when I ran for Congress, it was about a half a million. And now it's gone to 750, or half a million. Now it's gone to 750,000. And so you're getting less and less representation, as you will. Sorry. So the idea is very simple, David.

Place that big district into 100 hundred little tiny districts yes so that so that each district's only 7 500 people you're not going to use television to reach those 7 500 people you're not going to use social media you're not going to blast radio ads to all of them what you're going to be forced to do is actually go and have a conversation because 7,500 people is only about 3,000 households. And you can have a conversation with a couple thousand people. You just have to spend a few weekends doing it, but you can actually get to know your constituents. And more importantly, your constituents can know who you are and they

can know what your background is. And they can know that you have the character and the confidence and the leadership ability to actually do something. Now, as a practical effect, what ends up happening is that these hundred people who are elected in these little tiny districts, they get together at a meeting and they select one person to go to Washington. The other 99 stay home and they don't have an office. They don't have a pension. They don't have a staff. Their entire job is to get together every two years and decide on the guy to go to Washington. And then they monitor what that guy does in Washington. But you know what that guy in Washington is not going to do, David?

He's not going to spend six hours of every day on the telephone begging for money. That's right. That's right. He's going to study the issues. He's going to communicate with his constituents. He's going to communicate with the 99 people back home who sent him there because he's got to get reelected. And those 99 hold the keys to that, right?

That's right. So he's going to keep them informed. And each of those are going to, in turn, keep their own constituents informed. What this does, David, is it really puts the people back in charge of the people's house. And I think it would change politics up and down the political spectrum, because people then would feel like their voice will be heard and their elected leaders would actually respond to their voice and would have an interest in doing that. And it wouldn't be in through the media.

I think the media has gotten way too much power in this country. I hope you agree with that, even though you're a member. Oh, yeah. No, I don't consider myself to be a member of the media. And they don't consider me either to be that. And what you're saying is so true. And I remember in the early 90s, we talked about the New Hampshire state legislature. Yes, that's where I got this idea.

That's where I got this idea. In the early 90s, I don't know what it is right now, but they said if you spent more than $1,000 running for office, it accused you of trying to buy the election. And yet at that time, it was routine for people to spend over $100,000 running for Congress at that time. And that's the problem, is that we've allowed this. If you look at the Constitution, it said, well, we're going to have like 30,000 people, one representative for every 30,000 people. We're not going to go past 50. And then they just they didn't even go with that at the very beginning. They just kind of threw that away.

And then they fixed it and said, we don't care how rapidly the population grows. And we don't care about any of this, except we're going to have this fixed number of representatives. And I think you're exactly right. That's the one of the ways that we actually get a representative government is to increase the number of people. And when we would talk about this 30 years ago, people say, well, it's just not practical to do it. And it's like, no, you could do it today. And and you could certainly do it today now that you've got the zoom technology and all the rest of the stuff that everybody had to live by over the last three years there's not even a question as to whether or not that'd be a viable way to do it and you'd have the people living in their district instead of maybe traveling to washington you know they could still do their

work by telecommuting or something like that. But you're so right. The internet actually multiplies the opportunity for this because let's say I'm the representative of my own little tiny district of 7,500 people. It's a few thousand households. Well, you know, once I've met every one of those people, they know me, they trust me. I'll be able to send them emails. I'll be able to ask them questions.

They'll be able to ask me questions. If any of them is a crackpot and ask me wild, idiotic questions, I can certainly put them in the background. But I'll be able to focus on the people of my district who have real concerns, and I'll be able to then communicate those concerns to the guy that we sent to Washington. That guy that we send to Washington, he's going to listen to me because I'm one of the 99 who sent him there. And it won't be, it won't be because I gave him a whole bunch of money, right? Like a union boss or a big corporation or something like that. He'll listen to me because he knows I'm one of those 99 and I can unelect him as much as I can elect him. And that's really accountable, responsive government, which is what we ought. And it's Republican. It's a small R, Republican government.

