The Ezra Klein Show - The Contradictions of Gavin Newsom

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Gavin Newsom is the 2028 Democratic front-runner. That’s what many of the polls and the Polymarket betting odds say.It’s been widely believed that Newsom wants to run for president someday. But belief that he could be a front-runner was less common. A liberal white guy from a state that much of the country considers badly governed just didn’t seem like the profile the Democratic Party was looking for.But as a Californian who has watched Newsom for a long time, I was surprised by him this year. After President Trump returned to the White House, Newsom started a podcast, interviewing people like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and Michael Savage, which made a lot of Democrats mad. At the same time, Newsom turned himself into the leader of the resistance — trolling Trump on social media and pushing a ballot initiative to end California’s independent redistricting to counter the partisan redistricting effort in Texas.Newsom has been willing to try things and take risks. He has shown a feel for this moment — in politics and in the way attention works now.But it’s still true that he runs a state that the country considers badly governed. California tops the rankings of unaffordable states, at a time when affordability has become a central electoral issue.In this conversation, I ask Newsom about all of this — what he learned this year from talking to figures on the right, how he thinks the Democratic Party can win back voters it lost, why California is so unaffordable and what he’s doing about it.Mentioned:Applebee’s America by Ron Fournier, Douglas B. Sosnik and Matthew J. Dowd“And, This Is Charlie Kirk”“And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing”“And, This Is Michael Savage”“And, This Is Steve Bannon”“Newsom Says Trump’s Attacks Are ‘Not Normal’”“Barack Obama 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech”Book Recommendations:Built to Last by Jim Collins, Jerry I. PorrasMeditations by Marcus Aurelius1929 by Andrew Ross SorkinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

You know, The Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, might want to run for president someday. I mean, that's been widely believed for a long time. That Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, would have a chance if he ran for president. That was less widely believed. Liberal white guy from a state the country considers badly governed just didn't seem like the profile that either the Democratic Party or the country was looking for. well things change if you look at polls of the likely democratic field now newsome leads in many of them if you look at the polymarket betting odds on who will be the 2020 democratic nominee newsom is far ahead of anyone else jonathan martin political columnist he wrote a piece entitled admit it gavin newsome is the twenty twenty eight frontrunner look i know it's all very early to be talking about twenty twenty eight and in this episode i try not to but even if you

Even putting the future aside, Newsom has become, without any doubt, one of the Democratic Party's leaders at a time when the party is desperately looking for leadership. And as a Californian, someone who has watched and covered Newsom for a long time, he's surprised me. He's taking risks. He's trying new things. He's a feel for this moment, not just in politics, but in attention and in how attention now works in a way that very few other Democrats have demonstrated. And he just doesn't seem in the way so many Democrats seem afraid. He doesn't seem afraid of trying things and failing. Doesn't seem afraid of making his own side angry. It doesn't seem afraid of experimenting. It's working for him.

It began right after the election when Newsom launched a podcast, where he began interviewing people like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Michael Savage. I mean, that podcast pissed Democrats off. if I heard from any of them. But I watched him in those episodes, and I thought, he's listening. And I wonder what he's learning from them.

And at the same time, Newsom turned himself into the leader of the resistance. He began trolling Trump on social media, talking about the president, in the terms the president talks about everyone else. And it worked. Suddenly, I was getting sent, left and right, Newsom tweets of all things.

And then when Texas began its mid-cycle redistricting, Newsom did something many found shocking. He pushed a ballot. initiative to pause California's independent redistricting, a huge point of pride in California, and something he had, by the way, supported, and instead created these highly partisan maps to counter Texas, and that ballot initiative, which could have failed, and would have looked terrible if it failed, passed overwhelmingly. But Newsom's problem, as a leader for the Democratic Party, is what it has always been. Look, California, in my view, is the greatest state in the nation,

the place I love more than anywhere else on earth. But at a time when the politics of affordability are paramount, California routinely ranks as the least affordable state in the nation. Newsom has signed many good bills, done many good things, but he has not fixed that. So I want to have Newsom on the show to talk through what he has learned from the right, what he believes must be the future of the Democratic Party, and how he answers California's manifold critics.

As always, my email, EzraCline Show at NYTimes.com. Governor Gavin Newsom, welcome to the show. It's great to be with you. Can't believe I was on your podcast before you were online. Well, that's the way it should be. I mean, I needed some numbers. I needed some audience. So thank you for providing that.

I'm grateful. I'm happy to help. So I've been watching interviews with you recently. Everybody starts by asking you about the number. Democratic Party. I want to ask you about the right. I am always struck by how much of the modern right comes out of California. See of Breitbart, California. It's interesting. You have Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire begin in California. Stephen Miller grows up in California. Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin was based in California, the Claremont Institute, the intellectual home of

Trumpism. Why do you think that is that California's birthed so much of the new. Look, it's the size of 21 state populations combined. So you have to put it in perspective. I mean, there's nothing like it in scale and size and scope. You have more Republicans in California than most states have population. So you have to put all of that in perspective. So by definition, in a very pluralistic state, you know, politics is very diverse, even despite the fact of its perception of being a big blue state, you look at a map, two-thirds of that state is deeply red. You have some of the most conservative counties in America. And you have some of the most historically conservative counties going back decades and decades like Orange County that really

my county, your county, forged sort of the modern construct of, you know, sort of Reaganism and Nixon, these guys that came from that frame. So in that respect, it's not surprising. But the Stephen Miller, I think that's interesting because there's this dialectic, right? There's sort of that pushback to sort of orthodoxy and that friction that emerges and people that emerge from that merge with a very strong point of view. I know some of these guys. I don't know some of the others, do you think there's something, too, about the way they end up feeling embattled on the wrong side of history? Everybody says, and I believe California is a place where the future happens first. Yeah. And a lot of them felt like they were watching what they believed in, get encircled.

And it seems to me it created a kind of conservatism. It is much more apocalyptic, much more ethno-nationalist. It's certainly ethno-nationalist. much more about trying to stop where things are going rather than preserve, like, the best of where things run. Yeah, I mean, Ronnestein's written a lot about the forces of restoration in that context versus the forces of transformation. These guys want to put American in reverse. They want to bring us back in many ways to pre-1960s world on voting rights, civil rights,

LGBTQ rights, women's rights, et cetera. And look, you think about that in the context where I think about in the context of California and your question, to me, that peaked in my sort of modern. construct, meaning in terms of contemporary space in 1994 with Pete Wilson, a Republican governor. One of the hardest fought state races is in California, where incumbent Republican Governor Pete Wilson is facing Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown, and where the issue of illegal immigration could be a decisive one. Wilson believes he has touched a nerve. He is backing Proposition 187, which would deny illegal immigrants, services like health care, and public education

for their children. And on that same ballot was the beginning of the end of affirmative action which occurred at the UC regions shortly thereafter.

But Prop 1 in E7 was all about pushback and it was xenophobia and the nativism the pushback against immigration peak

1994. They keep coming. Two million illegal immigrants in California. The federal government won't stop them at the border, yet requires us

to pay billions to take care of them. Enough is enough. Governor Pete Wilson. Those against 187 were heard in the streets, but not at the polls. And, of course, his ascendancy running for election, re-election, was all about his presidential aspirations as well. I am seeking the presidency of the United States.

The values that guided us for 200 years are suddenly under siege, and so is America. So it was directional, not just in California, but growing across the United States. So we've had this for decades. I mean, there's a familiarity here. But, you know, the response to that is also interesting. And I think in many respects, the response to Prop 187 and Pete Wilson's success has a lot of clues in terms of how the Democratic Party responds to this moment and reasserts our success moving forward. What clues? It was a rebuilding the party.

It was about grassroots. It was about building movements. It was about connecting communities. It was about NGO. It was about community organizers. It was truly bottom up, and it forced a discipline that led to a lot of organizations that are thriving today that quite literally came out of what they perceived as a chaos of 1994, 1995. So, you know, I think about it now in the context of where we were in 2004 as well in terms of where our party is, where we got shellacked. We lost the Senate.

We lost the House. We lost the presidency. And then we built Media Matters. We built Center for America Progress. We built Democracy Alliance. We started organizing millennials. We started organizing Hispanics. We started focusing on mobile, local, social, cloud, cloud, meaning technology.

And we built this bottom-up movement that brought us back into the majority with Nancy Pelosi two years later, and then 53% popular vote two years after that, most since 1964, to get Barack Obama into the White House. So it was a remarkable story of resilience, but it was also the hard work in 2005 and six that set that course. So I often think about the 2004 analogy. I don't think, I think probably the Democratic Party was more shattered and broken after 24, but I think people who don't remember 2004 and how bad that felt can miss. And in the sense of the Democratic Party lost touch with the heartland, it had to be a completely different thing. We were, I was reading books about going

to Appleby's, Applebee's America. It was all about, you know, it was about appearing less frank, who can't have, you know, Hermes ties anymore. I mean, it was all about the heart. It was, I mean, And it's so familiar, so many of this stuff. All this stuff echoes over and over and over and over again. But so you've actually been trying to figure out different parts of America. So I was struck after the election to see you start a podcast horting in on our territory here. I got to say I didn't. You really didn't.

Well, you've actually had a podcast before. Man, what's had it, man? You got Mooreshine Beachmoe Lynch. Doug Hendrickson. And Gavin Newsome and you're listening to politics. Talk about podcasts. I didn't expect you to have that probably beat this one. But I would not have expected you to start with Charlie Kirk as your first guest.

Yeah. Steve Bannon. Yeah. Dr. Phil Michael Savage. I mean, I've watched you in these interviews. You're listening. Yeah. You're looking for threads of interest in agreement.

I've watched Steve Bannon tell you repeatedly how the 2020 election is stolen. You just let the pitches go right. Because, I mean, how many debates have we had about that he's wrong and we've, you know, it's exhausting. I want to ask what has stayed with you from these conversations, what you have been learned. across a couple of them. So let's start with Kirk. What for you was the most resonant point Charlie Kirk made? And I don't mean that you have to have agreed with it. Just something that has made the way you think about the world a little bit different. I thought there was a sincerity, a deeper sincerity than I anticipated in terms of his point of view and his perspective, a willingness

to engage with people he disagreed with, a willingness to debate to the extent that he thought in a fair imbalanced way. I think there's grace in that. Someone deeply focused on organizing in a deeper way than I fully understood. Right around, I'd say, 2021, we had a goal, could we move the youth vote 10 points over 10 years? And it was literally you sat down and put that numerical together. Yeah, like can we move at 10 points over 10 years? Because our whole hypothesis was, and we, you know, we did this alongside President Trump and his great team, was that this demographic is disproportionately to the Democrat side. We believe Democrats were taking them for granted. And someone that understood more deeply the pain that young men are facing and struggling with?

