Transcript of Governor Newsom Discusses Trump’s SCOTUS Loss and New Book New

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speech detected] [No speech detected] I'm joined by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Governor Newsom, great to see you. Gotta get your reaction to Trump's reaction to the Supreme Court ruling against his tariffs against the world, Donald Trump having a meltdown, a temper tantrum, and his entire regime right now, they're just whining. What do you make of it all, Governor? Yeah, I mean, there's never been a ditch that's been dug this deep, isn't it? I mean, as you describe it, a tantrum on top of the tantrum, attacking his own handpicked Supreme Court. That's been completely souped up, has been doing his bidding, particularly with the shadow docket for months and months and months. But look, months ago, I was on your show the day we announced we were the first state with our attorney general to announce our lawsuit against the Trump administration saying they were illegally moving forward exercising emergency authority under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. They could not unilaterally do that. And boy, I think about that complaint we filed that day, it sounded a lot like or read a lot like Robert's opinion, at least Robert's words as it relates to this illegal action by this administration.

I wanna remind you, by the way, we did it in a ranch in the Central Valley in California because it was ranchers and farmers, small businesses that were hurt most with this regressive tax that is taxed average American family by over $1,750. And so it's time to return those

Return that money immediately to the American people, put it back in their pockets, and it's time to return to the rule of law, not the rule of Don. Right, and you immediately demanded those refunds be issued right away. Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, they said, we're gonna try to hold up American businesses and the people in litigation, we're gonna be fighting this is what they said. The Supreme Court ruling is ambiguous and confusing, and they said, years of litigation, what's your response to that? Litigation, I mean, it's the last stop, sorry guys. I mean, we've all, I've suffered many times on the other side of Supreme Court rulings. There is no higher ruling. There's no board of peace here. You can't reestablish with a billion dollar tithing with 27 of your friends from overseas and create a new Supreme Court. So it's time this guy start to understand that he cannot operate as an imperial president, that he is subject to the rule of law, co-equal branches of government. The only branch of government that seems to be marginally operating, Supreme Court, I say, with an asterisk, but today they seem to operate are the courts.

And I hope the court of public opinion is finally catching up that, you know, it's gonna put pressure on the other branch of government, Congress, to step up and start doing their job.

They're all gonna be out of work in nine months. You're gonna have a Speaker Jeffries. This thing, this is a wrecking ball president. And his imperial presidency is about to come to an end, but he's gonna be, as you suggest, this last gasp of a desperate man. And that was advanced today rhetorically, and then substantively with his effort to now do a global tax of 10%, another regressive tax on working people and small businesses across this country and around the world. You mentioned his board of peace. Boy, was that a weird, bizarre thing to watch. He was like sleeping through it, you

had all these authoritarian leaders there, he was playing YMCA, very strange, but in a more serious note, you've now traveled to the Munich conference, you were at Davos, you were at a climate conference in Brazil, you've been speaking to world leaders who are our allies or under the Trump regime, former allies who should be our allies. What's your general sense of what the world is feeling right now as you've now concluded this travel to those places? One-on-one meetings with the Chancellor of Germany, the Prime Minister of Spain, talking ambassadors from across the globe. There's a reckoning happening. I didn't feel that when I went to Davos those first few days, I called out. I was very aggressive. I brought those knee pads and I brought them up on stage. I decided not to come in mildly. I came in very hot, calling folks out, calling those that are bending their knee like law firms and universities have in the United States and CEOs that were assembled in Davos. And I suggested a lot of world leaders were as well, only to be pleasantly surprised with Carney's speech there in Davos and this great retreat from Donald Trump as it relates to Greenland.

And maybe that was aided and embedded by world leaders bucking up and expressing themselves more clearly and more forcefully, but also by the bond markets that also spoke very loudly against these incursions against a NATO ally into Greenland. But it was an assertion that we need to be tougher, we need to be more united. And I felt it was important not to give him, again, exclusive playing field in Munich. And it was great to see other democratic leaders there, other congressmen and congressional leaders that, or other business leaders that were a little more assertive, including, by the way, the chancellor of Germany who decided to promote the fact that we got together. Trump was very critical of that. He was threatening, by the way, Trump threatening other world leaders not to even meet with me. He's a weak, weak president. And that weakness is on display globally now as well as the rest of the world starting to turn against Trump and Trumpism. And the only card he had left was these tariffs. And that's why it's exactly why he was so aggressive today because he knows it. He's got nothing else going on. His entire economic policy is mass deportations.

