00:02:22.960Literally so bizarre to see people calling Matt B an effing Russian bot in this thread as a regular watcher, lol.
00:02:30.960Sonny790, if you're listening to this, wherever you are, thank you.
00:02:36.100Josh Sorbet, a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Democrats, said that my tweet was, quote,
00:02:41.800one of the dumbest things he's read this week and attached a statistic showing that LGBTQ people0.68
00:02:47.900did mostly vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, which is nice. But that's not really responding to what0.94
00:02:56.260I was saying about her campaign, abandoning trans people. We'll get to that. Many people
00:03:00.980pointed out to me that, did I know Gavin Newsom supported gay marriage in 2004 before it was cool?
00:03:06.620it was a long day but we are so back today i want to talk about gavin newsom clearly he's someone
00:03:14.060we're gonna have to deal with for a little while whether we like it or not i want to do something
00:03:18.140i probably need a xanax for which is talk about democrats and elections and assess the state of
00:03:25.420our democracy if two and a half years before the next election it makes me a russian op to criticize
00:03:33.140an apparently preordained establishment Democrat who isn't even running yet.
00:03:38.640To do that with me, I am so excited to be joined by two friends of the show.
00:03:44.520First of all, Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report. Welcome back.
00:03:48.280Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to be with you, my friend.
00:03:51.540And Kat Black, veteran YouTuber. Welcome back to the show.
00:03:56.740Thank you for having me. I'm hella happy to be here.
00:03:59.920Kat, I'm so excited that you're here because I adore you, but also because I know, based on what happened to me on Twitter last week, that if I didn't get a Californian on this episode, people were going to be like, oh, but you're not in California. You don't know how great Gavin Newsom has actually been.
00:04:15.860Yeah, I don't know very many people who like him personally, but maybe that's my circle, you know.
00:04:20.660I mean, is he even really running California right now? It seems like he's mostly focused
00:04:26.640on podcasting, which, hey, that's our bread and butter.
00:04:31.180Yep. But we also don't have states to run, in fairness.
00:04:35.160I am so excited for the three of us to be here together, because despite occupying
00:04:39.480pretty different spaces online, kind of, I know there's going to be a specific portion
00:04:44.480of listeners of this episode who are like, wow, I'm a mad cat. But I know one thing that
00:04:50.140all three of us have in common is that we have been shitted on for criticizing this man. So I0.56
00:04:57.280want each of you to just give me your high level overview of how you're feeling on this topic.
00:05:01.280We're kind of seeing right now this effort to manufacture consent for Gavin Newsom being the
00:05:08.100best option possible for the Democratic Party right now. And he is engaging in much of the
00:05:15.460same playbook that was part of what the losing kamala harris campaign engaged in which is a
00:05:22.360move to the center to the right throwing certain marginalized people under the bus and not
00:05:29.360addressing fundamental questions of class and incoming wealth inequality which are the very
00:05:35.500factors that have led us to this moment of fascism yeah i mean to me gavin newsom is like
00:05:41.300obviously not a good choice and i and i feel a little crazy honestly because i've been talking
00:05:46.360about stuff like this for so long and to me gavin newsom like you know the glamour photo shoot that
00:05:52.760he does like tearing down homeless encampments like the way that he's speaking about the trans
00:05:58.760community to me personally it obviously makes him a bad choice not wanting to tax billionaires like
00:06:06.180I don't understand why people are trying to make us choose him right now as the candidate, because I think he would be the most obviously losing candidate. But maybe that's my bubble.
00:06:19.040I don't think it's your bubble. I think that it's one of the many tactics that we've seen as we're seeing an upswell of Democrats who vote in primaries, holding these candidates accountable for corporate money that they're taking, for Zionist money that they're taking, for crypto money that they're taking, for enabling Donald Trump.
00:06:39.740We have seen a very well financed effort. And it's funny you mentioned Ezra Klein earlier, Matt, it's the abundance movement, which is this very top down effort to make sure that the conversation around what is possible under a Democratic administration is extremely limited in scope and is largely about cutting regulations and red tape for more private housing.
00:07:05.060I mean, that's what they say their grand vision is. And it's funded by Reid Hoffman and other big donors in the Democratic Party. They're trying to make this a thing by advertising it as such. And I would say Gavin Newsom and the effort to elevate him preemptively and lock him in as the 2028 nominee is another example of top down efforts by Democrats to create a reality on the ground that is not actually organically occurring.
00:07:31.700And I wish they would listen. I really do.
00:07:34.520I want to start off that CNN clip, and I want to get into what he's trying to say there. So let's watch it.
00:07:40.860No doubt that the Democratic Party needs to be, dare I say, more culturally normal. I believe that.
00:07:48.340Less prone to spending a disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity, politics.
00:07:55.520more focused on tabletop issues things that really matter the stacking of stress
00:08:00.140in terms of electricity bills and child care costs and health care and obviously housing costs
00:08:04.620there's a lot to discuss here and this is not nearly the point of anything but tabletop issues
00:08:12.360oh my gosh tabletop issues what are we talking about their kitchen table issues it's this
00:08:20.280tabletop issues he's thinking about my i need in my second home my marble countertop
00:08:29.220my marble tabletop renovate tabletop tabletop tabletop oh right i'm supposed to be appealing
00:08:35.320to people on like a broad affordability issues and i if you want me to just go off i'll just
00:08:40.980go off here matt that is very much what the medium of podcasting is for okay so tabletop
00:08:48.880issues aside, when he talks about being culturally normal and speaking about pronouns, he is calling
00:08:57.160queer people, calling non-binary people, calling trans people not culturally normal. Now, he would0.93
00:09:03.080try to split that difference and say, look, I was an early supporter of marriage equality in
00:09:08.760California. That's what he hangs his hat on. We know that trans people's rights and gay people's
00:09:15.580rights are indelibly linked when they come for trans people. It's a matter of time before they0.97
00:09:20.700come for gay people more broadly. So that is a distinction that he should not be able to get
00:09:26.160away with. But what is so frustrating is seeing how Zoran Mamdani's message of affordability is
00:09:35.360being co-opted by Democrats who have no interest in addressing it outside of saying the word
00:09:41.700affordability. Now, Bernie Sanders in 2016 was speaking about class and billionaires. And the
00:09:48.500Democratic Party at the time called him a sexist and a misogynist and said that it was a real
00:09:54.720problem that he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and all that came with it. Now we have to appeal to
00:10:01.520young men. But within the context of affordability, Newsom isn't offering anything. In fact, he
00:10:07.320opposes the billionaire tax. So there's now this like belated understanding that, yeah, it turns
00:10:13.540out people wanted the Democrats not to just talk about certain cultural issues to avoid the issue
00:10:18.840of class. Oh, we have to be talking about the economy or not class, but affordability as Zoran
00:10:24.200Mamdani did. But without any proposal, without any of the policy that would address affordability
00:10:30.660so that he thinks you can just say the word and that is sufficient while throwing trans people
00:10:37.760under the bus. Theories about like political change involve building the broadest coalition
00:10:44.020possible. And the easiest way to do that is to say we're the 99% versus the 1% and we're going
00:10:50.880to tax billionaires to make your life better. But for Democrats that are involved in a very
00:10:56.600lucrative part of the party embedded in a consultant class with a lot of big money donors,
00:11:01.880they are tasked with avoiding that very conversation. And what that results in is saying
00:11:07.400this marginalized group has to go, Palestinians, Arab Americans have to go, perhaps the Black Lives
00:11:13.320Matter movement was too divisive, trans people, what have you. And we are done with that because
00:11:19.060fundamentally, billionaires and the power that they've accrued financially have become a threat
00:11:23.700to democracy and enablers of fascism. So it's not just fairness and equality and getting the
00:11:29.280economy to work for people. It's also an existential threat right now to the very
00:11:33.720nature of life in America. Yeah, it's, you know, we got to spend less time talking about trans0.93
00:11:40.120people. We need to sideline trans issues for tabletop issues like wealth inequality and also0.95
00:11:47.840not do anything about that. Like, what are you offering? Anyway, Kat, your turn.0.97
00:11:52.440I mean, so here's the thing. It's a distraction. And unfortunately, what they're banking on is that enough people will be ignorant about trans people that they will vote for them out of fear. Right. And frankly, this is something that I have navigated around my entire life. Right.