They are the most alcohol addicted, most drug addicted, most suicidal, most depressed, most medicated generation in history. And the message that was largely being fed to a lot of young people was lower your expectations. You're not going to have the same American dream that your parents would have. And we saw this as an opportunity, especially with young men. And was able to do something about and give them hope and recognize the society as failing young men, and someone that clearly was playing an outsized influence even greater than I fully understood in terms of supporting the base of the Maga movement. What part of his perspective on how society is failing young men felt reasonable to you,

recognizable to you, and which part isn't? I mean, look, and we all know, I mean, everybody knows the stats. If you're 30 years old, you're the first generation living that's not doing better than your parents. And there's a sense of nihilism that's growing. I've had a number of other interesting guests, Atriac and others, went down to TwitchCon and was there with a lot of gamers and really sort of trying to get into the belly of the beast of understanding where young men are and this pain and suffering, this isolation that's turning increasingly to grievance, that they're never going to do better than their parents. They're never going to get out of that room with three roommates. They're never going to get, even they can't afford rent because they can't afford the first two months payment on the rent, let alone buy a home. And this nihilism, he understood, certainly Trump understood it as well.

He took advantage of it. But they have no prescriptions to address it and deal with it. So where it fell short, of course, I only had an hour and a half conversation with Charlie, but where it seems to me not have fallen short with Turning Point USA and Maga movement is they don't have a prescription to actually address the real and substantive issues, but they sure as hell identified the problem. Isn't that prescription, I think, if I were to try to boil it down, tariffs a closed border in Christianity.

Christianity is a big part. That was also telling. You know, I lazily said, you know, Jesus. And he got offended. And then I said it again, and I realized, boy, I really are offended. Forgive me for being in. And I didn't understand how deeply held his faith was and how much of an organizing principle it is for them as well.

And how these rallies and everything, that's interesting. Just that merger in terms of creating community, sense of belonging, meaning, identity. it's hard to break. He was trying to build the new Christian, right? Yeah, and Trump understands that. It gives people meaning and purpose. It's powerful.

I mean, I imagine it's like, you know, I haven't been to a Bernie rally necessarily, but it seems, you know, not dissimilar, but even more. I mean, there's a religious construct to it. That's powerful, faith, community, belonging. We're desperate for that.

And those are universal. Those are not writing less. Are your religious or spiritual at all? Yeah, spiritual press, more than religious. As my dad would say about, I went to Catholic schools and I went to a Jesuit. at university. I'm Catholic of kind of the distant kind. I'll go to church on Christmas.

You know, I'm one of those. But I feel a deep connection to my faith beyond that in a spiritual sense. In Jesuit upbringing really is defy me. St. Francis is our patron saint in San Francisco, many parts one body. When one part suffers, we all suffer. This notion of social justice, racial justice, economic justice is deeply ingrained in me. It's really shaped me in that respect. So I attached that. I don't dismiss that when I talk to someone like Charlie. I respect that deeply. I admire that.

But look, there's a lot of grievance there. But there's also a lot of grievance I have in this space that my party has completely neglected this space, that we haven't been organizing the campuses. But we haven't been organizing young men. We haven't been addressing their societal screams, their concerns, they're legitimate. Suicide rate, 4x, that of women, dropout rates,

the deaths of despair. We have men that are suffering and it's hurting women. Any mother understands this. I've got two boys. And one of them, as you know, if you listen to that podcast, was so excited Charlie Kirk was coming on because his algorithms are saying that Andrew Tate is innocent and this guy Peterson is an unbelievable thought leader up in Canada and Joe Rogan is the best and, you know, and Charlie Kirk, you really get to need to know him, Dad, and start to wake up to this reality

that Democratic Party needs to wake up to. And that's, again, that's the entry into why did this podcast and had those folks on his first guests. I thought one of the most interesting shows you did was with the streamer Atrioc. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, what did you take from that conversation? You know, it was so interesting. He was wonderfully combative with me.

I kept wanting to talk about his history as a streamer and a gamer. He had no interest. I do want to start talking about Gen Z men. Yeah. And the issue I'm seeing, not all of them are like this. It's a broad, diverse group, of course. And it's a huge point in my audience. And I'm hearing them, I'm hearing their thoughts a lot.

They range from angry to openly nihilistic. He said, I'm coming on because my audience is pissed off. Pissed off with you, pissed off with everybody. Democrats and Republicans, you're not listening to us. They're struggling. They're suffering. And you're not listening to us. It's not about gaming.

It's not about discord. It's not about Twitch. It's about what the hell you guys haven't done to it. address the crisis for so many young people and how they're feeling today. If I could spoil it down to one word, it's like radicalism is when no house. If you can't get a house, if you don't see a path to get a house, and I hear this all the time, they're, some of them are working. They're working decent jobs. They're working hard. It's not even feasible in a lot of these cities to ever get a house. It was remarkable. It kept

come over and over and over. Once you feel like you can get on that ladder, you're okay. You can calm down, you can find a party, you can vote. But if you can't see that, what's the point? Why am I doing it? Why am I working this job for a boss I hate, for wages that are only okay? I'm never going to get another step up. And it was not just illuminating. It woke me up.

Wake up, Democratic Party. Wake up everybody. People are suffering and struggling. Trump understood that in a contemporary term. I didn't understand that in this terms. I was out there making a case, and I was one of the, of the last men standing for Biden. And I was talking about the economy and the aggregate, 15.4 million jobs, eight times more than the last three Republican administrations combined the best jobs

markets since the 1960s, all of these things that were true. All that said, I missed the obvious point. That's in the aggregate. We're talking about the economy. We're not talking about the American people. We're not talking about people's lived experience. And we missed that. And with Atrioc, He kept bringing that back that systemically for decades, this economy has not been working. Ten percent of people on two-thirds of the wealth. Half the consumer spending is that top ten percent. The stock market is seven damn stocks, maybe ten, but primarily seven, mostly in California. And so that reality, he burst in a way that pierced me even more than all the intellectual punditry,

the things you've written and other people have written. You didn't have to make it personal here, man. But it's not nourishing the economy for enough people. People are living on edge. And I saw that at home. I live that reality. But it's deeper than that now. I mean, we were able to finally afford a home.

But you needed to, I think somebody listening to this could say, like, you're the governor of California. Nobody was unaware that inflation was punishing people, that homes had become extremely unaffordable for young people. Nobody was unaware that there was pain. I mean, when you say it burst a bubble for you, how would, On my own rhetoric, I was so stubborn. I'm talking about sort of my rhetorical posture. Not my understanding. I mean, look, I'm the guy that did $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. No one of the government country has done that. Twenty-five for health care workers doubled the earned income tax credit that has universal health care regardless of preexisting conditionability

to pay and immigration status. I'm deeply mindful of the imperative to address these underlying issues. So I'm not naive in that respect, quite the contrary. But my rhetoric did. not match. And I think that rhetoric that was so much part of the rhetoric, this sort of defensive posture that inflation was cooling from that 9.1 percent. And jobs market was growing. We were envy of the world, economist magazine, everybody else, GDP growth. It just landed flat. America's already great. Yeah. And Trump understood. So it was the rhetoric, not the reality that I'm trying to know. But let me get at this rhetoric reality landing flat because I do think there's something pretty deep here. When you used to defend Biden to me and to others, the word you would

use about his governance, not necessarily communication, is a masterclass. I agree. And you were, I think, probably the most effective at making the case people wished he would have made. If these policies were so good, if the policies in California were so good, then what is the disconnect? Because ultimately, this whole thing is supposed to work on a feedback loop between policy, reality, voting. Was the policy not actually that good? Was it just unable to overcome the reality? What broke?

Well, I thought the policy was extraordinary. But so why then did it not make people happier? Because program passing is not problem solving. So you have to establish that as a framework. When you pass a piece of legislation, that's day one. Now you start at the beginning of a new process, which unfolds over the course of period of time. And it unfolds in ways that no one understands better than Esler Klein.

But no one understands better than the person sitting. Sure, you say that to all the podcasts. But it's a fundamental fact of the frame of reference that we have together in terms of your abundance agenda, understanding process, understanding the labyrinth of governance, understanding jurisdictions, understanding the sort of the pluralistic realities of how you actually manifest and implement these ideals. And that's challenging. And that plays out in 50 states. I mean, I just think about my own, you live in the Bay Area. There's a hundred and one jurisdictions in the Bay Area alone. There's hundreds of special districts, JPAs and transit districts, in addition to that,

to get anything done, how you break that down. You imagine from the presidential perspective, Chips and Science Act and the IRA and the tax credits, etc., having that framework, localism is still determinative. And now you can drive a lot of reforms on NEPA, Sequa, and California, etc., but localism still outweighs so much of that. So from a communication perspective, that should have been perhaps communicated more effectively, but also it needs time to gestate. Trump's success is destroying, not building.

That's easy. And you can destroy in nanoseconds the symbolism and the substance of the East Wing. That's destruction, doge, destruction. And that kind of destruction somehow satiates people in this respect. They feel like, oh, there's something actually. happening. There's real action here. But to be a builder, that's where greatness is. That's where greatness lies. And that's what I believe was the masterclass of the administration was able to create a framework to build again at scale, $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, the IRA, so we can compete

against our most fierce competitor. China in low-carbon green growth. They deliver $369 billion. The reality, though, obviously, is that Trump, take advantage of a lot of those investments, but he's also taken advantage of the narrative of destruction. A view I hold, I think, even more strongly now that I did when I was writing the book, which was mostly before the election, is liberal democracy will not work if policy cannot deliver at the speed of elections.

At the speed of elections. When Democrats get to the point where they are endlessly justifying, why everything is so slow. My favorite example of this is that when Medicare passed, it took one year for the Medicare cards to go out. When Biden, in what was arguably the most popular single

thing he passed during his presidency, certainly one of them, passed negotiating down Medicare drug prices, the way it was designed the, and you can blame corporate influence and all kinds of things, but it's still not. Those 10 drugs, I think

the first time people will pay those lower prices is next year. And so just in time for Donald Trump to take advantage of it. If you break the cord between the things that Gavin Newsom is doing and Joe Biden is doing and what people can feel, how are voters supposed to make decisions? Well, I think it's why they have turned to Orban and you've got more authoritarian leanings. I mean, it's why we were all just reverential a decade ago and Freeman and others writing breathlessly about the China model and how they're going to clean our clock.

people, yeah, they want action. They want to see results immediately. I get that. But we also believe in due process, believe in civil service, believe in the rule of law, not the rule of Don, not the law of the jungle. We believe in oversight, you know, vise and consent. We believe in due process and transparency. We don't believe in cronyism or perhaps we don't. Yeah, I'm not saying we need to believe in Trumpism. I'm saying what do you do to reconnect people to the fruits of governance. So look, I'm trying to do that in real time. One of the things that I look back on my term is, if there were a mistake, there's policy things, things I certainly should have could have do it, but there's notion of compromise and being complicit in that process,

as you suggest, where we're just, you know, all these interest groups, everything else, and we just want to work through, and we're making progress, feels good, so we went 80% of the way, we're going to come back. I have lost all patience for that, because I agree with you, the public has as well. They want to see results, and that was reflected in 13 housing bills that I disproportionately had to assert, well, a number of them I had to put in the budget, which you just don't do because it couldn't get out of the legislature otherwise, in order just to assert and deliver with a mindset that is aligned with your critique and your observation. But again, there's a balance there because I don't want crony capitalism.