That's beginning to unravel because of the people in Minneapolis. His economic policies were obviously aid and abetted by these terrorists. By the way, SOBEN was his personal dealings. And don't forget for a second, these

terror policies are connected to the great grift, this great self-dealing, this crony capitalism we're seeing around the globe. You saw it as he moved back on terror policy in Vietnam, as he got a business deal done there with the golf course in the waiver of a lot of environmental rules. Same thing in the UAE, same thing in Saudi Arabia. So, the self-dealing is a big part of the story in what happened today at the Supreme Court. I want to talk about your book in a moment. It's out right now, Young Man in a Hurry, a memoir of discovery. And it is a memoir of discovery of you becoming a man. And I want to talk about that, but it's in contrast to Donald Trump's behavior, because so much of what's taken place to me with this Trump regime masqueraded as political, this side, that side, but I had always been shouting from the rooftop, this is about basic human behavior and Donald Trump is behaving like a demented human being. And I've been just trying to say, stop viewing this as

a Democrat or a Republican, view this as human character. And this is someone utterly lacking in moral character. This is someone who is weak and pathetic and just stop with the politicizing of it. And so just talk to us before we get into to the book about just the behavior you've exhibited. Because you used to say that it was weakness masquerading as strength, but I've noticed a pivot in how you talk about it now, which is it's weakness, period. Yeah, exactly. It's weak. And look, he's a broken man in the spirit of your question. And I think, yeah, you rightfully for years now diagnosed him. He's a broken man that tried to break this country on January 6th, tried to light democracy on fire. He's going to do everything he can to analyze this next election. His presidency de facto ends when Speaker Jeffries gets sworn in. At least his presidency as we know it. And now losing this tariff policy in the unilateral authority under the IE EPA, this is a major body blow. You saw the new GDP numbers that came out 2.2% for the year, down from 2.8% under the Biden administration.

We're seeing manufacturing job losses. We're seeing the entire economic case that Besset not just Trump have made collapse, run or I mean, he's got nothing else left in his back pocket. And I think this is gonna be a hell of a state of the union. And I imagine that's gonna mean perhaps more forays overseas. Watch what happens, obviously, in Iran. But this weakness is on display. World leaders have finally figured it out, to your point, about Munich, cop, and what happened in Davos. And the American people are seeing it on full display. When you stand up to this guy, he backs down. His great strength, if there's any, is figuring out your weakness and exploiting it. But he does not do well when people assert themselves and push back. Again, that's what the people of Minneapolis have done, and that's what's happening across this country. And that's the pathway back. Conviction, strength, clarity, Purpose.

Call this guy out. No quarter. Fight fire with fire. He's a paper tiger, a broken man. And the only thing standing between our Republic, our 251st anniversary, we celebrate this historic project, is Donald Trump. We have to be mindful of what he will do between now and November and be more vigilant than we've ever been. You know, one of the things I note about your memoir and how deeply personal it is, how you open up about things like your emotions and you describe things that I'm not used to seeing political leaders or leaders at all really get into. I mean, you talk about feeling of this conflicting feelings of abandonment with your dad, William, you know, and how he was a mentor, but also you felt that he left your family, you know, in the 1970s. Moving from home to home with your mom, Tessa, what that experience was like living in these two different worlds where your dad was representing high profile people, but you didn't feel that, and you

were living with your mom and going

to, and you open up, I mean,

about going to college and not doing well on the SATs. We have currently right now people in the office who say, I did so great and I'm amazing. And you said, I suffered with dyslexia, torture. Was the words that you used and you open up about things that you just don't hear that people would normally say, ah, why are you opening up? You're being too emotional. What do you say about that? And why did you open up like that in the book? Well, it's because I'm sick of wearing the mask, you know, and I put a mask on and my face started growing into it. And I was becoming someone that I didn't want to become that I'm not. And I talked, you know, this book, it says, Young Man in a Hurry, it's a memoir of discovery. I didn't, you know, I didn't know about my family. I knew a little bit about my family. Both my parents passed away. My mom, many, many years ago, my father, right after I got elected governor of California, they never talked about their marriage. They never talked about why my father left. My mom was 19, two years later, she's living on her own.

She comes from no money. We're living in a one bedroom apartment. And my father just took off. And he never told me. I discovered that in the process of writing this book. She raised us single-handedly, grit, hard work, resilience, how she never wanted me to get in politics, how I struggled with learning disability. This day, I don't read speeches. You'll never see me read a speech because I can't read a speech. I can read and write. The irony of me writing a book and then reading, by the way, that book, the audiobook, that alone, that was 18 hours of pure hell. God bless the people that helped edit that and the grace of theirs. I just wanted to open up and be myself. You know, for those that hate me, you should buy this book. It's all the op research. You don't even have to work very hard. I gave it all to you. But it's honest. It's like really honest. And I'll tell you, Ben, you know this, man. There's so many political books out there. Diamond does. I'm not knocking anybody. I'm not. There's some great ones, too. But this is not your typical political book, but it's me.

