← This is Gavin Newsom
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- [00:00]
Ben Shapiro
Either go uphold the principal or you don't uphold the principle. If you don't uphold the principle, I'm going to call you out for not upholding the principal. On his EPITAPH, we'll read 45th and 47th presidents of the United States. He said a lot of shit.
- [00:11]
Gavin Newsom
Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates. You move to a state that has higher insurance rate, higher car insurance, not just home insurance, has higher property taxes. Many of these red states.
- [00:21]
Ben Shapiro
And I think that we should start from a position in the United States of gratitude and recognition that we live in a free country where the vast majority of decisions are your own.
- [00:29]
Gavin Newsom
This is Gavin Newsom and this is Ben Shapiro.
- [00:36]
Ben Shapiro
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.
- [00:41]
Gavin Newsom
All right, Ben Shapiro, welcome.
- [00:42]
Ben Shapiro
Hey, thanks for having me. I love it.
- [00:44]
Gavin Newsom
All the way from Florida. We'll get to that in a moment.
- [00:47]
Ben Shapiro
You seem a little bit spicy about it. Yeah, a little salty.
- [00:50]
Gavin Newsom
Well, you know, Texas, that would have been more spicy, but, but, you know, especially, come on, you're, you're, you're, you're a Hollywood kid, at least Hollywood adjacent. You're a Burbank kid.
- [00:59]
Ben Shapiro
Born and bred in, born in St. Joe's in Burbank.
- [01:02]
Gavin Newsom
I love that.
- [01:03]
Ben Shapiro
And what year?
- [01:04]
Gavin Newsom
1984. And you went, you know, you, and it's interesting because you were, you're, you know, it's sort of middle class. Family grew up and I, you know, got a new book we're going to get to in a moment, Lions and Scavengers. But in that you talk about your, your home where I think six members of your family living in a two bedroom home, one bathroom, Burbank, California. And you describe it at least briefly as pretty bucolic.
- [01:27]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, it was great. It was great. I mean Burbank was a great place to grow up like kids playing in the street. And I had the greatest privilege of all, right, I'm an American growing up in the greatest country in the history of the world and I've got a two parent household. My parents love each other and they take care of us and they're able to make a middle class income. My mom started off as a secretary and worked her way up to become vice president of a small film and TV company. My dad came out here to be a composer and he ended up playing piano at a restaurant on Venterable Art, I believe it was in, or actually it was across from Universal Studios. It was the Michelli's over there now, if you've ever been there.
- [01:59]
Gavin Newsom
And he was like a five night, a Week piano. Piano guy.
- [02:02]
Ben Shapiro
A couple nights a week he'd go in there, he played jazz piano because he's been playing since he was 14. And so that's how I grew up. And again, I think that that's the American dream is you start there and then you end up making a better life for your kids and they end up making a better life for themselves. And that upward trajectory is kind of what America's all about. I love it.
- [02:20]
Gavin Newsom
How many brothers and sisters?
- [02:21]
Ben Shapiro
So I have three younger sisters.
- [02:23]
Gavin Newsom
Three younger sisters.
- [02:24]
Ben Shapiro
Three younger sisters.
- [02:24]
Gavin Newsom
And were they music? Because you were a violinist, right?
- [02:28]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I started playing violin when I was five and then I was pretty good. I mean, I was. It.
- [02:33]
Gavin Newsom
You were. It was your dad just saying, you're going, son, you will be. I mean, they threw that at you and they made you and you're crying.
- [02:39]
Ben Shapiro
No, it definitely wasn't there.
- [02:40]
Gavin Newsom
You loved it.
- [02:41]
Ben Shapiro
And I was, I was pretty dedicated to it for sure. I was practicing by the time I was 16, maybe three hours a day or something. And then I looked at sort of the life of musician and I thought, well, again, that upward trajectory is very difficult, particularly in classical music. And so I thought, you know, maybe I better shift career strategies here. But when I went to UCLA or I went to UCLA for undergrad, when I went to UCLA, I was 16 at the time. My parents didn't want me going out of state for school, so I was living at home because I was 16 and, and I thought I was going to double major in biology and, and in music actually. And I got on campus and I found myself kind of drawn to politics and, you know, the rest is.
- [03:21]
Gavin Newsom
I want to get back to that a little bit more. How about, how about your sisters? What, what, where do they end up in terms of their professional pursuits and careers?
- [03:29]
Ben Shapiro
All of us grew up obviously here. Only one is still here. I still have one sister who lives in Orange County. I have a couple of sisters who live within a mile and a half of me in Florida. So basically the whole family ended up in Florida. My parents ended up near me in Florida. My in laws who lived in Sacramento ended up near me in Florida. Interesting. You know, there may be some reasons for that, Governor.
- [03:48]
Gavin Newsom
We'll get to that. We're going to get to all of that in a lot more. I just want to paint the picture a little bit.
- [03:52]
Ben Shapiro
I appreciate it.
- [03:53]
Gavin Newsom
Not everybody knows your childhood, but also connected. I mean, as you said, UCLA undergrad and then your interest.
- [03:58]
Ben Shapiro
My wife went to UCLA medical school. I mean, we were very California Embedded, I love that.
- [04:02]
Gavin Newsom
And, but politics had its calling there. Would you remember sort of a moment or issues or was politics part of the. Even your childhood was a part of the conversation around the dinner table. Were your parents politically active, engaged?
- [04:14]
Ben Shapiro
They weren't super politically active, I would say they were kind of Reagan Republicans. And you know, growing up we would talk politics in the House. But the thing that sort of sent me in a political direction overtly is I got to college campus at UCLA and I picked up a copy of the UCLA Daily Bru. And this is back in the year 2000. There was an editorial from the, from the Bruin editorial board, I believe, comparing Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister of Israel in 2001, I guess, to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi. Yeah. And so I walked in and I said, I'd like to write a counter to that. And that turned into a point counterpoint column that I would write every week. That became pretty popular. It turned into kind of a normal column. And then I went to my father one day and I said, do you think that my stuff is good enough to be published in like a normal paper? And he said, you know, might be, let me do some research. So he found this place called Creator Syndicate again out of California. And they syndicate a bunch of columns to different newspapers around the country. At the time it was everybody from Molly Ivins on the left to David Limbaugh on the right. And so I applied cold and they called me three weeks later, I was 17 and they said, we'd love you to write a syndicated column. So pretty much all of my bad ideas since I was 17 have been public, which is, you know, an interesting way to live. For sure.
- [05:20]
Gavin Newsom
17, I mean that's pretty remarkable that young age you have a syndicated national column and a few years later, 20, you've, you have published what, two books by the way.
- [05:30]
Ben Shapiro
So you're right. My first book came out when I was 20 from. It was sort of an expose of leftism on college campuses. I think some might say it was a little ahead of its time. And then I went to Harvard law school at 20 and I wrote a couple of more books while I was at Harvard Law. And when I came out, I came back to LA and I practiced at a real estate firm or real estate wing of a major law firm called Goodwin Proctor. I practiced there. I lasted for about 10 months, decided I hate it, quit. I remember walking into the bosses office and saying, I hate it here and I want to leave. And I remember him turning to me and saying, you're never going to make as much money as you're making right now. And I've been wanting to send him some tax returns for a few years now, but, you know, it all worked out. Politics was something that I was always very invested in. And so my sort of political approach generally is that I'm much more invested in principles than personalities. I care much more about the ideas than I do about sort of the, the gossip aspect of politics. Right. I, I think that that's unfortunately becoming less common. Right. I think that, you know, it's great that you're having me on. I really appreciate that. I like the exchange of ideas. I've always liked the exchange of ideas. And so that's, that's still, I hope, what animates me? What animates the show.
- [06:43]
Gavin Newsom
Love that. What, I mean, you're, you're obviously known as, you know, I mean, people have described you in so many different ways. But debate bro, I mean, is there, is there quick wits? I mean, obviously next level intellect, ability to quickly distill facts and figures. You talk about facts over emotion, et cetera. But were you that person in high school? Were you that person in middle school or did that take.
- [07:05]
Ben Shapiro
I was pretty combative in high school, I would say. I'd skipped a couple of grades, so I skipped third and I skipped ninth. Wow. And so I was much younger and much shorter and much skinnier and much more of a wise ass probably than some of the other kids in my high school class. And so high school was not exactly a joy for that reason. But, and I've said before that obviously bullying is terrible, but being bullied can be sort of a make or break situation for you. Meaning that a lot of the people that I know who are very successful went through a lot of adversity in that age range. And then you sort of develop an attitude and the attitude is, okay, I can either use this as fuel and grist for the mill and, and say, listen, I'm going to take all of that negativity and channel it toward, you know, more strength and more positivity and, and building and, and maybe you get a little bit of a chip on your shoulder sometimes, or you can kind of let it, break it down.
- [07:56]
Gavin Newsom
Do you remember, I mean, some of the specific instances where you sort of, where you had that kind of exchange? Where was it political? Was it, was it. Because, I mean, the fact you're always younger, a little bit smarter, maybe you're quick witted, I mean, was, you remember political, interpersonal.
- [08:12]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, but I remember you know, being the kind of kid who, When I was 16 years old, there was a program at, at the UC system that was all about affirmative action. At the UC system. I remember there were about a thousand people who were protesting down in the plaza over there. And I believe I was the only counter protester.
- [08:32]
Gavin Newsom
Interesting.
- [08:32]
Ben Shapiro
And I would show up and do that, that sort of stuff.
- [08:34]
Gavin Newsom
Did you have the, was it the confidence or was the gumption? What was it? I mean, was it, was it something your parents distilled in you just stand up for ideals strike?
- [08:42]
Ben Shapiro
I think it was more stand up for ideals. But, but also, you know, from the time that I was young, I, I never had any problem with being in crowds or, or, you know, being in front of people.
- [08:51]
Gavin Newsom
You're a performer after.
- [08:52]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. I played violin. And so if you spend a lot of time playing, you know, a rigorous sort of set of pieces in front of people, and you do that over and over and over, it kind of gets rid of whatever trepidation you might have about being in front of people and doing that sort of thing.
- [09:06]
Gavin Newsom
When did you. Was there a moment when you sort of developed a next level confidence? You're like, wait, I'm pretty good at this. Or was it the writing that was doing?
- [09:13]
Ben Shapiro
You know, I'm not sure I will say, I don't think that it's ever good to develop next level confidence, meaning I think you got to prep for everything. One of the things that I try to do is really over prepare for my show. If I'm going to have a debate or a discussion with somebody, I really try to dig in and, and get into what's true, what's, what's not true. I'd much rather be over prepared. I think there's a certain level of insecurity that's good. Yeah, I think when, when you're overconfident, that's when you made mistakes. I think in my career, whenever I've made a mistake, it's typically because I didn' take a challenge seriously enough or I sort of brushed it off. And you see that happen a lot. People sort of rely on their native intelligence as opposed to assuming that you're not going to be the smartest person in the room all the time. Remember when I was in middle school, so I went to Walter Reed in North Hollywood and they had a magnet school, like a highly gifted program. And I remember there was an IQ test, actually kind of a rudimentary IQ test. That was the baseline to get in. And I got in, but I didn't get in by leaps and bounds. And we, you know, I remember first day of class, everybody was kind of passing around their IQ scores and all this kind of stuff. And one girl had had above 180, really, really, really high IQ. And I remember going back home and talking to my father about it. He said, listen, you should assume that you're never the smartest person in the room, but you can always be the hardest working person in the room.
- [10:26]
Gavin Newsom
Love that.
- [10:27]
Ben Shapiro
And that, that. That, I think, has been sort of the motto.
- [10:29]
Gavin Newsom
I love it. So you went, you know, UCLA undergrad. Here you are, 17, national syndicated columnist. A few years later, you got two published books about issues around the universe, as you say, you may have been of most in that respect. And then issues around. I mean, it was interesting, the porn industry, broadly defined.
- [10:47]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. I was writing books about how the pornography industry was going to really carve out particularly young men's Souls in about 2005. And at the time, people were saying, oh, this is crazy. What is he talking about now? Of course, I think that there are a lot of young men who have fallen prey to that industry, who less family formation, less general happiness, less sex, actually. People who are kind of falling out of the social fabric that's necessary to build societies. I was calling that out in about.
- [11:15]
Gavin Newsom
2000, even in my state of the state last week, I referenced just one of many different statistics. But roughly half of young men have never asked a woman out in person on a date. So your point, nephasis and that, and we. I want to unpack that a little bit later as well in the conversation. But you started then to not only identify yourself in the context of your intellectual pursuits and expressing your point of view through writing, also sort of gifted capacity to engage in debate and speech. But then you found Andrew Breitbart was out and about in Southern California, and you took a job there working at Breitbart.
- [11:52]
Ben Shapiro
That been in 2012. During the 2012 election, I joined Breitbart. I'd known Andrew actually since my UCLA days, so I'd known him already for quite a number of years.
- [12:03]
Gavin Newsom
What do you think of Andrew? I did a lot of Andrew's kick.
- [12:05]
Ben Shapiro
Andrew. So I think that there's sort of the. I mean, you're in public life, so, you know, there's. For a lot of people, there's sort of like the private person, there's the public person. They're not quite the same. So Andrew, the private person and the public person were actually very much the same, I would say, up until the end. Toward the end, I think that Andrew became very frustrated with a lot of the political system, media coverage. But the truth is that Andrew was, for the vast majority of the time I knew him, very garrulous, willing to have conversations with nearly anyone. I think that if you talk to people who knew Andrew really well, their best memories of him are things like him just rollerblading in Venice and then just having political conversations, taking somebody to coffee like a random person. What I used to say to people about Andrew is that I knew Andrew for over a decade before he passed away. And if you Knew Andrew for five minutes, you knew him about 95% as well as I did, because he was just very much there. He was just on the surface, everything that. What you saw is what you got with Andrew. So, yeah, I joined Bret Barton in about 2012. It was during the Romney Obama election cycle. I was there for a few years, I believe I ended up leaving in 2016, like early 2016. There had been some sort of career transitions there in which I was taking other jobs at the same time. There was a point, again, going under that sort of working hard rubric. There's one which I was working effectively four jobs. I was doing a morning show in L. A where I interviewed you, actually. And then there was a. An afternoon show that I was doing in Seattle. So six hours of radio a day. I was the editor at large of Breitbart, which meant writing a piece or two a day for Breitbart. And then I had also taken a job as the editor in chief of a website called Truth Revolt for the David Horowitz Freedom Center. So I was working four jobs simultaneously. And again, my advice to young people, particularly, you want to be successful, say yes to doing everything, even if it's for free at the beginning. Because eventually saying yes a lot gets you the power to say no later on in your career when you can sort of winnow down what will make you successful.