Remember, we're not a democracy. We're a Republican. We're a representative Republican democracy, which means that we vote for people to represent us. That's right. But that only works. That only works, David, if those people are actually responsive to us. If they're only responsible to the people that give them money for their campaigns, which we know they are. That's right. We've we've lost our representative republic. We really have and i mean my goal here is to get it back yeah it's interesting you know when we look at what has

happened in government it is so rapidly distanced itself from us and i think about you know we're just watching some old movies uh for christmas and and you have these situations where you got you know the cop on the beat and he would walk the beat and he knew everybody you know he knew the grocer yes this person and he's people on the street he knew them and so you know he the cop on the beat and he would walk the beat and he knew everybody, you know, he knew the grocer, this person, and he's people on the street. He knew them. And so, you know, he, and if he sees somebody that he doesn't know, he's kind of keeping an eye on this, who's this guy, you know, that type of thing, but we've lost that personal touch with everything, but nowhere more so than with the congressional representatives. We don't know these guys, they don't know us. And, and, and that's why it is so amazing when you see the details of

these people's lives that are running for office, that you don't know these people at don't know us and and and that's why it is so amazing when you see the details of these people's lives that are running for office that you don't know these people at all they're so distant from you and what and what do they focus on each of these people that runs for office what they focus on is getting on television yes getting famous i mean look at in california right now i'm supporting them because i want to support a republican but you know steve garvey a former baseball player is running for the U.S. Senate. God love him. He'll be a million times better than Adam Schiff or Barbara Lee or Katie Porter, okay? But why is he running? Why is he the main candidate on the Republican side? Well, because he was in baseball for 30 years or 25 years. he got name recognition being in

baseball and so that all of a sudden makes him a great candidate for the senate yeah i'm sorry he's a celebrity probably a celebrity yeah and you know what we need people who are true leaders you know look at gavin newsom and frankly, Donald Trump are the same kind of person. They really manipulate the media. Why do we know Donald Trump so much? Because he's been in the media for 40 years. And, you know, Gavin Newsom grew up with the media. You know, his family goes back to governors in California and being part of that whole media thing. But do they really have the leadership qualities that we look to to be real leaders and real

truth tellers and real competent character-filled leaders? I'm sorry. We need good leaders. We need people of good character. We need people who can empathize and communicate with us and give us the background of why these policies are important. Not just, Dane, close the border, but tell us why that's important. Tell us how we're going to do that. Tell us the benefits and the burdens of doing all these things. We don't get those kinds of

discussions, David. we just get some soundbite somewhere and and i think that's really really damaged our democracy and damaged our country and i think it's one of the reasons why you know when you look at uh iowa and new hampshire they don't necessarily have great track records in terms of picking who's going to go on to win even the nomination but in those environments you have a situation where they go into a pizza ranch and they talk to people one on one. Or they have, you know, even the caucuses or the voters interacting with each other. Or in New Hampshire, you know, again, it's that retail touch that you can have. And that's just not, doesn't happen anywhere else. Everywhere else, it becomes about

the advertising budget. And I know when I ran ran the first question that anybody in the media would ask me was uh what's your budget how much money yeah exactly how much money have you raised i'm not interested because you're not going to be running ads on my uh tv show you know so i'm not interested in you anymore i can get the money somewhere else but you know that's what it's all about the money and it's about the fundraising with the exception of those two places but we can see that you've got to have that personal touch and people have to know you but they you know when you've got a celebrity like steve garvey or you got somebody like donald trump because they've watched them for years on a program and even if it's not a reality program even if it's not sports even if it is like some scripted uh tv show they think they know that person and they think they know them exactly you see when

the person dies everybody's like oh i'm in mourning for this guy that was in friends or whatever you know and it's like you don't know anything about him you know but they they get as upset about that as they do over their friends uh dying or something because they do think that they're friends with these people on tv and that's very true with Gavin Newsom. People think that they know this guy. They really don't. They don't know anything about his background. You know, his grandfather helped Pat Brown get elected governor. His father helped Jerry Brown get elected governor. They have fed at the trough of state politics for 40 years. The Newsom family goes back, oh gosh, actually more than 60 years at the power table of feeding off of government in California. Squaw Valley, which is now called

