The MeidasTouch Podcast - Former Governor Jay Inslee on Trump Energy Destruction

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the disastrous budget bill provisions involving the elimination of energy credits and how this will lead to massive job loss and Meiselas interviews former Washington State Governor Jay Inslee about how red states and blue states will be impacted. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fresh fruit, delivered. Grocery delivery on repeat for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at pcexpress.ca. You know, we've covered this GOP disastrous budget bill from many angles, and I think the angle that's not getting enough attention is how these green energy tax credits that are job creators are going to be removed.

And it's going to cause lots of people to lose jobs and lots of jobs that can be created to never actually be created the way former President Biden and when this legislation was passed years ago as it was intended to be created. You know, the Republicans always would want to mock this Green New Deal, Green New Deal, whatever. And as they were mocking it, you know, what I've always been reporting on is that, you know, China was smiling because they were going around to the world and they were saying, well, if America doesn't want to be the leaders and kind of green new energy, we'll do it because it's a job creator. And former President Biden would say this a lot and we covered it here. He would go around and talk about how clean energy tax incentives will help

make clean energy jobs, good paying union jobs. And we're seeing it from laborers and carpenters building solar farms, iron workers and operating engineers building wind projects, electricians installing solar panels and EV chargers. Heck, I remember when I visited Colorado and I saw the wind turbine plants there and the jobs that were being created there. On the other hand, you know, you've had Donald Trump and these Republicans attack this, attack

it as they call it a green news scam. But folks, we're seeing it in the data. I mean, the manufacturing data that came out on Monday shows manufacturing in a contraction where people were saying there was a manufacturing boom under former president Biden. And I was just saying, you know, when you watch Donald Trump go around on the campaign, you know, he was saying some of this crazy tariff stuff

then as well. Like here he was when he was on Joe Rogan, basically attacking Biden legislation and saying, you know what we really need? We need tariffs. We need tariffs here. Play this clip. But let me just say that chip deal is so bad.

We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here. And they're not going to give us the good companies anyway. All you had to do is charge them tariffs. If you were to put a tariff on the chips coming in, you would have been able to just like the auto companies, no different, more sophisticated, but no different. You know, Taiwan, they stole our chip business. Okay, they want us to protect and they want protection. They don't pay us money for the protection, you know, the mob makes you pay money, right?

want protection, they don't pay us money for the protection, you know, the mob makes you pay money, right? I want to bring in former Washington state governor Jay Inslee, Governor Inslee served as governor and state of Washington 2013 through 2025. Governor, I want to get your perspective, you know, as someone who's, you know, had to actually run a state, doesn't have the luxury of just speaking in soundbites. I mean, and you have to represent Democrats, Republicans, independents, libertarians in your state. I mean, you saw firsthand how clean energy tax credits

were helping your state. Talk to us about what this reconciliation bill is gonna do. It'll do a lot of damage to the best and brightest hopes of Americans in all 50 states. And I would point out that you can have job creation clean energy because we're having it in my state like crazy, both because of the preexisting work by Biden and team and by our state action, our clean energy sector has been absolutely rocking it, putting people to work across the state of Washington. But that is, if not coming to a screeching halt, severely diminished by Trump's threats.

The two things I want to point out about the idiocy of his policies, and it is idiocy, I don't know how else to describe it, and the only reason Republican senators should the idea of the idiocy of his policies and it is idiocy. I don't know how else to describe it and the only reason Republican senators should even give this the time of day is because they are acting as a

cult right now, not listening to even their basic knowledge of economics and the basic job and economic needs of their constituents in two ways. There's two ways I want to point out that I don't think have been discussed enough. One is on the job front. You've correctly pointed out this is going to cost thousands of jobs.

And analysis has already been done by the Climate Power Organization, that it has already cost about 62,000 jobs across the United States. And it is already causing huge contraction of investment. There are projects being canceled. I talked to a person in the capital financing word the other day that lost a multi hundreds of millions

of dollars deal because of this. Even the fear of this happening has contracted this job market. That is well known. I think the point that I'd like to stress though, when people think of clean energy, they think of clean energy, they think of nuclear scientists or photovoltaic engineers.

These are blue collar jobs. These are skilled jobs in making these turbines, manufacturing, construction jobs, putting it up, maintaining them. These are high tech manufacturing. These are the jobs we want our kids to have if they don't want to spend $400,000 going to college. It's exactly what we've all been talking about of how to create new jobs for the working families. And a lot of Democrats have been gnashing their teeth. How are we going to connect with working families? Well, here's a way to do it to show that Trump and his crew are trying to kill jobs for working families,

particularly young people. But there's a second part of this I want to emphasize that really has not had much discussion. Trump ran on reducing inflation. He ran on reducing costs of energy. He is going to give us the most expensive energy in the history of the United States by taking away, snatching from Americans the cheapest energy now available, which isn't coal. It is not coal. Coal is more expensive than 92% of the districts in America. Solar, wind, battery technology, efficiency,

these systems are cheaper. And that those fossil fuels are gonna get more expensive as demand ramps up for electricity, because demand's going to ramp up because of the oncoming AI and crypto needs of these data farms. As demand ramps up, Americans are going to face a price shock unless we really start to create more energy through cheaper means. And that price shock, to me, is almost the most amazing elimination of what Trump said he was going to do.