- [13:55]
Gavin Newsom
And people, a lot of folks know this, but a lot of folks don't. Steve Bannon was down there working for Breitbart at the time. You guys got along initially.
- [14:02]
Ben Shapiro
I know even in the beginning, Steve is not the easiest person to get along. I will say that.
- [14:09]
Gavin Newsom
We'll talk a little bit more, just briefly. I don't want to over index with Steve, but. So you left in 2016, but in 2015, you more formally established what more commonly is identified with your daily color. Right? I mean, it was.
- [14:23]
Ben Shapiro
It was daily wires, right? So daily wire, we established formally in 2015.
- [14:28]
Gavin Newsom
Right.
- [14:29]
Ben Shapiro
So it would have been in the middle of the primary. So it had been 2016. That's when we formally launched, was a few months before the election of 2016. I'd been working at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. It was kind of a funny story there where we had Jeremy Boreing and I, who are business partners, we've been working there. And he basically hit upon what was a social media arbitrage plan. He basically saw that you could market on social media in new ways and that would bring you traffic. And we proposed this to the board. They legitimately did not understand what we were talking about because boards of nonprofits are famously sort of elderly and non tech involved. And so we made a presentation. Jeremy was kind of fondly known as the Stupid Whisperer because we had met with many congresspeople and I speak quickly and Jeremy spoke slowly with a southern accent. And so he would very often get across better. See those congresspeople who shall remain unnamed. Anyway, we met with the board. Jeremy sort of explained the marketing plan. They had no idea what he was talking about. And they turned to me and they said, ben, can you explain the marketing plan? I said, sure, very easy. I was frustrated by this point. So I took out a napkin and I wrote on it, $sign arrow Facebook arrow website arrow back to $sign.
- [15:41]
Gavin Newsom
It's in your book.
- [15:42]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, exactly. And that was the marketing plan, right? It was that you were going to spend money on social media in order to gain eyeballs. Those eyeballs would then provide advertising on your website and then you would just direct that money back into Facebook. And so it was kind of a flywheel. And they fired Jeremy the next day. I quit a couple of days later. And then we basically took that plan out to market. We found a little bit of seed funding. It's about $5 million in seed funding originally. And we launched Daily Wire, which last year did $200 million plus in revenue.
- [16:12]
Gavin Newsom
How many, how many employees now?
- [16:14]
Ben Shapiro
We have about 220 employees at Daily Wire.
- [16:17]
Gavin Newsom
And you guys are doing. I mean. Well, we can talk more specifically, but I mean it's documentaries, it's movies. Yes, it's all this show. I mean it's a whole suite of.
- [16:26]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, we've tried to turn it into a semi major media company. Right. I would say it's probably the second biggest conservative media company in the country after Fox.
- [16:33]
Gavin Newsom
So at the time, who are your mentors who were looking up to at the time, who did you want to become? Was. I mean, Andrew obviously had a big Impact, I assume, in terms of your trajectory, who else was out there? You were watching. Was it the Limbaughs of the world? Was it the savages of the world? Who. I mean, on radio, I mean, I.
- [16:48]
Ben Shapiro
Think it's sort of a different thing in every industry. Yeah. So from a sort of ideological point of view, just being a great writer, be people like Charles Krauthammer. Yeah. Which of course, I love the writing. That's actually my favorite thing that I do because I can sit there, organize my thoughts, and I happen to write incredibly quickly. So that's, that's very, that's very nice. And then, you know, from a, from a, you know, radio or podcast point of view, obviously Rush. Rush is sort of the granddaddy of us all in this industry. And so Rush was the guy who I grew up listening to on talk radio. You know him, Larry Elder, like everybody who's sort of in the L A radio sphere when I was growing up.
- [17:20]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [17:20]
Ben Shapiro
And then in sort of social media land, obviously Andrew was. It was a major force in sort of showing what you could do in the, in the new media. And so I'd say that that triumvirate would be a pretty good way of defining what else.
- [17:32]
Gavin Newsom
And were you inspired, I mean, at the time, just even beyond those examples? Were there. There are books you were reading at the time, periodicals that really inspired.
- [17:40]
Ben Shapiro
So I read incessantly. I've been reading three to five books a week since I was probably old enough to read. Wow. So, you know, the books that I was reading on economics were things like Hayek. Right. I spend actually less time engaging, I would say, with, you know, the. The non traditional media space than I do engaging with books and great ideas, I hope. I mean, that's where I'd like to spend my time. Also, you know, I'm lucky from Friday night to Saturday night, I can't engage with media. Right. I'm an orthodox Jew, so all of the electricity goes away.
- [18:10]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [18:10]
Ben Shapiro
And so I read a lot of books, you know, fewer now than I used to because I have four kids now. But that means that if I want to. What's great about that for what I do is that if a topic comes up in the news, I have a pretty good memory bank to draw on in terms of a baseline of knowledge that I can then supplement with sort of further research. But I have a very strongly defined kind of worldview about everything from economics to foreign policy to social policy that I hope is rooted in some fundamental values, which means that I would say that my level of political consistency has been pretty high over the course of the last couple of decades. I mean, I'm 42, about to turn 42 years old this week, and I've been in this industry for a quarter century. I started writing at 17, and if you read stuff from when I'm 17, if it wasn't, you know, highly dumb, which some of it is. But if you were, if you were to find a column I wrote when I was 23 and it wasn't one of the ones that was like trying to get attention and look at me, if it was one of my more serious columns, it'll probably look a lot like the stuff that I'm saying today.
- [19:08]
Gavin Newsom
What do you make of the current media landscape? I mean, it seems to be the sort of dialectic between the old and the new, sort of the digital first and these legacy media companies. I mean, obviously podcasts becoming at least part of the nomenclature. It's a conversation, I don't know, we can get into the merits to merits of overstating over indexing podcast influence. But so much of what you seeded and influenced in terms of the right wing media, even in now in some respects what folks are trying to replicate with more progressive media voices. What do you make of the landscape today? How would you describe the current landscape?
- [19:43]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, highly fragmented. I think in some ways that's good. I think in some ways that's, that's bad. It's had tremendous benefits in the sense that you don't have three networks and you have to rely on just those three networks. You can in real time fact check things. It's bad in the sense that while gatekeeping is difficult and obviously can silo off information that you need to have, if you have people who are algorithmically driven, who are desperate for clicks and desperate for attention and don't seem to care very much about the truth, and if there's kind of no pushback, then bad information can spin its way around very, very quickly. And it doesn't take long for people to draw extremely hard narratives about, I would say, convoluted sets of facts. And I think that frankly, politicians sometimes have a position in doing this because if you're catering to a base and obviously, as in, everybody has to be aware of audience capture. In my industry, in politics, you have to be very aware of audience capture because you need to win votes. But I mean, just to take as a recent example what happened in Minneapolis, I think that the normie response to what happened in Minneapolis is this is obviously a tragedy From a sort of legal perspective, putting on my lawyer hat, the intent of Renee Goode is not relevant to the question of the intent of the officer. Right. If you're gonna prosecute the officer, then you'd have to determine whether an objective, reasonable officer would have perceived that he was being threatened by her vehicle when he shot her. And it seems to me that you could voice a fairly strong defense in a court of law that an objectively reasonable officer, since he actually was nudged with the car, at the very least would have. Would have perceived it that way. Now, this immediately broke down into two separate narratives, both of which I think are untrue. One was a narrative that was immediately pushed by the Trump administration and secretary from Lance Security, Kristi Noem, that she was a domestic terrorist who was attempting to run over officers with her car and was legitimately trying not just this officer, but multiple officers. That was the original statement. I said at the time I thought that was untrue. And then your press office tweeted out that it was state sponsored terrorism, which, I mean, Governor, I do have to ask you about that. That sort of thing makes our politics worse. Yeah, I mean, it does. And our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists. A tragic situation is not state sponsored terrorism. Yeah, I think that's fair when it comes. When it comes to ice. I mean, I'll ask you this just generally about policy with regard to ice, because obviously it's become incredibly contentious given what the federal government is doing in states like California. You know, it seems to me that there have been a number of deportations from red states where there are governors and localities working with ice. California is a sanctuary state, which makes it much more difficult for local law enforcement to hand over information to ICE about deportation status. What's the purpose of that? Wouldn't best policy. You're pragmatic. You talk about your pragmatism all the time. Wouldn't best policy be to cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases? So instead of ICE going to, as you say, hospitals and churches to pick people up, they'd be going to jailhouses to pick people up.
- [22:35]
Gavin Newsom
That's exactly what they do in California. And we have over 10,000 that I've cooperated with since I've been governor of California. We work very directly with ICE as it relates to cdcr, state prison. California has cooperated with more ICE transfers probably than any other state in the country. And I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation, legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that. So when it comes to the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to felons, people that are being released from the largest state system in the United States of America, California cooperates with ice.
- [23:09]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, but why is it then? What makes it a sanctuary state?
- [23:12]
Gavin Newsom
Well, the broader sanctuary policies that are established. And we had a policy that was established under Governor Brown, SB 54. You have City sanctuary policies that go back quite literally to the time Ronald Reagan was governor and relates to some of the issues in Central America, sort of the origin stories. But a bottom line is, relates to those policies, this notion that federal law should be enforced by federal law enforcement agencies, that we should not consign local law enforcement to federal responsibilities and prioritization.
- [23:40]
Ben Shapiro
Right. Shouldn't the state step in with localities and tell localities that they ought to cooperate better with ice, thus to facilitate.
- [23:46]
Gavin Newsom
Well, you know, I have sort of Rudy Giuliani's point of view, who made the point as an advocate for, for sanctuary policy when he was mayor of New York, of New York. He said it keeps people safer, healthier and more educated, safer in the context that it allows community members to be more likely to participate as witnesses of crime or victims of crime in going after the perpetrators, more likely to get an immunization shot if they're not worried about the nurse turning them over to ice, more likely to go to school and get educated if they're not worried about the school crossing guard crossing them and ultimately turning them over to ice. So it's the, it's the, the tool of pragmatism because of the complete abject failure of the federal government and sanctuary policies unnecessary. If we had comprehensive immigration reform and we had a federal response that was adequate to the task. But in the absence of that, it's grown from the 70s and 80s and 90s, 2000s. And obviously I got here as governor and we had an established framework before I got here, but it is true.
- [24:42]
Ben Shapiro
That sanctuary policy obviously has had a massive impact as a driver of tremendous number of illegal immigrants in the state of California.
- [24:49]
Gavin Newsom
I don't know about that. I mean, you see in a lot of states that don't have sanctuary policies, huge increase in immigration, illegal immigration, massive increases, even far greater than the state of California. Just look as.
- [25:02]
Ben Shapiro
But in terms of the cost structure, I mean, you recently, for example, had to freeze the enrollment of undocumented immigrants in, in state health systems to save money. Right. I mean, these are major burdens.
- [25:12]
Gavin Newsom
No, it's a separate, that's a separate issue. The 12 states that provide health care for Undocs and we believe in universal health care regardless of pre conditions.
- [25:19]
Ben Shapiro
My only point is that the cost structure is extraordinarily burdensome.
- [25:22]
Gavin Newsom
But I don't think it's in unpacking it. I don't think it's a sanctuary policies that are driving that. And I give you a proof point. Florida don't have sanctuary policy. Huge increase in undocumented community, huge increase in Texas. It's not a driver their sanctuary policy. They don't have sanctuary policies in those states. The state of California's policies, I don't think in that respect have invited people into our state. And I use those as I think proof points of that and that's a different. So the notion of how do you deal with people that are here 10, 15 years, how do you deal with mixed status families in this state and how do you provide for health care as opposed to emergency care and stabilize populations and community health, It's a different approach. It's one that we've been very transparent about. It's one that's hardly unique because in every state they provide compensated care for undocs at the emergency room. Many states provide it for children, many for seniors. California provides it across the board.
- [26:22]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, the biggest problem though, as somebody who left the state, is that the cost structure in the state has become so burdensome, not just because of illegal immigration, but generally. And so the idea that policy has no impact as a magnet for particular human behavior or alienating people from a state, that. That's clearly untrue. And when you look at the homeless population, for example, friendlier policies toward providing services in Santa Monica.
- [26:44]
Gavin Newsom
That's a good point though, but that now you're getting a homeless policy, not immigration policy.
- [26:48]
Ben Shapiro
But I want to stick with immigration policy. You make it easier for illegal immigrants. But let's stick with immigration to avoid ICE then presumably.
- [26:55]
Gavin Newsom
No, look, I appreciate this. So we've established important. I appreciate the question because I'm glad we've established that we do cooperate with ICE in California in particular this governor who's as I said on multiple occasions, vetoed efforts to stop me from that coordination for dangerous criminals. And we've done that over 10,000 folks.
- [27:12]
Ben Shapiro
So it'd be wrong for us. When AOC said this week that I should be abolished. You disagree?
- [27:16]
Gavin Newsom
Oh, I disagree. When I think a candidate for president by the name of Harris said that in the last campaign I came out, I remember being on Chris Hayes hours later saying, I think that's a mistake. So absolutely. Number two, as it relates to the issue of sanctuary policy I think it's important to establish because it's not well established. Sanctuary jurisdictions have lower crime rates, lower crime rates than non sanctuary jurisdictions. So this notion that it somehow increases crime is also I think contradicted on the basis of the facts. So this notion that population, it becomes an attractive nature for population increases I think is contradicted by the facts as it relates to crime. It's contradicted by the facts. But there's unquestionably, and you're right about this as it relates to an expansion of services, but not just for sanctuary jurisdictions, for population, diverse populations. Yes. There are states like California that have chosen a different approach.
- [28:13]
Ben Shapiro
And that approach, I mean means that when you came into office, for example, the budget was what, $200 billion and your proposed budget last year or this year is $350 billion.
- [28:22]
Gavin Newsom
200 plus the general funds, 248 billion. We have $42.3 billion additional structure than we anticipated by the way. Another 2.8 came in in December and California is now replenishing its reserves $23 billion paying down pension obligations, $11.8 billion. There's no question their cost pressures as rates to Medicaid and Medi cal in California and those pressures are going to be made worse because of the big beautiful bill.
- [28:49]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I mean I think that the main pressures in the state of California in terms of kind of future costs looks like some of the programs that you mentioned mainly if we're going to look at it, Calpers, Calstars, the fact that you have perhaps $500 billion in unfunded liabilities going forward, which we've substantially.