I don't want state capitalism. I don't want command and control. I don't want to blow up the procurement. I don't want to just pick winners and losers. Let's take as a premise that the model where you walk in and you hand Donald Trump, sometimes non-metaphorically, a gift made of gold, to get good deals from him. I think it's bad. It's not bad.

It's corrosive beyond words. It's extraordinary what's happening. We'll go with that. The model where government doesn't deliver is also corrosive. You have a great metaphor. in your book, Citizenville, where you say that people treat government like a vending machine. And they go and they put their tax dollars into it.

And when nothing comes out, they begin shaking the machine. Yeah, you kick the machine. If Gavin Newsom or somebody Gavin Newsom likes was doing Doge, but the thing Doge claimed to be. We have been doing it. I started Doge. We spelled Doge ODI. It started in 2019.

That's sort of worse than Doge. I agree. It's the Office of Digital Innovation. Now it's Office of Data Innovation. So I made it even worse again. And we've reformed our procurement. We've reformed our civil service system. We have advanced more gen AI pilots than any other big state in the country.

We continue to innovate in that space. But I didn't try to do things to people. I tried to do things with people. So it didn't get the kind of attention that running around on stage with a, you know, who is that guy? Chainsaw? Yeah, chainsaw with our Argentinian president or dictator and chief would have done. generated. I'll give you a specific. We've installed more green energy projects last year than any other time in history, 7,000 megawatts. We just had the largest solar in Fresno County, $5 billion,

$2,300 megawatt project, Darden, the largest battery solar project, one of the largest in the world done in record time because of the new processes we put in place. We also did the same thing with fast-tracking permits for an above-ground storage facility, the first and a half a century in California. We're doing the same with housing. 42 secret reform bills I've signed, infill housing reforms, ADU reforms. We can get into all that as relates to single family, housing reforms, everything that you have written about, and we have moved to a degree. I don't know that many states have. So I'm completely aligned with you in terms of having to deliver. And I'll tell you, if nothing else Trump has, I think, woken, better wake our party up to that's what people

want to see, but for good, not for destructive purposes. I want to move to Michael Savage. I think it is hard for people who didn't grow up in the era of Limbaugh and Savage to sort of understand what Savage culturally represented and why it was so surprising to see him on your show. So how did you describe who Savage was in his heyday? Savage was, I mean, this guy was at peak back in the day, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, dominating right-wing radio. He was an outsider in the Bay Area in San Francisco. You talk about, you know, someone who was sitting there in the heart of the region and attacking 25. the culture and the community and the values. And remember, the modern MAGA movement,

you could deeply argue, started with Michael Savage. That's why I thought he was an important guest. If I were running, I would run on a campaign of borders, language, and culture. Well, what do you stand for, Mr. Savage, borders, language, and culture. The Republicans are having meanings now on what they should stand for. You hear this? They're still trying to determine what their motto is. Duh.

Language, borders, and culture. That was his mantra for decades and decades. And so for me, that was, I thought, perhaps one of the most interesting interviews is sort of mind his consciousness of where we are today. And then what did you actually take away from the conversation with him that you thought was interesting? I think it's just his history. I mean, he's a big environmentalist. He's got a lot of deep opinions, very critical of the current administration,

as it relates to endangered species, as it relates to natural and working lands, as it relates to animal rights, more broadly defined. He's got an interesting progressive background that evolved or devolved, depending on the point of view, through his own experiences. And he's a family man, unbelievable relationship with his son who's unbelievably successful, interestingly, and his wife, which I admire.

I just family and faith. You're really connecting Kirk and Savage to the fact that they're human beings. I know they're human beings. But you're talking to people on the right of a very different view of view. Yeah, but I'm also talking about, but it's not about,

right or left. It's about there's a universe. The one thing, and it's a great irony talking to me, because I'm fighting fire with fire and I'm pushing back and I'm being criticized for that by being very aggressive and I'm not holding punches. At the same time, I say this all the time. Divorce is not an option. We have to live together and advance together across our differences. And so I want to find those areas. I want to find the humanity. I want to find the love. I'll use that word. We all need to be love. We all need to love. Savage's view is that California is a kind of hellscape. Yeah. Five years ago, I had a heart attack.

Yeah. Okay, here in Marin County. Yes. So I'm rushed to Marin General. Yep. I have to wait online. It's filled with illegal aliens. You've got the 10 zones here.

You got snow to the desert. Right. So it's a perfect geographical location for me. But there's a point at which I will leave this state, and that will be taxation without representation. So, Gavin, the homeless thing is the turning point. When that man defecated outside the window, that was the beginning of the end of San Francisco for not only for me, but for the whole city. My point is not to have you agree or even disagree with that, but when you sit there

and you listen to him and he lays it out, which part of it do you think there is something to respond to here, not the way he would respond to it, but there is some set of problems that from his perspective are visible that from your perspective are harder to see. Well, I mean, the affordability crisis, he's 100% right. The poster child of our failure as a state is the issue of poverty that's out on the streets and sidewalks, as it relates to encampments and homelessness. But look, he loves our state. That's why he's living in the state, California.

The vast majority of these guys that attacked the state, grew up in the state, made their wealth in the state, still had businesses in the state. Elon Musk put his R&D headquarters back, world headquarters, back in California. His AI companies in California. SpaceX was launched in California. Tesla exists because of California.

He's a billionaire because of the state's regulatory posture. So many of these folks that are attacking the state all come from the state of California. What they don't like is the progressive taxes. Tell me about it. You understand it. But it's the progressive tax. They want to take their capital gains someplace else, which I deeply understand. It's homeless and housing and transportation problems are legendary. It's a mass exodus. The California derangement syndrome is not new, is my long-witted point. When I talk to people about you as a leader of the Democratic Party, and you're a leading voice, let's call it that for the moment.

Sounds pessimistic for the moment. What are you suggesting? We'll be for long. I get it. I read between the line. I'm not going to ask you seven different ways if you're running into 2028. God bless you, yeah. What I am going to ask you is this. The big political issue of the day is affordability. Period.

California, U.S. News & World Report on Wallet Hub, look at all these different rankings. It ranks 50th on affordability. Yeah. These measures combine house and costs and other measures of cost of living. Why and what is the affordability agenda that is credible coming from the governor of California?

It's interesting. Wallup also talks about the Happiest City Index 5 at the top 10. Listen, man, I got Redwoods tattooed on my arm. I grieve every day I'm not in California. You don't need to tell me it's a happier place to be. And in terms of taxes, which is interesting. Wallet Hub comes out with their annual survey on taxes,

saying we're slightly above average on taxes. Total mythology there. It's the highest tax rate in the country, but not the highest taxes across the board when you add everything. That said, the affordability issue in California is real. It's been the original sin going back decades and decades. Housing, period, full stop. More things and more ways on more days explains everything.

It's the original sin in California. Nimbism. We haven't gotten out of our own way. We haven't produced enough housing stock. It's Econ 101. Supplied demand. It's not very complicated. And when I started as governor, there was no housing agenda. There was no homeless agenda. It was not the responsibility role of the state. It was assigned to cities and counties and regional COCs. And we changed all that. In fact, I put a marker down within the first few days when I got into office by suing some cities in my state. Put 47 on notice. sued Huntington Beach and have changed radically our approach to accountability, creating a housing accountability unit, looked at state excess land sites, which is unlocked over 5,000 units, began a process of working with carrots and sticks to move from nimbism to a yumbias mindset, which I think we have demonstrated in meaningful ways and substantive ways. 110,000 housing units were completed last year. It's completely underwhelming. And so we have more work to do. Why is it so hard? Because you've wanted to do this. You put a 3.5 million housing production goal. That was the aspirational goal and then the legal goal,

2.5 million by 2030. Great. Let's use 2.5 million. On our regional, what we call the arena goals. And by the way, it's first time we had goal setting that was this. But you're not on track for either goal. And not, well, no one is. Yeah. You know what it is. But across the country. And that's it. By the way, that's a macro. You got 1.2 million or so units. But other places are, I mean, Look, I spend, because I'm a nerd, a fair amount of time looking at statistics on housing starts in Austin and Houston. Austin's having now a big downturn in terms of costs because of some of the overbuilding, but it's interesting. Listen, I think of California having a big downturn in rents because it's overbuilt.

I think that would be a welcome change of problem. No, I get it. I take it's genuinely serious. I've seen how many bills you've passed. I've covered a bunch of them. What makes this so hard? You've got 470 cities, you're 58 counties. mentioned just 101 jurisdictions in the cities and counties just around the Bay Area. I haven't even

gotten to L.A. County, there's 88 cities, 88 leaders, COCs. I mean, everybody, everybody is participatory in this. And that's the challenge. It's that labyrinth. By the way, these folks aren't happy. League of City's not happy. Our county partners are not happy. I mean, we are asserting ourselves in ways that the state has never asserted ourselves into local planning decisions in order to break down those barriers, and we've been breaking down those barriers. What we need is to break down the cost of borrowing. It's the last piece that's missing right now. I think we have shifted the dialogue. We have won the debate. We're on the other side of this, and the proof point will be when we see the borrowing cost we're dying. So I think you can think about what it takes to build

housing as having three buckets. One is land use, zoning, permitting, etc. The sort of legal traps you have to run in order to get started. Then there's financing of construction, interest rates, things like that, and cost of construction, which is related, but it has to do with the cost of materials, labor, all the rest of it. And as you say, I think in a lot of blue states, the fight on land use and zoning is intellectually one, whether or not it's been totally policy one, that's harder. But I do think that's one. the financing and the cost of construction, which, by the way, with Trump's tariffs and deportations

is getting worse on a bunch of levels, tell me about those, because I actually think those are harder to talk about. Well, and you didn't even bring up productivity, which is down about 30% since 1970 to 2020. In the housing sector. In the housing sector, and every other part of our economy. Yeah, I'm pulling that into the cost of construction, but yes. And so let's establish situationally the tariffs environment has impacted the cost of goods, So material supplies has gone up.

