Transcript of And, This Is Charlie Kirk

This is Gavin Newsom, and this is Charlie Kirk. By the way, what brings you to California, your favorite state?

It is my favorite state in the Union. You're doing such a great job here, by the way. No, I'm honored to be on the show. Thank you. You were just down at USC? I was at USC yesterday. It drew a big crowd.

By the way, I knew you were at USC early because my My niece, who is gradually-She was the one with the Magga head on. She was, by the way, I do have to watch. But she was down there and she was like...

You never know. These kids are going to the right.

I'm aware. She said, this crowd's crazy. And the only reason she said, she would have said it perhaps otherwise, but she knew you were coming on. The worst part, though, Charlie, no BS. True story. Literally last night, trying to put my son to bed. He's like, no, dad. What time? What time is Charlie going to be here? What time? And I'm like, dude, you're in school tomorrow. He's 13. He's like, no, This morning, wakes up, it's 6: 00, then he's like, I'm coming. He literally would not leave the house.

Did you let him to take off school?

No, of course not. He's not here for a good reason.

But the point is the point-You canceled school for two years. Once a week, one day.

The point is the point, which is you are making a damn dent.

Thank you. I'm kidding.

No, but I appreciate that. I mean, it's the reason you're here, because I think people need to understand your success, your influence, what you've been up to, and the fact that you're on these college campus doors. And to your point, you just open up. You're like, Ask me anything.

Anything. Challenge me? Challenge me, whatever.

When did this whole thing? When did you start putting this together?

I've been at this for 13 years, and it's been a wild movement, really accelerated once President Trump came on the scene. Right around, I'd say, 2021, we had a goal. Could we move the youth vote 10 points over 10 years?

And it was literally you sat down and put that numerical together? Yeah.

Can we move it 10 points over 10 years-ish, approximate? Because our whole hypothesis was, and we did this alongside President Trump and his great team, was that this demographic is disproportionately to the Democrats side. We believe Democrats were taking them for granted. We think that your side had no message whatsoever and an ideological monopoly. We saw some of the fault lines there. And to President Trump's credit, he also harmonized with this strategy by going on podcasting and using TikTok. But yeah, we did it in four years, not 10, large in part, thanks to you guys.

And we'll get to that, and I'll sincerely get to that, because I want to stress test some of those fault lines as it relates to the reality of our party and where we are today vis-a-vis your ascendancy, not just individually as an organization. But where was that moment for you? Because it's I mean, you're such a young guy, so it's not a deep biography here. It's not like 20 years in the wilderness, writing his first book, getting a TV show that was canceled, coming back. It's more just this immediacy of ascendancy. Were you Were you born and bred with an ideological mindset, or were you more open-minded, and you started to realize a lot of BS was out there?

I've always been conservative, obviously, grown in that over the last 10-ish years. Was more libertarian Married, I'd say, in the first couple of years as to be expected as I got married and have kids become more conservative. But no, look, just one of the things we saw in the last couple of years that the Democrats completely ignored, and your side was basically not acknowledging what was happening happening was the crisis that young people were experiencing. It's the first time in America's history that a 30-year-old is going to have it worse off than their parents. It's a breakdown of the social compact. They are the most alcohol-addicted, most drug-addicted, most suicidal, most depressed, most medicated generation in history. And the message that was largely being fed to a lot of young people was, lower your expectations. You're not going to have the same American dream that your parents would have. And we saw this as an opportunity, especially with young men. And again, And this got ridiculed a lot by the press that, oh, they're creating this manosphere thing. Look, they're half of the population and necessary for any society and civilization to succeed, which is to have both strong men and strong women.

And we went about that in a very unique and creative way. And again, the President became a cultural phenomenon, where no matter what you threw at this guy, he rose above it. You would even have to give him credit. I mean, 700 years in federal prison, States tried to kick him off the ballot. I know you spoke out against it, but before, and he did have a faction that tried to kick him off the ballot. And despite all of that, of course, being shot, and that was the crescendo of all of it, he became this figure of an American comeback story. So he personified what a lot of young people, especially young men, wanted back in their politics, which was an ascendant rebel attitude against these institutions that have failed them so miserably.

It's interesting. And you keep saying we, which is interesting. And that's the organization that you created, Turning Point USA.

We would beTurning Point Action. Conservative movement, MAGA. But yes, I have Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, Charlie Kirk Show. But when I'm saying we, I mean more specifically, those of us that saw this political moment three or four years ago.

But you were at this even before then? Correct. So when did you decide to just shift your gear? You were working for another Kirk, for his campaign. Mark Kirk. Mark Kirk. So you had a political... Obviously, you had these strong political leanings, or at least desire to be in the political sphere, but not in elected office necessarily? You just want to be behind the scenes? Yeah.

The biography has been written about a million times, but I didn't go to college, wanted to go to West Point, didn't get in. I'm an entrepreneur. Yeah. Love it. Started this organization, and it became far more successful than I ever could have realized. As we started to grow the organization, I recognized that there was an ideological imbalance on a lot of these college campuses, and we wanted to go about trying to to offer a counterpoint of a conservative, pro-freedom, pro-liberty, America first ideas.

And you saw the college campuses as the underbelly of the opportunity, or is it more just experiential in terms of your own animus towards the institution?

Well, I mean, both. You have a sitting population of about 20 million kids that are there for four years. There's that. And also, again, you'd nowhere to go but up. When we started in 2012, 75 % of kids on college campuses would vote for Democrats. Now, Fast forward to today, this last election cycle, Democrats lost the youth vote in Michigan, nearly lost it in Wisconsin, nearly lost it in Arizona. So our goal was, Hey, let's move at 10 points. We moved at 13 points. And this is important for your audience to know and for Democrats to reckon with, of which I see no signs that Democrats care at all that they're losing the next generation. We're drawing record crowds. Our ranks are expanding. The most support that President Trump has is voters under 30. 60% of voters under 30 support President Trump. It's according to Rasmussen, you might say that it's a little rich. It might be, but it's directionally It's very true. And one of the main reasons that this has all been happening is that baby boomers have actually seen their wealth increased the last four years. They don't buy into this whole idea that our institutions are broken or that they're in need of massive bottom-up revolutionary change.

And we see that actually Kamala Harris did three points better with baby boomers than she did in 2020. And the number one story that James Carville, who everyone takes seriously for some reason, should have been saying is all Kamala Harris had to do was just do the same with younger younger voters that Joe Biden did in 2020, and she would be President right now.

And remind us what Joe Biden did in 2020 with younger voters.

It was 13 points better, approximately. In terms of just the numeric system. Again, this is a combination of exit polling. It's a difficult science to pinpoint.

So that goes back then, to your point, in order to do that, you've got to stand for something. You've got to assert yourself. You got to have a strategy, and you got to implement it.

You also have to not believe crazy stuff.

And not believe crazy. For you, it's interesting. Just this last week, I guess you were at USC, you were at University of Florida, thousands and thousands of folks. To your point, your crowds are growing. 2012, where were you? You were coming in and people were... You were getting threats. You still get tons of threats. What was it like? Just to paint a picture of you walking in a college campus.

I had no money, no connections, and no idea what I was doing. I didn't even have a social media account. It was just the ultimate startup.

And what did you just say, I'm available, and you started at this debate?

No, it was even more scrappy, I would literally show up to UW Madison with a card table and a big cardboard sign saying, debate me. Here's some provocative statement. So you're 20 something years old. I wouldn't even film it. I was 18 or 19. 18 or 19.

By the way, where does that end? And sincerely, to be able to debate anybody at any time, anywhere, and in that environment, you can say it's just confidence or it's just absolutely... I mean, narcissism. What is it? I hope it's not the other.

But no, I guess it It could just be, I mean, at the most charitable reading, it could be confidence. It'd also could just be that I wanted to try and challenge the predominant view. I always loved debate and disagreement. I love the spar. And I also find it to be exciting, and I wanted to try to figure out where my idea is actually that good and to draw-Stress test.

Yeah, exactly. And are you 10X better than you were in 2012?

