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About this Episode
California Governor Gavin Newsom sits down with Jon and Tommy before a live audience in Los Angeles to discuss Trump's war on Iran, the crowded California gubernatorial primary, and his new book Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. The governor talks about his close childhood friendship with the Getty family, issuing the first same-sex marriage licenses nationwide as San Francisco Mayor, and his surprising childhood pet, Potter the otter.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Hosts & Guests
Transcript
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Welcome to Pud Save America.
I'm John Favreau.
Last week, Tommy and I sat down
with California Governor Gavin Newsom
in front of a live audience here in Los Angeles
to discuss his new book,
Young Man in a Heary,
A Memoir of Discovery.
We also talked to him about Trump's War in Iran,
the race for Newsom's successor
in the governor's office, and lots more.
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What's so surprising about the book is it stops
at your election as governor.
It's all about your actual life before politics.
Yeah, you may want to leave right now.
Yeah, I mean, the whole idea was, you know,
it's interesting, a little bit of the origin story
I was talking backstage.
I had the privilege of working with Anne Godoff,
a legend in publishing, and she was the editor of the book
at Penguin Press, and she interestingly
and tragically passed away last week
on the day of the publication of this book.
And anyone who knows Anne, she's fierce, she's tough.
And about seven years ago, she asked me
if I was interested in writing a book,
and it was marked that book by the relationship
with Trump 1.0 and a little bit of the transition
to the new administration under Biden.
And it was a lot of storytelling about those first four years,
chaotic years around social unrest issues related to COVID.
And I submitted the book, and I'll never forget going on Zoom,
and just there was something off.
And I tried to stop her before we went into arguing
the case in the merits for the book, which I was really proud of.
And I said, if you want me, I know you
may have some concerns.
There's one chapter about my childhood and my family.
And I totally get if you want that out.
And she goes, that's the only part I want in.
So this was not the book I set out to write.
It was the book that I had to write in response to that.
And it's a book that I mentioned.
It was a memoir, ultimately, of discovery,
because it was a book that forced me to learn about my child,
to learn about my past.
And that's why it ended with the passing of my father
to the question you asked.
It went through election day where he literally survived
to see his son get elected governor of California.
And so I thought that was an appropriate way
to end the book.
There's an epilogue that has some interesting stories
that may fast track to the president a little bit.
But it really is a love letter to my mom and dad and my family.
Yeah.
Yeah, that election night scene is really remarkable, given
his story and trajectory and attempts to get into politics.
And we're going to get into all of that
and more stories from the book in a second.
But there's a lot of big breaking news happening in the world.
I think a lot of folks would like to get your opinion on it.
President Trump took us to war in Iran on Saturday.
It feels like a little scary out there right now.
The attack seemed to be growing in the Middle East.
There's not really a clear plan coming out of the White House.
What's your sense of whether it was necessary to go to war now?
And do you think Democrats should be taking
steps to try to block Trump via war powers
vote or something in Congress?
Yeah, I'm a little old-fashioned.
I believe in co-equal branches of government.
Yeah.
We are celebrating.
Yeah.
It is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration
Independence after all.
And this historic project, the best
of Roman Republic, Greek democracy,
the notion of popular sovereignty, the rule of law,
not the rule of dawn, which we'll get into perhaps later.
But I hope it's dawning on everybody.
He had no plan, no strategy.
He had no interest or desire to engage you, me, all of us
in understanding the why.
Why now?
What's the imminent threat?
What are the unintended and unintended consequences?
The prospect of this becoming a regional war
was that thought through who was going to take over
for the Supreme Leader, particularly
after you went through 49 others.
And now today, Trump says, well, maybe it doesn't work out.
Maybe we get someone who's worse.
You know, but nothing was more damning, I think,
of the moment and this administration
and who Donald Trump is.
It goes to the heart of who he is.
Then his press conference yesterday,
where he's remarks where he was lamenting the life now
at six, but four Americans that died.
And he mentioned them in passing and then went on
to mention in great detail the drapes
and the Imperial Palace and the East Wing
that he's building in, you know, and went
on to talk about the pile drive.
With real passion and conviction,
it says everything about Donald Trump.
The uncertainty in the world to the fact
that we've allies under threat and UAE,
we've got proxy war against once again with Hezbollah
and Lebanon.
We've got all the anxiety as relates
to 20% of the world's oil flow and issues related to oil
and prices and shocks and energy concerns
and you're 401K and the Zigg and the Zag.
And it begs so many questions.
Why is it?
It's got a passion for design.
He's got a passion.
We're going to have these.
But it's just, it's, and so yeah, you asked me
about the War Powers Act.
You asked me about invoking some consideration.
I mean, it takes a cursory.
Look at the, at the Constitution
to determine the requirement of Declaration of War
for the President to get congressional approval.