He's made it worse, Donald Trump. The labor shortages are real. Today, there was a Wall Street Journal article showing 400 plus thousand construction worker shortage, and they can't even get enough data center workers to address some of the energy needs for AI, et cetera. And that's been exacerbated by the mass deportation efforts, et cetera. So those two things are important. But the issue of productivity goes to deeper questions now around can we look at new styles of

construction? Are we going to promote at scale modular housing, prefab housing? Offsite. You're building houses like you'd build a car and then assembling them on site. And it's also 3D printing, which is really interesting. There's some interesting companies in Texas. They're actually working with NASA in terms of some opportunities there in terms of new materials. AI as it relates to the material space is also interesting in relationship to this conversation. So I do think we're about to experience a completely different shift on the productivity side because of necessity, because of the reality, because of the crisis of affordability. And this holds a lot of promise. It holds a lot of political peril in the context of the

politics within labor. And that has to be accommodated and dealt with. By the way, if there's a big preview for California, my last year, it's in this space. Legislature. to take it to the next level. But we have to accommodate because there's a lot of unions within. I want to slow down what you just said here because I know, but just for people who are not as into the modular housing debate is you and I. So right now, building housing is, you know, guys show up with hammers. Same way they have been since the beginning of time.

So this is why productivity is down. And modular, which there's no place in America that does a ton of off-site manufactured housing. But in Sweden, I think more than 80% of single- family homes are now off-site manufactured. You can have modular build, as many places do, in unionized factories. So it doesn't have to be a non-union industry, but it still means fewer builders. And it means which unions and which different skills, which trades are part of that. And their end lies, this is the issue we have to address. When you talk about address it, right, I think you're pointing towards there being some way that it can be addressed. But on some

level, it will mean for people building on site unless we increase housing production so much that you have a volume. And that's the, and the goal is to do what we need to do, which is the abundance of gender actually addressing the demand side of the equation. So I think we'll be fine for a decade or two as we work out of this morass, this mess we've created, not just in California, but all across this country. You had a hell of a conversation with Steve Bannon. I thought I was talking to Bernie Sanders for half of it. It's interesting.

I mean it. I've had that experience with him. What did you take from that? the sort of strange horseshoe nature of the populism that he espouses, maybe a little bit more when he's talking to people on the left, but that I think is authentic to him. I think it is authentic.

I mean, he has a point of view. He has a perspective. Here's, I think, it's important. And this is why I think, let's get back to why President Trump won again. You have basically working class people, and particularly lower down the chains, they've seen the bailouts on Wall Street.

They've seen the oligarchs be made. they don't think they have agency in a global supply chain they think they're just a cog in the machine that their voice is not heard right they're kind of dismissed

culturally they're considered and I don't care if you're black Hispanic or white working class it's not a race thing it's ethnicity it's you're just dismissed he's thought things through in a deeper way than I

frankly understood you know we're so quick to dismiss oh Steve Bannon trying to light democracy on fire in January 6th and the like and then you get under the hood and he's making a rational case for an industrial policy

that's workered center. He's making a rational case of critique and reflection about the WTO and NAFTA. He's making a reflective case that both parties, not just a Republican Party, but Democratic Party

was complicit in the hollowing out of our infrastructure and our manufacturing base. He's making the case for progressive taxes. I stopped him in the interview. I said,

you quite literally made a more effective case for California's progressive tax policies than I or others have made. He was arguing that Trump, on the big, beautiful bill, made a mistake. He should have increased corporate taxes and increased taxes on the 1%

and lowered them for working folks. On the upper brackets, I don't want to see extension. I want them to go back to the old rates and they have to pay the old rates. And then additionally, if they can't help us get this under control, I'm off for increasing taxes on the, they will have a tax increase if President Trump doesn't extend it. But then I think we'll have another, have another tax increase. Had he done that?

Democratic Party would be in real trouble right now. If Trump listened, I've had this experience interviewing and then listening to Bannon, there are moments where I'm like, if Trump actually listened to this guy, the left would be in real trouble. Had he done that, he would have, I think, created an enduring mega movement. I don't think there is one after Trump. I think it's going to fray. There's no chance, Jady, could keep it together, certainly not Ruby or anybody else.

Without Trump, there's no Trumpism. There's no ideological framework, but there could have been. He could have built the structure from a policy framework. and Bannon, I think, is the thought leader in that respect, and I say thought leader. And I know that offends a lot of liberal minds that are offended by Bannon and don't want to attach any thoughtfulness to what he promotes. But I think we would be wise to listen. And that's again, there's got to be some grace, learn from people. Success leaves clues.

There's power of emulation. And you've got to get out of your bubble, literally and figuratively. And you also have to find humanity. You have to find decency in other people. for no other reason that we're all exhausted, polarized, traumatized. We're exhausted. This has to end. We can't take this anymore. This is code red in this country. Just the humanity that we've lost. The sense of purpose back to meaning. That's why I believe in national service should be compulsory. That's why I believe in patriotism, not just from a party perspective, but from a

unifying perspective. We have an opportunity, 250 years of this historic project of our founding fathers to celebrate that sense of idealism, this extraordinary project, 249 years. And I think that's what I hope, not just our party does, but we as Americans can do next year. Well, I watched the reaction to a bunch of these conversations

and the thing you know about having conversations like that with people like Bannon, like Kirk, like Savage, is you get a lot of frustration from your own side saying, why are you treating them with so much grace? Yeah, of course.

Why are you listening so openly to them when they treat us like this? That's right. How did you take in? I thought it totally fair. And I was marginally hurt by it. But it was completely fair. Look, you can go on cable and you can watch the back and forth. You can watch me on cable. Go back and forth. I'm happy to get into that mode. I take a backseat to no one I'm being willing to engage in debate people. I'll do it on a daily basis. But that's not the point of the podcast. And so I'm trying to create a different space. And I think it's important to have that space. as we find the way back together because I just, I'm married in a big Republican family, you know that, and some may not know that. It's not an academic exercise for me.

It's not about right, it's not about left, it's not about red or blue. It's about the human experience is what it's all about. We've lost that in our politics. I think of most of the things I've read in newspapers this year, maybe the one that sticks in my mind

the most was in the Wall Street Journal. I apologize to the, times, but to read these sentences in the journal was striking. The net worth held by the top 0.1% of households in the U.S. reached $23.3 trillion in the second quarter of this year. That is up from $10.7 trillion a decade earlier. The amount held by the bottom 50% increased to $4.2 trillion from $900 billion. So the top 10th of a percent in this country has $23 plus trillion in wealth, the bottom 50% 4.2 trillion.

What does that kind of wealth inequality, which is prevalent in California, a lot of those rich people are in California, what does it do to a society? Well, I mean, I was quoting Plutarch yesterday who warned the Athenians in, I don't know, 50, 70 AD,

don't quote me, he said the imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest, 2,000 years ago he said this, is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. That's what it means. I say this all the time. We've got to democratize our economy to save our democracy. It's just back to Code Red.

Look, Steve Bannon will tell you we need to redistribute the wealth. How do you think about that? In many respects, that's what progressive tax states do. I mean, you have regressive tax states to do the opposite. Florida and Texas, by the way, most of those are taker states. Progressive states tend to be donor states like California, states that are actually producing more wealth for the American people. You looked at a statement that came out about a year ago from one analysis that showed that Texas took $71.1 billion more from the federal government than they provided the federal government. California at that same year provided $83.1 billion to the federal government. That said, California's progressive tax rate has been criticized, but foundationally provides me, and you'll see it on my January budget, the ability to expand our unprecedented investments into, child care, expand our universal preschool program, which we have fully implemented in our

after school for all and summer school for all programs, which are nation-leading programs. And that is part of a redistribution framework that I think in many respects was the model that Bannon was arguing interestingly for. But we fundamentally tax income, not wealth. Yeah. And difficult to tax wealth. It is difficult to tax wealth. It is not impossible to tax wealth.

I mean, we used to have a strong or a stronger state tax wealth. tax in this country. Yeah. And now it's pretty toothless. It's absurd. And we live in an economy built on assets. Yeah. And I just don't know how you can have an agenda for any kind of democratization, as you

put into the economy, that speaking here at the national level, because there are interstate dynamics that would make a wealth tax and the state level harder, that doesn't really begin to think about wealth taxation. But the point you just made, the key point at a state-by-state basis. Yes, I understand that. So from a national prism, this is a conversation that we need to have, an honest conversation about this. But we're in the how business. Again, this entire conversation is not abstract.

It's not an intellectual. We're practitioners. I'm a practitioner. I'm dealing with realities, cards that are actually dealt. I just criticize people from sidelines. It's much easier. I tell me about it. Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm on behalf of the Biden.

That's why you want a podcast. I don't want to be governor of California. Yeah. I'm speaking on behalf of Joe Biden and his legacy. But my point is to make this point. I mean, how do you mark to market? How do you determine assets? How do you determine this sort of internationalization of assets?

I'm not saying these are impossible things. I'm not making an excuse by making a point. So this is a conversation you have. And the state tax, the big beautiful bill was the big beautiful betrayal. I mean, this was a disastrous bill for our kids and grandkids, for atriot conversation, for those young kids, this transfer of wealth, this debt burden, this debt bomb that we're placing on them. What we've done to the next generation is a disgrace. And that's why Bannon was right and Trump was wrong and the supine Congress was wrong. And so we've got to

write that wrong as it relates to reestablishing a progressive construct. Whether or not we engage in a wealth tax, by definition, this debate is going to heat up because of the stance that you just underscore. I don't want to hear you tell me we need to have an honest conversation debate. I know there's a lot of difficulty around the implementation of something like this. We both know that. I guess what I'm asking you is you're here quoting Plutarch to me. Yeah. Is a society that has that level of wealth inequality a politically stable or economically just society? And that was the point he's making. That's why I say if you don't democratize the economy, you can't save our democracy. That's where populism is rising, authoritarian tendencies, fascist tendencies are asserting themselves. So that it sounds like

you're saying whatever the structure of it is, we're going to have to do something that shifts the structure of wealth in this country. Yes, my definition. And look, I'm going to defend our progressive tax structure in California. I'm going to defend it because I think it's the right approach. I absolutely reject the regressive tax structures of states like Florin and Texas. I reject the regressive nature of the tax structures that we're doubled down on with a big beautiful betrayal.

Absolutely. So no, I believe in that. I promote it. I practiced that. I was listening to you talk with Andrew R. Sork and my colleague at Deal Book yesterday. And you talked, you guys talked a bit about wealth tax and separately you talked about baby bonds, which have always been a proposal I like a lot. I don't like them.