- [29:07]
Gavin Newsom
Improved in the last seven years. I just mentioned the $11.8 billion commitment. We've highlighted that in the state of the state to pay down long term pension obligations, STRs and PERs, their funded liability has been improving over the last 5 or 6 years. Can't make up for last 30 years. You may recall a decade plus ago we did reforms for new employees moving in. We dealt with spiking and other issues and abuses in that space. We're hardly unique in this country as it relates to unfunded liability but or fraud issues obviously. And fraud issues. We can talk about fraud all day. I'd love to talk about that and we could get back to that because I think it's incredibly important topic and California's been actually out front on a lot of these anti fraud efforts and and you know I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of BS in This space as it relates to sort of targeted assault and offense that obviously are bigger politics. But I want to go back because we're going to get all this. I know everyone came here for all this stuff.
- [30:03]
Ben Shapiro
Of course, before we do, I just want to ask. There's sort of a general take that I have and that is I heard the, the podcast that you did with Ezra Klein. I think Ezra is wonderful. You know, he and I disagree about nearly everything and I think Ezra's really, really a fascinating person with a lot of really interesting and heterodox ideas. And he talked with you a lot about sort of governance. And you talked with him a lot about how you were trying to remove regulatory barriers to, for example, building units. Right. Because when you came into office, you wanted to build, I believe it was 3.5 million units.
- [30:31]
Gavin Newsom
That was that. Well, that was the stated need.
- [30:34]
Ben Shapiro
Right.
- [30:34]
Gavin Newsom
And then we created a legal framework of two and a half million.
- [30:38]
Ben Shapiro
And it will come up. It's like 20, 30. What is it? About 101, 50,000 units that are being.
- [30:43]
Gavin Newsom
A little, a little less than 50,000. You're right about 111, 108,000.
- [30:48]
Ben Shapiro
And this isn't, this isn't rip on you. I mean, because.
- [30:50]
Gavin Newsom
No, it's been a major national issue and the macroeconomics of this, with interest rate environment, sort of post Covid environment made this housing crisis across.
- [30:57]
Ben Shapiro
Although to be fair, the housing crisis in California is particularly bad. I mean, there are places like Phoenix or Austin or, or there's the original.
- [31:04]
Gavin Newsom
I said yesterday or last week in the state of states, the original sin, our inability to get out our own way and all the regulatory thickness.
- [31:10]
Ben Shapiro
Right. So.
- [31:11]
Gavin Newsom
And we, we blew through those in the Last couple years. 61 housing reform bills we just passed. And Ezra was highlighting that.
- [31:18]
Ben Shapiro
Interesting.
- [31:19]
Gavin Newsom
New York just moved in a direction. I think finally we Democrats broadly are moving now finally in the right damage direction after decades and decades, Democrats and Republicans in California neglect in this space.
- [31:32]
Ben Shapiro
Right. And I think that one of the problems that people see, and you know, there's been a big question, you've asked it, you've talked about it a lot, actually, about the, the frustration that people have with politics and the disenchantment that people have and the feeling that no matter what they do, they can't get ahead. And that's manifesting in a lot of political polarization. And this gets to, I think, a sort of broader issue. It's not just you. So I don't mean this to be a specific critique of you. I think It's a critique of a lot of politicians that I have left and right. And that is, you look at the system, you realize as the governor, how complex the system is, how difficult it is to get things done, how much gridlock there is in the system. But, but politicians, in order to get elected, have to make a lot of promises about how much things are going to change in the future. And they usually are talking about using the power of government in order to facilitate and make that change happen, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle. And it seems to me that that is a recipe for disaster for the American body politic. Because if you make promises that cannot be fulfilled because the system does not allow for it to be fulfilled, people inherently end up frustrated. And I have relatives who still live in the state of California. I visit it routinely and they're making a very good living. I have a sister in law and brother in law who live in la. They make a combined excellent living and they're barely making their mortgage. And the housing costs are too high, the cost of living is too high. I believe the poverty rates in California on a cost adjusted basis are some of the highest in the nation.
- [32:52]
Gavin Newsom
Right there with Florida.
- [32:53]
Ben Shapiro
Correct.
- [32:53]
Gavin Newsom
When you look at the supplemental Poverty Index, when you look at poverty broadly, you'll find it's slightly above average supplemental. Florida and California right now, if you're.
- [33:01]
Ben Shapiro
Looking at real estate costs in particular are extraordinary in the state of California. As you say, you're trying to remove regulations relations. But the problem is that unless we are willing to recognize a fundamental reality which is that the relationship of the American people with their government needs to change. And what that means is that we need to radically, radically remove the regulatory structures that allow for more building, that we need to radically stop perverting markets when it comes to how we make housing policy. That we need to stop wasting money in taxpayer funding on things like for example, a gigantic, once called it boondoggle high speed rail that is going to cost in excess of $100 billion in this state, the guarantee. And again, I see it rising on the populist right too, which is sort of a big government right, which is something I object to on a sort of classically conservative level. The promises that are made, that if you give government more power and more taxpayer revenue, that suddenly these problems are going to be alleviated. And the actual result, which is less ability to move, to do what my parents did, to move from a two bedroom small house in Burbank to a four bedroom, slightly larger house in North Hollywood and Then for me to go to a great state school like ucla and then for me to go to Harvard Law School and now to have a really, really nice house. You know, I did have a nice house in California before, before we left. Obviously, you know, those, those obstacles need to be.
- [34:27]
Gavin Newsom
Well, you sound like me. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean we can get high speed rail aside, you made my speech in my argument last three years in terms of the housing reforms we pursued. Could not agree more. I highlighted the 61 bills just last year. I didn't highlight the 42 SEQA reform bills, the original talk about process and regulatory thickets, those environmental rules that were established ironically by Ronald Reagan himself when he was governor of California. So we've been in the process of doing precisely what you're suggesting we need to do and we've been doing it very meaningfully and been nation leading reforms in this space. Now of course the private sector needs to catch up in the context of interest rate environment becoming more favorable. But now we, we are, we are cities and counties. We put on notice, maybe recall when I first became governor, I sued Huntington beach, the first city, because they were out of compliance with their housing element. We established a legally, legally binding goal of two and a half million units. We talked about the stretch goal, what needed to get some equilibrium in our prices, the supply, demand imbalance. But we created a legally binding goal of two and a half million.
- [35:24]
Ben Shapiro
So what could be done to make that happen in not Huntington beach, but la, San Francisco?
- [35:28]
Gavin Newsom
Well, we've been, we created a housing Accountability unit. We pursued 46 actions we've unlocked.
- [35:33]
Ben Shapiro
But I guess the question is from like the common man perspective. Right. From my perspective where I, I left, I took my business, right?
- [35:38]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [35:39]
Ben Shapiro
From that perspective, how do we get to the material change? And, and if we cannot, then perhaps that requires a complete rethink. Now come over to my, my classical libertarian economics here, Governor, is I guess what I'm, what I'm saying. And, and maybe recognize that the amount of tax revenue that's taken in, in the state perverts the market incentives that what's been generated in the state is a middle class that is really struggling vast social services for people who are at poverty line or below and slightly above. And then a group of people who are either so wealthy, they don't care or so wealthy now that now they're leaving. Right. Because of the prospective wealth tax, which I know you oppose. Right. You understand markets. So that's why I'm always a little bit bewildered when there, there are, you know, measures taken by the state legislature that, that end up perverting markets in fairly serious ways.
- [36:29]
Gavin Newsom
Well, we can get into the crony capitalism, state capitalism and the, the, the tithings from Nvidia and AMD and, and, and what's going on with intel and, and what's happening with the Trump administration in that respect. But I agree with you broadly in all this. I mean the fact is we've been tackling all, I can't make up for 50, 60 years and you're talking about literally a 50 year trend line as it relates to the issues of cost of having housing and affordability. But I can talk in terms of the substantive actions we've taken. Tripling their income tax credits for working families, creating a child tax credit, foster tax credit, doing more as it relates to pre distribution opportunities, about radically lowering.
- [37:04]
Ben Shapiro
The income tax rates.
- [37:05]
Gavin Newsom
Well, California has tax, I mean there's 16 states right now. Let's talk about those 16 states.
- [37:11]
Ben Shapiro
Why don't we talk about California? That's, well, I'm going to.
- [37:13]
Gavin Newsom
They tax their low wage earners more than California taxes its high wage earners. Let's talk about those, lowering those tax rates in those 16 states. How about the middle class, 40% of the middle class in Texas pay higher taxes than they do in California. We have the highest tax rate for the 1%. But the overall tax burden, and there's been independent analysis after independent analysis is marginally higher than the national average. So the tax rate for the 1%, you're in that bubble, but 99% empirically are not.
- [37:45]
Ben Shapiro
As a person who grew up in California and spent my entire career in California, I paid every single tax rate in the state of California. I started off making. When I, when I first got out of school and I quit the law firm, I was making maybe 60 grand a year.
- [37:55]
Gavin Newsom
So you started out paying less than you would in dozen plus other states.
- [37:58]
Ben Shapiro
And I didn't. It's a progressive tax, I understand it's a progressive tax state. The problem is that when I left I also took 80 employees and, and there's somebody who's got to pay the bills for those employees and that's typically not the state. The person who is paying the bills for the employees and the person that.
- [38:12]
Gavin Newsom
Is the guy, by the way, you're talking to a guy who's started right out of college, pen to paper and started 23 small businesses. Literally 23 started, created almost.
- [38:22]
Ben Shapiro
So you know, as a person who ran a small business, you wanted to pay salaries to your people Honored. Well, yeah, right. I mean, it's not about the greed of the one. I'm the same person.
- [38:30]
Gavin Newsom
I hated a lot of the regulations and I've been fighting against a lot of.
- [38:33]
Ben Shapiro
And having to fire people because of that stuff is awful. And losing your profit margin which allows you to hire more people is a bad thing. And when you are seeing. I mean, I've talked to major tech founders who say today that they would not. If they had to do it over again, they would not found in California specifically because of the regulatory and tax.
- [38:50]
Gavin Newsom
Well, let's talk about the largest startup in world history could have chosen any place to open its headquarters just recently. OpenAI and the folks there decided to open in San Francisco. I mean it runs.
- [39:00]
Ben Shapiro
That's where the talent is. I mean there's no question.
- [39:02]
Gavin Newsom
Therein lies the formula for success. California has more Fortune 500 companies than it's ever had in 20 plus years.
- [39:10]
Ben Shapiro
To be fair, you have 40 million people who live.
- [39:11]
Gavin Newsom
Hold on. But, but four years ago that wasn't the case. Today it's the case. We have 58 Fortune 500 companies. When I started was 49. We're the sixth largest economy. Now we're the fourth largest economy. You look at the 3.1 million jobs that are being created since I've been governed. You can look across the spectrum. I'm not denying its challenges, but those persist and exist in every other state. You move to a state that has higher insurance rate, higher car insurance, not just home insurance, has higher property taxes. Many of these red states, they have higher murder rates, lower wages, lower productivity, less innovation and entrepreneurialism. They're less contributory to the GDP of this country.
- [39:45]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, not, not to defend my, my current state, Florida. I mean, obviously you had a debate with Governor DeSantis where you guys had had this discussion. But, but I will, I will say that, you know, some of the statistics that you use with regard to California are aggregate statistics, not on a per capita basis. So you, I've heard you say, for example, that, that California is the top innovation state because it has the highest number of new businesses founded. On a per capita basis that isn't true.
- [40:08]
Gavin Newsom
How about on a per capita basis more Floridians move into California than Californians to Florida.
- [40:13]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, that's per capita basis. That's fine. And on. Absolutely.
- [40:17]
Gavin Newsom
Okay. I just want to. Let's establish the per capita per capita murder rate. Let's look at infant mortality per capita.
- [40:23]
Ben Shapiro
We can look at, we can look at, look at violent Assault rates, We can look at property crime rates, I don't know. But it's not.
- [40:27]
Gavin Newsom
I mean, I mean, Jacksonville versus San Francisco.
- [40:30]
Ben Shapiro
California, outside of immigration, has had a loss of population for the past several years.
- [40:36]
Gavin Newsom
Part of the secret sauce of California going back to its origin.
- [40:39]
Ben Shapiro
I understand, but if you lose people like me and the 80 employees I took with me and members, I'm not.
- [40:43]
Gavin Newsom
Happy about anyone leaving the state. But population's grown three years in a row. Last time it declined, it went down with 11 other states and we lost 151 people.
- [40:51]
Ben Shapiro
If you're talking not about immigration, if you're just talking about people who lived in California who are leaving, that number is high. And again, I'm not blaming that on you.
- [40:57]
Gavin Newsom
Could be the case in many, many states, as you know, across this country, by the way, a lot of red states, which I'm surprised you guys don't talk more about. What about the last few years, all these red states losing folks? California has been the last few years. These red states are Louisiana, Mississippi. Let's talk about those states. Let's talk about the murder rate. Adding a top 10 murder rates in America are in red states. I think there's some real problems. The most regressive taxes in the country are in these red states. Who are you for?
- [41:23]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, the question really, again, you're the governor of California, not the governor of Louisiana. If I'm speaking with the governor of Louisiana, I'd be very happy to talk about.
- [41:30]
Gavin Newsom
I just never hear anyone in the. And talk about the governor of Louisiana and the population.
- [41:34]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, because last I'm aware, the governor of Louisiana, you know, probably wasn't running for president and also doesn't.
- [41:40]
Gavin Newsom
I don't know, everyone else seems to be running for president. I never lived for president, by the way. Let's get back to that. Bannon is running for president. He said.
- [41:48]
Ben Shapiro
Oh, goodness, you don't buy that? No. I bet that Steve would run a vanity campaign in order to garner a few dollars and some more attention for himself. Sure, why not?
- [41:55]
Gavin Newsom
I'm going to get back to all the California bashing here in a second.
- [41:58]
Ben Shapiro
Second.
- [41:58]
Gavin Newsom
Because I know everyone wants to tune in on that. But I want to talk, I want to keep going a little bit. And just in the interest of you coming all the way out from that red Florida, because it is interesting, just in terms of just as you laid out the framework of the media environment in this country and how fragmented it's become, etcetera, this notion of trust and truth and how things are Weaponized and how everybody, you know, society becomes how we behave and how you indict a little bit my press office, which I appreciated the direct point you made on that, and I'm not naive about that. I think about that all the time. We put up a mirror to Trump, we become more like him. And are you complicit in that?
- [42:35]
Ben Shapiro
Not unique to you, obviously. We've had things at our company that have been said that's not unique. I will say that I think that for elected politicians who are hoping for a better future where we all come together, it is a problem. And, you know, I don't like the catastrophism. I've criticized it on the right, too. The sort of catastrophism that you see in a functioning democracy, which is what the United States is. It is a functioning republic. Like, you know, when, for example, when the president decided to push for redistricting and then you push back with your proposition. I actually didn't have a problem with that. I thought, you know, that is a, that is a normal use of the political mechanisms in order to fight back by one side against another. What I do have a problem with is if you go on Stephen Colbert and say you're worried there won't be a legit election in 2028.