At the format? Probably.

Probably. And do you study it or are you just participating? You look at the old great debates or you're reading debating books, you're watching some of the best.

I mean, less about debate. I mean, debating is a practice that can really only be refined with lots of routine and reps and repetition, just more about studying the great books, philosophy, all those.

And you make a point proud of that. To the point you never went to community college.

I didn't even graduate community college.

And you didn't even graduate community, which is great. By the way, I was going to college in Moraine. I got lucky. I got a baseball coach that called me and allowed me to get to a four-year university. I was joking with you before we started 960. Sat, I asked you about your SAT. I don't even know.

You said, the hell is that? I took the ACT.

You took the ACT, which proves two things, how young you are and how different things were. You grew up in Illinois, right?

I grew Illinois, which Midwest was traditionally more of an ACT.

But this has been a point of pride for you that you didn't do a four-year degree.

Well, yeah, because I represent most of the country. Is that actually still the majority of the country does not have a college degree. And if I may bluntly critique critique, the Democrat Party, you guys have become so college credentialed and educated that you guys snobbishly look on the muscular class of this country, the people that kept things afloat and running during COVID. And yeah, the majority of the country didn't go to Harvard, within Yale, Stanford, Caltech, or Cal Berkeley, right? Thank you. And the Republican Party has become far more representative of them, large and part thanks to Trump. But yeah, and look, I say it with some pride also because as an entrepreneur, I tried to build something, not just seek a credential.

Love that. And there are what? 11 million folks. There are 11 million jobs out there. You make this point all the time.

Oh, yeah. Open jobs that don't require a college degree.

That do not require a college degree. So when you say, and it's interesting because there's that critique of the Democratic Party that we are captured by this college elite. In what respect? I mean, stress test that for a second. Allow me to. What specifically are you referencing in that context?

Well, your voters have become nearly... The higher you go up the education ladder, the higher the correlation it is that you vote for the Democrat Party. It's almost a one-to-one with PhD. It's like 75 % for master's degrees, and it's 65 % for four year.

Why do you think that's the case? What are the issues that are identified in that respect?

The sloppy analysis is like, oh, they're smarter, therefore they must be Democrats. And I think that's silly and insane. And insulting. I totally agree. The deeper and more profound analysis is that a lot of ideological bubbles that exist on these college campuses, they are homogeneous, not heterodox when it to what ideas are expressed. Then secondly, the value system that you leave on college campuses is high trust of institutions. The biggest divide in America is not right versus left. It's whether or not you generally trust institutions or you don't trust institutions. This has been largely inverted the last 20 years. Back in the early 2000s, Democrats were low trust of institutions, Iraq War, Anti Bush, Anti-NSA, Anti-Patriot Act. That's when you guys had a lot of activist spark and energy. That has been completely inverted. The right is now low trust of institutions, where the left is high trust of institutions. We're the ones that challenge the COVID vaccine. We're the ones that think that public health authorities might have lied to us during COVID. We're the ones that don't necessarily believe the government when it says that we should keep on sending money to Ukraine.

Again, that's a general rule. There are some exceptions to that. But when you go to college, you are trained to trust the experts, trust the scientists, trust the people that are leaders of authority. And the Democrat Party is largely the gatekeepers of that ideological intellectual regime.

It's interesting. From your perspective, as As you advocate for people to open up a worldview that is life without a four-year degree and all the opportunities that present themselves a new in that respect. Are you arguing for the disestablishment, the end of higher education?

I think it's going to happen no matter what. In 10 years, artificial intelligence is going to change everything. And I don't know what these four-year degrees are actually doing to prepare these kids for that. But as far as my advocating for the end of the pursuit of learning, of course not. That's one of my big critiques is that at a lot of these schools, they're not pursuing what is good, true, and beautiful. It's become the oppression Olympics and a weaponized complaint seminar of people sitting in the circle and finding out who's been offended the most that day. That's not doing anybody any good. No. And in fact, it creates a very weak political movement, which I think plays into one of the reasons why we were able to steamroll you guys back in November, is that once there's a little opposition against a group of people that have never actually had to build the muscle mass of a very difficult and unpredictable world. Whereas those of us that are Conservatives, we're assaulted all the time. So think about the experience of a kid on a college campus. They say they're graded differently because of their views.

They may or may not be right. I think they are. But they're definitely in the ideological minority. You wear a Trump hat on a college campus, at least until we came around. That was a big sign of cultural rebellion. So you have two choices. You can either stop fighting for what you believe in or you become really tough. And you create that muscle that allows you to then carry and shoulder a heavier burden. Right.

And so I don't want to belabor the issues of the establishment plot called higher education. Some have not, you referred to it, though maybe you align yourself.

I wrote a whole book called The College Scan.

So it's That's testing that in the context of, some would argue, the contra-argument is a million dollars more in lifetime earnings, more likely to get married, less likely to get divorced, more likely to be civically engaged, and longer life spans with college degrees. And you would say to that-All of those is true.

It's just not everyone that goes to college graduates the national graduation rate. 41% drop. Yeah, 41% dropout. Exactly right. Also, half the kids that graduate college will not even end up using their degree when it comes to the affiliated job. So the numbers are true at the highest income. So about 10 % of kids that go to college stretch out the averages to be really high. Got it. And so, for example, you go to Caltech to study computer engineering and applied AI, you're crushing it, right? You go to Cal to go study North African lesbian poetry.

Is that an actual degree there?

You tell me, government.

I don't know. I mean, we fund it, but I'm not sure.

That's one of the courses. See, the fact you don't know?

I don't know every single damn course.

It should be like, no way. But if the fact it's a maybe, we got some problems.

Well, the fact that a lot of people have explored different disciplines.

That's fine. It's just the taxpayers shouldn't have to fund it.

Well, I mean, increasingly, the individuals are funding, as you know. No, that's true. It relates to the... Talk about the inversion of how we fund education. And by the way, just FYI, having just put together a career master We have a master plan in the State of California that created the UC systems, the CSUs, and the community college system half a century ago. We've applied the same discipline to a career master plan in the State of California. And so I'm completely aligned with you in terms of a focus and energy there and looking at pre-apprentices apprenticeships, looking not even at apprenticeships in the traditional sense, but valuing and highlighting and signaling the value of a life without a degree, et cetera. So I'm not as far off on this as you are. That said, I've got to admire what you've been able to do, not to weaponize, but to organize on these college campuses a different point of view. And again, let's talk about some of that. When you go to these college campuses, I love watching your TikTok, which is next level. Clearly, that's expressed my 13-year-old son. I want to meet this guy.

I actually- He's coming to a turning point event this summer, Tampa, Florida, Student Action Summit. By the way, if you did- You shouldn't be concerned. But let me say, here is why I'm concerned, because you have expressed that I should be concerned as a Democrat, that we're getting clobbered.

Yes.

That you've figured something out.

It's not me. The President first deserves the credit.

No, no, hold on. You were at this before Trump was Trump. No, I know, but he- He was a Democrat back in 2011.

But the President deserves huge credit, and I just have to say that as an obligatory thing, because without him, our movement would be small. And you can appreciate that in politics. You have to appreciate the person who is the catalyst.

For you, that's what you attached the identity with him?

It was also just the catalyst. It was a cultural moment that just opened us up.

But go back just on that, because I'm curious. In 2012, '13, '14, who were you identifying with from the movement perspective?

I was more like, as I mentioned, Ron Paul, Rand Paul libertarian, because that's where the energy really was, right? And then President Trump Trump comes on. Again, I was still very early in my political journey. So you're looking up a lot. Who's the top voice is? What do you believe? Why do you believe it? Yeah.

So more libertarian.

And I still have some libertarian leanings on sometimes.

And when Trump came down that escalator, you're like, boom.

Not day one. No, I was mystified at first.

Why? Just saying this guy, there's no chance.

It's funny. I actually sent out a tweet, 2011, when I was in high school saying, Trump should run for office. But I was not mystified negatively. I was like, Can this really happen? Can a guy that has no political experience come down an escalator, challenge the whole establishment.