I did it. I mean, we did 3.4 million kids entering kindergarten. We put aside $1.9 billion many years ago. It's interesting. Not everybody signed up for them, which is remarkable. Even if you hand something to someone, doesn't mean they'll necessarily take it, which is a stubborn fact. But I love this idea. What about a wealth tax or an estate tax that simply funds universal basic wealth funds?

We're looking at universal. We've been playing around. I mentioned yesterday in the MIMCOM. We played around with grant. funding for UBI. And we've done grants in California at scale. And we have a lot of interesting pilots, a lot of feedback. But we're also looking at universal basic capital.

We're looking at this notion of a sovereign wealth framework. Trump has talked about this, which is interesting. I don't dismiss this. Yeah, and he's taking out cuts of companies. And he's taken, we can get into the 10% tithing or 15% tithing from A&D and Nivit and the 10% from Intel. But the opportunities with those $1,000 baby bonds presents an entry point for that conversation that I think is important. And I said it yesterday, I'll say it to you. That's hard for

me to say, thank you, Ted Cruz. But Cory Booker, to his credit, was one more responsible than anyone as a thought leader in this space. Here's, I think, the difficulty on taxes for Democrats. Polling on this is clear, including among many Republicans, people want higher taxes on the rich. What they don't necessarily believe is the Democrats will spend that money well or effectively, but they'll put the money into the vending machine and get something out, right? You've talked a lot about the California tax structure here. California ranks according to Tax Foundation, which is right-leaning but honest. Second for tax collections per capita at about $10,000 per person. Florida, it's about $5,000 per person. When I hear rich people in California complain,

they don't so much complain, or they do complain about the level of taxation, but more about the feeling that when they go back and forth, they don't see the public services is so much better. They don't see the public infrastructure is so much better. They can't ride the train. How do you rebuild faith that if we do move to significantly higher levels of taxation, Nordic levels of taxation, that people are going to get from that what they're paying? What they get is a $4.1 trillion economic output built on the basis of a formula, as Friedman would say, for success, with a conveyor belt of town here? No, Tom in this case. Oh, Tom Friedman, okay. I'm staying close to home.

Yeah, I want to see what treatment we were talking about. I'm giving some reverence to Tom. We have a formula for success. I mean, California success is not an accident, by design. I mean, we have 18% of the world's R&D, we invest in that. Billions and billions of those tax dollars go back into R&D tax credits. The UC system. I mean, how many more engineers, scientists, more Nobel laureates do we need?

We have 13,700 active patents in the UC system. Those ecosystems have created these trillion-dollar companies, four-trillion-dollar companies, created and minted these billionaires that are complaining about California. That's the benefits that we have provided for these companies have laid the foundation for innovation and quantum and fusion and robotics in space

and the future in dominating that space. We have $180 billion. It's the largest since Pat Brown. $180 billion. It's build.ca.gov. You can look it up. Transparent website that shows the biggest investments

in capital and infrastructure in California's history that is being invested as we speak. We've dominated manufacturing. I mentioned yesterday, 2.8% of manufacturing advanced manufacturers in place like Florida. It's 13.9 in California.

We dominate in every critical category. Of the nation's total manufacturing up. Yeah, the nation's total. So we're number one in every category. So the economic opportunities, the growth, the energy, the daring, the creativity, all of that is present in California. My gosh, we have more Fortune 500 companies than we've had in a decade in California. We've more unicorn companies we've ever had.

Look at the venture capital that's going back into the state. I mean, it's a remarkable number one in two-way trade. I've heard you do this before, and I agree with it, but it's all true. But what people would say that what your critics on this would say is that you're sitting on an oil well, right? Silicon Valley was built. It's an agglomeration of talent. But how was it built? I agree with you.

But it wasn't built in the last five years. But it was built on these investments, these conveyor belts, these programs and protocols, well established that we, haven't walked away from. We've re-invigorated. You feel very shaped to me by the culture specifically of Northern California. And Northern California's become Silicon Valley, San Francisco, even compared to what it was five or ten years ago now, as the epicenter of the global AI revolution, that much more important. Yeah. And the culture of Silicon Valley has changed. The politics of it have changed very rapidly in this period. When I go back now to San Francisco, I feel this very strange tension of people racing headlong

to invent something that even they are not sure it will be good, who it will be good for. They hope. Completely agree with that. But they all of a sometimes seem like servants of a thing they are bringing into being more than, you know, they would not tell you they understand how it's working. I think AI is going to be a big part of the next turn of politics. Dominant, dominant. Before I get to anything about regulation,

how do you feel about AI? Promise and peril, both and, because I think what you said is spot on, and I spent a lot of times with these guys. The next three to five years, there's almost universal belief. People don't know what they don't know. But there seems to be some consensus that three to five years

AGI superintelligence that we're on the other side of the unknown. That's pretty alarming. And so to your point... I think my timeline for super intelligence is longer. Years may be longer on that.

But I'm, you know... But general intelligence, depending how you define it, maybe. I talked to some of the deep mind people. They were talking 36 months. I don't want to lay them out specifically, but people associated with them, not from deep mind.

Obviously, the race, everybody, this bubble, everyone's participating in this race, all acknowledged the bubble that's being built, the CAPEX that's been invested across this country and what's happening in terms of utility costs across the country and data center and energy is the one thing that will slow this down, how nuclear fission or fusion, nuclear fusion is a big part of that conversation as well. So it's going to shape more things in more ways on more days in our politics. You're already seen the beginning, just the beginning, I think, of job impacts, but likely to get

more pronounced and perhaps exponentially so. So tech genie's out of the bottle. you can't stuff it back in. It's a global race. Our biggest competitors, China. It's a race to superintelligence and what that means or what it doesn't mean. And we have to navigate that. And I think we have to take responsibility

to thoughtfully regulate it. And that's what California is pursuing the first regulatory framework in the nation, SB 53, that took me two years to get right in land And we did it with a lot of the competing parts within the regulatory space, meaning those that see this as an dystopian future, those that want a light touch. And we've tried to find some balance in this space. But obviously the state of mind of the president and guys from California like David Sachs and others is to let it rip and to try to vandalize and trip us up from being able to do that. I don't think we really know what AI is going to do to the job market or when or to whom.

No. I don't think it's clear enough in the data yet. No. But I think a couple things are worth assuming will happen. So one that is already happening is it the process of looking for a job has become hellish. You are... I may need to look one year from now, so keep fill in. Give me more examples.

I mean, I talk to people and say, you're sending endless resumes to dozens of places. is that they're being read by AI. Sometimes you're interviewing with that. It's become very dehumanized and dehumanizing, right? And hard to find a job. And it's this endless. Everybody's using AI to apply. The AI's are reading the AI applicant, right?

It's just a circular thing. But what I've seen in human beings going through it is a profound demoralization. And leave the question of, are you actually going to see what I think will first be job freezing as places don't hire as much? That's right. And you're not going to see a huge, it's not like, it won't be like COVID, where everybody

is to stay home all of a sudden, or half the people have to stay home all of a sudden. It's going to be just a bit harder, a bit harder, it's going to be a recession for the young. We're not good at handling things where people are being affected differentially. And the third piece I'll just add into this mix is just the fear. It's real. How many people I know who are reasonably, how many people I know in school who are reasonably afraid that they'll be replaced by an AI that they can work with the systems now and they know that at many things the systems are as good at it as they are. A lot of jobs are not at the frontier of creativity.

You're doing something somewhat wrote, somewhat replicable, somewhat learnable. And that's what the middle class of most of this economy is built on. And I just think that between the economic and the psychological destabilization of this, I think I am surprised how much people know this is come. You can see it in polling. People know it's coming. And politics seems at sea. Yeah. And that's what we're trying to change in California. That's why we're leading in this space. No other state is doing more in this space. But let me reinforce a few of your points and then add one additional one. I completely get anything that gets repeated, gets replaced. And AI has moved out in the physical world. You can see that physically in California with all of not just the Waymos that are

out there. You can be seven deep in traffic with seven cars with no drivers, but also Zook and others. You're seeing in robotics now. You're seeing humanoid robotics that are going to start moving into place. You're seeing it already exercised in a number of hospitality settings in hotels and hospitals that are starting to play and iterate in this space. And you're seeing mass adoption, particularly in China and elsewhere. So this is real. It's coming.

It's coming fast. As it relates to that anxiety, I would also offer that it will also have a gender component. You look at that gender displacement in terms of some of those jobs, those clerical jobs, and those, you know, paralegal jobs and like and the impacts that will have on women as well. So I think that's a dynamic. We also need to consider that gender dynamic as well in this conversation.

Look, I'm having advanced conversations, as I mentioned earlier, not on UBI anymore, but on universal basic capital and looking at those issues back to the baby bonds, looking at the prospects of mass displacement, even if it's for period of time and on the other side,

we have abundance, and how we address that anxiety in real time, that fear, How do we accommodate for it? How do we own a responsibility to address it? And again, I feel a disproportionate amount of responsibility coming from California to lead that conversation. Let me flip something about the California model.

California's success partially reflects a way that growth and economic energy and activity have become unexpectedly in the digital era more concentrated. And that has been amazing for California, which, as you say, is a world leader in technology, and advanced manufacturing and all of these things that are engines of progress and wealth right now, it is in a broad sense

somewhat politically destabilizing because so many places have ended up, as we were talking about at the beginning, more hollowed out, not because of California, but because of these huge returns

to concentration and capital. And so back in the 90s, Democrats won rural and urban counties at about the same rates, not that long ago. Now Democrats dominate cities really struggle in rural counties, in part because of people in those counties just feel left behind and unseen by them. So you're Gavin Newsom, your former mayor of San Francisco,

your governor of California, got Silicon Valley. How do you rebuild that connection? Well, also, the guy's never, there's never been a governor, spent more time in rural California. In fact, my first cabinet meeting was in rural California in a small town, Monterey Park, dealing with water supply. We were launched just recently. It was a three-year project. but completed just recently, 13 economic, regional economic, workforce and development plans. We called it regions rising together. It's not one economy. It's the intersection of many different economies to address precisely the point you were just making. It was a rural-led, suburban-led effort. 200, this is what made it different. $287 million seeded these bottom-up economic

and workforce plans, three-year process, over 10,000 people. I did seven events in seven in rural counties. No one covered that. You only covered what I put on some social media site and post because it sort of made fun or mocked Donald Trump. Now, you're framing it with an electoral construct. And that's a different thing. And I'll tell you, that's more challenging because if someone who's never spent more time in rural parts of California, I can assure you, having been on the ballot as many times as I have been, including my recall, it hasn't improved my performance there. I appreciate that you actually note this in a minute because it does get, I was going to say to you that this is what I always hear from Democrats when I asked

this question, look at all we're doing, look at all we're trying to do. So what do you drives that disconnect? I just think culture, belonging, meaning, I think identity. I think you're deeper issues here. They're deep. I mean, I can go on, talk about regenerative ag work I'm doing, all the work we've done for farmers, farm workers, all these things subs. I mean, like next level. No Republican governor ever did any of these things. I mean, Trump is destroying ranchers and small businesses and farmers, and they're celebrating the guy. I mean, this guy's, I mean, it's a joke. It's what thought. Is anyone paying attention? Yet they still vote for him. So there's, that is, you, I'm going to look for your punantry on this, try and understand.