And so I appreciate Congress now getting back
not the leadership, but the minority getting back
into the game in this respect.
But this is a hell of a thing.
And this is a, remember, you guys all know this.
He has done more airstrikes in his first year
than the last administration did in four years.
This is the seventh incursion twice now into Iran.
At a time when he's cutting taxes for billionaires,
he's cutting food stamps, he's cutting Medicaid,
he's cutting Medicare.
And here he is spending tens of billions of dollars,
not for recovery here in Los Angeles.
He has no interest in that, but overseas.
This is a broken president.
He's historic because he's historically unpopular.
And we all have to recognize the moment we're living in
and how perilous this moment truly is.
You mentioned the shifting explanations and rationales
that are coming out of the White House.
Yesterday, Marco Rubio pretty explicitly
said that the timing of the operation
was based on planning by Israel.
He basically said, we knew that the Israelis were going
to strike Iran, which meant Iran would strike back
against our bases in the region, which
means the US had to preempt the response, I guess,
and bomb the Iranians first.
What did you make of that explanation?
And then a lot of Democrats have looked
at the Netanyahu regime and felt like, you know what?
We don't like the trajectory he's on.
It's time to rethink the US relationship with Israel,
especially military support.
Where do you think?
We're thinking that easy right now.
Let's talk about that.
So the first rationale is we've got to make sure
that they're not a nuclear arm.
But of course, that rationale I thought was resolved,
meaning we had completely obliterated their sites.
And so that was the first rationale.
They know, OK, so well, maybe that wasn't the case.
But now it's about their missiles.
And they can perhaps hit the United States.
And then you realize, wait, that's a decade plus away, if that.
So that's BS.
OK, then it's about their militias.
It's about their proxy.
Then it's no, it's about their navy.
And then it's no, it's in response
to the likelihood that Israel was going to.
So we had to go in ourselves.
And then you hear Hexat, God help us.
In his rationale or non-rational.
So this is Keystone cops.
But playing with real lives, with our reputation, they've already.
I mean, they, so you see what's happening to our allies.
You see what's happening.
They all alliance in the context of truth and trust
and the conversations that all of our allies are having now
with India and with China as their strengthening
those relationships, because they're
starting to de-couple or de-risk their relationship
with the United States.
But the issue of BB is interesting,
because he's got his own domestic issues.
He's trying to stay out of jail.
He's got an election coming up.
He's potentially on the ropes.
He's got folks the hard line that want to annex the West,
the West Bank.
I mean, free men and others are talking about it
appropriately, sort of in a part-tied state.
They couldn't even.
I mean, we're talking about regime change.
For two years, they haven't even
able to solve the Hamas question.
In Israel.
So this is, I mean, you know, I want to be careful here,
but you know, in so many ways,
that influence in the context of the conversation
of where Trump ultimately landed on this
is pretty damn self-evident.
And so Rubio may have been saying something else
in the context of what he ultimately said
in terms of being sort of pulled into some of these things.
But I will say this, didn't surprise me in this context.
I don't know if it was Napoleon or whoever said
about a sword, the only thing you can't use a sword for
is sitting on it.
And when you bring two aircraft carriers out there
and you assemble the kind of military force
that Trump did over the last few weeks,
it didn't surprise me ultimately.
They moved that direction.
Do you think looking down the road
that the United States should consider
maybe, you know, rethinking our military support for Israel?
Well, it breaks my heart because the current leadership
in Israel is walking us down that path.
Where I don't think you have a choice,
but that consideration.
I mean, to say this is an America's interest.
At a time when affordability is at crisis levels
where you had administration literally got elected saying
this is exactly opposite of what they would ever consider doing.
The fact that we are in this now regional war,
all these proxies, the fact that we, you know,
and all the grift and the corruption,
it's also marks a huge part of this.
And that's a real conversation we need to have
as board of peace and the peace
that the Whitcock family is getting
and the peace that Kushner is getting
and the peace that Trump Jr. is getting.
You just got to reconsider the whole thing.
You just have to.
And, you know, that's a stubborn,
I didn't expect to be in that place, you know.
Few years ago, let alone, you know, where we are today.
And it's accelerating in real time
in a deeply, deeply alarming way.
And, you know, it's just one of many alarm bells
that are ringing and we can get it to democracy or republic.
We can get into what's happening with the, you know,
secret police, you know, the bovino vacation of our,
you know, of our streets and what's happening
in this country with democracy.
You know, it's a precious and perilous time,
but it also has parallels.
In some of those are reflected in some of the storytelling
in the book and some of the revelations
about my own family's relationship to, you know,
the red scare, to Oppenheimer, to McCarthy and McCarthyism.
And some of those currents,
some of those tenants echo today in many respects.