But you didn't expect Donald Trump to come down the escalator and start talking about illegal aliens or rapists.

I didn't disagree with it. You didn't see that coming. Again, this is well documented. Early in my journey, I underestimated the silent majority that really wanted a rebalancing of the American political landscape.

So interesting. So Trump then became the catalyst, and so turning point became next level. Your events start growing, youorganize around that. Turning point, action becomes what?

The political arm. So one is more educational, one is more political. And we did ballot chasing in Arizona and Wisconsin. We were successful in that. Alongside the Trump campaign, Arizona was the best performing swing state.

And you're not modeling yourself at anything because the flatness of the surrounding terrain, meaning we're the Democrats. Are you looking at other organizing?

We were modeling off of some of the ballot chasing, ballot harvesting practices of the left. But again, that's a self-limiting principle. You can't ballot chase if no one wants to vote for you. That's right. So you could have the best organizers in the world, and you have 2,000 people chasing ballots in Arizona, and you're running Kamala Harris in Arizona. What we ended up tracking through our data is that the Democrats were chasing for us, is that they were chasing low propensity Hispanics thinking that they were all for Kamala. And in fact, we were looking at the precinct numbers of areas we didn't hit that moved like 20 points in Trump's direction. We're like, well, thank you very much,women on a campaign for getting out and chasing our ballots and for all these Hispanic men that are mechanics. We appreciate it. Thanks for making sure that we also won Dave McCormick's Senate seat. Right. So again, chasing is only one part of it. Democrats That's, of course, are better organizers than us. I mean, it's in your blood. Barack Obama was a community organizer. We make fun of it. It's who you guys are. You guys have labor as a backbone, clipboard in tennis shoes.

Labor less and less. We can talk about that in a moment.

No, for sure. But what we We always felt that we had is we felt we had better ideas and a better message and all that. The idea was, can we combo a little bit of organizing practices with a mass movement, which is how you get a national popular vote victory and an overwhelming electoral landslide.

What do you see? Just, I mean, I talked about the flatness of the surrounding terrain, meaning the Democratic Party's party in some respect as it relates to, I appreciate your point about organizing, but also coercion, forcing people to vote versus an enthusiasmism and a desire to actually proactively get out.

Actually, that has a backfiring effect, too.

I appreciate that. And so what do you see right now? I think you talked about it the other day. A lot of folks were talking about that Carville article where he talked about-roll over and play dead? Rollover In essence, he said that. That's what he said, though, right? I think it was a strategic retreat, right? That we need to come back. Trump's starting to implode. His numbers are getting soft. This was even before the tariff issues, et cetera. And then come back and strike went hot. And immediately, no BS, thought about you, who's just 24/7 flooding the zone, back to my 13-year-old owning this space, every day getting a convert, every day picking up one, two, 10,000 folks, continuing the momentum, coming out of this damn election. And then I'm thinking about, we're going to stand back and watch you run circles around us for six months, the next two or three years, waiting for the moment to finally strike. Struck me as not necessarily the best advice, and it's not a knock on Carville who I have deep respect for.

What's your That's okay. So I don't have to. He's read about one thing in the last 40 years. It's economy stupid, and boy, he spent down that one line pretty amazingly. But yeah, look, I don't want to make this about Carville, but I hope you guys retreat.

You like the advice. More for us.

You like the advice. There's no opposition. There's no activist spark. You guys are posting these cringe videos on social media. What are the videos? What are the ones? I don't know. This harmonious thing of 22 senators all saying the same thing. I didn't like that. I didn't like it. Go ahead. Go do more of that. Whatwhat do you do?

But what do you do? Seriously, Charlie Kirk, give us some advice.

Get better ideas, governor. For example, you have an opportunity to run to the middle and see this man's office, you're talking to me, of all people. So you right now should come out and be like, You know what? The young man who's about to win the state Championship in the long jump in female sports, that shouldn't happen. You, as the governor, should step out and say no.

No, and I appreciate.

But would you do something like that? Would you say no men in female sports?

Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness. It's deeply unfair.

Would you speak out against this young man, A. B. Hernandez, who right now is going to win the state Championship in the long term? I can see you wrestling with it.

No, I'm not wrestling. I'm not relation with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you. By the way, someone with four kids, I think-And two daughters, right? Two daughters. And I have a daughter, too. And a wife that went, God forbid, to Stanford and played on the junior national soccer team, and a guy who got into college only because it was left-handed and could throw a baseball a little bit or hit the ball for a little bit. So I revere sports. And so the issue of fairness is completely legit. And I saw that. The last couple of years, boy, did I saw how you guys were able to weaponize that issue at another level?

Not weaponize.

Weaponize may be a pejorative, you're right.

But you were able to-Shine a light on?

Highlight it in a way that, frankly, there are not that many. We're talking about, I think, the NC2A, what, 510,000? No, but I just didn't realize.

It's 890 medals and trophies that we know of in the last five years. That's a lot. No.

Let me step back, say completely fair on the issue of fairness. I completely agree. So that's easy to call out, the unfairness of that. There's also a humility and a grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety, and depression. And the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well. So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the decency that I think is inherent in you, but not always expressed on the issue? No, I get At the same time, deal with the unfairness.

You asked a good faith question. How do we Democrats get out of the wilderness? This one is an 80/20 issue. New York Times poll, right? No, I agree with you.

We're getting crushed on.

And you have an opportunity in the state to be like, look, I have a heart for A. B. Hernandez. I have of heart for the San Jose volleyball player. Let's give them compassion. What's not fair is just for a entire woman's sports. I agree. By the way, I agree with you.

I agree with you. And it's interesting. I stress tested this, Charlie. I was wondering, in California, and I've been a leader in the LGBTQ place, as you know, back in 2004, was marrying same-sex couples. And I know we have different opinion on marriage equality. And so I've been at this for years and years. I take a bad seat to no one. But I was actually on the issue of sports, which in the last few years is just exploded. Trying to understand and understand the 10 athletes in the NC2A, 510,000 athletes, but 10 athletes. But how profound. And even my own friend cohort, people saying, The hell is going on? Why aren't you calling this out? When did this happen? So it turns out in 2014, years before I was governor, there was a law established that established the legal principles that allow trans athletes in women's sports. But the issue of fairness is completely legit. So I completely align with you. And we've got to own that. We've got to acknowledge it. I don't say that through the prism of politics because you disagree with same-sex marriage on principle. And by the way, I value the fact that you're not trying to walk away from that principle because But, historically, that's-I'm in the minority of it.

Yeah, in the minority. And I don't want to walk away from this principle because it's electoral, but it is an issue of fairness. And I think Democrats have lost that.

I wish that we would have done this podcast last week because This week. Last week? Well, because the US Senate just voted. Every Democrat voted against that bill. And I'm just telling you, again, I'm not one to give Governor Newsom advice. You guys are giving us an 80/20 issue that is just permeating the country. It's such an affront to our census And you look at these videos, governor, because it's not just that it's, okay, you read an article about it, but these young men that are in these sports, they're throwing around girls. And it is an issue of fairness, but it goes to a broader arch narrative, which is important.

No, I want to hear this.

Which is this, that the Democrats, you guys will tend to view an incident through an oppressor-oppressed lens. It's your training. It comes from college. We, as Conservatives, tend to view things through right or wrong or just or unjust. And And the country is going far more in our direction and away from your direction, because the problem with oppressor-oppressed is eventually you run out of oppressors and you start creating them out of thin air. And you start trying to say, well, these people must be blamed for all of our problems. That's where you get a lot of the, let's just say, a lot of, for example, there's a Wall Street Journal editorial, like when will the white men shut up or stop complaining? That does no good for anybody. What I'm getting at, though, is it's a worldview difference.

That's why the issue is so much more powerful.

