Valuetainment - May 25, 2026


＂They Bought A LOT Of Politicians＂ - How Unions HIJACKED California For Two Decades


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

192.18192

Word count

2,096

Sentence count

131

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with my good friend and long-term supporter, former California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, to talk about how he got to where he is today and why he s running for governor in 2020.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:30.000 So, okay, if we say unions, right, and teachers' unions, number one,
00:00:33.540 you've got a couple other unions there as well.
00:00:36.680 That was a big driver of the budget crisis.
00:00:38.260 For sure, but one of the biggest things that helped,
00:00:41.000 if you look at the five monumental moments in Trump winning in 2024,
00:00:45.520 one is Bobby Kennedy joining his camp, massive, we'll never forget Arizona.
00:00:49.480 He walks out with Charlie Kirk turning to USA.
00:00:51.700 That's one, right?
00:00:53.240 You can see the event at Butler.
00:00:55.760 That was definitely number one, okay?
00:00:57.440 Right. And then you have to put and as much as this may seem like a small one is when Sean O'Brien, the president of Teamsters, came out and spoke at the convention and he was going to talk something.
00:01:10.560 And then they said, no, we need you to submit your PowerPoint to prove it.
00:01:13.800 And he calls Susie Wiles, says, I'm not speaking. He says, just call the president.
00:01:16.720 I don't care what you say. He even said some of this. I don't give what you say.
00:01:20.820 Just say whatever you want to say. And he got up, gave a speech, bashed a couple of capitalists, got off the stage.
00:01:25.300 But it was the first time in 120-something years that a Democrat didn't – the union didn't support the Democratic Party.
00:01:33.140 So for you to win in a state like California, what are you doing to win over the union?
00:01:37.380 How do you do that?
00:01:38.020 Do you go and sit in front of these guys and try to get – or is it an impossible thing to do in the state of California?
00:01:42.980 Well, you look at the – there's, of course, two categories, the government unions, non-government unions.
00:01:49.680 And in terms of the lock on power, one way of thinking about it is using Gavin Newsom as a proxy for Democrat politicians.
00:01:58.420 Remember, it's 16 years now of one-party control, 16 years, continuous.
00:02:03.640 All the statewide offices, two-thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature, all the big cities and the counties, state Supreme Court, 6-1, Democrat.
00:02:13.040 Isn't representative even more than two-thirds?
00:02:16.020 In the legislature.
00:02:17.360 Isn't it 43 to 9?
00:02:20.360 Yeah, no, it's more.
00:02:21.200 But at least the two-thirds of what gives you the minimum to be able to do whatever they want to do.
00:02:24.740 So they call it super majeure.
00:02:26.140 So 16 years of that.
00:02:27.880 In those 16 years, Gavin Newsom's been eight years as lieutenant governor, eight years as governor.
00:02:32.460 You look at his donations as a kind of proxy for Democrat politicians in the categories.
00:02:38.220 Number one category of donors to Gavin Newsom, government unions.
00:02:42.860 Non-government unions is number three.
00:02:44.180 and so they control the politicians and that that's representative of the ones in the legislation or
00:02:52.820 the other democrat politicians so they drive it and it's the government unions that are the biggest
00:02:57.840 and that drives the budget crisis because you get over the years all these it's not the only reason
00:03:03.720 they've just massively increased spending they've doubled spending in the last 10 years the size of
00:03:07.640 the budget in california has nearly doubled um but the unions of course you're getting these
00:03:12.360 luxury pensions and healthcare deals and all these things. Okay, here's another thing that
00:03:17.700 I get on the road the whole time. We're doing town halls up and down the state, hundreds of
00:03:21.600 people coming out, bigger and bigger crowds. A question I get nearly all the time from parents,
00:03:26.600 we pay all these taxes and yet we're being asked to pay for school supplies, to chip in as parents,
00:03:34.900 to buy books or paper, pens, but we pay the highest taxes in the country. What's going on?
00:03:39.860 What's going on is that 19.1%, I think, of school districts' budget goes straight out the door to pensions, nearly a fifth before anything is spent.
00:03:51.380 So the government unions are definitely the bigger problem, no question.
00:03:55.800 You look at the prison officers, for example, another huge donor, the corrections union.
00:04:02.380 I mean, they've got this massive prison closure program in California, which is a whole story in itself.
00:04:06.720 a big part of the story on crime is that
00:04:08.780 because they've released tens of thousands
00:04:10.680 of dangerous, violent criminals
00:04:12.740 into the community. Would any of these guys ever support
00:04:14.780 you? Well, I don't think
00:04:16.620 on the government side, but
00:04:17.960 the point I was going to make about prisons is
00:04:20.080 basically they've cut the number of prisons
00:04:22.360 and reduced the prison population
00:04:24.920 nearly by half, but the
00:04:26.740 budget's doubled. It's classic California.
00:04:29.440 But the
00:04:30.100 budget has doubled
00:04:32.180 but the amount of people is split.
00:04:34.460 Yeah, basically. So it's classic.
00:04:36.720 um if you look at the non-government unions the for example involved in construction
00:04:43.520 i think that's where you're right there should be an alliance because all my
00:04:48.620 career ever i've been you know when i was on fox i the theme of my show was i called it
00:04:55.040 positive populism i wrote a book positive populism about how we need to you know the
00:05:00.400 ideas that drove that populist movement trump and you can see on the left as well
00:05:05.320 Lifting up workers, working people who have been left behind
00:05:07.800 by the policies we've seen before, 100%, that's where I'm coming from.
00:05:13.080 And a lot of my, the whole themes of my campaign,
00:05:15.600 $3 gas, cut your electric bill in half,