the Palisades, a big ski area, used to be owned by the Newsom family. And why? Because they leveraged their political connections. Newsom's father, Gavin Newsom's father, was the lawyer for J. Paul Getty, the first billionaire. And he opened doors and he maneuvered the legal system to help the Getty family get, you know, and keep their money. So, you know, there's so many connections here, but people don't know that. They just think that Gavin Newsom's this good-looking guy with great teeth and great hair, and he spouts statistics that sound good. I mean, if you look through those statistics, by the way, I mean, I think he said a whopper during the DeSantis debate. He said somehow California's middle class pays lower taxes than Florida, which, you know, I heard this and I say, what planet is he on?

I mean, this is property taxes. They've got to be the same. You know, I know Florida's property taxes are a little bit higher because they don't have an income tax, but they don't have an income tax. And I don't think that even their property taxes are as high as California. I may be wrong. Well, no, not, not when you look at the cost of housing in california i mean our tax our tax rate is only one percent but the average house here costs two million dollars versus one million

in florida or texas so i mean that means your taxes are still one percent of two million which is 20 000 yeah in texas it might be it might be two percent of 2 million, which is 20,000 in Texas. It might be, it might be 2% of 1 million, which is still 20,000. So you're not going to be paying much of a different tax bill, but you know, that's kind of lost on Gavin Newsom. I guess, you know, he doesn't expect people to look beyond the headlines there. Well, certainly he can get away with it. And again, it's because, you know, the he's, he's been trained and he's slick. Now, did you run for governor? Are you going to run for governor?

You did run? No, I did. I ran. The seat was open in 2018 after Jerry Brown left. And I figured people were going to be sick of Democratic policies. And so I jumped into the race. I had an idea about remaking the california legislature in the same way that i'm talking about the congress here and uh unfortunately people just

didn't pay attention and you know the media and newsom raised millions tens of millions of dollars from the unions from hollywood from silicon valley and you know the people that feed at the trough. And he buried me. But I'm staying involved, and I think this is the right thing. Well, that's really good. Absolutely. And I've mentioned this many times over the years. That is the path.

And when you talk about doing that in California, it needs to be done at the state levels as well, because the same thing happened at the state levels. We've frozen the number of representatives to the state house and the state senate and that type of thing as a population everywhere has exploded i mean you go back and you look at the you know 1776 and you look what the population was it was just like three or four million or something like that uh and uh you know and there was real representation because people really did know other people. And that's the key thing.

If it gets really big, as you pointed out, it's just going to be the people with lots of money and organizations that are going to manipulate them. That's who they're going to answer to. They don't know us. They don't share our concerns. They don't live in our area. And as I've said many times, even if you were to go back and say we're going to limit it000 people, you know, you'd wind up with like 8,000 congressional representatives. And that's unwieldy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But that would, that would be unwieldy. I mean, people would look at that and they would say, gee, a body of 8,000 congressmen would be just, you'd never get anything done. You know, there'd be, there'd be just too much stuff. That's why that might be a nice feature. I get that but you know the the structure that we've come up with here where you have a hundred sub-districts and then

you send one person who's responsive i think that probably works in a in a higher population area people can learn about this by the way by going to hearthepeople.org. We're going to try to get this done in a couple of states. I think we're going to start maybe with Arizona, and we're going to try to get the state legislature to enact this. By the way, that's an important thing, David. I'm sure you're a constitutionalist, but you realize the Constitution in Article I gives each state the ability to decide how to elect their congressman. Yes. So this is entirely constitutional. And a state, all the state legislature has to do is enact this, and it will be done for the next election.

So that's what I like about your plan there, because, uh, you know, if you wanted to say, well, we're going to go back and we're going to have, uh, you know, let's say maybe not 8,000, we're going to have, uh, you know, 2000 members of Congress, well, they determine right now, they said, that's our, our determination, how many are going to be there, but with your system, uh, it is, it spreads out the representation, uh, without, um, in a hierarchical way, right? Instead of saying, well, now we're going to send more people to Washington, which they can't do, you still wind up getting that representation, but in a hierarchical way. That's great. In your example, it wouldn't be up to the Congress itself to change to go to 2,000 or 3,000 people.