Of course it is, but it's also pattern recognition. It's pattern recognition of a Democrat Party that post-2020 decided to go all in. We call it woke. You might call it justice or whatever it is, but it's so outside of what we would consider traditional Americans norms and customs. A Democrat strategist would say, Oh, Charlie, you're weaponizing stuff. Not you. But that's a typical thing. But the most effective ad of this election cycle, the most effective ad, you know what it is.

Yeah, it was devastating. Trump's for you, she's for them.

Devastating. Devastating. Devastating.

And she didn't even react to it, which was even more devastating.

Let's talk about why it was devastating. Number one, it was the trans issue that was just monopolizing.

And this was even more challenging because it's issues people that are incarcerated and illegal incarcerated individuals getting taxpayer funding, gender reassignment. That is a 9010, not an 8020.

And then she's enthusiastically defending it, bragging, being like, I'm all4 this, I'm all for this.

And then you had the video that was a validator. Brutal.

Yeah.

Tens of millions of brutal. And then the targeted focus from the Trump campaign, next level.

And then Charlemagne comes out on Breakfast Club. I was like, this is insane. And they ran it on anFull Football.

Brilliant.

Yes. And so you're trying to reach men. It's not like it's not-It's a brilliant campaign commercial.

It was brutal. It was devastating. It doesn't require-We were running around just for the what the hell it's worth for you. She was agey at the time. She was addressing the issue of a legal settlement. The courts were interviewing on this topic. She was still bragging. But she had the video where in the video, she was obviously expressed support.

She was being a cheerleader for a very unpopular thing. It was It was a great ad, and I say that lightly in political. And I want to make sure it's not just that this was like the Willie Horton ad of the 2024. It wasn't just like a Lee Atwater brilliance. It's that it reflected truth that the voters felt. Yeah, I appreciate that. Because voters felt as if their country was slipping away. Now, the Democrats have a choice. You could say to those people, You're racist, you're Nazis, you're fascist, you're terrible, or you can listen to them and be like, Why is it that a steel worker in Pittsburgh who's voted Democrat his entire life is voting for Trump despite all of the stuff that's been thrown at him.

Yeah, and all the rhetoric that he's thrown at us in that context.

But it's a pattern, and the trans thing is just one of those things. But the second element was also what we saw under Joe Biden was if you came to the Southern border from any country and you spoke the magic words, you could go to any city you're choosing, right? Cbp One border app, and all of a sudden, that steel worker in Pittsburgh is like, Why am I paying all these taxes? I can't afford beer. I can't afford anything. And so I guess my question is to you, what are the Democrats going to do about it?

I'm going to answer that in a second, but let me pull a few more threads. You said 2020 is when you started seeing the Democrats advance this notion of wokeism.

It's when the awokening really started. What was it in total? You know what I'm talking about.

So is it The Latinx stuff. By the way, not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx.

So can we finally put that to bed? Yeah, what the hell? Where did that even go? No more Latinx, everybody.

I just didn't even know where it came from. I'm like, What are people talking about? Was it the pronouns? By the way, once, once. You'd think California invented the frame of the pronoun. I had one meeting where people started going around the table of pronouns, one. There's been a hell of a lot of days between 2020 and today, and one meeting. So it's not like this is... I'm like, what the hell? Why is this the biggest issue?

Well, in corporate America, it's everywhere. Okay. All right. And college campuses. It must college.

That's where you reside a lot in the college campus.

You got to defund these schools if they're doing the pronouns. Jesus.

Okay. Number three, what else? What was also the big wokeism thing?

First of all, it wasn't just the projection of certain narratives, which we could obviously go through, but it's when policy started to come forward. And what policy? Hiring practices. When it was, we're not going to hire-There was DEI, decades ago.

Yeah.

Of course, there was. It was just called outreach and inclusion. But we saw mass adoption, what we saw. And not only that, we saw pledging of billions of dollars of donations to racial justice from the biggest types of corporations imaginable. Fair point. And that was post George Floyd. That's what I'm saying. You had a combustible effect.

And was that wrong? I mean, to address the issue of racial... There's legitimate issues as it relates to past practices.

What was insulting to a lot of people is, number one, where's the money going? Because the top premier Their BLM charity ended up being a racket with Patrisse Cullors, where did that $100 million go? So all of a sudden we learned that and all these pledges of corporate dollars were going to this woman that's hiring her brother for personal security. And you would even agree, No, that became the poster child of the broader movement. But number two, which I think was most important, was that it elevated then this scholarly community that was otherwise fringe, like Robin DiAngelo and other people. And her book, White mobility. Literally the entire premise of her book is that white people need to stop being so fragile about race. You need to sit down and shut up and hear how racist you are. And she was brought on tours to corporations across the country. And by the way, just so you understand, this was a phenomenon over months and months, and it didn't quite catch up in time for the 2020 election. I do believe that if you guys would have been a little less insane on crime in the summer of '20, you would have completely clobbered us in November of '20.

It was the riots that even made 2020 close. But then it was the extension of all All of what we would call woke stuff.

Right. Defund police.

Yeah. I mean, Minneapolis literally had to hold a special vote saying, should we still have a police Department? Yeah.

That was lunacy.

But, governor, I don't want to-Lunacy.

And by the way, And by the way, you're talking to someone who's never supported the defund police. I know, but- It was explicit.

Hold on. One second. You did support Prop 16 in 2020, which would have legalized racial prejudice, right? Prop 16 literally would-I have to go back to my prop. You're smart. No, you're smart.

No, no, no. Prop 16. I taught 960 Sat, so a little humility here.

Hold on, you're the governor of the largest state in the country. No, no, no. I saw your debate against DeSantis. You're good at this stuff. You know what I'm talking about? Prop 16 would have had legalized racial prejudice, and it got defeated by 16 points despite all the institutions. So you're asking me what did wokeism look like when California, when all the institutions, yourself included, with all due respect, embraced this insane ballot measure. Guess what? Even the people of California didn't want racial discrimination.

I remember California since 1996 has had Prop 209. So the Affirmative Action case came from the Supreme Court as well as institutions of higher learning had no impact on California. Actually, it's interesting. California also codified as a constitutional amendment, marriage between a man and a woman. And that was in 2000. So California runs an interesting contract trend.

I found it to be illuminating, though, that despite... I mean, there was really no opposition. It was like a couple of hundred Asian activists. I appreciate. But you asked the question, what did wokeism look like? Prop 16 in California that would have had legalized racial discrimination.

That was not a major... There was a broader national narrative.

I'm just bringing it home to you because there were hundreds of such ballot referendums, right? There was city council meetings where they said the white people aren't allowed here, That's not good. No, it's not good. That stuff. What ends up happening is a broader question of sensible, not racist suburban moms that are like, wait a second, I have a eight-year-old white son. Are you trying to say he's a racist? Yeah. And it creates a backlash that then bubbles up, right?

I appreciate the perspective. I appreciate not just the perspective. I totally appreciate what you just said as an explicit statement of fact to make an eight-year-old feel like they're racist. It's absurd and outrageous.

But governor, with all due respect, that's happening right now in California public schools. And I'm not trying to drill you on it. I'm just being honest. You could say that, but maybe you should convene a special session and say no more race-based teachers Reaching against white people in the schools of California or Asians. I'm just saying, though, that this is not a conjecture. It's not a hypothetical. It is embedded into the DNA of the Democrat Party. Yeah, okay.

I appreciate. The CRT stuff. Yes. I What's the difference? I was trying to find it. You think we have CRT in K-12 education?

You have the principles of it. I mean, of course, critical theory is like a PhD level course taught by Derek Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw. But the same way that you have advanced physics and the theories of physics in eighth grade, it's like saying you don't have the elements of it. But for example, it's very simple.

But at least that explains why, because I'm just trying to find it.

We know of over at least 50 schools in California that do things called privilege walks. Do you know what privilege walks are? What are privilege walks? Where they make kids walk ahead based on certain questions, and they try to make a point saying, well, see, the white people are ahead. They must have white privilege.

Okay, I get it. All right, I got to get back into the classroom. I got six million kids. You got to get your education. 1,050 school districts. It's the largest system.

You got a lot going on. I know that.