Plus, he wants to dominate energy. Look, if you want to dominate energy, bring it home, build it here, make it here. The sun shines here. This is our sun. Nobody can divert it. The wind blows here. China can't steal the wind. We've got battery scientists. They can't steal the scientists until Trump eliminated university research, of course. So for multiple ways, you can't overstate the damage this would happen. But we still have some hope in the Senate. We hope people rise up, let senators know what they ought to be doing here. You know, but as you say, they are kind of functioning as a cult. You can give all of the objective data that you just gave.

You can talk about to these Republicans in the Senate that you're gonna be hurting your own constituents, you're gonna be hurting your own state. And then Donald Trump gives a speech and he goes, windmills, ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra. And I look at it and I'm like, what the hell is he talking about? And then I'm sure a lot of these people who you know,

look at it and go, okay, windmill's bad. And I'm thinking what, and I'm, I think I and so many Americans watch it and go, are we missing some, what is going, like when did politics, you were governor in 2013, how did we get here? How do we stop that? What's going on?

Well, it is, you're right, it has become a cultish behavior, and it is difficult to break, but that is our goal, and that is a necessity right now. And the way you break the cult is you threaten the political survival of politicians to let them know that your survival, if you stay in a cult, you're not going to be in office again. And it's just really simple. Democracy, when it's just really simple.

Democracy, when it's boiled down, is kind of a simple enterprise. Citizens need to know their congresspeople and senators are not going to be in office again if you destroy our energy future, if you give us more expensive electricity, if you give us less cancer research, if you give us less research in all of these emerging technologies, if you do these things, you're not going to be in office. Now, it's just really, in some sense, simple. Give an example.

So there are 12 members of the U.S. Congress of the House who wrote a letter saying, pretty please don't take away these energy tax credits because they're they're hurting our job creation in our districts then they turned around and voted for it and at the at the urging of the right wing or their party in fact accelerated the destruction of those jobs those people got to feel the heat there needs to be people let them know right now that you're not coming back if you continue down this course. And those Congress people need to talk to their senators.

Look, you got Senator Tillis there in North Carolina. He's a very vulnerable Republican senator. And people in North Carolina and around the nation will need to let him know that what's coming down the pike if he doesn't fix this problem in this bill. And he's made noises about it. But frankly, we've been quite disappointed in Republicans who've made noises, who've written love letters to Thune, but then turn around and vote for it. So this is up to us to bring the heat. If we can do that, we've got great stories of young people who want to build wind

turbines, brilliant battery technicians whose jobs are being eliminated now because of this. Those people ought to be in the lobbies talking to their senators, let them know what they think. And this is a matter of doubt. This is not a done deal yet. And the reason is there are so many problems with this bill that it lights up multiple places in the US Senate. You have some people actually don't want to cut Medicaid because they think that's bad political reform to throw people out of the hospital when they're having a heart attack.

Some people don't want to have the massive deficit increases that are associated with this. And a few people understand they don't want to reduce our ability to get clean cheap electricity. So you got multiple players here who have a way bring down the this monstrosity monstrosity of a bill. So I guess what I'm counseling is action to use your first amendment rights and realize these people work for you and for all of those

scores. It's three strikes you out on this bill. Governor Inslee, there's so much more I wanna talk to you about. I wanna schedule another interview where I wanna talk about FEMA, I wanna talk about all of these things. And we'd love to have you back on the Midas Touch Network, but I really appreciate you.

And what are you up to these days outside of, you know, what's the day to day like right now? Well, I'm continuing the work I've done as governor. As you know, we adopted the most aggressive, clean energy climate fighting laws in the nation, if not the world outside of Norway. So I'm continuing to push those. I'm working with a group called Climate Power and serving as a spokesperson for them to try to encourage other states to join Washington. And by the way, there is help here because states can move forward

on many of the things we've done. 100% electrical grid, clean energy building standards, new subsidized heat pumps, electrical charging stations. States can do these things, mostly can't be stopped by Donald Trump. So one of the things I'm doing working with climate power is other people around the states to encourage state action. We have 24 states right now in our U.S. climate alliance.

This is something I started with Jerry Brown during the first Trump administration. We represent 60% of the U.S. economy, and each one of our states can move the needle as they do destruction federally. We have our own ability to do that. It's the United States of America. So I'm working on that. I'm working on gun safety issues with the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.

We're building that out nationwide as well. So I'm still in the hunt. I'm pretty motivated on this for good reason. Governor Inslee, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. dot com.