And they're not going to do that. And why wouldn't they do that? Because it would dilute their power, right? If you're one of 2,000, you're going to have a lot less power than one of 435. So that's the last thing they're going to do. You're absolutely right. They're the ones that froze it at 435 to begin with, you know, back in 1920 or so. So what this is going to be required to do is each state legislature is going to have to meet

and enact this statute. We have a model statute. We've had draft. So it's very easy to do. And, you know, think about it a second. We're going to be able to make an argument that who doesn't want this change? The people who will fight this are the media and the lobbyists because they stand to lose that measure of power. I think people will look at that and say, hmm, who do we want to have the power? Do we want the people to have the power or do we want media and the lobbyists to have power? I think the people are going to say, gee, I like this idea because it gives me a greater say over my future and about our leaders, not the media or the lobbyists. And that's, I think, long overdue. So we're going to start in one state.

We think that once one or two states does this and the rest of the country hears about it, every state is going to say, hey, why don't we do this in our state? This makes a lot of sense. I think this is a perfect time for this as well. Because we're at a time right now where everybody is looking at the institutions and they're saying, you know, this just isn't working. You know, I subscribe to the ideas as Trous and Howe on the fourth turning, you know, that this type of thing happens like every 80 years. But whether you see this as a cycle or not, you can see that this is really what is happening, that everybody is questioning the institutions.

And we're seeing at the state level a lot of innovative approaches to change certain things. Let's come up with some different ways to kind of a backstop of the financial system in case the Federal Reserve really screws up, as many people are worried that it's going to do. So you're seeing moves in terms of like a financial backstop to what Washington is doing. Right. And many other things like that to nullify what they're doing. And so I think the time is ripe for people to look at this and say, wait a minute, let's change the way that we select the congressman. We may not be able to change the number of congressmen that we have, but we can certainly change the way they're selected to make it more representative.

And there's one word in all this, David, and that word is accountability. Yeah. People don't trust the major institutions. And why? Because they don't believe that they're accountable when they mislead us or when they give us bad information or when they give us half the story. The big deal with Hear the People is that you're going to have a guy or a girl in your district, 7,500 people who you know, and if that person gives you bad information or gives

you information that you know is not true or doesn't pass the smell test or is just lacks common sense, you're going to be able to hold that person accountable and you're never going to believe them again. What that means is that the person who you interact with, you're going to be able to hold accountable. And the 99 are going to be able to hold accountable that person that they've sent to Washington, D.C. at the same time. And they're going to be able to hold that Congress accountable. That's a really big thing. We've lost accountability because it's all about media. It's all about these soundbites and it's all about lobbyists and how you shade the truth and telling half the story. That's right. We've got to do away with that. We've got to make our leaders accountable to each one of us.

And I think this is a step in that direction. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah, when you look at the presidential debates are a good example. When they get together, they talk about the same issues, even though the issues have changed significantly, same issues that they talked about for decades. They skirt around the issues. They talk past each other, as we saw with Newsome and, and DeSantis. Um, and, and, uh, and then they get away with this because you've only got two

choices and it's like, well, I don't like either one of these guys, but I really can't stand that guy because I've seen all these negative ads and also, so I'll go for this guy, even though I don't really like him. And so all of these things combined together, we've got to find a way to break through that. And I like the bottom-up approach that you've got, because we've really got to take this back from the bottom-up. We can't take it back from the top down. It's too corrupt, as you just pointed out, that Congress isn't going to dilute their power. They're not going to do anything to change what they're doing.