- [43:15]
Gavin Newsom
I, I, but I feel that, I mean, if I believe that.
- [43:17]
Ben Shapiro
Do you really believe that?
- [43:17]
Gavin Newsom
I really believe that.
- [43:19]
Ben Shapiro
But then why are you running? Or why would you consider.
- [43:21]
Gavin Newsom
I want to make sure those. I, because we have agency. We can shape the future. It's not something to experience.
- [43:26]
Ben Shapiro
But I didn't believe it when President Trump said It's a. President Trump said in 2020.
- [43:29]
Gavin Newsom
He wants, I believe in it, but he tried.
- [43:32]
Ben Shapiro
I truly believe that President Trump is going to try to run in 2028.
- [43:34]
Gavin Newsom
No, I believe that he'll try to wire the outcome in 2020.
- [43:37]
Ben Shapiro
And I really, this sort of stuff is very dangerous to me. I really, because I heard it from the right in the aftermath of 2020. And you'll recall I was one of the few on the right who said this is not true. Right. That Joe Biden was legitimately, legitimately elected in 2020 and that if someone could provide me evidence that he was not, that was sufficient to overcome the burden.
- [43:54]
Gavin Newsom
What Trump tried to do.
- [43:56]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I mean, what, what is the.
- [43:57]
Gavin Newsom
Thing that you think maybe dialing up for 12, 000 votes in, in Georgia, he ended up partying. I mean, where you.
- [44:02]
Ben Shapiro
I'm not everyone. I'm not justifying try to light democracy. I'm not justifying what he said to, to Brad Raffensberger over, over in Georgia. Yeah, Brad Raffens. But by the way, did the right thing. Mike Pence did the right thing, by the way, and certifying the election. But my point is that when it comes to if you want the country to continue to work together, then if you set the predicate if I lose, it was rigged. It's true for either side.
- [44:23]
Gavin Newsom
No, I can't stand that.
- [44:25]
Ben Shapiro
Then we need some objective Agree with you on that. Then if you're going to say that we need some objective metrics by which we can adjudicate whether or not the election will be fairly decided. And it seems to me that just in terms of how elections are conducted globally and again, I'm in favor of many of these sort of election reforms that have been proposed. For example, voter id. I think it's kind of silly to argue that you shouldn't have to show ID when you vote. But do I think that we are at high risk in the United States of full scale national elections with 150 million voters being stolen and that the elective leadership is then fundamentally illegitimate, which leaves you with no choice, presumably, but to go to the mattresses, which is what you don't want. That sort of language, I think is.
- [45:05]
Gavin Newsom
Really but back to the point you were making earlier about the aggregate it we're talking about a few thousand votes here and there that ultimately determine that election for the nation on the basis of the electoral map. So I think it's more prone to concern than you may suggest.
- [45:22]
Ben Shapiro
But I think that concern pointing out specific problems that we can actually agree on the specific.
- [45:26]
Gavin Newsom
I'm with you. And that's why, that's why I'm calling it out now. And I've been I try to provide evidence to back up my point as it relates to the Department of Justice and how it gets weaponized. And I've seen it on my from my party as well. Sure as hell seen it from Trump's party, Trump's perspective, what they try to do with the BORTAC teams the day of the election here under Prop 50, where they send folks out and these guys all dressed up to try to chill free expression and free speech on election day, where Trump tweets out that morning saying this is a rigged election, the fact that he's out there suggesting that all the vote by mail is illegal and a bunch of immigrants, illegal immigrants are out there doing all, all of these things, you start stacking them, including trying to rid midterm elections as it relates to changing the maps and what he tried to do on January 6th. Yeah, I start getting a little bit.
- [46:09]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I don't, I don't want to lump all those things in together because.
- [46:11]
Gavin Newsom
I don't think they, they're not all the same, but they stack together from my perspective. Not one action. It's a sum total of all of those things, including sending out ice.
- [46:19]
Ben Shapiro
But it's very difficult to argue. Here's the thing. It's very difficult to argue over intentions because now I'm in the business of mind reading, which I can't do. I can.
- [46:27]
Gavin Newsom
Well, Trump's not. Trump's not. He's telling you what he thinks.
- [46:30]
Ben Shapiro
I know. And so it's not even mind reading. But when he, when he says what he thinks, I'll criticize. So, for example, when he said 2020 was a rigged election, he said, you'll recall in 2020, on the night of the election, he said, I won before all the results were in. I came out before anybody. And I said, that's wrong. The election is not over yet. All the votes have not been counted. Good for you. Good for you. So I try, and I think the responsible thing to do is, and I don't always do this, but I think that the responsible thing to do is to try and hone in on the specific behavior. So you mentioned that it would be election rigging if President Trump is pushing for gerrymandering in Indiana. I don't think that's election rigging. I don't think it's election rigging when you gerrymander in California. I think that is a long practiced part of American politics. And I don't think that you did anything wrong, actually, in pushing for it in California as much as it does not benefit the party that I tend to vote for and of whom I'm a member, of which I'm a member. So when the general tenor, and this is what I see in Democratic crises that you see around the world, one of the things that I see is both sides saying, if the other side wins, it was raised.
- [47:33]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I'm with you on that, though. I want to make. I'll double down on being crystal clear. I can't stand that any more than you can stand that. I couldn't agree with you more. I am concerned about the inputs between now in 2028, including concerned about folks that, you know, well, Steve Bannon and others saying there'll be a third Trump term. The fact that I was in the office.
- [47:51]
Ben Shapiro
I think he's totally full of shit. And by the way, I think that people should stop giving Steve attention for saying things that are complete horseshit.
- [47:56]
Gavin Newsom
And I appreciate that. But should I give attention to Donald Trump? When I sat there in the oval office for 90 minutes and he tells me to turn around and there's a picture on the wall or painting on the wall of fdr, and I look at him and I smile and he goes, I said, oh, here's the third term. He goes, what about four terms? Should I take him seriously?
- [48:13]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, so should I take him literally? I will say, I don't know.
- [48:16]
Gavin Newsom
I'm just a question.
- [48:18]
Ben Shapiro
That's the president. And my general answer to this is, if we've watched Donald Trump for 10 years, 10 years, and we're still doing the thing where we all take him and explicitly, literally, I think that Maduro.
- [48:28]
Gavin Newsom
Did so people or has.
- [48:30]
Ben Shapiro
Okay, it turns out Maduro should have. But, you know, one of the things that I remember, I would get this critique about President Trump a lot is President Trump, who, as I've said multiple times on his. On his epitaph, it will read 45th and 47th presidents of the United States. He said a lot of shit. You know, like the thing, I take.
- [48:50]
Gavin Newsom
My presidents a little more seriously than most.
- [48:53]
Ben Shapiro
See, I don't think you do. And this is the thing where I really doubt it. I see a lot of people who will. Trump will fire off a random tweet and everybody kind of laughs because it's President Trump. If I'm going to pretend that that is coming from the same thought process as whatever comes from Joe Biden's press office, which went through seven layers and maybe not the president very different, then I'm not going to pretend that's the same thing because I'm not an idiot.
- [49:17]
Gavin Newsom
And by the way, I could not agree even more. And that's. That's, I think, reflected in the humor I'm trying to put back in on my social media.
- [49:23]
Ben Shapiro
And actually, I think it's kind of a problem for you because I think that frankly, the stuff that you're doing is more thought out than the stuff that President Trump does. Meaning I think that President Trump is waking up at three in the morning, if he went to sleep at all, and he's firing off stuff on Truth Social, Right? And so am I supposed to take that as seriously as you in a methodical fashion saying, you know what? I'm gonna prank him back. And I think that people on people who are your supporters do take you in that way more Literally, than they would be apt to take president.
- [49:49]
Gavin Newsom
I think, I mean, a lot of my sport has been offended by, by what we're trying to do. But, but no, look, and, and a lot, I think, appreciate the humor that we bring to it. And I do think it, I think it's reflected in, I think, a sense of agreement that we have in that respect as it relates to what Trump puts out all the time.
- [50:06]
Ben Shapiro
But, like, if you win the 2028 election, I will call you president of the United States. Right. Because that election will be legitimate.
- [50:12]
Gavin Newsom
And if it's, I was, you know, as an American, I called Donald Trump President, United States, Mr. President. I mean, of course, and I, so I'm with you on that and the outcome. But that doesn't suggest that I believe for a second, and you haven't respectfully convinced me that I'm wrong or errant, that he won't do everything in his power to manipulate the outcome. I do, I expect, I think it's time of life. If he was 20 years younger, I absolutely believe he'd run for a third term. But his time of life suggests that that's not going to be the case. But I do think he's going to try to harden.
- [50:48]
Ben Shapiro
You see, the reason I'm concerned about this because it also implicates the guardrails. So, as you've talked about in your state, there's a lot of gridlock, right. There are a lot of various moving parts when you're trying to get something done at the state level. You've got local governments that can impede you, you've got a legislature that can say no to you, you've got a bunch of people, you've got a judiciary that will, that will tell you no in certain areas. You know, there was, there was a ruling a couple of weeks ago that I, that I strongly agree with from the judiciary with regard to, for example, school districts and what they can and should tell parents about, about their kids.
- [51:18]
Gavin Newsom
That'S going to be thrown out.
- [51:19]
Ben Shapiro
But I will get, but, you know, Benitez decision. Yeah, but when, when, when it comes to, you know, what President Trump is or is not trying to do, the problem is when we say that he will try to, he will try to steal the issue, will the election be stolen, that relies now on an opinion about, for example, the Supreme Court of the United States or an opinion about the various state legislatures and courts. And so now you're not just implicating what President Trump might try to do, you're now implicating pretty Much every major institution that is electoral in nature.
- [51:47]
Gavin Newsom
Well, there's a lot of evidence, and I know both sides have argued a lot of evidence as it relates to the weaponization of justice and the bias that's expressed in a lot of these federal judicial opinions. And yeah, it's a little alarming. I mean, as a father of a judge who reveres the courts and, you know, is someone that I was very proud. My father may have been accused of being an activist judge, but in many occasions calling balls and strikes and, you know, I revere that sense of justice. That's, that's where justice is found with an objective analysis. But, no, I do worry about the Supreme Court. You may not. I'm concerned about the Supreme Court of the United States. I'm concerned about what Donald Trump did after January 6, the degree that he went to, to ultimately try to stay into office. Yes, I'm concerned about the actions he's taken. Not any one of them from the midterm redistricting, but the sum total of many of them. And yes, I'm concerned if we don't take back the House of Representatives and we have no oversight and we continue to have the supine Congress, we may not have a country that we recognize. I really believe that.
- [52:50]
Ben Shapiro
I do. And, and it's fine to believe all of those things. I will say that. To articulate them as though they are all of equal levels of alarm, or that the sum total of them is that if we don't win the next election, the country's over. Which, again, is something that you hear very often from the right, too. I think that sort of alarmism is quite bad for American politics. And I don't think that anyone who's in electoral politics actually believes that, because I promise you that if a Republican wins in 2028, a Democrat will then run in 2032, and if the reverse is true, the same thing will happen.
- [53:19]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I agree with that. Look, I just. The level.
- [53:22]
Ben Shapiro
And I think the American people should know that because it gives them a sense, okay, I didn't win this time, but I might win next time. And once American people start to believe, they can never win or their side is always cut out.
- [53:31]
Gavin Newsom
Ben, I love what you're saying, the spirit of what you're saying, what you're saying, I completely concur with. I just, I have a different level of anxiety based upon my own direct experience, not just indirect direct experience with Donald Trump, my concern about the rule of law, this notion of co. Equal branch government. In your book, you talk about sort of the fundamental Judeo Christian values in this country with the best Greek democracy.
- [53:55]
Ben Shapiro
I worry about those, worry about checks and balances, too.
- [53:58]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [53:59]
Ben Shapiro
And by the way, I think that the best way to do that actually, and this would benefit you as governor of the state, is devolution of more authority back down to the states. Devolution, more governmental authority back down to the local levels and more robust checks and balances.
- [54:09]
Gavin Newsom
Your lips to God in the White House's ears. Yeah, I'm a little.
- [54:13]
Ben Shapiro
And I hope you remember that if.
- [54:14]
Gavin Newsom
You become president, this notion of federalism and 10th amendment. Yeah, I remember. I remember. You know. Yeah. The red states were arguing for that during those Obama years. God bless you. No, back to your being more consistent. And I respect that and that's why we're here. And I respect you and I appreciate this opportunity to engage, even though obviously we have fundamental disagreements on a lot of these issues. Maybe not fundamental, just disagreements on a lot of these issues. Let me go back to some of the disagreements and I don't want to paint too much and color this in because as a Democrat, it's in my interest to do so. But you got a lot of attention for going recently to America Fest Turning Point usa. You made a terrible decision of being the first speaker. That's just me saying editorially, what the hell.
- [54:59]
Ben Shapiro
That is not. That is not my decision. Right. They invited me. They gave me a slot.
- [55:02]
Gavin Newsom
That's, that's, yeah, just your luck because then every speaker can come on and that's okay.
- [55:06]
Ben Shapiro
You know, I got to say what I wanted to say and then paint the picture.
- [55:09]
Gavin Newsom
What did you say? So people tuning in don't know what the hell we're talking about. You went in and a pretty somber time. You know, Charlie's widow was there. He had a lot of, you know, the sort of branded celebrities in the right. And Candace Owens was there and not there to be fair, but, but became part of the conversation.
- [55:28]
Ben Shapiro
Is part of the conversation.
- [55:29]
Gavin Newsom
And Bannon and Megyn Kelly, others, so many others, certainly Tucker Carlson. So give us a sense. What did you say and why did you say it and why did you choose that moment to say it?