No, but you go to ground tables, you talk to people. And one thing I believe is you do listen when you talk to people. I love these folks. I love these folks. I care about these folks. I go into Kevin McCarthy's district. I'm like, how in the hell do you reelect this guy? He's cutting your Medicaid programs disproportionately impacting. He's cutting all these damn programs. that we're investing in your infrastructure and health and wellness, all the environmental programs about air, clean water.

They're the ones cutting it and you're celebrating that. I don't get it. So there's a cultural construct here that I'm trying to understand more fully and it matters. Culture matters. And I was talking to Kirk.

He says politics, not downstream culture. It's already, Trump is culture. And they've owned culture. They've won the culture wars. We have to recognize that. I don't know that I would say they're winning culture. though Democrats are probably losing it at the moment.

But I do think a couple of years ago what they figured out because they felt it authentically. And in some ways this goes back to the particular form of modern conservatism that grew in California is how much energy there is in the feeling of loss. And what they said, the way in which they were culture, was it they really understood the feeling of being left behind by culture.

the feeling that your stories were not going to get told, that your views would not be respected, the people running culture, from people who were then running the platform companies who at that point were understood as a liberal, they've obviously flipped a little bit in recent years, to the people in Hollywood. That, not only do they not care about you,

they don't like you. Yeah, yeah. They look down on you. I hate that. I know. I hate that perception. And by the way... And it's not even entirely untrue.

No, we talk down to people. We talk past people. So damn judgmental. I mean, our party just has to be more culturally, normal in that respect. That's why, again, I'm not just saying that. I'm also trying to prove a sensitivity of that back to the whole podcast conversation. All want to be protected, respected, and connected to something bigger than ourselves. There's universal truths here. All want to be loved. All need to be loved. We're all in this together. And so, again, grace, grace, humility, decency,

and respect for people we disagree with. Don't talk past. You can't win people over if you talk down to people. Can't talk past people, can't dismiss people. I'll keep going back to the Central Valley. You get the mayor, a Republican former police chief mayor of Fresno. How many times I've been there I have the back of the people of Fresno, Bakersfield, California. How many times I go back, Republican mayor go there. And so I'm trying to demonstrate respect. I'm trying to show it. And do the extent it's not reciprocated? That's the thing I can't control ultimately. I'm just trying to control what I can control. One of the other things I hear people worry about with you as a sort of leading voice in the Democratic Party the most is you've taken a series of positions that Trump tries

to attach to Democrats often wrongly. Under your leadership in California, there actually was subsidized government health care for undocumented immigrants. There was a big push to, let's call it, phase out cars with internal combustion engines. These are the kind of things right now Democrats are running away from. Yeah, I can't. I mean, I'm sure the polls would say I should, but I'm not, that's not who I am. I've never been a guy that can do that. I believe China is going to clean our clock. They have 70% of the EV market. They're moving.

I was down in BLEM. I was down in Brazil. BYD's everywhere. They're getting market share, supply chains. They're advancing influence. And it's to me not about electric power. It's about economic power. And I just, I can't cede that.

And so California is the center of the universe in that respect. We dominate an R&D for, you know, it's why we have all the mobility out there in Zook. And that's why we have Waymo and the R&D work that's being done at Tesla and skunkworks and Rivian and all of these other companies that, are investing in that future, and we are the future in that respect. And I'm trying to hold on to that. Is it related to undocumented health care?

Yeah, I'm proud of that because I believe in universal health care. Others may say it. I did it. First state in the country, regardless of preexisting additions, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status. I promised that. I promoted it. I ran three times on it.

I did it when I was mayor. People know who I am. We failed on the border. We need to own up to that. Largest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere in my state. spent billion-plus dollars to do migrant centers, try to put a lid on things. And it was quite critical, but I tried to do it in a respectful way of the Biden administration. We failed on the border.

We have to own that. But we've also failed as a consequence because of that to lead the comprehensive immigration question. We've got to get the border right. Then we can get to that. But I say that to make the point. You don't need sanctuary policy in this country if we have a federal government doing its job. In the absence of that, we'll deal with the cards that are dealt. And one of the cars that are dealt

is people are going to end up in the emergency room and you're going to pay for that one way or another. I want to keep people out of the emergency room. I want to keep people healthier. I want to keep people safer.

And that's why we've advanced these values. Trump uses it a cudgel, uses it very effectively to attack our party and our values. But I'll stand up to it. And good people can disagree, but I'm very mindful. Why did Democrats fail on the border?

Because we didn't own up to the reality. we didn't take responsibility. But beneath it, what happened, right? You know, Joe Biden was not a guy who didn't know that you shouldn't have chaos at the border. You sent down National Guardsmen at a level of why for policy. It's not just what happened.

The why was in reaction to. Trump, sort of the overreach of Trump, we come back and we then move 180 degrees in the opposite direction when we didn't need to. or shouldn't have. And you saw mass migration across the country. It was hardly unique in the United States. You had all of the shock and supply chain shock and issues around COVID coming out of COVID, et cetera, that created even more pressure. And then it became overwhelming. And then what also became

overwhelming was this notion that we can't do it without Congress. And then Biden then proved Trump right by doing it without Congress. In the last six months, we saw a significant decline in border crossings under the Biden administration that ultimately led to benefits for Trump claiming he did it all at the end when he really closed the gap marginally. But we paid a huge price for that and we picked up, I think, the wrong lessons in the midterms.

We outperformed in the midterms. And this was a time when all Democratic governors were critical. You saw it publicly. And then they did better than we all expected. And they said, why don't we just focus on these other issues? Mistake. I call this oppositional mirroring, the tendency to become the mirror of whatever you're politically

fighting. And I think on immigration, Democrats really became Trump's mirror. He was cruel. They were going to be compassionate. He tried to close it. They were not quite going to open it, but they began debating decriminalizing border crossing, right? There was a lot that was reactive. Now I think you see the Republicans doing, making the mistake. completely great. People don't like cruelty either. But I think it's deeper than that. I spent a lot of time sort of trying to understand the theories of the right. And they have really talked themselves into the idea that you cannot have a cohesive national community with high levels of immigration. They have talked themselves into the idea that even more than 15% of people foreign born or in some versions of this, not even heritage American, let's call it, or as they call it. that you're not a real polity. Now, California is a very diverse place. L.A., San Francisco,

very diverse places. What is your answer not on whether or not we need to secure the border, but what it means to be a political community and what it means to be an American if its meaning is not to be a heritage, as they call it American? I live in a state 27%,

just so people understand. California, 27% of the state is foreign-born. It's a majority-minority state. I mentioned the word pluralism before because we practice it. It's a word you don't hear a lot about. I think our strength is defined by that diversity. I know that offends J.D. Vance and everyone else and offends them from the folks you've referenced, truly offends them.

That said, this is an issue that goes back. I remember this from my history books in the 1880s. This guy Dennis Kearney, the Working Men's Party, started every speech beginning and end, said, whatever else happens, the Chinese must go, led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. He was in Oakland, California. The Bay Area was the center of that universe. There were walls, virtual walls that were being built in all these illustrations to keep the Chinese out of California. We were at peak immigration back then, peak populism out there. And so many respects, Trump, I mean, Kearney was the original Donald Trump, going after institutions,

going after the media, and obviously scapegoating others. We saw that peak drop. in 1970s to a relatively modest percentage of our overall population in this country that is now getting close to the old 1880s peak. So it's very familiar all of this. But I'm of the mindset. Here's where I am on this. I'm of the Reagan mindset. Life force of new Americans. He could have chosen any speech to leave the Oval Office. Ronald Reagan chose one speech to talk about the power of this country being defined that anyone can be part of this country nowhere else in the world is that the case

but it uniquely defines the greatness of America. I'm with Reagan on this point. So but I want you to expand what that point means. So what J.D. Vance, who I think is the most interesting speeches of any Republican politician right now because he's the one trying to build a philosophy around what

for Trump I think is gestural and intuitive. Impulsive. You know, Vance goes to the Claremont Institute in California to accept an award and gives his speech basically making an argument that we have erred

in our philosophical understanding of what it means to be an American. We have erred in following Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and believing in creedal Americanism. What Vance says in the speech is, look, there are billions of people in this world who might like

to pledge allegiance to our flag who would agree to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. And we can't make them all. I wish J.D. Vance and Trump would. Forgive me. We can't make them all.

We can't make them all Americans. We can't make them all Americans. Forgive me. That there is something distinctive about an American who can trace their lineage back to people who fought in our civil war. I had a conversation.

It was a very striking. Literally about this yesterday. Very striking speech to me. My father, by the way, a Brazilian immigrant. So immigration is quite close to my heart. But his argument, which I think, he's doing. a couple of things. He's mixing up immigration, which is a question of how many people we decide

to let in, and this question of critical Americanism. But he is trying to say that this idea that being in America, being American, is about what you believe is false. And it doesn't give you a way to limit who's an American. What we have to do is recognize, admit that bloodline, that length of time, numbers of your family buried in cemeteries here, as he talks about all the time. us. That is what really decides it. What's your answer to that? I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I just, you know, I think about it. You, you, you, you talked about, I look forward to your podcast with J.D. Yeah, by the way, that should be fine. I'm trying to get Marjorie Taylor Green on first. But look, you mentioned your lineage a little bit.

I remember my dad used to say, I said, and when did we come out to San Francisco? He said, well, my great-grandfather, or my grandfather was here. He goes, he was an Irish cop even before San Francisco. He says he didn't know what came first, the Irish cop or San Francisco. But he was, they were immigrants. Came through Indiana, came from, from County Cork in Ireland. I don't know. Is that J.D.'s? Is that enough? Or do I have to go back to 1680s?