00:12:11.120um this is something that is a big reason why i'm a full-time youtuber do you know why
00:12:16.580because back before um there were legal protections for trans people against discrimination
00:12:23.660it was one of the only things i could do right i've been a youtuber since you know 2005 trans
00:12:29.620people are offered are being offered up right now as a scapegoat and unfortunately i think
00:12:35.080if for some people it's going to work all they have to do is talk about um you know trans people
00:12:40.320being in sports with, with, you know, with women and things. And it's like, that's a
00:12:45.240incredibly small group of people, but there's a lot of people who are propagandized against
00:12:51.060trans people. And these Democrats are really, they're banking on those people. And you see,
00:12:56.800this is a great demonstration of like the problem with liberals. I mean, it's one of the many,
00:13:01.080he is entertaining the right wing premise of this issue. Pronouns. Look, I'm in a lot of like
00:13:07.420legitimate spaces where weirdos exist. Pronouns aren't even a big deal there, right?
00:13:12.900No one is like hyper fixating on pronouns. But really what's happening is people are assessing
00:13:21.140that the civil rights protections that have existed for trans people only very recently
00:13:26.320may go away. And so there are some of us who are trying to fight to protect those things, right?
00:13:31.660But people are treating that fight as like this unnecessary thing where from where I'm sitting, historically, when we've seen stuff like this happen where, you know, stigmas created against a group of people and then their rights are starting to see a way.
00:13:47.020It's a clear path line to genocide and people need to recognize that they're not going to stop with trans people.
00:13:54.440They're going to justify the premise of it using trans people because everyone can agree that, you know, the trannies are weird or whatever.1.00
00:14:01.660But they're not going to stop there. And that's kind of why I am so frustrated with people embracing Gavin Newsom and saying that we need to vote for him and then yelling at me for not wanting to.
00:14:13.480Because when I hear Gavin Newsom say that, what I'm hearing is that when it is time for them to decide whether or not they're going to go through with their plans, there are a lot of Republicans right now talking about how they do want to genocide trans people.0.59
00:14:30.280how you know certain mass shootings are evidence for why trans people should be rounded up put in
00:14:36.500asylums and roundly exterminated right it's a a real serious thing i've been trying to talk about
00:14:42.820it for a really long time before we got on the show i was talking about how i've been disconnecting
00:14:48.000a little bit and enjoying you know my creative side and a lot of that has to do with the fact
00:14:54.120that I kind of feel a little bit like they may be successful. And I need to kind of enjoy what I
00:15:00.780have and disconnect and stop fighting as much as I historically have. So I get what people say when
00:15:06.840they say, you know, harm reduction and yada, yada, yada. But we've actually had plenty of examples of
00:15:11.960this now. Has the harm been really reduced? I'm not entirely sure. You know, so sorry, that was
00:15:19.640my reaction. No, it's entirely valid. And we will get into this, I'm sure. But I also am deeply,
00:15:28.740deeply skeptical about the electoral benefits of throwing trans people under the bus, even when
00:15:34.120the issue polls in a certain way. You can't take polling in a vacuum. Certain people vote on
00:15:40.380certain issues and are motivated to go out to vote based on issues of whether it's the economy
00:15:45.200or immigration, but trans issues, even if it polls negatively in terms of people's rights,
00:15:50.380it's not really motivating independents or anybody except an anti-trans bigot to go out and vote.
00:15:57.020This is something I've been thinking about a lot because whenever you say like,
00:16:00.680I'm not going to vote for someone who throws trans people under the bus. And that's just0.99
00:16:03.440one group of people, by the way. We're going to talk about Gavin Newsom's record on LGBTQ rights.
00:16:07.300We're also going to talk about his position on Israel, which is dizzyingly untethered,
00:16:13.040shall we say. But people will say, oh, well, you're purity testing. Yeah, it sucks because
00:16:18.500you can't get a politician who says everything you want, but this is what we have to do to win.
00:16:24.940First of all, is it? These are the Democrats that the DNC has run for the presidential nominee for
00:16:30.420the past several elections. This was Kamala, this was Biden, this was Hillary. I find it morally
00:16:36.280unethical, but I also find it strategically stupid. Who is this voter in 2028 that you're0.99
00:16:43.320trying to win over who isn't already voting for Trump and whose holdout on voting Democrat is
00:16:48.620the 10 trans athletes? Like, is that a significant voting block that like Ezra Klein would like for
00:16:55.140us to believe that this is like who we have to cater elections to? So this is a voter that really
00:17:01.480does not exist. But you have had, since 2016, Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party have
00:17:08.460reoriented their strategy to try to appeal to this voter. You can look this up. I repeat this
00:17:16.300all the time. But Chuck Schumer was quoted in 2016 saying, for every blue collar worker that
00:17:22.840we lose in rural XYZ area, we're going to gain two in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And this was
00:17:30.740about pursuing affluent suburbanites who may have voted Republican in the past and are very likely
00:17:38.560voters, but not necessarily the working class base that Democrats had traditionally kind of had the
00:17:45.120corner on in past election cycles. And this is because they wanted to micro target specific
00:17:51.200voters. And this is motivated by donors in swing states and not do this like broad based coalition
00:17:57.680of people coming together, volunteers, motivated to tax billionaires, but this specific pet
00:18:04.880constituency that has narrowed the Democratic coalition to such a degree that they keep losing
00:18:10.240elections. This fixation on trans people is also a part of that. It's about this small sliver of
00:18:17.800voters who they hope can turn out for Democrats, but don't really threaten the power structures
00:18:23.700here and also keep getting consultants rich because you can micro-target them with ads as
00:18:27.860opposed to having a volunteer base of door knockers and things like that, the more Bernie-style
00:18:33.160grassroots politics. So this is about going for that specific voter base, but it's shown that it
00:18:40.500has caused electoral failures for the Democrats more broadly across the country because their
00:18:46.020message is so narrow and so muddled that it has no broad efficacy and doesn't turn out voters.
00:18:52.180So you look at trans issues. Yes, you'll see that, say, a majority of voters in this poll don't think that trans women should participate in sports. But the question is, do people go out and vote in mass on that issue?
00:19:06.080And the answer is no. In the same way that gun control polls extremely well for the Democrats, I mean, something like universal background checks is a 90 percent issue. Well, if polling was all that determined how Democrats should run their campaigns, then that should be the top line on every single Democratic Party platform.
00:19:25.160Why is it not? Because it's not a motivating issue, even if it polls in their favor. The people that are motivated to vote on gun control are the crazies that want no regulations, and they're the ones that are already voting Republican. And you can see that related to the trans issue as well and how Democrats have approached it.
00:19:44.220Now, you'll get pushback from Democratic Party consultants, because when you look at the testing for the ads in 2024, the one that was most effective in focus groups was the Kamala is for they them ad burned into the back of my brain.
00:20:01.660A year later in Virginia, they tried this exact same playbook because they took that same data and said, well, transphobia was so electorally beneficial for us.
00:20:10.980Why don't we run on this in Virginia? Why don't we triple, quadruple down?
00:20:14.800And the Republican in that race lost to Abigail Spanberger when she ran just on transphobia, this Republican, by historic margins.
00:20:22.740It is incredibly unstrategic. And like, I think this is amoral. But even if you are, you know, I see online a lot of cisgender gay people who think that the right wing attack on trans people won't reach their doorstep.
00:20:36.120Ken Paxton is making a very threatening run right now for Texas Senate.
00:20:43.200Ken Paxton very openly wants to bring back sodomy laws that make consensual gay sex illegal laws that were struck down in 2003.