- [55:40]
Ben Shapiro
So the, the reason that I chose the moment to say it is that Candace Owens, who has some issues of her own, she has been saying since Charlie's death that there was effectively a conspiracy to kill him. She's implicated pretty much everybody, ranging from, believe it or not, French intelligence to the Israelis to various friends and family members, possibly of Charlie in his murder. And there have been an enormous number of people in the influencer space on the right who have gone along with this, who have massaged it, pretended not to notice it, tried to defend her, tried to pretend that it was an aspect of, that questioning her was an aspect of free speech, which of course was a violation of free speech rather, which of course it isn't. You know, criticism is not a violation of free speech. It's a form of free speech. Thank you. And so I, and so I got up on stage and I basically gave a speech saying our responsibility as people with influence in the public space there, we have some responsibilities. And those responsibilities include truth above all. We ought to give you, we ought to be clear about what we believe. We should not hide the ball. We should not allow, quote, unquote, friendship to trump what is true. Just because you're friends with someone does not alleviate the responsibility for you to say when they're doing something that is wrong or immoral. We should not engage in audience capture. Just because our audience wants us to say a thing doesn't mean that we ought to say it. And we ought to ensure that we are held responsible for the things that we say and also the people that we have on and how we question those people. So of course anybody has the right to have anybody on their show who they want and then they should treat those people how they want to treat those people. I mean, if I were to have on somebody who is, you know, in a deeply adversarial position, I think what's great about this conversation is you can see how adversarial we are with regard to some of our positions, but at the same time still have the discussion. You know, if you are, if you are going to have on, for example, as Tucker Carlson did, Nick Fuentes, who is a self stated Nazi apologist, and then you're going to treat him with kid gloves, then you ought to be held responsible for that in the court of public opinion. And if we as influencers do not do that job, if we lie to you, if we fib to you, if we make predictions which we are then not held responsible for, if we hide behind, quote, unquote, just asking questions. This is one of my bugaboos. I hate it. You hear this a lot in the influencer space, mostly on the right, but some on the left as well. This sort of. I'm not putting out a theory, I'm just asking questions. Well, there's a difference between seeking answers and just asking questions. Seeking answers, that's what questions are for. It's to get better information, more clarification. You know, I should have a better idea after the question of the answer than I did before. Just asking questions is usually a guise for willful ignorance and for positing a theory without having to carry the responsibility for positing that theory. So if I say, you know, I'm just asking questions about whether you have peculiar sexual proclivities. I don't have any evidence. I'm just asking the question. And then you say, well, that. What are you. Where is that even coming from? Listen, I'm just asking questions. I'm not asking questions. I'm obviously attempting to impute something to you. And so this is what this speech was about. I named names in it. I mentioned Tucker Carlson. I mentioned Megyn Kelly, who had sort of gone out of her way to massage Candace Owens in her pursuit of bizarre conspiracy theories about Erica and Charlie's murder. I mentioned Steve because I think Steve has been doing many of the same things. And so that was the speech at AMFOs.
- [58:58]
Gavin Newsom
And that you felt it would necessary to name names as opposed to imply you just felt it was important to be clear.
- [59:03]
Ben Shapiro
Yes, because I think that people should know exactly who they're listening to, particularly since they're going to hear from some of those people at the same event. And so I thought that people should be forewarned about the people they're going to hear about. Then they can make their own decisions and determine whether my assessment of those personalities is accurate or inaccurate.
- [59:20]
Gavin Newsom
And the reaction was exactly as you anticipated?
- [59:24]
Ben Shapiro
I think that the reaction in the room was, I think, overwhelming because a lot of people were very upset that people had been saying this about Charlie's murder, which, again, was carried out by all available evidence by a person motivated by hatred of Charlie's position on transgender issues in particular. And all the evidence points to Tyler Robinson as being the person who shot Charlie Kirk. And so I think that a lot of people in the audience were deeply offended and upset, correctly so. At the kind of specious conspiracy theories that have been promoted by this group of. By this group of folks. The sort of blowback that came afterward was really interesting. You know, there were a lot of people who obviously were very upset, and many of the people who had named. I'm not surprised, Came back and fired back. I will say that I don't think any of them actually argued with the point that I was making. They seemed to make collateral attacks imputing intent to me suggesting that my speech had something to do with Israel, which is funny. Since I didn't mention Israel one time in the entire speech. And I found that sort of. Of bizarre. And then obviously, you've seen sort of the influencer wars going on. But the whole point that I was making is here's a principle. Either you uphold the principle or you don't uphold the principle. If you don't uphold the principle, I'm gonna call you out for not upholding the principle. And it really is quite simple. It's not about friendship. It's not about whether we go fish riding together. None of that has anything to do with the principle that's at stake. Because if we want to have an honest discussion with one another, then we actually should be honest about the principles that we hold. And if we disagree, we disagree. But clarity before agreement, as my friend Dennis Prager said.
- [60:54]
Gavin Newsom
What were you close with Charlie?
- [60:56]
Ben Shapiro
I don't want to pretend that we were best friends or anything. One of the things I said in the speech is I think that it's pretty rare actually, in politics for people who say that they're friends in politics. These are usually not people you're going and hanging out with on the weekends. It's not real. Okay. Like, whenever you hear politicians, oh, we're best friends. It's such bullshit. I'm sorry. There may be a couple of exceptions. They're rare.
- [61:16]
Gavin Newsom
Okay.
- [61:16]
Ben Shapiro
The reality is that they are business colleagues and associates in the same way that most people have business colleagues and associates that they see at the office. We see each other more rarely than you probably see your business colleagues or associates at the office.
- [61:27]
Gavin Newsom
You respected how he organized in the campus level. I mean.
- [61:30]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah.
- [61:30]
Gavin Newsom
I mean, again, all the echoes of things you were doing.
- [61:32]
Ben Shapiro
Listen, Charlie was incredibly gifted as an organizer. Yeah. I won't say that we agreed on everything politically, because clearly we didn't, but I think that, you know, Charlie as a. As a person who was willing to go into fraud spaces, obviously, and he was still doing this, and to. And to speak his principles to people who disagreed and do so in what I think overwhelmingly was sort of an honest and decent fashion. I think that was a very good thing.
- [61:57]
Gavin Newsom
What Tucker Carlson and you. History.
- [62:00]
Ben Shapiro
Do you. I mean, I'm not sure that we have a history so much as Tucker seems to object to my politics and I object to his. I think Tucker tries to personalize this. I think Megan has tried to personalize this. I don't believe in personalizing these things. I was asked by somebody, you know, would Tucker and I ever be. I said I'd go fishing with Tucker. I mean, I don't care. I mean that doesn't matter to me. The question is his principles and the things that he says. I think that Tucker. I gave a speech right before TPUSA at Heritage foundation where I pointed out that Tucker is not an advocate for conservatism in any way that I can identify conservatism. He's not in favor of a more limited government of checks and balances. He's come out in favor of feudalism fairly recently. He's not in favor of, of traditional institutions. He seems to think that they have lost their way. He is, he's in favor of what appears to me a sort of horseshoe theory, Noam Chomsky foreign policy where America is always the bad actor in the world. And so I think I read my.
- [62:56]
Gavin Newsom
Chomsky back in the day.
- [63:00]
Ben Shapiro
And I think that, you know, when the biggest thing that Tucker engages in, I mentioned the just asking questions which he's very fond of, is, and this is something again that is a both sides problem and that is a general conspiracies about the world. The worst thing happening in our politics is a grievance based politics that is being set up by actors on both sides which basically says the failures in your life are generally speaking not your fault. You have no responsibility for them. And you need to, and you need to shift the burden of your own responsibility over to systems. And so the systems could be free market. The free market is responsible for your failures or the, or the systems of history are responsible for your failures. And listen, there are real conspiracies out there. They exist and usually can provide evidence for them. That's the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. But if your going theory is that the reason that you are lacking in life is because the most successful people in your society have rigged the system on their own behalf and therefore they must be brought low in order for you to succeed. First you need to show me that that's actually evidentiarily the case. You can't just make that claim and then abdicate all responsibility for doing the right things in your own life. And the number one message that I would, that I constantly am trying to, you know, give to what I would now call young people since, you know, I'm of the older generation now and I is get off your ass and do the thing. I hear people complain I can't, I can't get married. It's just so hard to get married and no one can get married these days. Bullshit. I'm sorry, that's not true. You absolutely can find someone and you absolutely can get married. Your grandparents were way poorer than you and they got married and they more kids. Hey, this is just nonsense. You are, you are the richest, most privileged people in the history of the world. Living in the United States today, just relatively speaking, doesn't mean everything's perfect. Because I'm not comparing it to perfect. You can't compare anything in life to perfect. What you can say is that if you, if you are sitting around in a country that has a GDP per capita among the highest on planet Earth and open jobs and the ability to move to those open jobs and the ability to vote on your leaders and not get shot in the streets like people are getting shot in the streets in Iran, you should consider yourself pretty damned fortunate. And maybe you should start with what can I do to make my life better today before you figure that it's the system. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't problems with the system. And this is why I like these conversations. And we can get very specific about policy and how we fix a policy so as to make it easier. But I think that the, the big, the American dream is you can make it, you can, right? Get government out of your way, get everybody out of your way, right? Let, let people succeed. And we do need obviously a functional social fabric, right? Which is why you've seen a lot of the institutions, like I would say, churches, synagogues, break down. That social fabric breaking down is a massive problem because that's your safety net when family breaks down. That's your supportive safety net for when things go wrong. We need to, on a social level, help restore all of that. But the desire by politicians to say I alone can fix, which is something President Trump said, but has also been said by. You got Zorn Mandani talking about the warm embrace of collectivism, which is insane by the way.
- [65:59]
Gavin Newsom
Nature of campaigns, campaign promises. You may on day one, on day one. And also end the Ukraine, Russian war day one.
- [66:06]
Ben Shapiro
Or give me more power and I will solve the affordability crisis. Or give me more power and I will ensure that you have a good paying job and you can buy a house on a single income the way that your grandfather could in 1952. And I mean, first of all, let's just be real. The if the house your grandpa was buying in 1952, you wouldn't want to live in. They're kind of crappy, okay? It was like a brick, it was like a brick box in Detroit and your grandpa was working on a Ford line riveting okay, now you're not. How many people are riveting today? The answer is none. The machines are doing the riveting. Right. Like we should recognize the reality of our situation as opposed to creating either a false promise of utopia or a false utopian past that wasn't really existing in 1952. The reason the United States. The reason we in the United States were able to survive on one. On a one parent income, 52 paychecks versus 104. It's because. It's because the entire rest of the world did not. It had been destroyed. Every place on earth had been destroyed as of 1952. The United States was basically left untouched in the homeland by World War II. And literally every place else had been destroyed. And so that was all an export market for the United States. So much so we had to prop up our export markets by doing things like the Marshall Plan so people would actually have money to buy things. Right. And then it turns out that, you know, by the 1960s, reality was setting in and many of the union contracts that had been negotiated weren't sustainable and we were being outcompeted by foreign sources. You know, like, let's just. Again, ignorance of sort of economic history and how people have actually lived throughout history leads to, I think on the right, a nostalgia for an economic time that didn't exist. And on the left, to a sort of utopianism about what is possible that is also not possible. And I think that we should start from a position in the United States of gratitude and duty and hard work and virtue and recognition that we live in a free country where the vast majority of decisions are your own. And then if you. And then let's. And then let's deal with the problems.
- [67:55]
Gavin Newsom
And you laid all this out in lions and scavengers in detail with historic context and traveled the globe. I mean, each chapter begins in different places to place from, you know, London, Oxford and Poland. Which is interesting, that section with Elon Musk and others. But let me ask just a little bit. It's interesting, the politics of nostalgia. And I try to paint this. Forgive me, keep going back to the state of the state I just gave. But we talked about the politics of nostalgia. Trying to put America in reverse, but sort of selling this notion of this utopian notion. And it's interesting you cast some critique not just on the right, but also on the left in that respect. And I imagine you weren't a big fan of Elizabeth Warren's speech yesterday.
- [68:35]
Ben Shapiro
No.
- [68:36]
Gavin Newsom
On the basis of what you just.
- [68:37]
Ben Shapiro
Said, Elizabeth Warren was much more interesting when she was a professor at Harvard Law. I was there at the time. And, and she's writing the Two Income Trap, which was a much more interesting book. Interesting than where she's at.
- [68:47]
Gavin Newsom
Let me just talk about. And I appreciate the trap of promises being promoted in politics, the nature of politics, both political parties. And Trump sort of trapped now in this affordability question. He's in as we, as we tape this, he's in Michigan. He's, as part of this affordability tour, you've been, and again, just to your credit, calling balls and strikes, you know, and that goes back even your Breitbart days, as you had some issues with the early aspects of Trump in terms of this sort of just the character, personality issues. But you've been a big supporter of him more broadly.
- [69:18]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, I did not vote for either candidate in 2016. I voted for President Trump in 2020. And I actually campaigned on behalf of a bunch of Senate candidates and did some events for President Trump.
- [69:27]
Gavin Newsom
And you've been very forceful in your support of what he did in Venezuela. And I think more broadly, just in terms of looking at the picture across the country, across the globe, but back here in the United States, as it relates to tariff policy, I've been very.
- [69:43]
Ben Shapiro
Critical of his terror policy.
- [69:43]
Gavin Newsom
You've been critical of tariff policy on other domestic issues. How do you score the first full year of Donald Trump?
- [69:52]
Ben Shapiro
So I think that when it came, I think the number one domestic issue for President Trump was closing the southern border a plus. Right. I mean, that I think put the lie to the Democratic proposal that you needed comprehensive immigration.
- [70:02]
Gavin Newsom
But you also acknowledge, close this other. For about six months, it was substantially 8, 7, 80, 90% closed. When Biden decided that he ultimately, to your point, could do something about it, which they suggested they couldn't.
- [70:14]
Ben Shapiro
Right. The fact that they basically lied about that for several years, saying there's nothing we can do, we need congressional action in order to shut the southern border.
- [70:21]
Gavin Newsom
We, we have more areas of agreement on this. Remember, I put almost 400 National Guard down at the border going back to 2019. So I've been pretty consistent on that basis. And of course, California had to absorb a lot of that on our own with migrant facilities in three major counties, five migrants that work at Jewish family services, Catholic charities that did God's work, but at the same time, try to put a lid on what was, you know, an unacceptable situation.
- [70:48]
Ben Shapiro
So that's, that's, that's a big win for President Trump for sure.
- [70:50]
Gavin Newsom
Okay.
- [70:51]
Ben Shapiro
So much so that it's not even a top issue for voters anymore.
- [70:53]
Gavin Newsom
Well, he seems to forget about it.
- [70:54]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I mean, I don't think he's forgotten about it. I think that he may made again, I think a lot of promises with regard to mass deportations that in practicality are probably not fulfillable. And what you see is, you know, Tom Homan, his borders are. Who's being a little bit more meticulous about his life.
- [71:07]
Gavin Newsom
Where the temperance come from? Homan, Geez, yeah, I know we're gonna.
- [71:11]
Ben Shapiro
Go out, we're gonna go after criminal, illegal immigrants. Those are the people who are mostly going to deploy resources, they said. And, and I think that overwhelmingly by the numbers that that has been the case, as far as I'm aware. But when, when it comes to questionable.
- [71:24]
Gavin Newsom
But I, I appreciate there's a lot.