00:05:18.060 your first $100,000 tax-free, a home you can afford to buy,
00:05:22.460 very much with workers in mind, workers and small business.
00:05:26.100 That's really who I, if there's one group,
00:05:28.160 of course you want to help everybody, but that's really the focus.
00:05:31.320 So I agree with you.
00:05:33.060 I think you've got to flip, though.
00:05:34.100 I think so, because here's the challenge, right?
00:05:36.860 But the government unions, I think, it's their machine.
00:05:40.320 They've built this political machine.
00:05:42.240 They've got huge amounts of money, a billion dollars a year in election cycles spent by the government unions.
00:05:48.580 It's crazy.
00:05:49.180 Did you see the clip, Rob, of who was the fellow, the African-American fellow in the chamber that twice got up and got kicked out of the – when Trump was giving the speech?
00:06:00.100 You know which one I'm talking about?
00:06:01.220 He was holding signs, Elon Musk is a racist or he's this.
00:06:04.100 What is his name? He's got a unique name.
00:06:07.020 He said something. Al Green.
00:06:08.600 You know what Al Green said yesterday about Trump?
00:06:12.180 The first time he met Trump, what he told him.
00:06:14.000 Did you hear this, Rob?
00:06:15.240 Can you type in Al Green first time meeting Trump?
00:06:18.300 Al Green first time meeting Trump.
00:06:20.360 He's telling this story.
00:06:21.600 The guy asked him a question. Maybe it's the lady.
00:06:23.480 I just saw what he said.
00:06:25.120 So what was your reaction the first time you met Trump?
00:06:27.960 He said something very interesting.
00:06:30.140 I wish I saved this.
00:06:31.560 That could have been it, Rob.
00:06:32.820 Go a little bit lower.
00:06:34.100 Zoom in a little bit. Yeah, this is it. Watch what he says here. Go for it.
00:06:37.520 Turn on the audio. Have you ever met the president in person?
00:06:42.400 Yes, I've met him. Watch this. And what is that meeting like?
00:06:46.080 Well, let me tell you. I'm glad you mentioned it. The president that I met first time we met
00:06:50.040 was right here in Houston, Texas. Watch this. When he landed and
00:06:53.860 he left. He deplaned from airport one and
00:06:58.160 he and I talked to each other. He took my hand. Pass your hand
00:07:02.220 over show you how the credit he took my hand and said you're gonna like you're gonna really like
00:07:06.560 me yep those were his words okay very personable very personable guy you can pause it right there
00:07:12.880 so so you know you know why i wanted to play this clip here's why i wanted to play this clip
00:07:16.500 there's something unique about him that i don't know why he's convinced he can flip everybody
00:07:25.400 Yeah. Whether it's him growing up early on in church, he used to go to Norman Vincent Peale's
00:07:32.160 church. I don't know if you're familiar with Norman Vincent Peale, you know, the guy that
00:07:35.060 wrote the book Power of Positive Thinking, which is a book everybody needs to. It's one of the
00:07:38.840 first 50 books I've read in my life. He would go. So the idea was positive thinking. I can convert
00:07:44.600 him. I can convert him. I can convert him. You have that level of optimism. There's something
00:07:48.780 very unique about your energy and your personality, which is attractive. So to me, it's, you know,
00:07:54.640 So what is your strategy to go talk to these guys that there's a 99% chance they're going to say, screw you, Steve. 0.99
00:08:02.620 We hate your type. 1.00
00:08:03.940 You're a Republican. 1.00
00:08:04.960 You're the enemy.
00:08:05.600 You're a conservative.
00:08:06.600 For you to say, look, you may not like me on all my policies, but I think you're going to like me because I want to make the state better.
00:08:12.960 That is how I am.
00:08:14.180 I get along with – I do get along with people.
00:08:18.680 I mean, that's exactly why I'm very interested.
00:08:20.180 That's how I think.
00:08:21.260 and i think it's obvious to me i mean let's just go back to the workers point and unions as a focus
00:08:27.560 like it's so obvious that these 16 years of democrat policies even they think yeah the
00:08:34.140 democrats they're my guys have just been a disaster for the average working person in california
00:08:39.900 more for them than anyone else the rich people can kind of deal with it i'm glad they're leaving 0.95
00:08:45.540 now as well of course because of this ridiculous insane billionaire's tax i'm sure we'll get into
00:08:49.840 that but for regular working people i mean look at the gas you know it's exactly those people
00:08:55.100 who are being hurt the most who does gas price who's hurt most by these insane gas low middle
00:09:00.940 income regular driving their trucks that's right two three four five hours a day for work that's
00:09:05.820 who really is suffering and that's the point i make the whole time and i find when when i'm in
00:09:10.960 those communities and we do events there and i go to and i i love doing events and meeting you know
00:09:15.740 restaurant owners and bars and just regular places like that and it's blue-collar workers
00:09:20.720 often that i mean we were just chatting before the show about you know who comes up to you and
00:09:25.360 who says hi it's often workers see i think i think california needs a guy like you that's optimistic
00:09:31.780 that gets out there but i i'll tell you this one part because as the audience in california is
00:09:37.260 watching i call out california all the time and the reason why i call out california is listen
00:09:40.400 you want change get behind somebody do the work you got to go do the door knocking find a candidate
00:09:45.080 Support him financially.
00:09:46.160 Support him with your community.
00:09:47.360 Support him with, hey, I like this guy.
00:09:49.480 I support this guy.
00:09:50.360 Go put your name out there.
00:09:51.380 There's been a lot of guys that have endorsed you.
00:09:52.720 I think the president endorsed you.
00:09:54.040 Yes.
00:09:54.540 I think Peter Thiel endorsed you.
00:09:56.040 I want to say Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, whom we've had on, endorsed you.
00:10:00.600 There's been a number of people that have come out that have said they want you to be the governor of the state of California.
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