00:20:52.680There is, and I want everyone to Google this right now, there is an extraordinarily well-funded, up-and-coming anti-gay marriage movement called Greater Than.
00:21:04.180I don't know if you guys have seen this.
00:21:05.640I cannot believe that the mainstream right-wing voices, including Lila Rose, the anti-abortion activist who is good friends with Gwen Stefani, is one of the faces of this movement.0.52
00:21:18.200It's saying children's needs are greater than your desire to get gay married.0.65
00:21:22.800And their whole thing is like gay parents can't provide a stable future for children, etc., etc.0.83
00:21:27.320It's all of the old arguments from 10, 20, 30 years ago.0.82
00:21:30.540But they are absolutely coming for gay marriage.0.98
00:21:33.000And so I just think that when you continue to run these candidates who are willing to concede inch by inch by inch, and they don't even fucking win.0.97
00:21:41.740Well, now we have fascists who have made it so all of, you know, all of these other people are on the chopping block, just in case you don't even care about trans people.0.98
00:24:31.680Would you still advocate for using taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgeries?
00:24:35.760follow the law just as i think so trump would say he did so not only taking basically no stance
00:24:43.140i'll follow the law you would be the president but also saying she's almost being like actually
00:24:48.520trump was the trans friendly one i'm not trans i'm not trans friendly i'm not promising gender
00:24:53.040affirming care that was trump blame him this was also the strategy on immigration yes when they
00:24:59.120felt that they had some sort of disadvantage when looking at the polling, as opposed to
00:25:05.860understanding that you can affect polling by using the bully pulpit. I mean, Trump has done that with
00:25:10.260immigration over and over again. He transformed the immigration debate almost single-handedly,
00:25:15.080fascistically in this country, since coming down that escalator and speaking about how0.94
00:25:19.360Mexicans are rapists and criminals, and some are, I assume, good people. From that point on,0.99
00:25:25.300the Republican immigration debate was indelibly changed. The Democrats like Kamala Harris and
00:25:31.340the consultants that ran that campaign look at issues like that and they sprint away from it
00:25:36.280and they try to outflank the Republican from the right. But if somebody is motivated by the issue
00:25:42.100of immigration, if somebody is purely motivated by the issue of transphobia, they are already
00:25:47.140voting Republican. You are not gaining any votes by acting like the diet version of that. And it
00:25:55.280also creates a credibility problem for you, because it makes it seem like you're obviously
00:25:59.920lying when you're trying to say that Trump is the real person giving away your taxpayer dollars to
00:26:05.680trans people. No one's believing that. That's why that question is being asked of you. It's because
00:26:10.280they think it's a liability for you. And so what a left-wing candidate, as opposed to a liberal
00:26:16.120candidate like Kamala Harris, would say, would be, say Zoran Mamdani was in that position. He would
00:26:22.220say, I believe in a single payer universal healthcare system that cuts out the rapacious
00:26:27.960middlemen of insurance companies that are constantly gouging you. And healthcare should
00:26:33.320be a right for everybody. And that includes you and your family. Are your healthcare costs too
00:26:38.920high? Well, I want to change that with Medicare for all. But that also is going to include people
00:26:43.640who are in prison, because trans care is healthcare, and they have a right to healthcare
00:26:47.880But you know what you have? You have a right to not go bankrupt for cancer treatment, or you have a right to not have to pay X, Y, and Z for your prescription drugs. And that's why I'm going to change that. Do you see how that immediately neutralizes that argument? But she's incapable of making that case because this is a consultant focused campaign focused on appealing to suburban Republicans, the most narrow, narrow part of the electorate possible. And it's damaged the Democratic Party, perhaps indelibly.
00:27:16.420Amen to that. I think a lot of people have to understand that health care for trans people, it is our life or death. And I think a lot of times when people put trans people in these scenarios, they are kind of aware of that.
00:27:30.600There is this thing that happens within prisons where trans women are housed with male inmates and sort of presented as like a way to calm down violent offenders. It's called V coding, right?
00:27:43.160Trans women who are imprisoned experience a lot of abuse, a lot of assault. And people are really
00:27:51.080just trying to have these conversations to create even more stigma against trans people who need
00:27:57.100access to care. Trans folks from the people that I've known in my life who do medically transition
00:28:02.240often have to undergo immense debt just to gain access to the care that they need to keep
00:28:08.260themselves alive. That's a problem. That's a problem, not just for trans people, but for a
00:28:13.580lot of us. I was very disappointed by what she said in that interview. And I know that, you know,
00:28:19.900right now, Kansas just closed down one of the only places where trans people in Kansas could
00:28:26.720get care. That may not seem like something that matters to people, but for a lot of trans people
00:28:33.860in Kansas that on top of the shit that just happened with their ID that is going to be their0.96
00:28:38.600life or death and and this is a strategy that Kamala did that is being replicated by Gavin Newsom0.98
00:28:45.900but you know what like Emma like you gave that perfect rhetorical answer of like okay well here's
00:28:52.920what you could say and always bring it back to affordability without selling anybody down the
00:28:56.800river which is exactly what Zoran Mamdani did but Gavin Newsom can't do that because he's in the
00:29:01.280pocket of billionaires anyway when i tweeted that kamala harris had had sold trans people down the
00:29:08.020river i think just because trump during that election cycle talked endlessly as if kamala
00:29:14.800was obsessed with trans people that that's just sort of what is in people's cultural memory it's
00:29:20.700like oh she would never shut up about pronouns never talked about pronouns a single time someone
00:29:26.340quote tweeted my quote to the tune of 12 000 likes kamala's entire campaign was gay this
00:29:34.680this is a work of trumpian fiction it is it is insane to me that what gavin newsom thinks he
00:29:41.480has to do now to win is talk about trans people even less than kamala did which is to say not at
00:29:47.360all i would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to the american humanist
00:29:55.420Association for sponsoring this episode. I was so grateful when the AHA reached out about
00:30:02.120sponsoring this podcast because their values organically align so well with my own, and if
00:30:08.460you're a frequent listener of this show, they'll probably line up with yours too. Humanism is about
00:30:13.940living ethically, fundamentally caring about people, and making decisions based on evidence
00:30:20.880instead of dogma. On a material and legal level, it means enacting laws that center our lived
00:30:28.020humanity, not religion. The AHA is a wonderful organization that is on the ground working to
00:30:34.540keep separate church and state. Like recently, the American Humanist Association got involved
00:30:40.780in a case where Virginia had allotted $5 million in taxpayer funds to go towards private religious
00:30:49.240charter schools in Ohio. The AHA challenged that funding through a legal system and it was ruled
00:30:56.000unconstitutional, preventing that taxpayer money from going towards religious education. I believe
00:31:01.860strongly that the laws that govern all of us should center our humanity and our reality and
00:31:09.100not certain people's religious practices. And the American Humanist Association does the work to
00:31:14.160make that possible. If that resonates with you, consider checking them out at humanist.org
00:31:19.480slash fruity. That is humanist.org slash fruity. You can learn more about what they do. You can
00:31:26.060support them if you're able to. And just check them out. Great organization. Now, let's get back
00:31:32.460to the show. I want to talk more about Gavin Newsom's record on LGBTQ issues and how he arrived
00:31:40.840here. First, I want to establish a little bit of his backstory so people who don't live in
00:31:46.760California can feel included. Because I think there are some important consistencies throughout
00:31:52.400his life. One being access to money. So Gavin Newsom is born in 1967 in San Francisco. He has
00:32:01.400many notable people in his family. The Newsom family has its own Wikipedia, which I'm like,
00:32:06.960when your last name has a Wikipedia page, like that's serious. His dad was an attorney for Getty
00:32:13.500Oil and an administrator for the Getty Family Trust, which the Gettys of Getty Oil and the
00:32:20.380Getty Museum, et cetera, et cetera, billionaires, were close family friends with Gavin's family.
00:32:25.420Do you know this background? A little bit. Yes, I did know that he came from money,
00:32:30.720but that he grew up primarily with his mother who didn't come from money.