One more newsy question.
I'll connect it to the book about that.
In the book, you talk about your first race for governor
and you talk about one of the strategies you guys pursued
was that you sort of directed your advertising campaign
against a Republican candidate that was running
and said because if, you know,
this top two vote getters in California
and the primary go on to the general
and if it was you and a Republican,
in this case, John Cox, a supported Trump,
then you were to have a much easier general
and if it was Antonio Viragosa,
it would have been a little trickier.
So you elevated John Cox and it worked.
And I know people hate that, but yes, it worked, you know.
And now, even though you are, of course, irreplaceable,
there is a race for the irreplaceable governor.
Do you hear that?
You're irreplaceable.
There's the third terms, yes.
There is a very, don't worry, don't worry.
You get the hat.
Though I do have a hat on my Patreon site,
you can check it out with our knee pegs
and Newsom was always right hats, but I digress.
You were asking me a question.
Very crowded field of Democrats.
A couple polls have actually show that it's so crowded
and they're splitting the vote so much
that has the two Republican candidates
in the one two spot, which would mean
a Republican governor of California.
Today, the chair of the California Democratic Party
said, look, if you're not making meaningful progress
towards winning the primary and you're a candidate
by April 15th, you should drop out.
I saw the speaker of the assembly agreed as well.
Do you agree with that as well?
You know, Russy Hicks is head of the party sent me
his statement, and I read it a few hours ago,
and I confess I agree, and I didn't really
protest it because there's just, I mean,
at this moment in history with all the peril
and promise that marks this moment for California,
the most untrumped state in America,
and I have a Republican Trump running.
There is no margin for error.
And so look, but I do confess, it is the hardest thing.
I used to, when I was running for governor,
and it was all about me.
And I'm like, what is this, Jerry Brown?
Why doesn't he, and I says, Lieutenant Governor,
I said, just go out of the state governor,
go out, why are you still talking like you matter?
Oh, now I feel his pain.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, Jerry.
You know, it's hard when you're like, I'm a milk carton.
I got to sell my date.
And it's, you know, it's a countdown.
By the way, my daughter is 16.
She's like, oh, she can't wait till I'm no longer governor.
Circle in the date.
Yeah, she's like, it's freedom.
It's liberation day, the real liberation day for her.
But it's, you know, look, this thing's around the corner.
I think it's been hard, just a brief reflection.
You know, this race hasn't, I don't think
is getting the kind of attention it deserves.
And it's hard at a time of Trump and Trumpism
where so much of our politics is so nationalized
and the ability to dominate the narrative and the shock
and awe that is Trump is taking, of course,
last year so much it was marked by a lot of the work
we did around the, you know, pro 50, et cetera.
And so I appreciate that.
You all did on that.
So it's been a little more difficult.
And you got an election in a few weeks early voting.
It's not even that many months.
And so this is a moment for real self-reflection.
Is it about you?
Is it about me?
Or is it about all of us?
And the stakes couldn't be higher.
And so all I'll say is, choose wisely.
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Let's talk about the book.
You've been saying that writing this book
made you realize that for most of your life,
you're trying to be someone you're not.
Yeah, yeah.
Who are you trying to be?
I don't know.
I think Oscar Wilde says, you know,
the first duty in life is to strike a pose.
The second duty, no one knows.
And I feel like I'm in that second phase.
The first phase, I struck a pose.
I put a mask on and my face was growing into it
in some respects.
Quite literally, his kid wrote about putting on a suit.
And I try to put on this armor as a kid
that struggled in school.
It's a pretty severe learning disability
that still marks who I am today.
A lot of my anxieties, my insecurities.
But I was also marked by those moments
that I never fully understood
until I wrote the book and learned about them
in a way that I never understood it.
Give me a point of that.
My mom was 19 when she was pregnant with me.
And a few years later, she was on her own with two kids.
My father, for reasons, neither of them explained, left.
Just a few years after the birth of my sister,
who was here in a night.
And I didn't understand it until I learned about it
a oral history that he had done that none of us knew about
at the Bankcroft Library.
And someone said, when I was asking about my father,
and do you guys know why they got divorced?
They never talked about it.
They said, did you hear the interview
he did in the Bankcroft Library?
So he said it to a stranger.
He never told us.
And he said that he, and there's reason
that I'm telling this story.
He lost an election for county supervisor,
turned around the next year, ran for state senate,
lost both races.
And in the interview, he said he was broke and broken.
And he had a breakdown.
And just had to get the hell out of there.
And he left.
And he went up to Lake Tahoe region.
And for years and years and years,
not only did I not understand that,
I also never understood why my mom was so insistent
that I never get an apolitics.
And up until her nine days,
she's like, you need to run, get out of this.
And by the way, when that recall against me qualified,
she spoke very loud to me.