But no excuse because these things are important. And by the way, it's the reason we're having this conversation. This is very illuminating and helpful to me to understand the animus. What is it about that animus? I joke with people. I said, You guys don't like DEI, CRT, ESG, DOJ, FBI, IRS.

It's all the acronyms.

It's all the damn three-letter acronyms. What the hell is the issue? What's going on with all that?

You missed some.

Which ones? What's the others? What have I missed? Epa?

Of course,PA, the Employment Prevention Agency.

Okay. You're about to get that 65%. That's what Lee is calling for.

It's not just acronyms that we dislike, for the record, but it's what-It feels like that sometimes.

How about the book ban stuff on a serious note? 4,240 books or titles, libraries and schools were banned in 2023. Is that not as a conservative?

Well, it depends. I think we can both agree, pornography should not be taught to nine-year-olds. Fair point. Okay. So that's a book ban. All right.

Well, there are some other books. No, no, no.

That was the Mom's for Liberty contention. Time out. I agree on Bill O'Reilly. The Mom's for Liberty Movement that you made a big thing of was just no porn to 10-year-olds. We agree. Those books should be banned. So what we should do right now is every California school that has porn in their library should be kicked out. Does that include the Bible? Well, I wouldn't say the Song of Solomon is porn.

No, but I mean, some have made that point. Is that a fair point?

I don't think that's fair at all.

And as a man of faith, and I deeply admire that about you.

Thank you. Yes, but no, I mean, again, the Song of Solomon is rather risque. But what we're talking about in these books is not just the words, it's also the images. And again, your audience can look at the images themselves. It's highly graphic. But again,It seems a banning, binge.

At next level, cancel culture.

But why do you think moms are doing that? Do you think it's because they want to have mind control, or do you think that they have come across incident of incident of highly provocative material?

I love moms, but this mom I mean, we don't have to get into Moms for Liberty.

You brought up the book band, though.

Deeply organized for a larger agenda, but that's my humble opinion.

But let me just complete the point is that it's easy to call it a book fan. But when you actually have to read some of these books, it will take your breath away of some of this stuff. You're like, okay, we're teaching a 10-year-old how to put a condom on.

I just have a problem with who the hell is going to decide that government? I mean, Durán DeSanta is going to decide what I can read or say in the boardroom?

Hold on. This is the The exercise of politics, though. The exercise of politics is the highest form of community because it blends morality and sociability. So what we do is we have discussion and elections, and we have boards and commissions, right? And we, as a people, say, okay, no porn for 10-year-olds. That's politics, right? I'm not saying But we got a stress test where the Bible is including that.

I don't even want to go forward anymore on this. No, it's tough, but this becomes a dialectic.

I have heard a lot. I've never heard. That's interesting, though.

No, it's a provocative.

I don't need to offend.

Again, I deeply don't mean to offend. By the way, Father Kha's would be offended with me.

If you think the Bible is pornographic, we have a hole.

Most of these books are not pornographic. There's sections that can affect.

Of images that are very violated to young kids.

If When we would agree on that, I don't think 4,000 folks-But can I just say one other thing?

If you want to learn, governor, and I'm happy that there is a movement of moms that's growing, where they feel as if our kids are being hyper sexualized. And I agree with them, that they have to hear topics.

Social Well, both in the social media and the classroom.

In particular. Look, again, you signed a law where school districts can't even tell parents if their kids are trans. Not true. Okay, thenNo, they can.

They just can't get fired for not doing that. And it wasn't just trans.

They can't get fired for not doing it.

The law was explicit, said, you can't be fired for not snitching on a kid, not just for being trans, for being gay. My point is, how the hell are you telling But shouldn't the parents know?

They have every Is telling parents snitching?

No. The teachers themselves have the right... The law doesn't... They can do that. They can do that. We're not saying you can't do that. We're saying you shouldn't be fired if you choose not to say, Johnny was talking about liking some other boy.

That's a charitable reading. It's not charitable. It's actual. The freedom not to snitch. Let me tell you the other way to say this, that a teacher, of course, should be fired if you don't notify a parent of what's happening to their kid. Of course, they should be terminated for that.

I'm health and safety. Shouldn't they be teaching? I want these kids to teach. I want these teachers to teach. And by the way, they feel like the health or safety of the kid, they have a responsibility to communicate. They still can. By the way, we're not selling these teachers. They can't. We're saying they won't be fired if they don't look around and say in the recess, there were two boys. Why didn't you see that? You're fired. You should have said something because they're talking about-You're talking about two different things.

But there, of course, should be a penalty measure, whether it be termination or whatever, if a teacher withholds information from a parent. Because what you're saying is that there's no way to hold them accountable. You're saying- Accountable to what, though?

Accountable to two kids talking about the fact that talking about subject matter. All of a sudden, now we have to have teachers policing speech or conversations that kids are having.

I think you would even agree, governor. That is an over-extreme example. What we're talking about-No, but the extreme example. This was a solution in search of a problem. What we're talking about, which happens a lot, unfortunately, is if a young girl says that, Hey, I want to transition, and the teacher accommodates and affirms it, and the parent doesn't even know. I have met parents like that in the States.

I heard Trump, and then they come back, and they're a boy or something.

There's so much extreme work in this space. I will say, and we don't have to wrestle too much on this topic, but you guys will lose on these topics. You might disagree.

But I'm one of those guys, and, Charles, I appreciate, and I, by the way, appreciate the civility, which we're engaged in this conversation, sincerely. I don't mind losing. Sometimes you lose on principle. It's one of those things. Everything's not political, is the point. And sometimes the principle, and by the way, mad respect for you, abortion and same-sex marriage.

I hold you for the American people don't agree with me. Exactly.

But I admire that on principle. But for me, it's not just political, and I appreciate you making that point. I deeply am mindful of the politics of this, which are very unhelpful. Personally, it's unhelpful, more broadly, professionally, the Democratic Party and our brand. And one of the reasons, to your point, the Democratic Party brand has just been crushed.

Your self-awareness is helpful to know because it is deeply unpopular. And I think that That is an ascendant political force that is not going away.

No, I appreciate. But I also appreciate you hold deeply unpopular beliefs.

Of course I do. But you're not running for office. I'm not going to run for President as a moderate.

What are you running for office? I'm not running I saw a poll in Arizona that you were like one or two. You have the highest name ID and a favorability.

When are you running? Is that what this is all about? No, it's definitely not.

You're not even old enough to be President. You're only 31 years old. You're going to run against AOC.

I'm running for head of most popular TikToke. No, I'm not running for anything.

By the way, should we ban TikTok?

No, we shouldn't. I used to say that. And then I started this.

Why did you change your position?

Because it was politically interesting. It's really interesting. Or Trump told you to. Well, no, definitely not. I sent out a tweet, and I'm perfectly honest about this, I think you'd respect this, is that I was so mad at them because they would ban me all the time. And I sent out a tweet saying, Hey, if you guys are really for free speech as a creator, let's see it. Get a call from TikTok a couple of hours later. We're going to show you that we're for free speech. We're going to show you the power of the platform. And I saw real changes where our campus interactions went from being banned to now well over two and a half billion views on TikTok. And so I wouldn't say expedient, I'd say impact. And also, they now have changed some of their speech codes. They've changed some of their... Hey, enough where your son is. Your son finds my content somehow.

Look, I use TikTok. I wasn't out there trying to champion the band. I just love this conversion. It's a hell of a conversion.

Hey, I'm open about it. I appreciate.

Back to the Democratic Party. We talk about we're not aligned with them. They don't trust us. I think we have 31 favorability, 57 % on favorability.

I'm surprised it's that high, governor.

Thank you. 31 % favorability is not good enough. Back to just the basics. So you talked about wokeism, broadly defined. We talked about some specific examples of that. You began on the transport, which is interesting, and I respect and appreciate.

I want you to speak out against that one, governor.