Instead, they're trying to put these tentacles further into our lives and to micromanage more and more aspects of our life at the local level. And that's why I think you're starting to see these approaches rising up at the state level and below that are saying, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to start taking back some of our rightful power in all this. And you're absolutely right, by the way the the answer to all this is not media that's you know telling us what we want to hear and sound bites it's to get the people back involved you know fox news was created as a reaction to the liberal bent of abc cbs and nbc right but but now we've gone to the fox news silo and we only hear certain things there and then we don't hear that over here and on the major networks so we're kind of buffeted back and forth

and and you know the people's reaction to all this david is to just turn off i mean you've seen you you've seen those interviews that they do on the street you know jesse waters or jay leno or one of these they go up and they ask people you know name the supreme court justices or name your u.s senator most people can't do it yeah most people they have no knowledge of politics and why because they're so detached from it they they've they've gotten moved so far away from it that they just don't even want to get involved anymore and uh you can't blame it because they don't have really any input into it right you know it's become so distant from us it doesn't really matter and i look at it even from that standpoint i've got to the point where it's like i'm trying to focus on my local elections and

things like that even to the extent that extent that I look at the national elections and there's lessons to be learned there about the directions that they're going to come at us with. But for the real practical stuff, you've got to focus on what's local. And so we've got to grow this from the bottom up. That is a great idea. I love that. And so that is also discussed in your book about Newsom? Yes. Is that the solution?

Yes. Good. And there's also a website there as well. Hearthepeople.org. Hearthepeople.org is the plan laid out there that people can see what that looks like. But before we leave, tell us a little bit more about, just talk about how California, whether or not Newsom runs for president or, God forbid, gets elected president, the impact that he has on all of us, whether it is, you know, the kind of car that we drive or the appliances that we have and it folds back to the activist government in california and just how big they are uh compared to other states and how they can throw that weight around isn't it well listen gavin newsom will survive gavin newsom if he gets to be president we survived barack obama i think our system is strong enough but you know what we won't make the same amount of progress people won't have the same opportunities and i think think our country will get weaker. And if our country gets weaker,

I think the world is worse off for that reason. You know, I'm involved in a movie about Ronald Reagan right now. It's going to come out in a couple of months. And, you know, Reagan, you know, took over for Jimmy Carter. We were a weak nation made weaker by Jimmy Carter. We had inflation. We had an oil crisis. We had threats from the Soviet Union. Reagan turned us around and said that we could do better and we could grow and give more people opportunity. We just got to get government out of the way.

That's right. Well, you're absolutely right. Gavin Newsom is one of those that wants to empower government out of the way that's right well you're absolutely right gavin newsom is one of those that wants to empower government you know hugo chavez was the same in venezuela he promised people better stuff through the government you know cadet castro did the same for cuba oh you're going to get better health care you're going to get better this than that and guess what spectacular failures i don't want to see the united states go down that route and let me tell you joe biden has taken down us down that route jimmy carter tried to ronald reagan saved us i don't necessarily see another reagan on the horizon to save us from

joe biden and if it turns out to be Gavin Newsom, I think that could lead us further down this road to more government, more mismanagement, a lower standard of living, a weaker country, a weaker, more dangerous world. I don't want to see that happen. I want to see us become a better country. And that's why I'm warning people about Gavin Newsom. That's why I'm publishing this book. That's why I'm appearing with you and getting this idea out. Well, talk a little bit about, you know,

we're all, uh, I talk about this a great deal on this program, you know, his energy policies, his car policies and things like that, that have effect on other people, but also,

uh, the immigration policy that he has there, you know, the, you come in as an illegal immigrant. As you point out, you've got Hugo Chavez and you got Castro promising all this free stuff to everybody, which is what the socialists and the Marxists do. But now we've got Gavin Newsom and other people like him promising it to people in other countries. At least Hugo Chavez was promising it to the Venezuelans.

He wasn't promising it to the people from El Salvador or Peru or Mexico or whatever. But, you know, Gavin Newsom is promising it to the Venezuelans. He wasn't promising it to the people from El Salvador or Peru or Mexico or whatever. Gavin Newsom is promising it to the world. Just come here, get across that finish line, and you're done. You can collect unemployment. You get free medical care and all the rest of this then. And of course, that's going to bankrupt us very rapidly. I think that was the plan. Cloward and Piven economists talked about this years ago. So the welfare state's not growing quickly enough, and we can make it grow even faster and make people even more, you know, poor and more dependent on government if we can do this. And I think that's the real strategy that's there. Talk about, you know, what is happening with the immigration issues with Newsom.