- [71:28]
Ben Shapiro
As a general rule, I think that's a win for President Trump. Obviously, I agree with the extension of the current tax rates and not allowing them to rise.
- [71:36]
Gavin Newsom
You don't agree? I mean, I hate to bring up, Steve Bannon, this notion of a more progressive tax rate for corporations and the wealthiest among us.
- [71:43]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, no, I think it's a bunch of. I think it's a bunch of nonsense. And the reason I think that. Yes, and the reason I think that it's a bunch of nonsense is because if. Because corporations are just legal entities. Those legal entities are comprised by people. If you tax a corporation that is still money, that in the end is coming away from the people who comprise the corporation.
- [71:57]
Gavin Newsom
Sounding like Romney when you were covering them with bright part.
- [71:59]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I mean, this is just like basic black letter Econ 101. A corporation doesn't have like a magical existence whereby it hires people. It's not how. There's. There are people who make those decisions. People get paid by the corporation. Most people in the country are getting a paycheck.
- [72:12]
Gavin Newsom
We have established you like the big beautiful bill as relates to the tax structure. You don't give a damn about debt, but that's another conversation.
- [72:18]
Ben Shapiro
Oh, no, I definitely give a damn about debt, but I do not think.
- [72:21]
Gavin Newsom
He doesn't appear to, does he?
- [72:22]
Ben Shapiro
I don't think anyone seems to care very much about that, Governor.
- [72:24]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:25]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, to be fair.
- [72:26]
Gavin Newsom
Well, we balance our budgets. Just for the record. Just for the record. I mean, kind of 100% legally statutorily required. I mean, talked about my reserves. We talk about paying down.
- [72:35]
Ben Shapiro
So statutory required that we are running, you know, the last several years the budget has run what, a $20 billion?
- [72:42]
Gavin Newsom
No we just, I just submitted a balanced budget on a, I mean a de minimis 2 billion dollar 2 point something odd billion dollar which is a rounding error in the state balanced budgets.
- [72:54]
Ben Shapiro
Period and half a billion dollars of unfunded liabilities. Increased tax rates.
- [72:59]
Gavin Newsom
Well, we haven't increased taxes since 2011. I haven't increased any taxes. So that's just factually untrue.
- [73:04]
Ben Shapiro
I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that you increase taxes.
- [73:06]
Gavin Newsom
Well, you, but your friends continue to believe Newsom's tax rates. Anyway, let's go back to Trump because I appreciate where you go down the rabbit hole California but I want to talk about, it's interesting so we established from your perspective of he, he fulfilled his promises on the border. Mass deportation is a work in progress and good people can disagree as it relates to whether or not he'll achieve that. I, I think it's absolutely when it.
- [73:26]
Ben Shapiro
Comes to, when it comes to, when it comes to dismantling structures inside the federal government on dei, I think that's a very good thing. I think a meritocracy is what ought to be preferred.
- [73:34]
Gavin Newsom
What about the economy? What about the quality of our lives in the context of what we deal with day in and day out? Just your typical family. What has Trump done that has significantly benefited us in last year?
- [73:47]
Ben Shapiro
So this is where I'll go back.
- [73:48]
Gavin Newsom
To my fundamentals because I'm not getting a big tax.
- [73:50]
Ben Shapiro
Well, this is, this is where I'll go back to my sort of fundamental point which is that I think that the government guaranteeing that your life is going to be enormously better based on what are at best marginal changes to the structure of the federal government. I think that's an over promise. So I think that how are lives better? Well, I mean inflation is obviously down. It was started to drop under the late Biden and then it started to.
- [74:09]
Gavin Newsom
I just saw the numbers today. I mean you saw food was up 8%. You saw grocery groceries up 8% and food was up 7%.
- [74:17]
Ben Shapiro
I mean the overall CPI is, is running at about 2.6 2.7%. That's way down from where it was two years ago.
- [74:23]
Gavin Newsom
Still not close to that too.
- [74:25]
Ben Shapiro
I agree by the way, stuck where.
- [74:26]
Gavin Newsom
It was a year ago.
- [74:27]
Ben Shapiro
This is why I'm not in favor of for example lowering the interest rates. I think that the Federal Reserves worst.
- [74:30]
Gavin Newsom
Job market in 16 years. Manufacturing factory jobs down.
- [74:34]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. Terror tariffs have not helped in manufacturing.
- [74:36]
Gavin Newsom
I, I, I, average person's paying more for Halloween. We paid a little More than they were last.
- [74:41]
Ben Shapiro
Than they were last year on a margin, sort of. Sort of on a, on a low rate. I mean, the, I think that again, he.
- [74:46]
Gavin Newsom
Get rid of those tariffs, that would be significant.
- [74:49]
Ben Shapiro
I've been a big advocate of getting rid of the tariffs since literally day one. The, the biggest, you know, issue that I see with the Trump administration on the economy is that the promise that Trump thought he was making is not the promise. I think that actually came out rhetorically. So rhetorically he was saying, everything's going to become affordable again. And what people mean by affordable is, I want 2019 prices. Yeah, okay. No one is getting 2019 prices. There's too much.
- [75:11]
Gavin Newsom
We get into it until we get into a recess. Exactly.
- [75:14]
Ben Shapiro
If we get into a recession.
- [75:15]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [75:15]
Ben Shapiro
Stagflation. No, you need a stagnation. Right. You need like an actual depression or a recession.
- [75:20]
Gavin Newsom
I, I stand corrected.
- [75:21]
Ben Shapiro
And so the, the, the sort that, that promise is, is not a coherent one. It's why I actually had some sympathy for when he said, you know, affordability is, is, you know, nonsense. I think what he meant by that actually is that affordability. When have you ever thought, hey, everything's affordable, right? Pretty rare in anyone's life to say things are just affordable because the dollar store, right? It's a comparative term now.
- [75:43]
Gavin Newsom
It's a $29 at the dollar store.
- [75:45]
Ben Shapiro
And so specifically saying, specifically speaking, I think it's good that inflation is down. I think it's good that the stock market is up. 50% of Americans hold stocks. And when the stock market is robust, that means there can be more investments in, for example, infrastructure projects and data centers and all the rest. I'm a believer that there is, in fact, a bubble that's going on in the stock market because there's an enormous amount of momentum at the top end. And most of the gains in the stock market are happening in AI 7 stocks. It doesn't mean that AI won't be an amazing thing. I think it is an amazing thing, but I do think that there will be a winnowing at the top end of the market. When that happens, then there will probably be a depression of some sort. Not a great depression, but I mean, like depressed prices in the markets. I think that a lot of these stocks are trading at unsustainable PE ratios. So, you know, I'm concerned about all those things. The main critique I have for President Trump on the economic front is that investors, what they are really looking for is, number one, less regulation, ease of investment, but number two, consistency. And the lack of consistency at the federal level is incredibly difficult for investors to navigate. And actually, I think that if the Supreme Court steps in and says no to the tariffs, you'll actually see be a rather large economic boost because of it. Because the Supreme Court will have placed a limitation then on the executive branch.
- [76:57]
Gavin Newsom
Three quarters that he can oppose with other means, though that's going to be.
- [77:00]
Ben Shapiro
When the idea then the Supreme Court will, you know, will likely step in.
- [77:03]
Gavin Newsom
At that point, six months, year later.
- [77:05]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah. Again, I'm very critical of the tariff.
- [77:08]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I appreciate the consistency.
- [77:10]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah.
- [77:11]
Gavin Newsom
But on Trump, generally, I'm curious just.
- [77:15]
Ben Shapiro
On foreign policy, which you put it to the side. I, I think Trump has been the greatest foreign policy president in my lifetime. I don't think it's close. I think he's been spectacular on foreign policy. And that's with many of my critiques with regard to, for example, Ukraine, where I'm significantly more hawkish than the administration has been.
- [77:29]
Gavin Newsom
And did you feel that way in his first term?
- [77:31]
Ben Shapiro
Yes, I was very. Yes, I was very much an advocate of his foreign policy. I thought that in terms of his foreign policy, he is, as he said before, he's not got us into any major wars, which is a good thing.
- [77:42]
Gavin Newsom
He views the military six, seven significant.
- [77:45]
Ben Shapiro
Times he has used the military in, I think, targeted and pinpointed ways that do not reinforce the Iraq war syndrome that we need to put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. I think the President has a very good feel for. The thing about foreign policy is it kind of works like the New York real estate market. It actually is a sort of zero sum win or lose game. And President Trump actually is quite good at those. I think that on domestic economics, the president tends to bring a zero sum approach sometimes to his economic issues that I don't agree with because I think that you can expand the pie for everybody. But I don't think the same thing holds true generally in foreign policy, where when it comes to geopolitics, there's a winner and there's a loser and it's all about relative power and power dynamics. And the President seems to get that on a very gut level, which is why in the Middle East, I think he did the right thing with Gaza. I think he's done the right thing with the Iran strike on Fordonuclear facility. I think he did the right thing in extraditing Nicolas Maduro. I think those are all good things. I think that, that he has found ways to continue the funding of Ukraine via this Sort of Jerry rigged NATO. NATO buying weapons and funding. I think that he has gotten a bunch of countries in Europe to increase their defense spending, which is something that even Mark Rudy over at NATO has said is generally a good thing. I think all of these things, I.
- [78:55]
Gavin Newsom
Don'T argue with that. I mean, we can, boy and I, people are looking for us to unpack that. We, I mean we can spend hours and hours on every single one of these specific examples. Let me ask. And just before we get off the foreign policy, I am curious. Greenland, come on.
- [79:12]
Ben Shapiro
I don't understand why we are attempting to make Greenland our 51st state. It seems to me we already have.
- [79:17]
Gavin Newsom
Defense agreements in Greece well established since 1951. We were the ones that pulled back. We can re enter at any end of the week.
- [79:24]
Ben Shapiro
Listen, I think that, Greenland. I think that despite the desire to rename it Trumpland, I think I haven't even heard that.
- [79:31]
Gavin Newsom
No, but trying to deal with the Donnie Doctrine or whatever it is, this.
- [79:35]
Ben Shapiro
You know, I think that's, I think that's silly. I think that the, the, you know, attempt to strengthen our bases in Greenland would be a good thing. But I think that's he can do.
- [79:46]
Gavin Newsom
Tomorrow, which they've already agreed to.
- [79:48]
Ben Shapiro
Agree, agree.
- [79:48]
Gavin Newsom
The whole thing seems folly, but it not seems.
- [79:51]
Ben Shapiro
It is now invading Canada. That's it. Okay.
- [79:53]
Gavin Newsom
I want to. Just because you, you write about it in Lions and Scavengers. You talk about this notion of free enterprise, you talk about markets. What do you make of, of Trump's interventionist attitudes, not just overseas, but as it relates to, to corporations and companies, so many disproportionately based out here, including, you know, MP materials, which is, I.
- [80:13]
Ben Shapiro
Don'T think the federal government should be taking stakes in private companies. I don't believe in what has been called crony capitalism or state capitalism, really. It's just corporatism. I'm not a fan of the idea that the government ought to, you know, be involved in command and control economics with regard to, with regard to private companies. So I've opposed that pretty much every step, step of the way. I think it's a mistake. I think that the market has a magical ability to make things better and cheaper over time if left to its own devices.
- [80:38]
Gavin Newsom
And that includes, by the way, not interfering in the independence of the Fed.
- [80:41]
Ben Shapiro
Yes. Listen, I'm an Austrian school of economics guy. I think that there's a good case to be made that the Fed really should not have control over inflation rates in the first place. I think the target inflation rate should be zero, not two. And I think that we should allow interest rates generally to free float because I think that, that sometimes one of the great problems with the American economy is artificial bubbles that are created by loose monetary policy. I think that's what helped lead to the Great Recession. I think it's what also led to the inflationary spiral under Joe Biden.
- [81:09]
Gavin Newsom
What do you make of Donald Trump? And forgive me, this is zigging and zagging around a little bit, but I still can't get over the fact that he sat down and had dinner with Nick Fuentes.
- [81:21]
Ben Shapiro
So I think that that was, was a bad thing to do. Obviously. I think that Nick Fuentes is a scumbag. I think that the President has an unfortunate tendency to make nice with people who want to make nice with him. He did come out this week, by the way, and in the New York Times said the Republican Party wants nothing to do with people like Nick Fuentes has wanted to do with anti Semites. I'll continue to be critical of Republicans who flirt with this sort of stuff. I wish that the Democratic Party were as critical of sitting Congress members who not only flirt with this sort of stuff, but overtly traffic. Traffic in this sort of stuff. You know, I mean I'll ask about Zoram Dani Zoramdani literally in the, in the campaign. In the campaign. He was asked on Fox News about Hamas and he refused to announce it as a terrorist group.
- [82:03]
Gavin Newsom
They are terrorist group and they should have been announced. I was there, as you know, a few weeks after October 7th, met with Bibi. Not a big fan of Bibi. This is where we have fundamental disagreements. Quite the contrary in fact.
- [82:13]
Ben Shapiro
But it staying on domestic politics for a second. Yeah, it seems to be have become a sort of debriegore requirement for Democrats who are running for office to now suggest, for example, Scott Wiener just did this, he's running for Congress that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza. That is forget about anti Semitism and discussions of it because I think that those have become really loose and people don't have a consistent definition of anti Semitism. Let's just talk about what's true.
- [82:35]
Gavin Newsom
That's true. I think it's true about the definition. I mean we as you know, been struggling with that in California as it relates to a lot of laws.
- [82:42]
Ben Shapiro
Of course anti Semitism is a fundamentally different, different cat than for example racism. It's basically a conspiracy theory about Jewish power in the world. But.
- [82:49]
Gavin Newsom
And it makes me sick to my stomach and I say that clearly and, but not Just, of course, I mean, we've, we've tried to lead in terms of our response and we've called out and called balls and strikes. In terms of the outrageous.
- [83:00]
Ben Shapiro
I would, you know, in my own framework of anti, Semitism, I think that saying overtly false things about the Jewish state is a form of anti Semitism. But I don't think that, that, that is really important as much as it is. Is it true or not? So Democrats have now been dragged into this conversation. Some drag, some, Some run with, you know, flags waving into the conversation of genocide. Yes.
- [83:24]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [83:25]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, look, Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza. There is no standard by which Israel committed a genocide in Gaza. Just on a factual level.
- [83:31]
Gavin Newsom
Just a legal and factual level.
- [83:33]
Ben Shapiro
Yes.
- [83:34]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [83:34]
Ben Shapiro
What is your opinion of this?
- [83:36]
Gavin Newsom
My opinion is I understand the tendency for people to make that. To assert that.