Man, it's, you know, all the good, the bad, the sweaty hands, the nervous guy in the back of the room, the guy, you know, tries to put a mask on, wear a tie, you know, the whole thing. And mistakes I made, you know, how I played into the stereotypes. But it's a little more raw. And to the extent it's emotional, it's real. And I was there for my mom's assisted suicide when it was illegal. And I was there with her, held her hand, her last breath. didn't I know about her dad who put a gun to her head, committed suicide. He was a prisoner of war after the March in Corrigedor. I didn't know all these history. I didn't know that history. And so, you know, it shaped me. And now it explains who I am in ways that I didn't, I never understood the why, why I was motivated by this, why I was doing certain things, why I felt certain anxieties. And it all just started to take place and shape. As I started to learn and dive deeper in this book. And it's a book for my kids, man. It's literally a dedication to my four little kids.

And, you know, how I wish my parents wrote this book. I wish my grandparents wrote this book. And, you know, I hope people receive it well. And I know it will be seen through the eyes of cynicism and politics. But that's the third way. I can't control that. I can't control the critics. We'll see. It's just coming out. People have different opinions about it, but I'm really proud of it. And I'm proud of my dad and mom and for all the awards and all.

And I'm proud of the person I'm becoming. I'm in the process of becoming. I'm trying to be a better dad, better father, better husband, rather. And we're all works in progress. And my life's been open, there's been bright lights on it for a long time. Supervisor, mayor, lieutenant governor, governor. And I made a lot of mistakes and paid a lot of personal professional price for it. And I try to put it all out there in this memoir. You know, it's a book for everyone, but also, as the title talks about, you becoming a man, young man, a journey of discovery. And we've seen so many young men who were peeled off by Trump and MAGA and their movement and put in much darker places than they perhaps already felt. I've always said, you know, look, empathy is a good thing and that, you know, supporting the bullies was always a bad thing when I grew up. And we should feel comfortable as men

to call out that behavior when people are, again, trying to use the phrases of, this is what an alpha is and this is what it is. And I'm like, that actually is the behavior that's being exhibited by these MAGA leaders to me who call themselves alpha to me is deeply problematic. What I like about this book is you said it's okay to feel these things, but let's and it's okay to make mistakes, but let's try to let's try to fix it. Let's try to be better. Let's aspire for something more. Yeah, no, I love that, man. Look, I it's about empathy, care and compassion. Those are the superpowers. You want to talk about strength. It's defined in those terms. It's not power, dominance and aggression. You know, it's about moral authority, not formal authority. You don't have to be something to do something. You know, Donald Trump's learning that. The more he uses his formal authority, the less he has of it. The more we, the people, people in Minneapolis use our moral authority, the more abundant it becomes. And that, you know, and that's, it's reflected in aspects of this book, you know, failing forward fast, learning from mistakes, try not to make them again, you know, the grace and humility, the human expression, the human experience, you know, and, how we have privileges and challenges and how they shape us and how our parents, man, I mean, all the good and the bad.

My mom said to me, it's in the book, or she said something that just broke me. She said, it's okay to be average because I was struggling reading. She was worried I was going to drop out of school. I was going into community college, 960. Thank you for reminding me of my SAT. And it hurt me. I'm like, man, I don't want to be average. But I understood what years later, and part of the memoir discovery is I understood She was just on her journey trying to be a good parent. She was struggling herself. Just like, it's okay. You don't have to be smarter than anybody. And that's life, man. We're all just like, it's not like we're all broken. I don't want to get into that, but it's like, it's just, you know, it's messy and we're all messy and it's okay. And, you know, and so, you know, that's what it's like to be a man. Man is recognizing that and into love, man, and to be loved. You know, we all need it. And to ask for help. I mean, the strongest people, those that bend down on one knee, yeah, and

lift other people up, but also those that ask for help. And I had to ask for help a lot. And that's in this book. That's why I say, for those that hate me, you want more op research, buy the damn book in bulk. But for those that think they know me, I challenge you, buy a couple

books, 'cause you may wanna pass along to a friend and it may challenge even your assumptions. And those that love me, I hope

I gave you some reason why you may be right and maybe challenge you to say, all right, you didn't know that about me, but, But, you know, maybe I offered another layer of understanding that may allow you to forgive me a little bit too.

Everybody check out the book, Young Man

in a Hurry, a Memoir of Discovery.

Governor, thanks for being on.

We always appreciate you.

We appreciate the work you're doing here in California and for this country.

Honored to be back with you.

Thank you, brother.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, everybody, and hit subscribe. Let's hit that 6 million subscriber this week. Wanna stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our Substack at

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