Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Melania, only in theaters January 30th. Well, earlier this week, I sat down with Gavin Newsom. I want to show you what happened when that happened, because it was pretty spicy. Plus, the latest on ICE. Will the president invoke the Insurrection Act? And in Iran, is action still imminent? First, the wait is almost over in less than one week.
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Well, folks, on Tuesday, I sat down with California Governor Gavin Newsom on his podcast. He does a podcast. He sits down once every few weeks with somebody. He invited me on. So I flew out to Sacramento and we sat in the governor's mansion in Sacramento and did what is about a two hour podcast.
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Chapter 2: What insights did Ben Shapiro gain from his discussion with Gavin Newsom?
It is well worth the listen. You'll hear us go through a number of topics. It was a sort of fascinating experience, not only because Governor Newsom, of course, is the governor of the most populous state in the union, a state that I left back in 2020 with my company and with my family, thanks to what I believe to be serious misgovernance in California.
It's fascinating because right now, according to the polling data, it is very likely that Newsom will be the Democrats' nominee in 2028. When you look at the potential field of Democratic nominees right now, I've said before, I think AOC is underrated as a possible nominee. She's likely to do well in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
The problem is once you move to the South, AOC's numbers start to dwindle and she's not going to win California if Newsom is in the field. Kamala Harris right now in the polling data for 2028 is a placeholder. Just like every other election in my lifetime, after somebody loses, they remain the quote unquote front runner for the nomination for the next election cycle.
for a short period of time, and let's just say it's a rarity for somebody to come back the way that President Trump actually did in 2024 and then win a nomination after losing a presidential race. Typically, nominees who lose go away. Mitt Romney in 2013, if you look at the early polling, would probably have been the frontrunner for 2016, but obviously...
He was nowhere close to the nomination by the time we hit the next election cycle. So it ain't going to be Kamala Harris on the Democratic side of the aisle. Newsom has heavy fundraising power. He's obviously a governor of a very populous state. He's positioned himself as the quote unquote anti-Trump in the field. And he's done that by being very, very loud on social media.
And so it was fascinating to sit down with him, ask him some pretty pointed questions about governance in California and where he thinks the country is going. And I think the entire discussion is worth listening to or watching. A few things about Governor Newsom. First of all, in person, very personable guy for sure. Most politicians are, by the way.
Large number of politicians, very good in person. Gavin Newsom is very quick on his feet. He's a person who is going to spend his time, I would imagine, trying to avoid serious charges about the state of California. And he knows his own policy record and he knows where the holes are. And so he's pretty good at sticking and moving with regard to the holes in those policies.
We'll discuss that in a moment. The biggest problem for Gavin Newsom is a problem for the Democratic Party. In order for him to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate, he is going to have to jettison some core Democratic positions that are just unpopular with the American people.
And so I think one of the reasons that Governor Newsom decided that he was going to have me on his show was specifically to do that, to make overtures to the middle. Now, you can decide for yourself how genuine you think those overtures are.
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Chapter 3: How is Gavin Newsom positioning himself for the 2028 Democratic nomination?
Instead of you judging them on their output, you're supposed to judge them on their intent. And then they can sort of blame everybody else for failure to achieve what they, quote unquote, wanted to achieve. So, for example, there was one point where I was questioning Governor Newsom about the fact that he had promised to build millions of housing units in California.
I was really grilling him on the fact that housing prices in California are exorbitant at this moment in time. And they have been for quite a while. And I got him to agree that, you know, over promising and under delivering is a bad road to make policy.
And they usually are talking about using the power of government in order to facilitate and make that change happen, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle.
And it seems to me that that is a recipe for disaster for the American body politic, because if you make promises that cannot be fulfilled because the system does not allow for it to be fulfilled, people inherently end up frustrated. And, you know, I have relatives who still live in the state of California. I visit it routinely and they're making a very good living.
I have a sister-in-law and brother-in-law who live in L.A. They make a combined excellent living and they're barely making their mortgage. And the housing costs are too high. The cost of living is too high. I believe the poverty rates in California on a cost adjusted basis are some of the highest in the nation. Right there with Florida, correct.
When you look at the Supplemental Poverty Index, when you look at poverty broadly, you find it's slightly above average. Supplemental, Florida and California.
Real estate costs in particular are extraordinary in the state of California. As you say, you're trying to remove regulations. But the problem is that unless we are willing to recognize a fundamental reality, which is that the relationship of the American people with their government needs to change. I agree with that. And so if you listen to him there, he sounds like a moderate, right?