00:32:34.980Exactly. His parents divorced early. Gavin was mostly raised by his mom, who didn't have money, who worked multiple jobs. This is from his Wikipedia page, quote, Newsome wrote in a later memoir that the family would receive luxurious gifts from the Gettys, which he and his sister pretended not to like so their mother could return them for store credit.
00:32:56.060gavin newsome struggled in school which he attributes to his dyslexia to this day he says
00:33:05.740he prefers memorizing a speech over relying on a teleprompter which fair enough ultimately he
00:33:11.220graduated from santa clara university in 1989 majoring in political science within a couple
00:33:16.380years of graduating from college a then 25 year old gavin newsome launches the plump jack group
00:33:23.260which is a really fascinating name for a business management company that launched over a dozen
00:33:29.280businesses, including wineries, restaurants, cafes, hotels, very Californian. Now, almost all of these
00:33:36.540businesses that Gavin Newsom now manages were funded by Gordon Getty, who says he viewed Gavin
00:33:42.520like a son. And I just think it's notable not to be too thematic here, but you know, Gavin Newsom
00:33:47.740didn't grow up with money, but he always grew up with access to money. And I think always had an
00:33:52.740intuitive understanding of how to appeal to people with money to further his own ends.
00:33:57.800Gavin Newsom became wealthy from his Getty-funded businesses pretty quickly. He is now extremely
00:34:02.700wealthy. I think people might underestimate just how wealthy he is. In 2021, he sold his home in
00:34:08.840Marin County for $6 million and in 2024 bought a new one for $9.1 million. He's just a relatable
00:34:16.700guy. Have you heard from him that he's an underdog because of the dyslexia? I'm not trying
00:34:21.460I'm not trying to be ableist in any way, but it's just amazing to me that he's clearly gotten some poll numbers back, that his like greasy used car salesman thing isn't necessarily making him the most relatable.
00:34:38.440He's playing up the dyslexia as like his one human attribute.
00:34:41.360I'm sorry to be so cynical, but that's kind of where I'm at.
00:34:44.900Now, it was through his business success that Newsom got into politics.
00:34:50.440A 29-year-old Gavin Newsom threw a fundraiser at one of his plump jack properties for Willie Brown, who would successfully become the mayor of San Francisco. Willie Brown, once a mayor of San Francisco, then installed Gavin into the board of supervisors for San Francisco. So do you think there's any meaningful conclusions to be drawn from this being his entry into politics, essentially like buying his way?
00:35:15.400I think that it's more indicative of the San Francisco machine. Nancy Pelosi came out of the San Francisco Democratic Party machine, as did Gavin Newsom, as did Kamala Harris. There were a lot of misogynistic jokes about her relationship with Willie Brown around this period as well. So it's interesting that he comes up here.
00:35:34.560But it's also notable that many of the billionaires that are responsible for surveillance technology and the tech broligarchy that has populated the Trump administration also comes out of this area of the country.
00:35:50.560So Gavin was on the board of supervisors for a number of years before running for mayor himself and winning in 2003. He ran as a business friendly centrist who promised to do something about homelessness.
00:36:03.900We have seen many iterations of that, including him doing raiding homeless encampment photo shoots, obviously to little success.
00:36:14.160Gavin Newsom won again in 2007 for mayor, despite progressives in San Francisco trying to find an alternative.
00:36:30.900In 2004, Gavin Newsom directed the San Francisco city county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which Newsom supporters on Twitter in my replies will still hold up as evidence of his progressive views, especially around LGBT people.
00:36:49.780It's interesting that Kamala Harris also sort of touted that as well, but less so because she was quite self-conscious about being seen as a California liberal because of her race and because of her gender.
00:37:04.920And I am sympathetic to the misogyny and the racism that was definitely a big part of Kamala Harris's loss to Donald Trump, despite all of our many critiques of the campaign.
00:37:16.820But it is notable to me that he will elevate this part of his career, but is still willing to throw trans people under the bus in the present, even without having the issues that Harris had with trying to appear like a tough person or trying to dispel the notion that she's some sort of California liberal.
00:37:36.920because when you look at polling about her right now, she's almost up there in terms of public
00:37:43.160perception of liberalism with Zoran Mamdani. And that's not that has nothing to do with how she
00:37:48.580campaigned. These are all just California, black woman, liberal, boom, there are a lot of people
00:37:55.600that just turn their brain off with that. And so it's not that it's excusable how she ran. It's
00:38:01.660just it makes more sense when you think about the issues that this country has with blackness and
00:38:07.880with women with gavin newsom it's even more egregious because he doesn't have any of those0.51
00:38:14.120issues he has the luxury of being brave with his identity and his whiteness and his cisness and all
00:38:19.260of that and he still chooses to throw marginalized groups under the bus even back to the homeless0.51
00:38:25.320encampment thing. So the question here is, who does he stand up for? Because it doesn't seem
00:38:31.620to be anybody except the billionaires. Yeah, I will say that my impression, though,
00:38:36.520this could be wrong, is that I do, I do feel like Gavin Newsom is trying to come off as like,
00:38:41.840not one of those Californians. I didn't really realize this until I started traveling. And
00:38:47.240apparently I have an accent that comes obviously from California. And people were like, they had
00:38:52.300an issue with california like people have a whole thing about california and la specifically and i
00:38:59.320know just you know because i see it on my feed republicans do think that gavin newsom even after
00:39:05.700all of his sniveling is like a crazy liberal a crazy leftist extreme yes they really do um so
00:39:13.200i get the vibe that that like when he said that stuff about trans people i did kind of feel like0.94
00:39:18.240it was coming from a place of like yeah i'm on the left but i'm not one of those like weird leftist
00:39:23.300to like or not leftist let's not be crazy i'm not one of those weird liberals who believe like
00:39:28.360you know that men can be women or something like it and it gives me that vibe but it's also not
00:39:33.560effective i mean if with when harris did that she's still the polls still show that she is
00:39:38.940considered just as quote liberal as zora mandani yep who has the kind of political ideology that
00:39:45.480can overcome that Zoran and that's the problem is is that Newsom is perhaps using the exact same
00:39:53.260playbook but when there's even less of an appetite for it within the country Kat what you're saying
00:39:59.080about people I think especially like right of center thinking that Gavin Newsom is like a crazy
00:40:06.080leftist is so true I guess it's because he's like comes from California I really think that that's0.86
00:40:13.220it but he really is i was having a conversation with a gay guy at a party a few weeks ago and
00:40:21.600neither of us really knew anyone at the party so we just started talking to each other he was like
00:40:26.320what do you do i said i do a podcast it's mostly about politics he said oh i listen to political
00:40:30.640podcasts all the time i said oh well what do you listen to he's like oh well you know i make sure
00:40:34.660i listen to everyone across the spectrum you know from like ben shapiro to like gavin newsome
00:40:41.120so silly but but and i just i i but you know this is ultimately the information ecosystem
00:40:49.880we're up against and um and i i do genuinely wonder like where that comes from because
00:40:54.960even in his career infancy with san francisco politics he wasn't particularly left-wing there
00:41:00.880it's because our politics in this country are more right-wing than people really like to see it
00:41:06.020like as they really they really don't understand that leftists have not had the power in this
00:41:12.860country and there is a huge effort towards silencing and deplatforming leftist people
00:41:19.340i mean and we're seeing it now in our media like like very in a very big way you know they are
00:41:24.940trying to really suppress leftism right so like most of the time when you guys see people's very
00:41:31.220well-produced well-funded fancy podcast a lot of times a lot of times it's because it's being
00:41:39.040propped up by people who have moneyed interest you know and at this point thank you to the
00:41:43.860listeners of this podcast i could afford to get new headphones but i still have the same pair of
00:41:47.900headphones that i have when i started this show and i'm getting an uptick in comments of people
00:41:52.940who are complaining about that that this side if you're watching the video podcast you'll see that
00:41:57.080this side is, uh, the ear cuff is peeling. Anyway, back to Gavin Newsom.