Are we real Americans? What's his definition? And who's going to decide? Is this the basis of, I don't know what the heck. This ethno-notice concerns me. I just don't think this is who we are. And I'm not a deep thinker in this respect. And I'm not claiming to be because I haven't given a deep thought. But clearly, they're trying to make a point that I think California stands out as a counterpoint in terms of economic growth, prosperity, innovation, domination, dominance. You talk about the future, it's happening every single day because of that vibrancy. Half the AI researchers are Chinese. These guys are advancing some of the most. I mean, talk about vandalism and sand in the gears. I mean, look at all the international students, except I guess we're making carve-outs for Chinese students because I'm sure there's some carve-out for something related to the Trump family businesses in relation to that.

I mean, this is literally part of the secret sauce of this country, and they're putting all of that on the line because they're looking at some sort of vulgar version of lineage and ethno-nationalism that concerns the hell out of me. And I'm just not, I don't even want to indulge too deeply in it. That said, let me say this. I think one of the mistakes and may get in trouble for saying this about my party is, and it's in the spirit of Clinton, we tend to focus so much on our interesting differences. We don't focus on the things that unite us together. And I think our- Within the party or within the country? Within our country.

I think that's a mistake. And I remember Clinton talking a lot about that. You know, it's many parts but one body in the spirit of father cause at Santa Clara University. We're all bound together by this webbing mutuality. But we have to find that thing that binds us together. And I think those founding documents, you just referenced,

the best of the Roman Republic and Greek democracy, this historic project of our founding fathers, it's all in there. It's the 27 grievances in that declaration, which again, I did read. And this notion that we can unite around those values, I think is critical. And I think it's missing ingredient in our party where we need to assert that and affirm that. And that's why I talk about faith and family and patriotism, things that unite us all together. And that's what it means to be an American.

All those interesting differences, racial, religious, ethnic differences. But at the same time, we're united around these fundamental values, these enduring values, these historic values that we've inherited, but we have to fight for. Let me ask you then what binds at the Democratic Party together. I've been writing about the Big Ten Democratic Party what it would mean to build that. You said it more pithily than I have, which is you said in a recent interview, you want to see a party that goes from Mansion to Mom Donnie. What binds together a party that goes from Mansion to Mom Donnie?

I hear a lot of people say, isn't this big tent, doesn't it not believe in anything? What do you think of believes in? Give me a break. I mean, my grandfather, we talked about a Democrat. Party. It was a broad coalition. My kind of party. You brought people in. It's about addition, not subtraction. I mean, come on. I mean, our party needs to be many parts, one body. And so this idea of exclusion, and again, that's judgment. That's purity. That's getting into, I didn't like the pronoun you used. And I mean, we got in that we were, I mean, there was a year or two there.

Where for all of us, I mean, it's took me a back too. I was even participating. I found myself a little And I got pushed back from me, my own staff saying, why did you use that word? And I'm like, you know, we're all sort of struggling through a post-George Floyd world and understandable racial justice and all these issues coming out of COVID and sensitivity. I just a little less judgmental, a little more inclusive. If you believe in the death penalty, you don't believe in the death penalty. It doesn't mean I don't believe in you or your right to be part of our party. If you believe in choice, but you believe a late-term abortion, you have an issue?

I'm not going to deny that. If you have a more moderate construct as it relates to, you know, more worker-centered policies or more liberal one, we shouldn't be excluding you. You don't believe in the minimum wage, but you believe in an income tax credit? Which one are you? A Democrat? Are you a corporate mod? Our party needs to knit back together that coalition that helped build the world's great middle

class. And so that's, I want to, I don't want to exclude the mansions or the mandonis. The thing that the mansion of Mondani line made me think, bit about is what would it mean for the people who represent the Democratic Party nationally to seem like they simultaneously respected Joe Manchin and Zoran Mamdani. Chuck Schumer did not endorse Zora and Mabdani, for instance. And I understand that Schumer probably has his disagreements. On the other side, the sort of people who might have seen Manchin, who, for all of my disagreements

with him, and there were many, guy was a genuine Democratic, most, you know, the sort of people who might have seen Manchin, who, for all of my disagreements with him, and there were many, guy was a genuine Democratic most valuable player, right? Holding a seat, no one else could have held. No one could have held. That gave Democrats that 50-50 Senate. Drove me crazy, too.

I mean, we all were driven on that. Then allowed Kamala Harris to break ties and pass the Inflation Reduction Act, right? Like, Joe Manchin was the most valuable member of the Senate for Democrats. But also drove us mad. Drove us, but that question of how does respect exist across disagreement at a time when I think

social media and other things, algorithmic media, create a lot of incentive for line drawing. That's right. A lot of incentive for saying, you know, you're out, right? Oh, my gosh. And drawing our circles ever smaller. I've spent my life being on the outs and then back in, on the out, back in.

I don't begrudge other people's success. I don't think you could be pro-job and anti-business. Same time, I say businesses can't thrive in a world that's failing. And so who are you? You know, you support a progressive tax, but not a wealth tax, or then you're a corporate demo. So you're right. And you're right.

the fine lines that are being divided online and in these sort of filter bubbles that we're in only reinforce those lines. And of course, that's what you're going to have an open primary. You're going to have 25 candidates for president. My gosh, you're going to see that on display on two gigantic stadium stages because you can't even fill it on one.

And every flavor of the party is going to be represented from the Democratic Socialists, which are just the old progressives in my town or Green Party folks back when I was mayor of San Francisco, very familiar in the more moderate voices that, quote, unquote, can win those seven swing states. And so we'll work, we have to work through all these.

But again, with an open hand, not a close fist, a little less judgment, and a little bit appreciation that this party, we got crushed in the last election. Donald Trump. It was Trump. I just remind us who beat us, we need to find common ground, not just stand our ground to then hold the line so that we. avoid the worst instincts of this president by extending a third term in the presidency. Here's what's made me fascinated by what you have done since the election, which is you seem

more comfortable with contradiction and paradox in your own person than most people I see in politics. So I think you could have said after the election. There are two lanes for a Democrat, right? You can say, we got shellacked, a word that only exists when Democrats will lose elections. I've never heard that word used in any other context. We got shellacked. And we have to reach out to MAGA. People have to listen. We have to talk to the outside, go to the diners.

Or you can be, we need the resistance. We need to fight back. We need to troll them the way they're trolling us on social media. You know, those were sort of two different ideas you hear. And your answer was, yeah, both. Yeah, I said, look, my favorite book, one of the most influential books interesting in my life is called Built to Love. last it's about the tyranny of war versus the genius of and both and moving away i forgive me i

hate the vernacular you know moving away from the binaries but i really believe that i mean it is both and it's to find you know look i come from a reality based experience as a small business person there's a practical reality you got you got to implement your ideals again none of this is an intellectual exercise and you got to deal with cards that are dealt you can still i mean and i have been as progressive and adventurous in terms of progressive policies is most, if not all Democratic governors in this country, as former mayor that did same-sex marriage in 2004, where my party was attacking me for being too progressive. Same time, I was also advancing Care Not Cash program to take welfare away from homeless and guarantee housing in lieu of cash because I didn't believe

in the handout framework. I believe in opportunity and responsibility, more of a Clintonian frame in that. So I was both and. So I was trying to show not only respect to who I am in the past in my truth and authenticity, but also show respect to those I disagree with because I do respect people I disagree with. It's not a zero-sum game. I try to work with Donald Trump. I was on the tarmac with him. I was probably, no governor in the country work with them more closely during COVID than I did. At the same time, no one's being more aggressive. To your point, trolling and attacking back on Trump. I started when he got elected. said I want to work with him when he got elected.

But I started with a special session of my legislature, the only state that did this. As I said, I want to work with him saying trust but verify and fortified our litigation posture. This is the reason we have almost close to 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration have led the country because I knew it was going to come, both and. So it's to me not a paradox necessarily. It's not a contradiction. It's the human experience. You've been working very effectively, I think on the attentional level of politics. I think the great sin of Democrats, attentionally in recent years, is that they are the party of the institutions. People got all A's or Darverd. And when you go through a lot of

institutions you're informed by them, you become careful and cautious. The thing you don't want to do is offend everybody at a meeting. Yeah, well said. And that worked for a previous era of attention, when everything was decided by who the New York Times decided to cover by who would get on network news. In this era, attention comes from, see? Although that does work for me because I won't have anybody on is boring. Podcasts do not like people who speak in a very structured way. Yeah, I agree with that. You can't do a podcast, a good podcast with a politician, when you can watch them buffering before they answer for you. It's a, like we've been talking for a long time, in this medium for this long, it doesn't work. It's a way that the mediums change who succeeds in them. That's true, too.

You seem pretty comfortable with risk. Yeah. I think of your debate with Ronda Santos, it was on Fox News with Sean Hannity moderating. I went back in launched out the other day. That's being a liberal bully. That's being a bully. Really? They had Down syndrome and you wanted to discriminate against them. 27 million dollar fine. They were discriminating against special. Because they were discriminating against the athletes. On the issue of marginalize the athletes and you wanted the athletes marginalized. That was wrong. God help you. God help us all. And I've met a lot of Democrats who don't, who they're more worried about things going wrong in their communication than something going right. Esra, I'm a fail forward fast guy. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I got a 960

on my SAT. I wasn't when I was straight A students at Harvard. I can't read. You've never seen me read a speech. I can't read a speech. I have severe dyslexia at a learning disability that is defined me and who I am. My struggles, my insecurities, my anxieties, but also my willingness to try new things and learn from my mistakes. I got a lot of facts you've been spinning. How do you learn? It's just I'm, I absorb a lot. I can, I observe, I absorb. It's just, it's just harder. I have to do hundreds and hundreds of reps. For one, you know, some folks, you know, do one or two reps. But in that process, you overcompensate and you then develop all of these other skills that have been gifts. It allows you to read a room. It allows you to pivot,

allows you to be a little bit more flexible. Yes, dare I say, even more authentic. And so that's who I am. I'm just, I can't be someone I'm not. I'm not good at being someone I'm not. I'm not comfortable faking it. And there are so many things in politics I'm not good at. The one good thing, is, I think politics is radically changing. I think it's rewarding a little bit more authenticity. I think Trump is sort of broken through this morass. We're all getting roughed up a little bit here. And we've all made mistakes. We haven't talked about my legendary mistakes. And you got to own up to them. And it's who you are. It shapes you. As long as you learn from and don't repeat them. And so I'm just constantly trying new things. I don't have all the answers. I seek them.

but again, with a willingness to fall flat on my face. Yes. So I've always had a different mindset in that respect, and I've tried to encourage that, and I've tried to govern in that space. And so I'll take the hits. We tend to be months or years ahead of others on a lot of issues, and that's risky, and you get a lot of, you know,

you get a lot of arrows in your back, but you also pave the way for others to be smarter and learn from that and tack in a perhaps more electorally successful space. So I'm happy to be that guy. I don't need to be president. There's not about that. There's no, I didn't wake up with some strategic plan. The idea that I'm even sitting here and people talk about this 20, that's beyond me.