- [83:45]
Ben Shapiro
Why?
- [83:46]
Gavin Newsom
On the basis of the images and the proportionality. No, no. And by the way, I agree with you and international.
- [83:56]
Ben Shapiro
And I'm not. Doesn't mean that if you kill my child and I then kill seven criminals that I've been describing disproportionate.
- [84:02]
Gavin Newsom
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think the. But I understand that tendency on the basis of trying to reconcile the proportionate nature of how the war was ultimately conducted.
- [84:16]
Ben Shapiro
I have a question. Why do you, why do you feel the need to create a permission structure for that sort of stuff? I mean, meaning it's not true. Why not just say it's not true?
- [84:27]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, look, I don't know the definition and I don't know the legal threshold. That's not my opinion. So I don't, I don't share that opinion as it relates to genocide. IGN not agree. I do not agree with that notion.
- [84:36]
Ben Shapiro
That you do understand that if you accuse Israel of committing a genocide, that now puts Israel in the position of it should be a pariah state. Because states that commit genocide should be pariah states. So granting legitimacy to that position inherently.
- [84:47]
Gavin Newsom
I'm not granting legitimacy. I'm just saying the, the, the devastation in Gaza, that the. At the human level, you've got four kids.
- [84:55]
Ben Shapiro
Of course it's terrible.
- [84:55]
Gavin Newsom
No, but, but I think it's also important to absorb that a little bit more. Just as it was. Was sick and we were clear in our condemnation, these people like me, as it relates to what Hamas did in that act of barbarism and terrorism.
- [85:07]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, but there's always terrorism and wartime collateral damage.
- [85:11]
Gavin Newsom
Of course.
- [85:11]
Ben Shapiro
And if we refuse to acknowledge that reality, then we end up collateral damage.
- [85:15]
Gavin Newsom
I just, I have stronger opinions. It wasn't just collateral, you know. Really?
- [85:19]
Ben Shapiro
You think that Israel is targeting civilians?
- [85:20]
Gavin Newsom
I, I think some of the double tapping issues. I have a lot of issues with how BB ultimately to conduct the war. I personally do. And I have a lot of issues that are also painted on the basis of the conversation I had a few weeks later after October 7th. The way he talked about the Palestinians. I kept talking about Hamas, he kept talking about the Palestinians, I kept coming back to Hamas. And then ultimately how the war was conducted. Not saying it was a genocide, I'm not, but I have issues.
- [85:47]
Ben Shapiro
What is the thing that he said that you particularly.
- [85:49]
Gavin Newsom
There was a dehumanization. I didn't like the way he talked about the Palestinian people. I just think what, what is the specific. They can't govern. I didn't, I don't want to get into the details.
- [85:57]
Ben Shapiro
The reason I'm asking because, because when. When you suggest that he is conflating Hamas and the Palestinians, he wasn't conforming. Does lead to the conclusion they were different.
- [86:05]
Gavin Newsom
It wasn't. No, no, it was. I'm just saying the way he ultimately conducted it. I look back at that conversation. I reflect on rather that conversation. It doesn't surprise me. And, and I did not think it was proportionate.
- [86:18]
Ben Shapiro
Okay.
- [86:18]
Gavin Newsom
And I thought it was overwhelming. And the devastation and destruction breaks my heart.
- [86:24]
Ben Shapiro
Okay. So you're President of the United States. Somebody invades from Mexico, they take several thousand American citizens.
- [86:30]
Gavin Newsom
I get it by the way, they.
- [86:32]
Ben Shapiro
Hold them all the way until the end of the war. Until the end of the war. They're hostages being held.
- [86:36]
Gavin Newsom
Don't get me wrong on any of this. I'm with you in terms of the ultimate accountability and bringing the hostages home. I like the clarity and conviction as it relates to getting all the hostages is dead and alive home and all of that. I'm not denying that by the way.
- [86:48]
Ben Shapiro
Hamas still has not been extirpated in.
- [86:50]
Gavin Newsom
The areas where Israel and there's. And, and clearly this truce and detente is. Is still a work in progress. There's been a lot of destruction. Look, there's no. I'm crystal clear about him.
- [87:04]
Ben Shapiro
The point is that.
- [87:05]
Gavin Newsom
Crystal clear about him.
- [87:06]
Ben Shapiro
But the point is that I think crystal clear.
- [87:10]
Gavin Newsom
My love for Israel and my condemnation of Bibi and there's a distinction. I condemn them. Donald Trump, I love my country and.
- [87:15]
Ben Shapiro
I think, listen, anyone is free to disagree with Prime Minister Netanyahu anytime that they want. I will point out that.
- [87:20]
Gavin Newsom
But they're not anti semitic. When they say, of course. But that's also important to say because some people conflate that you don't, you don't know, but others do.
- [87:29]
Ben Shapiro
I've critiqued Bibi myself mainly for not being right wing enough, in my opinion, on many issues domestically. God bless me, actually. But when it comes to, but when it, when it comes to the, the, I mean, we can get into perceptions of Netanyahu's leadership and all this. This, I will say this. I know every major politician in Israel, just, I know many major politicians in Ukraine, in Hungary and in a wide variety of places in Israel. I happen to know the last several prime ministers. If anyone outside of the state of Israel believes that Naftali Bennett or Yair Lapid, who's on the left, would not.
- [87:58]
Gavin Newsom
Have been conducted in their response.
- [88:00]
Ben Shapiro
That is nuts. Yeah, that's not, it's not true.
- [88:03]
Gavin Newsom
No. Fair point.
- [88:03]
Ben Shapiro
And look, hey, and the, and the idf, by the way, operates largely independently in some ways of the Prime Minister's office. It's kind of a strange dual system that they have over there. I know too many soldiers who, I mean, I talk about one in the book who had three limbs blown off going door to door in Gaza, not, not using Trump, not using overwhelming air power to eviscerate millions of people.
- [88:23]
Gavin Newsom
I was in the hospital meeting victims on October 7th in Israel. So I look, look, you know, and been to memorials and I want to.
- [88:32]
Ben Shapiro
Be clear in the terminology we use about all this stuff, because right now, for example, example.
- [88:35]
Gavin Newsom
But, but the genocide where the protest.
- [88:37]
Ben Shapiro
Where are the members of the Democratic Party protesting and wearing pins for the protesters in Iran who are getting mowed down, maybe by the tens of thousands this week?
- [88:45]
Gavin Newsom
Well, I know where I am. I put out a pretty clear statement.
- [88:47]
Ben Shapiro
This week, and I'd like to see more Democrats.
- [88:49]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I don't disagree with you, by the way. I also thought it was, I thought it was the right thing to do, that strike, and I thought it was unbelievably effective, inefficient, and had no problem saying that during the strike. Not. Didn't wait for the outcome. So, yeah, I marched to a beat of a little bit of a different drum, a little bit more nuance here. But there is, look, there's no, everything's so black and white. It just, there's nuance here. I mean, for sure.
- [89:13]
Ben Shapiro
But I think that the point that I'm making back to sort of where we originally departed here was that, you know, I'm trying to call out what I see as bad Behavior, untrue, immoral behavior. On my own side, I'd like to see that more from a Democratic Party that seemed to be perfectly willing to wrap an arm around Zoram Am Donny the minute he got a little bit of momentum. Yeah, the same man who had said that whenever the NYPD boot is on the throat of Americans, the IDF is lacing the boot. You know, that sort of nonsense is, is terrible.
- [89:38]
Gavin Newsom
No, I don't associate with those comments at all. I mean, look, for me, should Mandani.
- [89:43]
Ben Shapiro
Be the mayor of New York?
- [89:44]
Gavin Newsom
That's like, that's up for people in New York to make that decision. That's not for me to mount here in California, thousands of miles away.
- [89:51]
Ben Shapiro
Trump should be president. The American people decided he should.
- [89:52]
Gavin Newsom
Well, that directly impact impacts me. I mean, New York may indirectly, but I mean, it's a little bit of different question. We'll see how he ultimately does that. He ran an incredibly effective campaign. I think there's a lot of interesting attributes that he has. Incredibly bright, incredibly capable. He's delivered some early.
- [90:06]
Ben Shapiro
A lot of terrible people who say bright and capable.
- [90:08]
Gavin Newsom
No, I get it, but. And I absolutely disagree with him on a lot of those comments. And I was also, I also maintained that posture pretty consistently over a great period, a long period of time. And no, I was not a Cuomo fan. So just for the record, and sorry.
- [90:23]
Ben Shapiro
It turns out there weren't a lot of Cuomo fans.
- [90:24]
Gavin Newsom
Well, and I say this with respect. I mean, I, you know, the Cuomo family, as a good Democrat, you know his father and there's some members of the family I like a lot. But look, these are, these are tougher issues and they are tough issues. And I, look, I, look, I appreciate your willingness to call balls and strikes and a lot of folks, you know, frankly, a lot of folks in your world, as we sort of castigate the right wing media ecosystem, your willingness to call this stuff out.
- [90:49]
Ben Shapiro
And this is the, well, you know, I think in general, this is the way if we want to have a way forward in American politics, just to get a little general, it has to be predicated on certain basic premises about truth. And that's why I keep saying, forget about categorization. Is it true or is it not true? I think one of the major failings of the Democratic Party in the last election cycle is the unwillingness to say whether it was true or untrue, that a boy could become a girl, for example. I think a lot of people looked at that and they said, excuse me, how is this Forget about the political ramifications or the policy ramifications for just a second. Can you say a boy is not a girl?
- [91:26]
Gavin Newsom
And I don't. We can go down. And I feel like a year ago I was with Charlie having this conversation, which is remarkable. I'm curious. Did you. And I'm. This is not. I'm just honestly curious when I'm asking this. I'm not even. It's not. There's not a loaded question. Did you or others in the right. Condemnation the Trump policies as it relates to gender affirming care for including reassignment surgeries in the federal prison system under the Trump administration's first term?
- [91:54]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, if I'd been aware of them, I would condemn them. My company was the only company in America, I believe, that on a media level, refused to use preferred pronouns for anyone. We use only biological pronouns since 2015, since we launched the company.
- [92:04]
Gavin Newsom
No. And I say that because it's just not well known, but the Trump administration's policies allowed for gender assignment, general affirming care, but hormone treatment being an actual. I think that change operation. I mean, it was federal policy.
- [92:20]
Ben Shapiro
Listen, I think that's wrong, and I wish that, frankly, you would go further. You've talked about the unfairness in sports, but for me, the bigger question is not unfairness in sports. The bigger question is whether we should be allowing the administration of chemical or surgical mutilation of minors based on gender dysphoria.
- [92:35]
Gavin Newsom
Well, we're going to. I mean, the Trump administration has strong opinions. They've sued states like California, many other states, 20 plus states. And my position is that's between the physician, it's between the family members and, and, and these, These patients themselves.
- [92:50]
Ben Shapiro
Why are there, Are there, Are there any surgical or chemical interventions that you would oppose? Even if the patients. And doctor.
- [92:55]
Gavin Newsom
Here we go. I mean, I know exactly where this debate goes.
- [92:58]
Ben Shapiro
Right. But I'm asking. I mean, it's. It's a real. It's a real question because it does have public policy implications. Meaning in the state of California, there's a judicial ruling. We referenced it earlier, that said.
- [93:06]
Gavin Newsom
Well, that's a different. That judicial ruling was ridiculous. On this basis, any teacher. And what you're talking about is a law that I signed as it relates to this, this idea that school districts, that you can fire teachers, that you can fire someone for not telling on a child and saying that they're talking about being gay. Not just trans issues, any LGBTQ issues, that you can be fired. There's nothing in the law the law that I signed does not preclude these teachers from telling the parents, precludes school districts from, from, from mandating and firing someone for not.
- [93:43]
Ben Shapiro
But don't you think that.
- [93:44]
Gavin Newsom
But trust a teacher to make that judgment on the basis of seeing someone that's being bullied and the requirements they have under the law to keep people safe?
- [93:51]
Ben Shapiro
As a parent, don't you believe that a teacher should facilitate passage of information to you?
- [93:55]
Gavin Newsom
Why, why would that on, on every basis. I mean, I mean that they should.
- [93:59]
Ben Shapiro
Somehow the teacher is going to call you. I mean, if my kids decide about.
- [94:03]
Gavin Newsom
Safety, the law is pretty clear. And is it about. And the teachers have that ability and the teachers maintain that ability. We didn't deny that. We didn't say to the teachers, you cannot not quite the contrary. This is critical because there's been a lot of misinformation.
- [94:16]
Ben Shapiro
I'm not.
- [94:16]
Gavin Newsom
And I'm not.
- [94:18]
Ben Shapiro
I mean the school.
- [94:19]
Gavin Newsom
But I'm just saying you should fire someone. And in many cases, look, anyone that's members of the LGBTQ community. How many stories that you've heard of people that say, I went to my parents with my teacher, that was a safe place for me in school. There's a lot of grace in this space. There's a lot of testimony in this space that I think should just provide a little bit of grace and humility. It's not a black and white issue. Teachers can still quote, unquote, turn in a child. They just can't be fired.
- [94:44]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, but my question on that, and again, this is a subset of a broader issue, is why does the parent not have an absolute moral ability to receive that information and requires there not a requirement. There should be a requirement for teachers to turn over that information.
- [95:02]
Gavin Newsom
Health and safety. Health and safety doesn't matter.
- [95:06]
Ben Shapiro
If a teacher truly believes, believes that a parent is a threat to a child, they can report it to child services.
- [95:09]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah. So health and safety is still the standard. So that you maintain that standard. That standard is the law.
- [95:14]
Ben Shapiro
That's a lot of wiggle room for a teacher to apply.
- [95:16]
Gavin Newsom
Well, it's also. But it's a lot of law in terms of the weight of that law and that responsibility to take care of the make sure your kids are safe. But this idea that again, people are going to public schools and coming back having surgeries and coming back the next day is absurd.
- [95:30]
Ben Shapiro
No, but there are, there are certainly cases in which, in which kids are being quote, unquote, socially transitioned at school without parents knowing about it. I know some of the parents to whom this has happened. I mean, this is, this is the, the, the fundamental question that lies at the root of all of this is the question that you're not wanting to answer, which is whether boys can become girls.
- [95:46]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I just don't. Well, I think for the grace of God. Yeah.
- [95:50]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, I appreciate the sympathy. I also feel terrible for. Listen, anybody who's suffering with any sort of.
- [95:55]
Gavin Newsom
I mean, I think it's mental or physical, but generations for time immemorial. I, you know, God bless. I just, I don't know.
- [96:03]
Ben Shapiro
I just don't understand.
- [96:06]
Gavin Newsom
Why is it. It's such a. I'm curious. I, I understand the political potency of it.