00:42:05.460I don't think Newsom in his podcast studio is experiencing that kind of, uh, you know,
00:42:11.760putting stuff together with duct tape. So Gavin, as we know, eventually in 2018 is elected governor
00:42:17.520of California back to his LGBTQ record. So he did have a while there while it was culturally popular
00:43:23.020Joe Biden's hanging in the race for way too long, shutting out any primary challenge, despite having very historically low approval ratings.
00:43:33.440Yeah, all that stuff. All that stuff mattered. Not at all. It was trans people who she was too vocally supportive of when none of us were listening.
00:43:44.420then in march 2025 gavin newsom who at this point has a podcast naturally invites charlie
00:43:54.980kirk to be on his podcast the whole vibe of gavin newsom's podcast is very like it has kind of a
00:44:00.960bill maher syndrome to it where he's like i'm a real lefty and i'm gonna have all these
00:44:06.160conservatives on and just kind of agree with them on everything this is a very very very lucrative
00:44:13.120part of media by the way and you can go to Dave Rubin you can go to whatever Anna Kasparian is
00:44:19.000doing right now you can go back and see all of these people who have so called you know have
00:44:24.140supposedly left the left for some really well-funded media venture where you have right
00:44:29.920wingers that want to hear why the left is so damn crazy and then suddenly you're making millions it's
00:44:36.120nuts I remember when that shift started happening I was like wow we've we've lost the plot but then
00:44:41.700people started making money and here we are yeah yeah 100 so gavin newsome has charlie kirk on his
00:44:48.300podcast and says this about trans girls in sports so like you right now should come out and be like
00:44:56.620you know what the young man who's about to win the state championship in the long jump in female
00:45:01.140sports right that's that that shouldn't happen you as the governor should step out and say no
00:45:05.240no and i appreciate and but like would you do something like that would you say no men in1.00
00:45:09.060female sports. Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.0.97
00:45:12.840So that's easy to call out, the unfairness of that. It's easy to call out the unfairness of
00:45:16.920that. How about the unfairness of our economic system where we have income and wealth inequality
00:45:22.960that has surpassed the Gilded Age, where people have hit a record of credit card debt month and
00:45:29.540month over and over again, where we continuously over the past year and plus are hitting records
00:45:35.800of subprime auto delinquencies because people can't make their car payments, where you have
00:45:41.400the top 10% responsible for 50% of consumer spending. These are the kinds of things where
00:45:47.700you could talk about fairness in ways that actually impact people in a broad way in their
00:45:54.560day-to-day life, or you could zero in on a right-wing talking point about some volleyball team
00:46:02.100in some part of california and give that idea oxygen instead of redirecting it towards the0.74
00:46:07.880actual nerve centers of power that need to be challenged gavin newsom's a coward in addition
00:46:12.860to being somebody who's not right for this moment politically yeah and that podcast it's all just
00:46:17.500about chumming up to these guys like that's what it is like yeah i'm sure that you know they go
00:46:22.420back and forth here and there but like it's just about being like hey you know like we may have
00:46:26.780our disagreements but like there's a lot that we agree on and like we can all do like drink beers
00:46:31.720together and like that's all this is yes and it's that's like a terrible metric for who you should0.97
00:46:38.640vote for as the fucking president and i hate this whole i want to be able to get beers with1.00
00:46:43.480my president kind of shit you know i want a president who actually is about that crap you1.00
00:46:48.820know i don't want a fucking performative president who's going to change his mind1.00
00:46:51.780once it's politically inconvenient and i think people have really lost sight of the fact that0.99
00:46:56.560these motherfuckers work for us it's not the other way around i i have had so many people say0.97
00:47:02.980to me even today i i with regard to uh gavin's evolving shall we say stance on the israeli0.99
00:47:09.240genocide which we'll talk about in a second people are like well isn't it better to have
00:47:12.940an opportunist than a staunch zionist or or a staunch transphobe and i'm like
00:47:19.280i guess but can't we do better than an opportunist we're not even in the election season right now
00:47:28.680that we're talking about this election is two and a half years away and i already have to go
00:47:33.780for the opportunist because that's the best i can do if we do not have a president that comes in
00:47:39.600and acts with the urgency that trump has to repair our institutions our systems and to actually
00:47:46.140prosecute the criminals that are in this administration right now. We are on a complete
00:47:52.080downward trajectory into like a failed kind of democracy territory. We need somebody who isn't
00:47:59.620just going to put their finger to the wind and decide what polling says and then make a
00:48:04.860determination from there. The danger that we're in right now requires actual leadership.
00:48:09.580Yeah, it's real shit. And people think, oh, we want a perfect candidate. I don't need a perfect0.99
00:48:13.860candidate. I don't think that exists. I've always said that if you ever see me supporting
00:48:17.380a presidential candidate, like really with a lot of gusto, that's not me. That's a Cylon.0.96
00:48:22.440I've been replaced. I want a very, I want a very short list of things right now. I feel,
00:48:29.800I feel, I want someone who's willing to disentangle their relationship from Israel.0.93
00:48:34.780I want someone who's willing to tax these billionaires, someone who wants to place
00:48:40.080restrictions on AI and someone who wants to codify our civil rights. And if I get that list,
00:48:45.620which to me isn't a very exhaustive list, that'll be probably for the first time in my life,
00:48:51.220a person that I'm eager to vote for. People are being sold like supremacy shit. Like if all of0.99
00:48:56.540these immigrants are deported where we're finally going to be able to own homes. No, you can't own1.00
00:49:02.380a home because private equity has bought all of them. That's the actual problem. And those people
00:49:08.460are paying to tell you that trans people are the biggest issue it's distraction it is distraction
00:49:15.540i don't want perfection i want someone who's actually offering something that's going to do
00:49:20.880something and everything that you just listed like those are majority popular positions in
00:49:27.800the democratic base the center democratic voter right now is so wildly further to the left than
00:49:35.840like dnc strategists and consultants and their refusal to acknowledge what people want out of
00:49:44.100our public servants is insane and then we are made to be the crazy ones when we say two and a half
00:49:50.440years in advance that we won't vote for someone who doesn't provide those very basic necessities1.00
00:49:55.580because we're just supposed to settle for like another corrupt asshole in the pockets of health1.00
00:50:01.000insurance billionaires. I don't know. I feel like I'm going a little bit insane. And I don't mean1.00
00:50:05.940to yell. And I know my tone on this podcast, which is why some people listen to it, is like
00:50:10.380like a little bit chilled out. But I get so much heat for this online. I know all three of us have.
00:50:17.100It's just crazy to me that two and a half years out, I am told I am like browbeaten into
00:50:24.580to accepting that the best we can do is someone who has a $9 million home and whose highest
00:50:33.540personal ambition, his most important belief, is that he wants to be able to sit at the table
00:50:40.760with other powerful white men and chum it up. Donald Trump's politics come largely from the
00:50:46.660same place. We have plenty of time. We have plenty of time.