Yeah, the border. Well, this is this is a prime example of a false choice that gets demagogued all the time, David. And, you know, I'm a Jack Kemp Republican. I believe that the United States has benefited tremendously from bringing people who want to contribute to us into the country. Most other countries do the same thing they they have a very strong immigration policy that that welcomes people who want to contribute to our our growth and our opportunity but that's not what's happening with our southern border i mean anybody and anybody can come across that border without any restrictions and without any knowledge of who they are or what they're planning to do that's just as wrong as a total closing of every input to our country. We need

to certainly, you know, get more people. Our kids are not having enough kids. I don't want to see us end up like Japan, which has a no growth economy and has terrific problems caring for its elderly. We need to have some growth. We need to have some growth. We need to have controlled immigration. We need to know who's coming into the country. This is a false choice. The Democrats are just letting the borders completely open, which is just so incredibly wrong for our future. And frankly, it's misleading to everybody who's coming in as well. They think they're going to come here and live a wonderful life. And a lot of them discover that they're just not going to be able to.

We need, you know, we need to make sure that our borders are secure. You can't have a secure country without it. And, you know, this is another example of politicians who just aren't leading. They're just not leveling with the people on both sides, frankly. I agree. Yeah, because there's a lot of, you know, again, as you point out, legal immigration, knowing who the people are, that's one thing. But no matter what they do at the border, if they've got this massive welfare magnet pulling people across and promising them free stuff, that's the real issue. And we shouldn't have a problem with people who want to work

and people who want to be contributing to the economy. But we ought to know who's coming in. You just had this massive, in Ecuador, just massive prison breaks and drug cartels and everything. So what are they doing in neighboring Peru and other countries? They're saying, well, we sent police to the borders and we said you're not coming in here unless you got some kind of paperwork from your government showing you don't have a criminal record we don't do any of that stuff so they'll just come up here you know and come in and they are yeah

and they are yeah yeah yeah they are coming up here. And, you know, again, the politicians just jitter and demagogue and they don't get the job done. They need to be securing the border. But then they need to make it easier for quality people, for people who in America is what's going to destroy us. I mean, we have got, we're spending what six and a half trillion dollars this year. We're only and I say only raising four and a half trillion from the tax revenue, which by the way, is a record. That's a record amount of tax revenue. But the politicians in Washington are spending it. And what are they doing? They're maintaining a welfare state. You know, something like 80% of the people now are on Medicaid. They've expanded that all the way through all the states. And governors like Newsom have willingly taken this money. Interestingly, of course, you know, DeSantis desantis abbott a lot of red state governors have refused it and why because they know it's a drug it's it's going to be there for one or two years and then

it's got to go because it's unsustainable and they don't want to get you know tied into this drug they don't want to you know balance their budgets on medicaid they want to make sure that they're sustainable and And it's not sustainable for the government to have our entire medical system supported by the government. Our medical system should be free market, just like cars, just like energy, just like every other good or service. It ought to be free market. It ought to be driven by the private sector. It ought to be driven by innovation. It ought to be driven by competition. sector. It ought to be driven by innovation. It ought to be driven by competition. Putting it in the hands of the government is the way, sure, is the way to destroy it.

Oh, I agree. And yet you look at this last three years, they don't want your physician to even have a say-so in your health care, let alone you. And when you look at the strings that come attached to this money that they give you, That was kind of the way they roll this thing out. First, they gave a massive bonuses, you know, to, uh, to follow the Fauci protocols in the hospitals.