- [96:11]
Ben Shapiro
It's not politically potent, but it's just how so few.
- [96:14]
Gavin Newsom
We're talking about so few people.
- [96:16]
Ben Shapiro
It's not about that.
- [96:17]
Gavin Newsom
That are. That are struggling with. With, With, With. With gender identity issues. A lot of remarkable people, a lot of wildly successful people. And they've gone in their life, have incredible lives. I just, I don't know. There's so much hate and bigotry, so much condemnation.
- [96:33]
Ben Shapiro
This is the part where I start to object. Yeah, okay.
- [96:35]
Gavin Newsom
The idea that you may not be spewing it.
- [96:36]
Ben Shapiro
No, no, no.
- [96:37]
Gavin Newsom
Like some others, trust me.
- [96:38]
Ben Shapiro
But the app.
- [96:39]
Gavin Newsom
This is the business. There.
- [96:40]
Ben Shapiro
There are lots of terrible people who say lots of terrible things. But yes, it is not an act of bigotry to say that a boy cannot become a girl. Nor should my children be taught in K through 12 public schools that a boy can become a girl. That is not an act of bigotry. That's an act of rationality and biological simplicity.
- [96:53]
Gavin Newsom
I respect your point of view. And you know, but good people disagree on this.
- [96:59]
Ben Shapiro
I know A.
- [97:00]
Gavin Newsom
And a lot of states, not just California, well established rules, by the way, that predate me. Again, this is not where I started. We're campaigning and advocating on these issues, as some suggest. And, and look, I'm with the governor, Governor Spencer Cox, who said about many of these issues. Never so much attention been placed on so few people.
- [97:20]
Ben Shapiro
And the problem is, I do think that on an electoral level, to go to the politics. It is a barrier to entry for a lot of people.
- [97:26]
Gavin Newsom
I agree with that. That I agree.
- [97:27]
Ben Shapiro
Boy, I can become a girl and then just. I do agree on a realistic.
- [97:30]
Gavin Newsom
And by the way, and I respect. If that's your barrier to then listening to people on myriad of other issues, so be it. It is what it is.
- [97:38]
Ben Shapiro
I just find it. I find it strange that even if you wish to Have a public policy that pursues something different. We cannot just admit that boys and girls are two different things and that a boy cannot become a girl. Why is this so difficult?
- [97:49]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I understand your point of view. And you know, and I also respect Caitlyn Jenner, you know, I do.
- [97:56]
Ben Shapiro
And that respect for individuals. Well, no, I can tell you a story. This is. They're also. I mean, I just did it. By the way, I was speaking at university.
- [98:01]
Gavin Newsom
This is a harder thing for me too, as you may know, and you probably do. I have a trans godson. It just, it's. There's a little more. I just, I find the humanity. I find different aspects of this at different layers.
- [98:11]
Ben Shapiro
This goes back to my sort of truth.
- [98:12]
Gavin Newsom
I know your facts over empathy.
- [98:15]
Ben Shapiro
Here's the story. So I was speaking at University of British Columbia, this must have been now, five years ago or so. And a person who identified as trans got up at the microphone. And obviously I do a lot of these things on campus. I used to do more of them. And this, this issue came up. The person started talking about his family's biological male again. You can use whatever pronouns you choose to use in free country, but you can't force me to use pronouns that I believe are grammatically incorrect.
- [98:39]
Gavin Newsom
By the way, I'm not sitting here, you know, trying to browbeat you. I'm pronouns. I'm just putting that out.
- [98:46]
Ben Shapiro
So anyway, so this person gets up and starts talking about his family and how they treat him. And I said, I'd really appreciate if we're going to have a conversation on sort of a general and philosophical level about this issue. If you didn't invoke your family, because I don't want to be in a position of having to talk to you about what your family thinks or believes. And the person continued to invoke their family said, well, you know, my family keeps saying that I am a woman, that I'm a woman. And finally, after about, about seven, eight minutes of this, I said, listen, you've now forced me to the corner where I have to give my opinion. My opinion is that your family is treating you with sympathy, but they don't actually believe that you're a woman because they care about you and they love you, but they will fib to you because they believe that it is better for you or that you will not hurt yourself if you say this thing. That is not true. The person got very upset, rushed out of the room. Now, normally that's the kind of thing that ends up online as a destroys video Kind of thing. I went to the people who are in charge of the event. I had them cut it from the tape because I was worried about the person's mental health status. I appreciate it. I called up a person who I knew, who knew the person because they had mentioned it to me. And I actually had breakfast with the person the next morning to make sure that he was okay. Good for you. My only point is not what a wonderful person I am, it's that sympathy does not preclude truth telling. And when you're making public policy, it is very important that sympathy not preclude truth telling. And I think that, again, it's not just the trans issue. If the idea is that I have to protect my friends and I have to attack my enemies in politics. Politics, things get really squirrely really quickly because again, public policy is for everyone. It is not just for subgroups.
- [100:14]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, I hear you. We just see the world with a different set of eyes on this. I appreciate your intellectual argument and the sort of soundness and the firmness in that space. I can't help but unpack the relationship to families and people and lives lived and the grace and, you know, people's lives that are lost and people that are struggling and going through this. I do just. That's, That's. That's how.
- [100:40]
Ben Shapiro
And.
- [100:40]
Gavin Newsom
And to me, that does shape the way I make policy, because it is. It's. It's. It's. It's not just science. It's art. It's. It's lived experience. It's reality. And it goes back to the sanctuary thing. There's certain lived realities. And, and. And one has to sort of deal with the cards that are dealt. As imperfect as things are in life is.
- [101:01]
Ben Shapiro
And as you know. You know, but you're.
- [101:03]
Gavin Newsom
You're. You've one of these. That's why you got the, what, 180 IQ. What was it?
- [101:07]
Ben Shapiro
I do not have 180 IQ.
- [101:10]
Gavin Newsom
Jesus. You can read your book to learn more. By the way, when I was listening, reading Lions and Scavengers, this notion of victimization and envy, the scavenger mindset. I thought you were writing about Donald Trump.
- [101:25]
Ben Shapiro
Well, I mean, listen, when I was on with Ezra, Ezra said it feels like you're talking about a lot of people on both sides. And I said, that is true. I am talking about a lot of people on both sides. I think that one of the points I make in the book. Book is that the model of lions and scavengers, it's really about kind of people who build versus people who wish to destroy. And the point that I make is that's actually an internal battle inside of all of us. If you go back to the book of Genesis and the story of Cain and Abel, it's a fascinating story, obviously for a variety of reasons, which is why it's lasted for several thousand years. But what happens is that Cain actually initiates the idea of let's give sacrifices to God and then God takes Abel's sacrifice, but not Cain's. And it doesn't say in the Bible why that is. That's just what happens. And Cain gets angry and God actually goes to Cain and he says, listen, you have the ability to fix yourself, right? Sin crouches at your door. But in the word in Hebrew is Tim Shaw. You can overcome that. You have the capacity to overcome that. And so in every human heart is the capacity to be the person who builds, makes things stronger, makes, if you're a politician, better policy, makes the country stronger in terms of its social fabric, or the person who's going to grift, or the person who's going to engage in conspiracy theories, or the person who's going to tear things down because they're unhappy with their life and therefore have decided falsely, with no evidence that the system is to blame for all that. I see politicians who do both of those things. I think that sometimes I look at what President Trump says and I think that's a real lion thing to do. I think that sending the B2s to Fordo was a lion thing to do. I think that, that grabbing Maduro was a lion thing. And then sometimes he says things and I'm like, that is a scavenger thing to do. So, you know, this week, for example, you know, he's. He's doing some populous things on economics that probably some members of the left would agree with.
- [103:06]
Gavin Newsom
10% caps on credit cards.
- [103:08]
Ben Shapiro
I think that that's silly. I think that that is. That is, again, externalizing people's debt problem to a place that does not solve the problem and in fact is more likely to lead to people not being able to get credit cards. Because obviously, if you.
- [103:21]
Gavin Newsom
You sound like the head of J.P. morgan. What about rolling up all the corporate purchases of private single family owns?
- [103:28]
Ben Shapiro
I think that that's. I think that that is a ridiculous misdirect. Okay. The fact is that in the state of California, for example, exorbitantly low percentage.
- [103:36]
Gavin Newsom
Relative to other states.
- [103:37]
Ben Shapiro
Yeah, relative to other states, for sure.
- [103:39]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah.
- [103:39]
Ben Shapiro
Okay. And guess what? Real estate here, really, really expensive. And meanwhile, if you go over to Charlotte, North Carolina, where the real estate prices actually have been diving. You actually do have. Have pretty significant corporate ownership. And here we're talking about large corporations, not like small mom and pop operations where you own a second home to rent it out. Typically speaking, when a corporation invests in an area like say, Phoenix and then builds up an enormous number of rental units, because that's what happens. They buy, let's say, a single family home now they rent it out. Okay, so they just increased the stock of rent. Right. Which means that the rental prices go down. And then corporations typically are investing in areas where it's easier to buy and easier to renovate and easier to build. Like, renovating is very difficult in places like New York and in certain parts of California, it's a lot easier in, say, Austin or Phoenix or Florida. And so what you've seen is actually there is not only zero correlation between corporate ownership of real estate assets and price of rent, for example, in many cases, there's a reverse correlation. And so trying to refocus on. Look at this terrible. It is in blackrock. Blackrock doesn't own real estate assets in this fashion. But if you're looking at Blackstone, it's Blackstone's fault that the real estate prices are going up. No, it isn't. And again, I think that, that.
- [104:48]
Gavin Newsom
So why is he pursuing two policies that you vehemently disagree with?
- [104:52]
Ben Shapiro
Because I think that it's flailing on.
- [104:54]
Gavin Newsom
The issue of the economy with the American people.
- [104:56]
Ben Shapiro
Governor, I think that it is politically beneficial for politicians to tell people that their problems are easily solvable with the stroke of a pen and by blaming somebody who's richer than they are. I think that is a very easy way to get away with with really bad public policy.
- [105:09]
Gavin Newsom
All right, let's talk about it. We're a limited time here, Ben. My gosh, we've covered so much, and I know everyone's like, that's been fine. Wait, why haven't we gotten into politics in Nigeria? Or we can talk about Somaliland and we can get into some more interesting nuanced issues. And, you know, we didn't even get to she. And there's. There is a. Legitimately a lot of issues that, that I think are fascinating, that will define more things in more ways on more days. But what do you make of amazing. I mean, Republicans have no chance in this midterm.
- [105:37]
Ben Shapiro
Right. I think that they are in for a world of hurt right now in the midterms. I mean, they're the. They're the incumbent Party, they have a bare majority. That alone would put them behind the eight ball. There are not a lot of swing districts that are, that are kind of left because of all the redistricting, but the swing districts that are left seem to be trending more blue. President Trump isn't on the ballot, so he doesn't really have coattails among the low propensity electricity to it. So, yeah, I think that Republicans are going to, are going to have a rough ride.
- [106:04]
Gavin Newsom
On the scale 1 to 10, how big a mistake was not expanding the health care subsidies or extending them?
- [106:10]
Ben Shapiro
So I have made the case that on just a raw political level, and again, I will say that what I do is different than what you do. Right? I mean, like, you're in the podcast space now, so this is my ballgame. But the reality is that you're in the policymaking space. And I've said this to Republican and Democratic politicians.
- [106:22]
Gavin Newsom
That's why I have to bring the human element into this.
- [106:25]
Ben Shapiro
Ben.
- [106:25]
Gavin Newsom
The human element.
- [106:26]
Ben Shapiro
This is where I would say you need to remove the human element. But, you know, the, the. I would say that the. One of the things that I hope that people appreciate about the difference is that in podcast space you can be a purist and in the political space you get, you try to get 70% of the pie. And so when you are looking at, for example, extending the Obamacare subsidies, it is a political loser, obviously, for Republicans not to extend the Obamacare subsidies and to let it hit a cliff. Clearly, then the question becomes, what can you do do that shortens the duration if you're a conservative, if you're a Republican, what can you do that creates a softer landing for people who are reliant on those subsidies in a transition to policies that you believe will in general bend the cost curve down in the meantime? Because if you have kind of a hard stop, then that's going to affect a lot of people. There's a reason why purple state Republicans, purple district Republicans are trying to cut deals right now with Democrats in order to extend those health care subsidies. Hopefully in return they will get some provisions on fraud, maybe some release of certain regulations around Obamacare. I think the healthcare system is so complex, it's so mixed. You know, let's put it this way. If you and I were sitting and designing a healthcare system and there was none, then I think that we might have very differing ideas of where it goes. But trying to extricate ourselves from what is an incredibly difficult situation, I think that the easiest and dumbest way to do policy is to just keep tossing money at it. But I also think that on a political level, if you never have the power to do better things, then you never have the power to do the better things. You got to get as much of the pie as you can. And that's the nature of pragmatism, as you are constantly talking about.
- [107:59]
Gavin Newsom
Well said. I agree rather your sentiment. It's interesting. On the issue of subsidy, it's an important point. I mean we'd have to lower the cost of healthcare. That's why Very proud of California. We created our own insulin branded drug under CalRx. We're just lowering costs. Costs, not subsidizing costs, which means socializing that cost on the rest of the rate payers more broadly or premium payers. But on the issue of Vance and Rubio. Vance or Rubio? Ben?
- [108:28]
Ben Shapiro
I mean, in terms of who I.
- [108:29]
Gavin Newsom
Am, 2028, what's going on?
- [108:31]
Ben Shapiro
So I think that, look, J.D. vance has already sort of been deemed by Marco Rubio as the presumptive nominee, barring some sort of cataclysmic circumstance. In terms of who I tend to agree with most more politically, obviously I would think that the Secretary of State Rubio on foreign policy, I tend to be more aligned with. Yeah, I think that the Vice president, obviously very high IQ guy. There are certain areas of policy I agree with him on. There are certain areas of policy I strenuously disagree with the Vice President right now. If you have to lay odds, then then JD is the most likely nominee. Things can change. Obviously it's very early.
- [109:02]
Gavin Newsom
Who, who, who leaves first exit or Pam Bondi?
- [109:07]
Ben Shapiro
You know, again, I. Yeah. In terms of. This is where you get into sort of the personality side of the business that I care less about. But I think that it is significantly more likely the pound bond is out before the Secretary of Defense.
- [109:18]
Gavin Newsom
Interesting. Thanks for coming all the way out.
- [109:21]
Ben Shapiro
Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. This has been fun.
- [109:23]
Gavin Newsom
Ben Shapiro, you're always welcome back home.
- [109:27]
Ben Shapiro
Thank you so much. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.