00:50:50.700yeah should we talk about israel i always am down to talk about israel uh i know you are emma
00:50:58.340vigeland i know you are i'm very passionate about palestinian rights and the genocide in gaza and so
00:51:04.640that is one thing that uh obviously i'm ready to tee off against gavin newsom about tee off on him
00:51:11.700i guess that's the right way to say who tabletop issues baby table tabletop you gotta tabletop
00:51:17.980them so i want to begin on october 20th 2023 a couple weeks after october 7th immediately after
00:51:28.800which the genocide on gaza is launched in its current iteration by october 20th 2023
00:51:35.320thousands of palestinians have already been killed by israeli bombs and it is on this day
00:51:41.520that gavin newsom travels to israel he writes on twitter i'm on my way to israel i'll be meeting
00:51:48.280with those impacted by the horrific terrorist attacks and offering california support what
00:51:53.420does that even mean i'll be offering california's support anyway i just added here that jorts the uh0.97
00:52:01.020the twitter famous cat jorts wrote in response oh for fuck's sake is there anything to say about0.87
00:52:09.740Gavin Newsom traveling to Israel? I'm not surprised. His record on Israel is not going0.97
00:52:16.080to be as direct as if he were in federal office, because obviously AIPAC is more focused and the
00:52:22.620Israel lobby, we should say it's not just AIPAC, is more focused on retaining the endless supply
00:52:28.280of weapons and billions of dollars of funding that they get from the federal government. So
00:52:33.560those voting records are a little bit more clear. But we do know that Gavin Newsom is a staunch
00:52:38.620opposer of boycott, divestment and sanctions in the state of California. And so I'm not surprised
00:52:45.380that he went to Israel after October 7. Yeah. And in 2024, amidst Gaza encampment protests
00:52:52.860at universities across the US, Newsom signed pro-Israel legislation that required California
00:52:59.600college students to take like courses or training modules or whatever on protesting with civility.0.58
00:53:08.620whatever that means, and have anti-Semitism training, which just, you know, as a Jewish
00:53:14.700person opposed to genocide drives me insane because all of that legislation about like,
00:53:18.780we must do anti-Semitism training for pro-Palestine protesters. Well, a lot of those
00:53:23.980protesters are Jewish. And so, you know, it's just tying the protest to Judaism, which they were not
00:53:29.340about Judaism. This legislation that Newsom signed was opposed by the ACLU, which said that it served
00:53:36.400to, quote, chill the speech of students.
00:53:39.020So the first time I heard Gavin Newsom talk about APAC
00:53:42.280was when he was on the Higher Learning podcast
00:53:45.480and the host, Van Lathan, said that he would not vote
00:59:29.760And international and proportionality doesn't mean that if you kill my child and I then kill seven criminals, that I've been disproportionate.
00:59:37.080I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think the, but I understand that tendency on the basis of trying to reconcile the proportionate nature of how the war was ultimately conducted and the devastation.
00:59:50.820I have a question. Why do you feel the need to create a permission structure for that sort of stuff? I mean, meaning it's not true.
00:59:59.400why not just say it's not true yeah look i don't know the definition i don't know the legal
01:00:03.940threshold that's not my opinion so i don't i don't share that opinion as it relates to genocide
01:00:10.380it gets me so mad it's unbelievable it's unbelievable i can't stand this out of this
01:00:20.460oh my god everything ben shapiro was saying here is categorically false it is dehumanizing0.99
01:00:28.420anti-Palestinian racism, bullshit. Every major human rights organization in the world has ruled0.98
01:00:35.020this a genocide. I cannot believe we are still even talking about this. Any person with two
01:00:40.200functioning brain cells at this point knows that it's a genocide. Nonetheless, Ben Shapiro is
01:00:45.520absolutely steamrolling him here because Gavin believes in nothing and he can't articulate for
01:00:50.840a belief because he doesn't have one. There's no difference between Holocaust denialists and those
01:00:56.060two men right there. In fact, I would say that being a Holocaust denialist is potentially less
01:01:02.040damaging in this current moment than being a denialist about the act of genocide in Gaza,
01:01:06.920because there's still an opportunity to prevent the worst things from happening there. I'm being
01:01:12.860a bit inflammatory with that statement, but I do think that moral courage in the face of a current
01:01:18.620genocide is even more important because we are supposed to have learned the lessons from the0.99
01:01:23.480past to prevent what happened to millions and millions of Jews, as well as other Roma, gay0.53
01:01:29.740people, trans people, what have you, under the Nazi regime, that it compels us to stand up against
01:01:35.860this current genocide in this moment. That display of a lack of moral courage as he gets steamrolled
01:01:41.120by Ben Shapiro in that instance is why he has no capacity to actually deal with fascism on a really
01:01:47.600systemic level. And when, to bolster your point, Matt, Bet Selim, the Israeli human rights group,
01:01:52.880has called this a genocide, as has Human Rights Watch, as has Amnesty International, as has the
01:01:57.380UN Special Rapporteur, you can go to the genocide conventions and look at what constitutes a genocide
01:02:03.400based on Article 2, and I'll just go through it really quickly. Killing members of the group,
01:02:07.700causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group
01:02:11.780conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,
01:02:15.880imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring
01:02:19.660children of the group to another group. Now, you just have to meet the criteria for one of those
01:02:24.880thresholds that I just listed to constitute a genocide and to have an active claim on that front.
01:02:31.100Killing members of the group, clearly. Causing serious bodily or mental harm, clearly. Deliberately
01:02:36.360inflicting the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
01:02:40.840or in part. They have dropped the equivalent of multiple nuclear weapons on Gaza. There are0.64
01:02:45.780hundreds of thousands of people stuck to death, screaming to death, suffocated to death under
01:02:49.780rubble, who are not accounted for right now. They've destroyed the hospital system. They've
01:02:53.940destroyed all education systems in Gaza. And then 141 square mile area, that is what they have done,1.00
01:03:00.200dropping bomb after bomb, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
01:03:04.440We spoke to a doctor on our program who saw babies rotting in NICUs, their corpses, because of the0.63
01:03:10.360Israeli genocide, because they've cut off access to health care. So that's preventing births within0.65
01:03:14.680the group and five forcibly transferring children of the group to another group we know how many
01:03:19.300children in both the west bank and in gaza have been kidnapped and tortured in israeli prisons
01:03:24.260that is literally all five planks of what constituted genocide is met by just me listing0.79
01:03:31.740it off right there off the top of my head the one question is is this a holocaust that's the
01:03:36.580only question that we're talking about right now anyway yeah and i think that it's important
01:03:44.480for us to keep pushing candidates to withdraw their support from Israel and I hate the fact
01:03:49.940that people think that that's like purity testing like oh my god just like I know that I know that
01:03:56.400they support it but like because it's it's actually to me this is what drives me insane
01:04:01.220to me it's like a great metric because if you continue to believe that what's happening in0.99
01:04:08.960Palestine isn't genocide and that we should continue to send money to them I think that
01:04:13.500that actually does say more than people are giving it credit for. You have to keep in mind that
01:04:19.520Israel is so in bed with all of this surveillance bullshit that we're, that we're struggling with0.99
01:04:26.060right now. Like all of this stuff, all of the anxieties we have with billionaires right now,0.99
01:04:32.520it's connected directly to Israel and Israel, the, our engagement in it is because of capitalism,
01:04:38.280right? That's literally the primary reason. Like I said earlier, I don't need a perfect
01:04:43.040candidate, but for me, and it really is, in my mind, a baseline. I want to vote for a candidate
01:04:49.300who at least believes in disentangling our relationship with Israel, because I think0.99
01:04:53.760that on its own even is more massive than people I think are willing to acknowledge.
01:04:59.440Israel has so many of the things that we would like to have over here, and we give our money
01:05:05.180so that they can have it over there. And there's so many angles to come at it from, but at the end
01:05:10.360of the day, they are funding genocide. And that should actually put you off enough to not want to
01:05:16.300support a candidate who even kind of sort of believes that maybe they should keep doing it.
01:05:20.960But he also believes in the concept of an ethnostate of Israel needing to maintain its
01:05:26.400security or its national character by having a massive demographic majority of one group. And
01:05:33.240this is why Zionism is incompatible with democracy and incompatible with any anti-fascist movement0.94
01:05:38.400is because inherently it believes that there should be a nation state that is defined by0.61
01:05:43.100someone's religious or ethnic character, and that that needs to be maintained by force and
01:05:46.900domination. And when you talk about what all of the surveillance technology that is oppressing0.91
01:05:52.140us here at home, and you have this imperial blowback that we're experiencing in the United
01:05:56.160States, people should read The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Lowenstein, which literally
01:06:01.520speaks about how in Gaza, and this is prior to October 7th, this book was written, they are0.69
01:06:07.200testing AI, weapons, surveillance technology on the Palestinians like they're lab rats.