Don't over-promise. Don't under-deliver. Government should probably promise to do less. I mean, that sounds like a Republican policy. And herein lies the problem for Governor Newsom and for the Democratic Party. The stuff that sounds good is him moving away from the rhetorical and policy radicalism Democrats have embraced. More on this in a moment.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Newsom face in appealing to the Democratic base?
Which is to say, in my opinion, be predatory toward children who are suffering from gender dysphoria. And... hormonally or surgically mutilate them. And he really did not have a good answer on this either. Again, this is the problem for the Democratic Party on these issues, that a good Democratic candidate is going to make the radical issues secondary or ignore them.
But in doing so, he or she is going to piss off his own party. Because if you look at X today, X is filled with people on the left who are livid with Gavin Newsom. for not endorsing every radical left position. Here is Gavin Newsom not being able to answer the question on trans, presumably for political reasons, since, again, we all know the biological realities here.
But this idea that Trump says people are going to public schools and coming back, having surgeries and coming back the next day is absurd.
No, but there are certainly cases in which kids are being, quote unquote, socially transitioned at school without parents knowing about it. I know some of the parents to whom this has happened. I mean, this is, the fundamental question that lies at the root of all of this is the question that you're not wanting to answer, which is whether boys can become girls.
Yeah, I just, well, I think for the grace of God,
I mean, I appreciate the sympathy. I also feel terrible for, listen, anybody who's suffering with any sort of mental or physical condition, that's terrible. I mean, I think it's been the case for generations, for time immemorial. Again, just trying to avoid the question. So Gavin Newsom wants to be a moderate, right?
At least he wants to play moderate when it comes to running in a general election, except when it comes to a couple of issues. One of them, of course, is Trump. And this is, I think, Gavin Newsom's secret sauce as a candidate is that he, in person, and again, Rhetorically, when you're speaking with people like me, he appears to be a moderate or move toward moderation.
You can believe him or not believe him. I'm just presenting you with what he was saying to me on camera. And then there is the stuff where he does not want to appear moderate. And that's particularly on Trump. So Democrats seem to believe that if they campaign against Trump in 2028, that that will be enough. And listen, we can say that that's crazy and that that won't work.
But I'm old enough to remember when Democrats campaigned against George W. Bush in 2008. Right. He was on his way out and they took George Bush and they hung him over John McCain, who is a large scale opponent of Bush in a wide variety of matters, and tried to paint McCain as his natural heir. Well, I assume that Gavin Newsom will do the same thing with J.D. Vance. Should J.D.
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Chapter 5: How does Newsom's approach to California's housing crisis reflect his governance?
So we got into a tet-a-tet about ICE and about immigration policy, sanctuary city policy. He made the case that sanctuary city policy makes cities safer. You can make a case that sanctuary cities policies, they don't additionally add to criminality over baseline. You could theoretically make that case.
I mean, of course, every crime that's then committed by an illegal immigrant in your city, if that illegal immigrant goes there because of the sanctuary city policies is one more crime than would have otherwise been committed. But the case that he was making is that people don't even move into areas because of their sanctuary city policies, which I find hard to believe.
I find it hard to believe that if you have a choice right now under the Trump administration of moving to a sanctuary city area where the local government will not coordinate with the federal government or moving into a red area where the local government absolutely will coordinate with the federal government, that you're going to be more comfortable moving to that redder area.
Well, I asked him about California sanctuary city policies and sanctuary state policies, actually. And he suggested that actually California does a wonderful job of cooperating with ICE, which I think ICE might have some questions about this. You're pragmatic. You talk about your pragmatism all the time. Wouldn't best policy be to cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases?
So instead of ICE going to, as you say, hospitals and churches to pick people up, they'd be going to jail houses to pick people up.
That's exactly what they do in California. And we have over 10,000 that I've cooperated with since I've been governor of California. We work very directly. with ICE as it relates to CDCR state prison. California has cooperated with more ICE transfers probably than any other state in the country.
And I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that. So when it comes to the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to felons, people that are being released from the largest state system in the United States of America, California cooperates with ICE.
OK, it's true for violent criminals. It is not true for people who say, let's say, avoided 100 traffic tickets. You get arrested. You are not then reported to ICE. In fact, the law in the state of California is that police are not supposed to question individuals about their immigration status.
State and local funds cannot be used to investigate, detain or arrest people for immigration violations because that's federal law. And local police are not supposed to proactively share nonpublic information like home addresses.
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Chapter 6: What role does public perception play in Newsom's political strategy?
Okay, the whole episode I think is really interesting. Again, credit to Governor Newsom for having me on. Credit to him for actually having a pretty open and I would say fairly both cordial and combative conversation about some of the key issues facing the country. Now, I've talked about the problems facing the Democratic Party. The problems facing the Democratic Party are pretty obvious.