I appreciate. Well, we just did with all of you. And by the way, I've been saying that. So interesting, it gets picked up, and that maybe goes to the question. We live in these filter bubbles. We're talking to ourselves. We're in these... It's Newsmax, One American News, Fox, and then it gets into all the stuff that you guys are doing and everybody else. And meanwhile, I'm safe over here at MSNBC and CNN, reading the New York Times, feeling really great about things and having a nice glass of Chardonnay, listening to Rachel Maddo, self-medicating and just going, yes, yes, yes.

At the French Laundry, of course.

Yeah, at the French. That's, of course, the only place I eat. You get me a table. It's a great takeout and the whole thing. Where I should have been at Applebee's. I get it. Applebee's America. I read the books.

Come on, man. In an out burger, be with the people.

Jesus Christ. Here's a guy that makes 25 times more money than I do. Sitting here with a jacket, and I'm sitting here with a senior T-shirt.

That's right. And you control the fifth largest economy on the planet.

We don't control. The people control the fifth largest economy. By the way, proud that you know it's a $3. 89 trillion economy.

With a declining population.

No, the population might not last year. You're holding on to it. The population went up last year.

Because of the illegal border. We'll talk about that later. I got a whole thing on that.

That's just factually and true in that respect.

290,000 net last year. By the way, 394 National Guard that I put down at the border six years ago.

You should be championing that as governor of California. 394, we have down at the border. We've been focused on Fentanyl.

I've been working on this. Anyway, you're getting somewhere complementary.

Yeah, I was.

Going back to-You're talking about your wine and then dying at French Laundry. Yes.

I was talking about the importance of never Well, I can't help you with the reservation.

I get such a kick out of this whole shtick. I got to be honest.

Jesus, very nice. By the way, we couldn't have this conversation with that conversation. Dumbest bonehead move my life, okay? Own it, move on, grow up. Is that you talking to yourself?

I'm tryingIs that you talking to yourself?

That's me talking to myself. I'm looking right at you in the eyes as I say that, just to get your reaction. That said, we're losing. I feel it's the asymmetry of Donald Trump and Elon Musk sending on tweets, are you doing social media, and then me doing a three-minute hit at three o'clock in the afternoon on CNN. I mean, how the hell will we compete? We're toast.

Well, I mean, And part of it, and credit to you for doing long-form podcasting, because long-form podcasting does penetrate different audiences, right? Our show does very well. But part of the problem of the Democrat Party, that for the health of the country would be great to change, is that Democrats cannot survive in long-form podcasting environments. Why? It's too unscripted. It's too masculine, honestly. And the Democrat Party's become too feminine.

What is masculine about a podcast? Honestly, because I get the whole manosphere.

To go into the wilderness with no rules and duel it out and see who's better or who's Strong. No, seriously. We don't do it.

You're right. For whatever reason, don't do it.

You can laugh, but who in the Democrat Party-We're not.

You're right.

Will go. I mean, maybe Bernie Sanders, but he only-RFK when he was a Democrat. Bobby, who's now HHS. But there's something to be said that if you want to earn the respect of forgotten America, you have to show them that you can intellectually joust with no script, no hard breaks, no producers in the ears, no teleprompters. That's where new media is going. Now, I'll I'm going to challenge one thing. You say, I am reaching new audiences. I'm not talking to my bubble because our content is so appealing. It goes in a decentralized way.

And it's not just political.

No, it's not political. But again, our conversation here is going to go far and wide. A lot of people are going to see it. A lot of people are going to consume it because it's also politics and entertainment have begun to overlap. And the old adage is, well, politics is downstream from culture. I think politics and culture are indecypherable from one another now. Donald Trump became a culture It's a cultural phenomenon. You go in to Inner City, Compton, you'll see guys with Trump shirts with the hand up, fight, fight, fight. So what Democrats are doing is you're still playing in a very old, hyper-sanitized media environment. And My advice is you got to go where it's unpredictable, where it's treacherous, where it's dangerous. Now, I would make a more provocative argument that you wouldn't necessarily resonate with, which is that you guys have not built the intellectual muscle over 30 years because you all agree with each other all the time.

Not like Conservatives are massively disagreeing at the moment.

Hold on.

Trump has completely collapsed the conservative movement.

I would push back a little bit. I would disagree. We have a robust discussion.

It seems like Congress is really doing great oversight of Trump right now. They're holding them to account.

That's an important but separate issue. I just want to finish the point, then we could talk about Congress, which is that in the Republican Party, we have immense and vocal and public spats all the time. I think you would agree. We fight about foreign politics. Look at Ukraine, right? We're talking about primary challenging some of these senators that were meeting Zelensky last week. The Democrat Party would never do that. Now, I think that is a symptom of an underlying thing. We're constantly trying to find the approximation of what truth is. We're trying to use dialog towards, Hey, who's right? What do you believe? Why do you believe it? And it's by no coincidence that out of the long-form podcasting genres, the top 10, eight of them are conservator or center-right. Rogan, Megan Kelly, Theo Vaughn, the Paul Brothers, our program, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh. There's a singular one on the left, which is Pod Save America, which is just like a bunch of Obama Bros agreeing with each other for 90 minutes and saying that we're not very smart. And And so anyway, but I appreciate.

No, but it's objective truth, right? I mean, you just dominate this medium. But it's interesting. You're making a deeper argument that we're not... You didn't say it again in in a malignant way, but that we're just not capable because we're not hardwired to be able to participate in this.

Well, I think that it's two things. Number one, your upbringing in college campuses does not foster debate like it used to. It just doesn't. It's that it's about silencing the critic and the elevation of the victim. So you do not have the practice of robust having to defend your position. It's very monolithic, it's very centralized, it's very top-down, it's quasi-authoritarian. Minoritarian. And then, secondly, I would just say that the philosophy on the worldview, as I mentioned earlier, that you guys have adopted, is that thou which is oppressed will get the most points. You guys don't have thou that has the best idea wins. And because of that, you guys have an elevation of, Hey, eventually, we're just going to have a small subset of a minoritarian hectoring hall monitor assistant principle vibe of people telling you that you're not allowed to say these words, and you can't say that. And we call that political correctness, which in and of itself is hyper-authoritarian. So if you seek to understand why young men are rebelling, it's like, no, I'm not going to go along with this anymore. For an example, maybe I'm going to send out a stupid tweet when I'm 17 years old.

When I'm 26, I shouldn't have to get fired because of that, right?

I would do that, 100 %. I've never liked this, Cantz Kall. I'm glad to hear you say that. I remember back when I was Lieutenant Governor, I think Bill Maher was trying to get on the UC campus or something. They were saying Bill Maher was too conservative voice, and we called that out at the time. It's But it's equally insane that people are boycotting bud light. How is that not called?

I don't drink. You don't drink at all? No.

By the way, that's interesting. You don't?

Never have? I have, yeah.

What happened? A couple of years ago, you stopped?

I stopped, yeah.

Why did you stop?

I just wanted to be more successful.

I love that. What were you drinking?

Napa Valley wine.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Here we go.

Are we going to get a little my Lord and savior in vain like that?

By the way, forgive me. I deeply respect. By the way, do respect your faith.

I'm serious. It's like the fourth time. No, I don't drink. But first of all, we have the agency to boycott whatever we want, but understandable.

But I mean, in that cancel culture in reverse. A lot of cancel culture on the right right now.

It's something completely different. First of all, cancel culture is someone in power using their power to cancel somebody that doesn't have power. That's cancel culture. Time out. Hold on. But Bud Light was people that don't have a lot of power, consumers using their agency to say, no, powerful Corporation, I'm not going to voluntarily associate with you. Cancel culture is There's always been the incumbent person with power, a governor, a principal, a boss, a CEO, a corporate board, going against the weaker. What we did with Bud Light was just a bunch of decentralized folks doing a good old fashioned boycott. Completely different. But a boycott is not I mean, there's boycotting speakers.

There's boycotting that is a derivative of cancel.

But the culmination of cancel culture is somebody who has a power position, wrongly canceling.

I appreciate that perspective. Let's go back to Democrats being totally incompetent, incapable of spending 30, let alone 45 to an hour having a conversation broadly on podcast.