Uh, you diagnose somebody as a COVID patient, we'll give you a 20% bonus. And then the next year after the bribery, what follows is the blackmail. Uh, we're not only going to take away that bonus, but we're going to take away all your Medicare and Medicaid patients and

bankrupt you. If you don't get all your staff shot with a vaccine. And guess who are some of the biggest supporters of Gavin Newsom in California? Healthcare. Healthcare entities. Yeah. That's one thing we can talk about is how they rolled out the vaccine mandates in California. And I believe that was under Newsom, wasn't it? Where they started saying, you're not going to have any religious or medical exemptions for any of these childhood vaccines. They've been laying the groundwork for this kind of stuff for a long time.

And I think it's one of the reasons why Washington is pushing so hard to get everybody addicted to this Medicare, because that's going to be one of the most effective ways that they can use to control us and say, well, now you're going to have to get the ID or you're not going to get any medical care. We've already seen that done by Gates in India with the Aadhaar system. We'll give you welfare. We'll give you medical care. But you're going to have to take the digital ID. And so there's all these strings that are attached to it. But they begin by bribing people.

It's always the way the federal government gets around the 10th Amendment. And guess what, David? Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives. The more government can control a service like that that almost everybody's going to need, the more that government then control your life.

This is an old playbook, and Hugo Chavez used it, Castro used it. You know, you promise people something that they know they're going to need and you tell them that government's going to provide it and they'll give you their power. And that's what this is all about, David.

It's about a small group of people trying to control the population. And it's the story of human history. You go back to the pharaoh's and it's the story of human history you go back to the pharaohs it's the story of human history the united states has stood out among all the countries that ever existed as a place where government was limited the constitution was about limiting the scope and size of government and And along the way, we really have lost that idea. We really let that idea slip. And I think it's time to bring it back. That's what our proposal is all about with here, the people putting those limits back on government. And I think the people, you know, they do want to run their own lives. They don't want government telling them how to live. That was Ronald Reagan's

plea to us. That was the key to his success and appeal. We need another Ronald Reagan, and that's in the book, too, by the way, so you'll get a chance to read that. Well, you know, when you look at the rights, and as you correctly pointed out, it was about

prohibiting government from interfering with our God-given rights, that's what the Bill of Rights was about it's very clever i remember when obama was um running for president and um or shortly after he got elected i can't remember exactly when he said it was at the very beginning and he said um and he taught this and and he knew exactly what he was doing but they have they control the way that that you perceive things by the terminology and so they would say he said well you know i know that this is set up and we got prohibitions there for government we call that negative rights uh but you know a positive right is your right to health care or your right to

an education or to housing or to this and it's like oh well i want the positive stuff i don't want the negative stuff and he completely turned it upside down by using those labels. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution. He knew that, but he was great at selling stuff, isn't he? I knew Obama very well. I'm from Illinois. I'm from Chicago. And I ran for the U.S. Senate, and I once debated Obama for an hour and a half just on those ideas, education and health care. And, you know, David, you know what his big response to me was? We need government to help people with education and healthcare.

We can't let people, and these are his words, fend for themselves. We can't let people, people are too stupid in his world. People are too stupid to choose their own health care or their own education. Government has to do it for them. And darned if that wasn't his program on becoming president of the United States, he convinced the media that it was a great thing, that government should control your education, government should control health care.

You're too stupid to choose it on your own my answer was people can choose their health care people can choose education if they're given the tools to do so and they want to choose that and frankly they should be able to because that means we have competition and when you have competition you have quality and you have lower cost yeah but obama didn't want to hear that i mean he disagreed with me on that and we debated on i wish i i wish i had a tape of that debate by the way because it was an hour and a half and he and i were the only ones there and i wish you would have beat him i wish you would have beat him in the election i'm sure you beat him in the debate i wish you'd beat him in the election it would have been a very different world wouldn't it if we'd had john cox instead of barack obama but you know that is a

very that's the same kind of argument john that uh if you go back and look at civil war history we talk about civil war a lot everybody wants to talk about the civil war now well you go back and look at it and you've got a lot of people uh who were plantation owners and slave owners and they said well we realize this really isn't a very good system and we feel bad about the fact that we're controlling these people and enslaving them but you know it's for their own good if we let them loose they just wouldn't be able to survive right you know it's that kind of paternalism that obama is selling that's a slave plantation mentality uh and and it's actually the mentality of the plantation owners uh well i have to enslave them for their own good and that and reagan and that's why reagan's message was so