01:06:13.100And so it is all a part of this overarching problem with capitalism, as you say, Cad,0.78
01:06:19.260where the whole world could be Gaza, as far as I am concerned, because everything about the
01:06:25.720systemic problems of capitalism, anti-democracy, kleptocracy, climate change, militarism,
01:06:31.880American imperialism, it's all there in the heart of this 141 square mile place.
01:06:37.200And so if you can't stand up for the Palestinians, you won't stand up for trans people, certainly.
01:06:42.120And you're not going to stand up for people at home who are facing the brunt of this from the Trump administration.
01:06:47.580I keep saying to people in my life, like, this is the everything issue.
01:06:50.780And we saw this with the 2024 election.
01:06:52.640And the fact that we're seeing it now and we're not even in the presidential election cycle drives me crazy because people say, oh, you're a single issue.
01:24:20.520things like highlighting the reality that this is an apartheid state that's nice to know but i'm not
01:24:26.800celebrating and people can disagree with this but i'm not celebrating gavin newsom's answer here
01:24:32.900beyond that it reflects what we already know which is that is popular because like i said this man
01:24:39.020has proven again and again that he believes in nothing he could sit down with mike huckabee
01:24:42.580and and say well yeah you make some points about the greater israel project am i crazy absolutely
01:24:49.040not hey y'all it's matt from the future editing this episode and how grateful am i to be able to
01:24:56.540let you know that by the end of the day that we recorded this episode on gavin newsom's spokesman
01:25:02.100had already walked back his recognition of israeli apartheid from the new york times quote
01:25:07.440asked to clarify the comments izzy garden a spokesman for mr newsom said that the governor
01:25:13.580believes in Israel's right to exist and its right to defend itself, period. And that's showbiz,
01:25:21.320baby. So I want to round out this episode, Act Three, if you will, by talking about what it
01:25:28.800means to live in a supposed democracy where like, apparently we already have to commit to voting for
01:25:36.800this person who's not even running yet. And I want to explain that through a controversy that
01:25:40.980recently took place online with a one hassan piker who listen i try not to center you know
01:25:54.020straight men on this podcast but you know he's at the heart of this one and no he's an exception
01:25:59.840i joke hassan's a friend and i love whenever i see him trending because i'm like oh someone else
01:26:05.220is taking the heat who has a little bit more clout than me that can just buttress these insane
01:26:13.040Democrats. We've given you a lot of context so far for Gavin Newsom's politics or lack thereof.
01:26:20.940Another important element of his current political career as governor of California is that he
01:26:26.640opposes California's billionaire tax. There is a fight right now within the state of California
01:26:31.960over this ballot measure, which would be a 5% tax on the residents of California who have over
01:26:39.800a billion dollars. This would be a big part of trying to cover the gap in funding for healthcare
01:26:47.340programs like Medicaid that the Trump one big ugly ass bill pushed and was responsible for0.98
01:26:54.880some of the largest healthcare cuts in the country. This billionaire tax would fill those0.95
01:27:00.160gaps. But Gavin Newsom has been vociferous in his opposition to this proposal, even as there is
01:27:07.360like significant grassroots support for it in California. And this is not the first time that
01:27:12.240he has acted on behalf of billionaires. There was a measure that he ended up killing as governor
01:27:19.260that would have much more intensely regulated private equity and hedge funds as they price
01:27:24.960gouge on healthcare. He was somebody who ran on single payer healthcare, but then worked behind
01:27:31.880the scenes after getting elected to kill it. So the only time really that Gavin Newsom engages
01:27:37.800in progressive rhetoric is when he's going to backtrack on it later and stab the left in the
01:27:43.300back. That's pretty much his track record. Yeah, we need to focus on tabletop issues,
01:27:48.140like health care and also do nothing about that yep it's really important that we focus on nothing
01:27:55.780except making sure that uh nothing threatens the wealth of billionaires i digress by the way i will
01:28:02.020say you know one of the uh arguments that gavin newsom makes in opposition to the billionaire
01:28:08.020tax is like well if we tax the billionaires five percent they're all gonna leave california
01:28:12.520and i just want to say that that's not true that doesn't happen this whole thing just played out
01:28:18.060in New York City, all of the richest people in New York City saying if Zoran wins, we're going
01:28:22.200to leave. Guess how many of them have left? Even in California, they did this. They raised taxes
01:28:26.380on millionaires 15 years ago, and the number of millionaires increased in the state. This is a
01:28:31.640capital flight myth that academics have studied, and it's there to stave off the calls to tax the
01:28:36.620rich. It's not actually something that happens, especially in large states like California and
01:28:41.940New York, where they are centers of culture and finance. And these corporations and billionaires
01:28:47.200need to be there. They're just trying to shake down the state for more tax cuts to pretend that
01:28:51.820they're going to leave. The real reason Gavin Newsom opposes this stuff is because his career
01:28:56.080is in the pockets of these billionaires. And so Hassan Piker, popular leftist Twitch streamer,
01:29:02.240if you in fact don't engage with any straight men on the internet and don't know who he is,
01:29:06.540he was talking with our girl Jennifer Welch of I've Had It, who's been on this podcast before
01:29:13.020as well. And she asked who he would vote for in a hypothetical election between J.D. Vance and
01:29:20.580Gavin Newsom. And this is what he said. Who do you vote for, J.D. Vance or Gavin Newsom?
01:29:25.740Well, I'd have to vote for Gavin Newsom. Me too. I wouldn't blink. What about you, Hassan?
01:29:28.960I'd probably vote third party. You would? Oh, yeah. I mean, at that point, it doesn't even
01:29:34.640matter. Like, because my policy on this is is the same as like my refusal to endorse Kamala Harris.
01:29:41.460the reason why I did not endorse Kamala Harris was because she did things that were not only
01:29:48.760unproductive but also unconscionable but and I still stand on that I still talk about it all
01:29:54.520the time because people constantly bring it up they're like you didn't sufficiently like promote
01:29:58.060Kamala Harris you're the reason why she lost I'm like I am incapable there is no singular force in
01:30:04.820this country that is capable of making or breaking an election and if that was real then it is the0.97
01:30:10.880most idiotic thing not to listen to my demands but everybody knows that that's not real right0.91
01:30:15.200if i had this singular force to be able to make kamala harris the president then kamala harris1.00
01:30:20.460should be coming to me every day and being like let me do a collab with you please right that's
01:30:25.480not the case of course and they know it that's why they didn't do it and for me the way i see it is
01:30:31.180if the democratic establishment makes this decision one more time just as they did with
01:30:35.640Hillary Clinton, just as they did with Kamala Harris, and in some ways, just as they did with
01:30:40.460Joe Biden as well, which led to Trump too, then they just don't care. People lost their minds
01:30:48.400over Hassan Piker saying that he would not vote for this candidate. In an election that is two
01:30:53.880and a half years away, for a candidate who is not running yet, they blamed Hassan for the state of
01:30:58.540the country, saying he's no different than MAGA Republicans, that Hassan handed Trump the
01:31:03.640presidency on a silver platter. They also called him a Russian asset. Hey, Hassan Piker, we have
01:31:08.840something in common. There was one popular tweet that said, Hassan is functionally no different
01:31:14.660than a fascist. Here's what I'll say. You can argue that there are some Democrats who are0.52
01:31:22.880functionally no different than fascists. And I would argue that perhaps Chuck Schumer, who is
01:31:30.100refusing to rule out voting against supplemental funding for this horrific war that we are waging
01:31:36.620in iran is an example of at the very least a fascist enabler that he is repeatedly caving
01:31:44.180to the republicans on issues as it relates to government spending like that is much closer to
01:31:49.480a fascist because he's literally enabling their actions than someone like hassan who's demanding
01:31:54.940better of the opposition party that's supposed to be keeping us from a moment of fascism that
01:31:59.020we've already reached. And the problem here is that this level of entitlement, this however the
01:32:08.020Democratic Party kind of fans are reacting here, is what has repulsed so many voters and has made
01:32:15.060it so that the Democrats are actually more unpopular than Trump right now. And when you
01:32:20.580look at polling and that is because of the entitlement here, they keep trying to preach