I said you're becoming the exception.

You're in the process of becoming.

You're not there yet. It's like becoming Gavin, like becoming Michelle, right?

But are there Democrats? You do it. Forget it. Literally, any Democrats you admire out there right now? Even beyond just the podcast thing, that you look and say, Jesus, there's hope. Got to stop saying that. Forgive me. There's hope. We can edit that out.

No, I don't care. You can keep it in. I used to have respect for Bernie on his anti-war stance, and now he's a complete neocon. I was going to ask you about Bernie. He's a complete neocon now, so he's not there. Democrats, I respect. Were you Yeah, I mean, Bobby Kennedy, I respect. Tulsi Gabbard.

Why are you laughing?

Why are you smiling? Because they're on our team now because you guys kicked out your best people. It's like the people that were in. This is a great point, though, governor. It is. Is that Bobby Kennedy was a heterodox opinion on a thing that a lot of people were concerned about. Get him out. He's an anti-vaxxer. Tulsi Gabbard, who is an anti-war. Get her out. She's a Russian agent. You guys see how you have an unhealthy purification process, where eventually you're left with just a 31% approval rating and a bunch of people that are talking to each other. And meanwhile, we're the ones that have Democrats in our cabinet winning the electoral majority vote. Because there needs to be said, if Democrats are serious about being a majority party ever again, when somebody has a disagreement, for example, if there's a pro-life Democrat Is there a place for a pro-life Democrat in the Democrat Party?

No, I mean, there should be. Okay. On principle, there should be.

Absolutely. That's a big stuff.

That's a deeply held personal point of view.

God bless. I agree. Not every party or Democrat official would say that, right? And so certain states have different opinions on that.

And I say this is one of the biggest champions for reproductive freedom on the planet.

Trust me, I know. But the issue, though, is that that is a one-stop purity test. We have pro-choice Republicans.

That was a sister's soldier moment.

Susan Collins is a pro-choice Republican.

No, and Trump himself decided to pivot a little bit.

He's more pro-choiced than I am, for sure. But what I'm saying, though, is what you see in the Republican Party is the best, in my opinion, culmination of modern politics and doesn't get appreciated. Look at that ideological diversity. We have people that But, jeez, they want to go to war with every country that says something bad against us. And then we have people that are far more dovish, like Rand Paul. But that is a better, more, dare I say, diverse picture. You could say diversity is our strength.

Look at you. Look at Charlie Kirk, diversity is strength. I mean, I want to end the podcast right there.

But first-I said you could say. You could say.

Do we have ultimate editing here? I'm going to put that out.

No, you better not edit any of this for the rep.

We're not going to edit any of this. And by the way, no reason to edit any of this, despite my use of inappropriate words here and there. Let me ask you just on the Democratic Party side, forgive me. I do want to just look. Our effort to get out of the wilderness on the woke culture wars, on some of these issues, on providing a more diverse campus, dare I say, of opinion and pulling people in. But what else? Do you feel this party... You had a point that the Republican Party is now going to be the dominant incentive party.

I'm not saying that. I don't have that pride. I'm not saying right now we are the ascendant worldview, but we could screw this up easily. You have to have the humility to say that. But as of the recording of this podcast, we have a majority approval rating, won the electoral, all that stuff. Right.

And he both has it.

We could screw it up, and you guys could adjust or adapt.

This was the question that I'm not articulating very effectively. But I remember so many of the similar contours of this conversation we were having in 2004 and 2005. You just got Schalack, both houses at First, Republicans. You had a Republican President that won the popular vote, the last Republican President to win the popular vote. And two years later, you had Speaker Nancy Pelosa. Four years later, you had 53% of the vote, the highest since 19 what? I'm on 64.

It's conceivable that could happen I don't say that's impossible.

So if you were in my camp, what is that?

I'm not going to give you my best advice. I'll give you the B or C level advice.

Okay, give me the B plus advice.

Because the secret stuff, I'm not sharing.

No, What is your secret stuff? Why don't we go right to there? That's secret for-What is it? Is it technical or is it a substance?

I could design your presidential run in a way where you would win.

We're not talking about a presidential run. This is not about that.

No, no, no.

By the way, you guys are so obsessed with the idea that every goddamn thing I do. I said it again because I needed your emotional reaction. That everything I do is framed in that context. Talk about Trump derangement syndrome. I think you got one with California and me.

First of all, it's not new to have someone from California run for the presidency. We just beat someone from California presidency. California is to politics, to the Democrat Party, as Florida as our party. You guys have the former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, right? You have a lot of the ascendant political voices come out of the state. So it's not derangement syndrome. No, it's knowing your enemy and looking at the horizon and understanding what's coming. But anyway, if I were to give you or somebody advice, I'll give you the B and C level stuff, which is very simple. You have to go to war with your own party on three major things. You got to say, We are not going to do this illegal immigration thing anymore, which includes, are you going to work with ICE?

We do work with ICE. Okay, great. By the way, just so people can hear this. We have been. I, in fact, directly, we actually put out the I had a... I actually reached out to the administration saying, Are you not aware that California coordinates and cooperates with all CDCR releases over 10,000 since I've been governor?

That's great. Explain the sanctuary state thing then.

What is the difference? You got the statewide sanctuary state, and you got local sanctuary cities.

Which Governor Brown signed in, not you.

Yeah, which in the statewide framework allows us to work as it relates to issues of criminals and coordinating the release of criminals from our state prison system. We coordinate with ICE on the deportation. We've done that over 10,000 times since I've been governor. We're not denying access. We're not denying coordination for criminals.

That's why I asked.

For criminals.

Sanctuary policy was never-I would say if you break into the country illegally in eight USDC-13-25 is a breaking of federal law.

I get it. It's civil, not criminal.

But it is a federal law. I get it. By the way, if you're serious about moderating the party, 8USC 325, vast majority Americans-So we got that. Let me just go through. No, no. The vast majority Americans want mass deportations. It's just the thing.

Until they don't. Well, okay. That's my humble opinion until they don't.

Okay.

Someone has been here 10 years paying taxes. I don't buy it.

But at the moment, you're right. You might be right. The number is buried up. We'll see. Number two, we mentioned the trans stuff. It's in a front of all of our senses. It's out of control. You But you don't believe in it fundamentally.

It's not just sports. It's not stuff.

You just don't. Charlie Kirk's views are separate than the political advice I'm getting.

But if you'd like me to do a whole Charlie Kirk ask me anything, and you could show up to Cal State, North Carolina.

I've got 25 TikToks of what your feelings are.

Actually, that was a question I didn't need to ask.

If you want it, it's fine. I just don't think that's the best use of our time. But on the political advice is that Americans increasingly believe that their good-heartedness and charitable nature towards the LGBT issue has on overblown, especially with youth sports, youth curriculum, and the chemical castration of our kids when it comes to this medical therapy. And you seem that you want to really... I encourage you, governor, to learn about some of the butchery under the guise of health care that is happening under chemical castration in this state and in other states. We don't spend a lot of time on that, but the American people are overwhelmingly against it. They're overwhelmingly against it.

I think we have to be more sensitized to that.

Youth should be off limits. I think that's the political direction things are going. You might be right on deportations. I know I'm right on this. I know that this issue is picking up steam. There is no good counter to it. The cast report, the United Kingdom cast report, the NHS came out and said, there's no good reason to ever operate surgically on a young person. Puberty is not the problem. Puberty is the I think I encourage-I'm not an expert in this, but I appreciate your brother. But I'm saying politically, it's a turbo-charged issue that is kicking the tail of Democrats. The third one, though, is quality of life. I agree with you on this one, especially. But look, I know you do.

No, but homeless and temp and encampment is out of control. Unacceptable. Yes. Issues have just quadruped.

You know where I'm going with this? Why is it you were able to clean it up for Xi Jinping? You can't clean it up.

That was the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. By the way, you guys weaponized that. I saw them on 25 things. It was almost ridiculous. You know what? I will happily revert back to your counterpoint, weaponized.