There's a big divide between their radical base and the moderation they're going to need in order to win. And Gavin Newsom wants to campaign as the guy who cooperates with ICE, as the guy who wants to be at least moderate on the trans issue, secondary on the trans issue.
who wants to be fairly moderate on foreign policy, who doesn't want to engage in a lot of the same sort of rhetorical radicalism of his own party. Will the base allow him to do that? I think probably not. He's been able to hide it so far by attacking Trump. I'm not sure how long that's going to last. So that's one problem for him. And of course, the other problem is his record in California.
There are going to be a lot of sort of Willie Horton type ads that come out against Governor Newsom as he runs for the presidency. Now, the problem for the Republicans, Gavin Newsom is a very talented guy. I don't think there's any doubt when you watch that episode that he is good on his feet, that he is slippery when he needs to be.
that he does a convincing imitation of a pro-capitalism moderate, if you think that's an imitation. Maybe that's the real Gavin Newsom and he's had to slather it over with radicalism to get where he wants to go. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But anybody who thinks that Republicans are going to waltz to 2028, I do not think they will waltz to 2028.
I don't think Democrats are going to waltz to 2028. It's going to be a dogfight. And there are problems inside both parties, obviously. The Republican Party is pretty divided on some major issues ranging from the involvement of the state in economics to foreign policy. The record of whoever is the Republican nominee is going to come up for scrutiny also. So here's what I would urge.
For both parties, maybe you ought to take a look at what the American people want. Maybe you ought to take a look at the closeness of every American election for the last 12 years. And think to yourself, maybe if I tacked toward the middle, maybe what Americans really just want is normalcy. Now, maybe the primary structure prevents normalcy from actually taking the floor.
But as we were seeing from the polling data, more and more Americans are identifying as independent. And the reason for that is because all they want is return to normalcy. I think that the reason President Trump won in 2024 is he was by far the most normie candidate by far. Joe Biden was not a normie candidate. He was dead and he was radical. Kamala Harris was not a normie candidate.
She was an empty suit and she was radical. Donald Trump took the middle position on nearly every issue. Will Republicans do that or will they be so high on their own supply that they go rhetorically radical over and over and over for no apparent reason while pursuing mainstream policy? That's going to be the big battle of 2028.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of Newsom's immigration stance on ICE policies?
And that doesn't make any sense. And so we went to the pharmaceutical companies and said, hey, look at me in the eyes. We know and you know that you've been getting away with price gouging and global freeloading from other countries as well for the last several decades. This president will not tolerate any more work with us. be patriots, fix the problem. And to the last one, they've all said yes.
They've come in, they will be willing to participate, the major companies, we haven't gotten to the smaller ones yet. And for that reason, we now have a bunch of contracts with pharmaceutical companies where they agree voluntarily to reduce their prices so they're the most favored nation pricing here in America. It's fair. It works.
It turns out that these companies have maintained their valuations. They haven't been hurt by these deals, even though they've taken significant financial haircuts. The president wants Congress to codify what we already believe works. We don't want to go any further. We don't want to cause any more problems for any pharmaceutical companies, for any parts of these negotiations. We just want to
grandfather in people who have been there and make sure that going forward in future administrations, the drug companies stay committed to this deal structure and that the U.S. government doesn't overreach its needs and start to do crazy things like cap prices in the pharma space that actually would hurt their innovation.
So that's the big first step, number one, most favored nation, acronym MFN, you'll be hearing that a lot. Second big area, how do you make insurance companies accountable? Well, first off, the money that they're getting, it's
This is a good example for the Affordable Care Act, as the president calls it, the Unaffordable Care Act, is a problem because they just take the money, their valuations go up. The money actually, eventually, some of it gets down to the people, but premiums still keep rising. So the president said, from now on, we want the money going to the people.
We want to make sure that as much as possible, we drive down prices in the insurance space fairly. And there's a way of doing that called cost sharing reduction. It was actually in the one big, beautiful bill. The president put it in there and yet Democrats stripped it out. It's a smart way to run insurance. It actually drops the prices for everybody by more than 10%.
So we want to try to get those elements of the program back into this legislation. But we also want insurance companies to tell us how much are you taking home of the premiums and how much are you paying out for the benefits of the average American people? What value are you providing? How many months do people have to wait to get a simple doctor's appointment?
Tell us exactly what's going on behind the scenes so you're accountable and so people can pick the best companies out there. Because if we're giving the average American money in their HSC account or in their pocket to buy insurance, they need to be educated about which ones to pick. And finally, Ben, and you're a big proponent about this, just be transparent. I mean, shed light.
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