01:32:26.400democracy as an ethic. And I agree. I want to protect democracy. But the big problem is that
01:32:32.080they don't practice it internally, whether it's forcing Joe Biden to run when you had actually
01:32:38.760Democratic Party voters saying we want somebody different. They said, no, no, no, we're going to
01:32:42.980actually make South Carolina the first primary. We're going to try to box out anybody who might
01:32:47.200challenge this very geriatric kind of ailing old man who's deeply unpopular. And we don't really
01:32:51.900care what you have to say. You oppose the genocide in Gaza? Only, like, single-digit percentages of
01:32:56.920Democratic voters, let alone only 25% of independents per Gallup poll last August. Those
01:33:02.400numbers have gotten worse since then. But it's something like 9% of Democrats support Israel's
01:33:06.540military action in Gaza. Well, hey, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, he's all for Israel. It
01:33:12.140doesn't matter what the voters think. My base I don't even care about. I care about the Zionist
01:33:17.840lobby. These are fundamental undemocratic actions that have enabled the fascism of Donald Trump.0.81
01:33:24.860So when then Kamala Harris goes out there with Liz Cheney with a big democracies on the line
01:33:29.520ballot, what do voters think? Do they think of democracy as something that they need to protect
01:33:34.700inherently? Or do they see a group of cynical politicians who are not acting democratically
01:33:42.120in and of themselves which means democratic responsiveness which means changing your
01:33:47.660positions to reflect that of your constituents to reflect that of the voter base and that you
01:33:53.360have they have no legitimacy on the issue of democracy because they don't practice it themselves1.00
01:33:57.640they don't listen and they pretend like they can just force things through by throwing trans people0.52
01:34:02.320under the bus by some focus testing here what have you no no no there's no shortcut you have
01:34:07.160to respond to voters period i wish people would understand that leftists did not actually lose
01:34:13.040this election that non-voting leftists are a minority within a minority um that many of us
01:34:20.140actually did go out and vote for kamala harris i did i voted for her i did with all of my criticisms
01:34:27.280and that's another thing i wish people would understand that a lot of times we're making
01:34:31.540these criticisms with the idea that we would like to vote for them to me telling me as a0.96
01:34:36.720trans person to listen to gavin newsom essentially say he doesn't give a fuck about my civil rights0.91
01:34:42.820and then say if i don't vote for him i'm ushering in donald trump or you know the the jd vance0.99
01:34:50.960presidency that that's gonna you know ruin everything it's like it's so ridiculous and0.95
01:34:57.520it's frustrating that people don't see that it's ridiculous because it should actually be seen as a0.58
01:35:03.300very reasonable thing for me to not want to vote for a candidate who would be working against my
01:35:09.160interest and would also be funding genocide or would be defending the idea that billionaires0.86
01:35:14.120don't deserve to be fucking taxed it's like none of this makes sense so why are you yelling at me
01:35:20.560yeah i mean look the discourse around the 2024 election was in my you know seven years like0.99
01:35:28.680being online and talking about politics, some of the most miserable months of like my waking up
01:35:34.580and doing work every morning. And I know that like all three of us feel that because if you
01:35:39.200were vocally against so many of the things, notably the genocide that Kamala, maybe in
01:35:46.200different language than Trump, but functionally promised to continue in the exact way that Trump
01:35:50.800has, then it's like, well, how do we vote for this person? How do we advocate for this person?
01:35:55.260and the election came upon us i i went in the week leading up to the election i took a bus0.91
01:36:02.180to pennsylvania and i fucking door knocked i was coconut posting i'm a dsa member
01:36:09.220i was on tiktok getting yelled at for being like i think maybe kamala might be the better of the1.00
01:36:17.380two choices like yeah i'm like making stupid cases like look how hot she is that's got to1.00
01:36:22.760count for something right i didn't even like her policies like that and i mean this is the thing0.96
01:36:29.540for me it's like when i talked online about how i had like gone to pennsylvania and door knocked
01:36:34.960there were palestinian people who were very disappointed in me and what could i say to them
01:36:43.500what did i have to say to them nothing because i am not going to look you straight in the face
01:36:50.260As so many people are asking trans people to do, are asking Arab Americans to do, and say, vote for this candidate who doesn't care about you, who has presided over the mass death of your family members, of people in your community, and suck it up and vote for them because that's what it means to protect a democracy.0.70
01:37:09.080What kind of democracy is that? And so that was the conversation, the very tense and uncomfortable and miserable conversation that was happening then in the days before the 2024 election. Guess what? We lost that election. And we've seen what having a candidate who failed all of these litmus tests has paved the way for.
01:37:32.120And I mean, years and years and years and decades of this sort of neoliberalism has paved the way for. Now we're not in an election cycle. So now we're having this conversation. So just don't tell me that I am a fascist, that I'm no different than a MAGA Republican, because in March 2026, I'm saying I don't want to vote for Gavin Newsom.
01:37:53.900Like, what is the point of representative democracy if we can't even air our desires because it's like we must accept this preordained prince from his nine million dollar mansion?
01:38:06.340You know, to wrap it up, that's kind of where I am just screaming from the rooftops is that we have to perform representative democracy by actually representing people and representing their views and not just trying to work around it.
01:38:22.600Represent them, uplift them, and it's not that hard.
01:38:25.640You can do it. You just have to have a universal message, which a lot of Democrats are afraid to do because universal programs mean taxation, challenging power, all of that stuff that needs to happen if we're going to make sure that fascism is destroyed.
01:38:39.740and uh and i'll just say on twitter as people were you know going at hassan for saying he
01:38:46.540wouldn't vote for newsom hassan defended himself by highlighting gavin newsom's waffling on trans
01:38:52.580issues in particular to which some people said no he supports us look what he did in 2004 and
01:38:58.880one week later after this whole fiasco gavin says on cnn just to bring it home that democrats should
01:39:05.300be more culturally normal hassan piker vindicated i guess i don't know you know being a leftist
01:39:17.020it's it's often a game of just being right too soon oh yes it's absolutely agonizing and it ruins
01:39:23.940uh your psyche and your mental well-being but we don't have a choice but to be leftist because
01:39:29.300this is how progress is made i guess there's some comfort in knowing that uh the people before us
01:39:35.780people who have sacrificed way more than i have also experienced this incredible frustration we're
01:39:40.740just in a really really difficult time right now and we keep fighting we've got no other choice
01:39:45.280emma and kat thank you so much for like dragging me through the mud i promise if you're listening
01:39:52.760to this i promise this is the last time for at least a few episodes that i'll talk about electoral
01:39:57.480politics it'll be back to celebrity analysis soon i just had to get it off my chest thank you both
01:40:03.180so much for being here today where can people find more of you the majority report uh with sam
01:40:09.020cedar but also myself emma vigeland is live every uh weekday noon eastern we're live for around two
01:40:16.060and a half hours you can become a member at join the majority report.com we are a daily left-wing
01:40:21.060news show that covers all of these issues and more. I'm primarily found on YouTube, where I go
01:40:27.980by my stage name, Kat Black. And you can also find my writings on blackinthecity.com. I am
01:40:33.560definitely trying to celebrate my creative ability right now. So I'm going to be trying to speak less
01:40:39.960about politics. But knowing me, I'm still I'm still going to do it. I'm still going to do it.
01:40:43.660I can't stop doing it. It's important to me. But I'm trying to embrace my creative side. So
01:40:48.340look forward to seeing that and if you have made it this far in the episode thank you so much I
01:40:54.000hope this is the last time for a while that we have to talk about Gavin Newsom it's one thing
01:40:59.300to talk about like you know pop cultural stuff that I have a problem with it's another thing0.96
01:41:04.060to just talk about this dog shit cynical rich guy politician that I don't it's just like genuinely
01:41:09.620not fun but I hope we made it fun I love you so much thank you for listening to this episode I0.95
01:41:16.160We'll see you next time, and until then, stay fruity.