Can I have the streets as clean as Xi Jinping?

In this case, weaponized.

In this case, weaponized. Can I get the Xi Jinping streets back? It was ridiculous. Give me a break. No, but, Governor, all due respect. I saw a It's a beautiful picture of San Francisco that looked like Singapore. And then Gigi Ping leaves and the Walking Dead comes back.

By the way, it was APAC. You had dozens and dozens of foreign leaders. And California is not San Francisco, but I'm the governor of California, not the mayor of California, not the mayor of San Francisco.

You were the mayor, but I just I understand. Why is it that we have to clean it up? But you have to admit, it's emblematic of something that if enough important people show up, it can get cleaned. So why not make it clean all the time?

That's exactly my... By the way, that's my energy. I think you missed a lot of my press conferences. I've been saying that to all these mayors. State vision is realized at the local level, it's about accountability, transparency. If you can't clean up the streets, we're going to redirect the money.

I hope the new mayor can do that. He seems to be more modern than the other.

Great progress is being made. By the way, what's going on with homelessness in all these red states? You're seeing it through the route, went up 18% across the country.

I'm not here defending every red state of what we're doing.

But I'm making the point.

This is hardly unique to California. I'm sure there's a lot of governors and mayors. So quality life is huge, right? And then look, the number one thing, which I know you're going to agree with, and I'm sure you'll have a super slick response, right? That's about half true. Which is the cost of housing. Average home in California, 850,000 bucks.

I like what you said about Black Rock.

But that was interesting to me. I think that is. But again, that's not a majority of house purchasing. About one and four houses are bought by private equity. Would you agree to say that Black Rock should not be able to own homes in California?

I think, and then turning around and renting them. It's insane, right? This is a huge problem across the country.

You should propose a bill in the California Statehouse.

We've had one. It didn't get very far last year, and there's more conversations.

A $10 trillion fund shouldn't be able to come in and buy homes.

But it's not just Black Rock, specifically.

It's the idea of mass asset managers that have $50 billion asset under management are now competing against our college grad from Cal State, Fullerton.

I love that you say this. By the way, just in that spirit, don't you agree one of the DOGE things should be dealing with the one and a half billion of subsidies on carried interest?

Oh, I carried interest. I think it's a huge problem. And by the way, President Trump has proposed in his tax bill to get rid of-I know he proposes it all the time, but in actually-Oh, I mean, Joe I didn't get rid of carried interest. That is the Holy grail of private equity. You know that, right? Carried interest. I get it.

But let's go back to housing.

By the way, you're going to have a revolt in Palo Alto if you get rid of carried interest. They're going to light torches It's like run to Sacramento.

On the issue of housing, you couldn't be more right. It's the original sin in the state of California, affordability, period, full stop. And it has more impact on the issue of homelessness than any other issue because of the cost of living. By the way, we had 188 8,000 people in 2005, 20 years ago on the streets and homeless and our point in time count. So this is hardly unique to modern California.

But help me understand, no.

But it's been a long term issue. And housing is at the core.

We agree on the problem, but help me understand this. You guys control the house, the Senate with super majorities. You control everything. Why can't you fix it? You said you're going to build three and a half million homes. You're building like 111,000 a year.

There was something called a pandemic that may have had a little impact. Is Issues of interest rates may have had a little impact on housing production across the country.

You guys are still outpacing every other state. But hold on.

We've done 42 secret reform bills, created a housing accountability unit. How does it work? And we're making big progress. We've done all the rezoning. I don't see any of it. We've been pounding in this space. There's no administration in modern California history that's done more to reform the housing space and the regulatory space as it relates to the issue of housing. The biggest challenge right now is nimbyism. The biggest challenge we have is local planning and zoning, and that's why we've been very aggressive.

Nimbi is a disaster. We agree on that.

I have a Yimby mindset on all this stuff. I'm in the front lines of this. They are your friends down in Hunting Beach that I'm suing. Which ones?

Pastors or the city council?

The whole day. They love you.

The You're 99.

9 %.

Who's living who in rent free in who's head? Is that one of those small of your towns?

We're suing them because of their rank nimbiism. We have been very aggressive in this space. I'm waiting for one big thing we all are waiting for, and I think it had perhaps one of the biggest impacts that we don't focus on enough in the last election. That was interest rates. As interest rates, that environment-I believe they will come down. And you're going to see an explosion of housing production. I'm very confident in that in California.

Yeah, but you also might see an increase in housing prices, of course.

Well, to me, it's all about supply, right?

Econ 101, supply to-Yeah, it's just the biggest issue. It's been our biggest-California and Hawaii have the two highest housing prices in the country. Hawaii has an obvious excuse. They only have so much land. You guys don't have a lack of land.

By the way, I haven't been governor for a century, okay? I mean, Jesus.

Iit's been six years.

And by the way, no excuse. I get it.

You can't take credit for all the assets, number one AI, number one nanotechnology. But you also got to take responsibility for some of the problems.

I can take a little more credit on the general AI, 32 of the top 50 market company.

But I'm saying you have to balance both the credit and the blame. But quality of life. When I talk to a college kid, one of the reasons they saw Trump as a vessel for a better life is that under President Trump, those first four years, we saw a material increase in their livelihood, wages, easier to buy a home, four years. Four years, just the facts are, the average wage to be able to own a home in LA, to be able to own a home. Yeah, insane. It used to be $75,000 a year. Now it's $145,000 a year. What it does, and this is, again, it's creating this belief system of Russian serfs of a generation that will never have the material American dream that their parents once enjoyed.

Look, I think it's a full circle on this conversation where you began by identifying-We'll circle back. No, but it's a point. The point you're making, Scott Galloway and others have been making as it relates to this generational theft. He's spot on on this, and I think there's so much validity to-And you recognizing that problem. So diagnosis is one thing.

And President Trump as well.

He deserves credit.

I'm going to get you to say the words.

By the way, I just spent almost 90 minutes with him in the oval office a couple of weeks ago. Isn't he the greatest? And I think he was the first Democrat invited in, and Trump 2. 0.

You got to admit, there's something magical that guy. Joe Biden couldn't do five minutes with you.

By the way, I did almost 90 minutes with Biden right before he left in the oval. Did he remember? By the way, that'd be a hell of a book. 180 minutes. I should do a book of that bookmark. Was he sent to? By the way, he 100 % was. Oh, come on, governor. Just a fact. Do you think there was any mental?

No, seriously, you went around the country being like, I'll take him at 100. There was one exception.

Just the one debate? No, before the debate, I was about to say, and that was the big fundraiser down in LA where I saw a different person.

The Clooney? And Clooney called that out.

Jack Black, right?

That was the one.

But so much of that focus was, all right, he just got back from Europe. But that was the one time we don't need to get it.

But I just say, governor, just on that one topic, we saw with our own eyes for three years, and the media told us, no, he's perfectly fine. And then we saw the debate, and Look, it makes us not trust our leaders when we say everyone is perfectly fine. The Emperor is fine.

Have you seen any mental decline in Donald Trump?

I see that more sharp acuity. You tell me you sat with him in the oval office for 90 minutes. The guy has a memory of an elephant.

I'm asking. I know. I'm just asking your personal impression.

No, of course not.

How often do you talk to Trump, by the way?

Once or twice a week.

Is he checking for advice or is it you get him advice?

A little bit of both. It depends if there's something I want to talk to him about. But he's just a machine. He'll take every call. You got to give him credit for that. Isn't it amazing? Every call thing's big, right? It's amazing. And he'll listen to every idea. He'll joust it out. He'll talk about it. He always goes back to what did I promise the voters.

What was the last idea you gave him?

The last idea I gave him.

Mr. President, here's what you need, or here's the thought.

Here's my observation. Actually, it was interesting. I said, I don't think Canada should be the 51st state. We already have California, and we have enough libs in our country.

Jesus, on that, Charlie Kirk.

Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain.

No, on that, I just want to thank you.

This is Gavin Newsom.

This has been Gavin Newsom.

This was fun. Thanks, man.