I thought I went last through a recall. You talk about humility. Seeing your name on a recall ballot? Having your kids, one of my kids had to be homeschooled because it was so humiliating for her. Can't go outside. You can't walk the streets without seeing signs. And getting through that and getting the other side and dealing, I mean, this has been a hell of a seven years as governor of California. I mean, the most blessed and cursed state from historic

wildfires and droughts and floods and, you know, unrest, social unrest. I'm one of the few governors left in the COVID era. There's only a handful of us that could talk about all those scars and the mistakes that were made and the lessons learned and the humility that comes to that. And so I'm on the other side. And I think people have noticed anything about me is you feel that a little bit. But I'm just, I'm like, I'm smash mouth about some of this stuff. I think Trump is one of the most destructive presidents and human beings in my lifetime. I think this republic is at real risk, this country being unrecognizable. And I have no patience for people that want to indulge it. I can't stand the corny capitalism. I can't stand all these supplicants that are sitting

there bending the knee to this president. I can't stand the universities have done that, the law firms that have done that, the individual corporate leaders that have done that, other governors maybe, Democrats and Republicans that have been complicit at this moment. This guy is reckless. He's a wrecked this country. We'll not have a fairer. in free election if we don't continue to fight. I'm just, that's what matters to me. Seriously, I'm the future ex-governor and who the hell knows what happens the rest of my life, except one thing I know that matters in the rest of my life is I have to look

with my kids in the goddamn eye. I mean that. Seriously, that's not like a politician thing, to look them in the eye and said that I, you know, not a peril of being judged not to have lived in the moment. So that's what animates me. But it's not some grand plan. So paradox, bring it on. contradictions bring it on contradictions but that i think i can explain perhaps evolutions we didn't

get into trans sports that's an issue no one wants to hear about because 80% of people listening disagree with my position on this but it comes from my heart not just my head it wasn't a political evolution it was position being that i i don't think it's i i want to see trans kids i have a trans god sign. There's no governor that sign more pro-trans legislation than I have, and no one has been a stronger advocate for the LTPQ too many. But you have to accommodate the reality of those whose rights are being taken away as we advance the rights of the trans community in terms of the fairness of athletic competition. And I just think that's not a bigoted position. And it's an example of some of the things I've been saying about being judgmental, dismissing people, throwing

that person out of the party. I mean, you want to talk cancel culture. I've lived it on that issue alone, despite a record of 30 years. And people are willing to say, I'm done. Friendships I lost on that position. And that position, by the way, came to me two years prior, where I had to try to accommodate for a trans athlete and another athlete that were in the state finals in track and field, and they both dropped out because we couldn't figure out a way to make it fair. And it was so unfair to both their families. Broke my heart. And I tried for two years to figure out how do we do this. And so I was asked, is it fair? I'm like, I don't know how to make it fair.

But these people just want to survive. Where's our grace and dignity about this community? And at the same time, so this is life. It's not linear, circule in here. It's not just politics. And I think I just want to bring a little life back to my politics. I got a year left. I got an expiration sell by date.

I'm on a milk carton. And to the extent I want to hold the line and push back against Trump, I'll take no backseat to anybody else. And to the extent, one, you're throwing to throw me into the mix with these 12 other remarkable leaders that they're all friends. I'm going to see them all tomorrow at the DGA.

Half of governors, the other half great senators and legislative leaders in Congress. What a humble and extraordinary thing. That's something you pinch yourself. Back to that 960 SAT kid that couldn't read. I've been very careful not to ask you about 2028.

So I'm not letting you go there yet. But as we sort of wrap a little bit, I do want to talk about a different tension, It was my way of getting ahead of it, so you didn't have to ask about it. Jesus. You're not going to say anything interesting if I ask you about 2028. One of the contradictions and tensions that I do find interesting, when you were talking with my colleague, Andrew Ross Sorkin, towards the end of your conversation, you talked about wanting to be a repairer of the breach. Oh, I say, yeah. And this is, I think, hell, in my own job, I feel, this is hard.

We have an attentional world right now We're one, we're all very far apart And the stakes are very high And everything you said about Donald Trump And more is true I think to describe reality Honestly Is to say things

That if you're a fan of Donald Trump We're going to be hard to hear Right? That's right To get attention You need conflict You have been Without any peer

The most successful Elected Democrat this year And getting social media attention by mimicking Trump's style talking about J.D. Vance's love of couches. Yeah, forgive me. You know, selling knee pads.

Don't forgive me, you should buy them. A lot of people sold out and so have the knee pads. So it's a good joke. But there's a tension between getting attention by leaning into conflict and being a repairer of the breach. And I'm curious because I think you are sincere in all these directions.

how you think about that tension. I think, look, there's so much situational politics now. We have to deal with the reality at hand. I can't wait to hold hands, have a candle. I talk about how we can come to. Everyone that says that is right. I mean, there are plenty of people that are already auditioning for President of the United States.

And they say, we just need to focus on a positive alternative agenda that economically is inclusive and address these trends, and they're right. And there's a world post-Trump, and they're right. But right now, we have to protect and preserve our republic, this democracy. It's code red. This guy has masked men all across this country. People are disappearing in real time.

It's still happening. You have federalized National Guard still in California. You had 700 active duty Marines in the United States America in the second largest city in my state. You had this guy put Bortak teams out near Dodger Stadium on Election Day to chill free expression, free speech, and a free election just a few weeks ago. in California. This guy is not scoring around. We have to fight fire with fire. That's what Prop 50 is in that reality. So it's situational. The redistricting about it. And that's what we try to do with our social media to enter into then these conversations that, by the way, helped aid and a bet the fact

that we were able to raise almost $120 million in 90 days to get Prop 50 passed and to build the political coalition to make that happen. So substance, not just style. For all the knee pads and everything else, there's a utility for doing it. It's not just mockery. It's not just trolling. It actually, for me, serves a bigger purpose. But in terms of how we get to the other side, in terms of how we lock hands moving forward, how we govern, the next president of the United States, not about me, whoever the next president needs to be their parents, we can't keep this up. We're polarized. We're traumatized. We're exhausted. I can't even conceive of three more years of this. It really is.

What's happening to our kids? Their brains are already being scrambled by social meeting and everything else we didn't even talk about. But this is their role model? A guy who calls someone a retard. Guy I call someone a piggy. This is our role model, the President of the United States. You go back to Obama's brilliant speech

at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and you listen to it now, and it sounds naive. You can feel the power in it, that we're not red and blue, we're not as divided, is a spin-meister's thing. So I love it. But we are that divided, actually. But one thing I see you, like, playing with, again, between the podcast and the social media,

between sitting down with Kirk and Bannon and trolling Trump and Vance, is a sort of a both-and-politics. I don't know where that goes for you or for anybody. But I think there's some interesting question in it. What does it mean to not say that the other side of this? is unity or common ground, much less an end-to-disagreement, but some kind of living amidst the disagreement that is more like the way a good family handles it. Yeah, I mean, despite the fact we struggle every Thanksgiving,

I did again this year with some members of the family that see the world with a different set of eyes. It goes back to the fundamental point. Divorce is not a damn option. It just is. I mean, back to Clinton. He talked about defining the terms of our future. And so at the end of the day, we don't have a choice.

There's no leak on your side of our boat. We rise and fall together. And I just think this notion of bringing humanity back, and that's not good politics. It's just human decency. Look, I'm sorry, I'm sitting here with Ezra Klein, but the first thing I should say, it's an abundance mindset.

It's not a scarcity mindset. This notion goes back to what you were saying about J.D. Vance and that speech he gave, this notion that it is scarcity. It's zero-sum that something's been taking away. I mean, I don't live like that in California. It's always been abundance. There's only one dream. The American dream, oh, and the California dream. And it's all about abundant mindset. If something doesn't exist, we have to invent it. And there's a sense of limitlessness in that. And then always our final question. one of three books or giving your turn to podcasting three podcasts.

Well, I mentioned Bill to Last. You'd recommend to the audience. I got to tell you, people really should. I wasn't joking about Bill to Last. It's so interesting to have a book that shaped me early on. I was aspiring to be a small business person. I got right out of college, took pen to paper, and came up with an idea to open a little store with 13 investors.

And I had one part-time employee, Pat Kelly. And she encouraged me. She said, you have to read the book, Bill To Last. It was about a Stanford academic that was. studying what works, what makes companies endure, and talked about being a clock builder versus a timekeeper, talked about the genius of Anne versus the tyranny of war. It changed my mindset and my outlook, political terms, not just in business terms. I hate to bring this book up because it's such a universal, obvious book. I had never read it. I've had 10 copies. I finally

picked it up off the shelf. I'm like, what the heck? Meditations from Marcus Aurelius. And I'm like, where the hell have I been? Or where's that book been on my life? See, man to get into podcasting. and immediately the Stoics. I'm telling you. Can't be a mail podcaster and not get into the Stoics. How could you not? I don't think there's, perhaps there's never been more important and impactful words ever written.

And they were written by almost powerful leaders in the world. Thousands of years ago. That book doesn't do it for me. You've... I've read it, I've read it. You didn't do it. It's not a, I have the feeling about it, and I think this is because I get more to meditation.

It was never a book for publication, as you know. So it was not intended to inspire. The thing I don't always get with it is that, yes, if I could just not worry about all this, I wouldn't. If I could just look at all the problems in my life, think, yeah, you know, can't change what I can't change. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I read something very different. It's not, it's not about denying the existence of things. I don't think it's about denying.

It's about understanding what you can influence. But no, the opposite I see. That's so interesting. I think it expresses the practice. And that is, you can control what you can control. You can't control the third. thing. And that's powerful. And this notion of accountability, responsibility, agency, and taking accountability for what happened. You can't. And I just think that's powerful, but it's the core of

minor psychology as well in terms of just this notion that we have agency and that we can shape things and change the future. My inbox after admitting that I don't love the book. I'm in bad shape. Unbelievable all those stoics out there listening. Look, I mean, I just because I was with Andrew yesterday, and I did promise I was going to read 1929. You can't recommend it if you haven't read it. No, I just started reading it. Oh, you did start reading it. No, I haven't finished it, but I actually legitimately just started reading it.

So it's the one that just actually truthfully on the proverbial nightstand. Governor Gavin Newsom, really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. and who. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Gelb with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon.

The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassione, Marina King, Jack McCordick, Kristen Lynn, Emmett Kelbeck, and Jan Kobel. Original music by Amun Zahota and Pat McCusker. Audience Strategy by Christina Similuski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times' pending audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

Thank you.