wonderful because it was just so simple you know the the eight most dangerous words in english languages i'm from the government i'm here to help you uh you know the stuff that reagan said was so true to so many people you gotta get government out of the way government can't be all things to all people government should do our defense because we don't want people owning nuclear weapons and tanks and other things like that so government should provide national defense and that's what the constitution specifically says yeah but on all these on all these other things, health care, education, government shouldn't be providing those things. Government should create the avenues for private industry to be able to provide those things.

And that's what we've got to get back to. And yet, as I'm sure you're aware, you're talking about education. We just had Biden's education secretary say, you know, that's our's our mission statement i'm from the government i'm here to help you totally oblivious to the fact that reagan used that as the uh fearful words that everybody doesn't want to hear i'm sure you're aware of that it was it was really funny that that he bought that he bought into that and uh so few people called him on it it truly is amazing to see that well i think you've got a great plan i'm sure that it's a very well i know that it is a very relevant book. Gavin Newsom, whether there's a presidential race or not, has a tremendous impact on everything across the country. People need to understand

where he's coming from. A good example of an elitist politician that we don't want to keep promulgating that system. And it's great to see that in your book, you have a plan for how we can start from the bottom up to reform this without having to beg Congress to reform themselves, which, of course, they will never do. Hearthepeople.org is where people can see that plan. I guess they can find your book on Amazon. Do you also sell it at hearthepeople.org? Okay, good.

So great talking to you, and I'm so grateful that you come up with this plan. I guess, you know, you can find your book on Amazon. You also sell it at hearthepeople.org? Okay, good. Yep, yep. So great talking to you, and I'm so grateful that you come up with this plan. We need people to think outside of the box that they have put us into, and we need to look for state solutions, and we need to look for ways that we can. way of nullification and essentially you know a positive way to nullify this calcified system that has become so self-interested and um that it can't uh be that it won't respond to us and it can't be reformed so i think that's a very important way to do it uh is and let me and let me and let me make this clear by the way here the people is not partisan in any way uh bernie bernie sanders and donald trump would agree on the same thing uh in one sense uh bernie sanders talks about corporations and millionaires and billionaires donald trump talks about the the deep state and the media and the fake news right well you know

here the people gets rid of both yes here the people puts the power back in the people's hands, gets rid of the media influence, and gets rid of the big corporations. And so I think people can look at it as a bipartisan, as a solution that both sides, that all the people can get around and believe

is the right way for us to go. I agree. And even as we try to engage and debate ourselves on social media and they try to censor us, this is a way that people can get directly involved. And it is something that is a personal, direct person-to-person type of thing, grassroots, moving up. These are all the things that we need to be looking to. These are all elements of what I think are going to be any successful solution.

So thank you so much for doing that again. Hearthepeople.org. And the book is Newsom's Nightmare, The Newsom Nightmare. And you'll find that on Amazon. Thank you so much for joining us, John Cox. Appreciate it. Thank you, David. Really a pleasure to be with you.

Thank you. We've got just a little bit of time left and just enough time for me to thank Stephen Patterson. Thank you again, Stephen. That is very generous i appreciate the tip on rock fan and um we will um we're about ready to go out so i'll just cut this short uh tomorrow we're going to talk a little bit more about the pharmaceutical stuff that i did not get to today because there's some very important updates on that. Yes, Fox News is out there trying to sell measles panic again. And we shut that down once and for all.

But that's always the way they begin. And they keep going back to that. That's their bread and butter. That's their pharmaceutical sponsors that they've got there. Thank you for joining us. Let me tell you, the David Knight Show you can listen to with your ears. You can even watch it by using your eyes. In fact, if you can hear me, that means you're listening to The David Knight Show right now. Yeah, good job.

And you want to know something else? You can find all the links to everywhere to watch or listen to the show at thedavidknightshow.com. That's a website.