It means she passed away in that moment.
But it makes sense now.
Here she was coming from no wealth, no money, no privilege.
Got married to a guy who was 32 years old, scandal.
At 19, looking for that mentorship,
looking for that stability and support.
And here he is, he takes off.
Not because he was a bad guy,
but he didn't know how to be a good husband.
And he didn't know how to be a good father
in those early years.
And here's my mom, just hard work, grit, single mom.
And by the way, single moms.
I mean, just mad respect for all those single moms out there,
honestly.
Like I didn't know, my mom died 20 years ago.
I never told her, thank you.
I didn't.
That young man in a hurry with that mask on was just me, me, me.
You know, I'm just running, running, just hustling,
just trying to, you know, I'm grinding away.
And here she was working two, three jobs.
And by the way, when I say two, three jobs,
I describe every single damn one of them,
part time bookkeeper, part, you know,
working part time in a department store,
working for A to adoption, special kids,
kids with intellectual and physical disabilities,
working as a waitress at Ramona's restaurant.
And just grinding grit, we had roommates,
we had people literally, I walk in,
my mom's living in the living room,
because she left her bedroom, because she's running out.
She's just trying to pay the damn rent.
And so what this book is, I'm paying homage to her
to thank her for her sacrifice.
And teaching me resilience, man, teaching me grit.
And in the process of doing this,
also teaching me to let go, that it's okay.
You know, take the mask off.
Just be yourself.
And so this book was cathartic.
It's not a sanitized politician's book, man.
It's not, I hope that it's not.
And I hope you didn't read that.
I've read plenty of those.
Yeah, I appreciate those things.
And I try to scrutinize, and I kick the tires,
and I went deeper, and I questioned my own relationship
to, you know, my own participation,
and my own image of that slick guy,
and all the whole thing, I mean, I get it.
I get it.
I'm not naive about that.
And so this was my opportunity to, you know,
tell a different story, and also tell the story
that my mom and dad deserved.
So look, as you were saying,
you clearly have a complicated relationship with your father.
I can tell reading the book, and in this conversation,
that you revere your mother,
and all that she did for you, and all the sacrifice.
But I was struck by a comment made to you.
I believe by your aunt, Cindy,
who sits by the way here tonight.
Okay, careful.
She's a star in this book.
Oh, a fascinating person.
I'd love to be sitting.
But no, I think she said to you
that your parents in attention to your dyslexia
as a boy was abuse, and that was sort of a jarring thing
to read, and I was wondering how it felt
to you to hear that, whether you agreed.
You know, I was, and some of you may know this,
most of you probably don't or won't believe it.
I can't read speeches.
You'll never see me, someone hands me a speech,
and I start to read it.
I could do a teleprompter,
and it just takes dozens and dozens of hours
for dozens of minutes.
And it's hard just sort of focusing on that written word,
but allows spatially, I'm able to just,
you know, stare at the screen, and I'm able to do it.
And that's, you know, my entire life, I felt dumb.
You know, in the back of the classroom,
you're struggling through school,
and by the way, you know, wasn't just me struggling,
and this, again, part of the process of writing the book,
I can't even imagine what it's like to be a mother,
a single mom, trying to read your kids,
trying to explain it's okay.
I mean, my mom said something that I'll never forget.
I really was angry about it,
and I drought about it in the book.
She said, in a fit of frustration with me,
she said, it's okay to be average.
And it's like, damn.
And I honestly, for years and years,
I held a lot of resentment around that,
until, again, in the process of writing this over the last five years,
I realized she was struggling.
She just was saying, it's okay to just be you.
You don't have to be someone you're not.
You don't have to put that mask on.
And so, you know, my aunt saw it up close.
She saw the struggling.
My mom had, she saw me running out of classrooms,
running away from, you know,
just constantly running and searching and struggling.
And, you know, I just, I can't sugarcoat it.
And anyone that's got a learning disability,
I think you can appreciate this, but at the same time,
you also start developing these superpowers,
because you start overcompensating
for the things you can't do as well as everybody else.
And that has been the gift and the ability to,
you know, sort of absorb and create and look outside the lines
and paint outside the lines.
Take risks, you have to take risks.
Learn from mistakes, have a resiliency.
All those things are also part of the journey
of having a learning disability
and having a learning difference.
And so, I'm here because of it,
despite some of those early scars
that mark those moments in the book.
I was gonna ask one thought I had
when you were talking about,
when you were writing about dyslexia is,
how does it affect you writing?
Like, how does it, was it a challenge writing the book?
Well, the worst part was doing the audio of the book.
I mean, whoever did the editor,
they deserve a pay raise and hugs.
You can't pay them enough, Penguin.
They did it.
It took like, I don't know, 20, 30 hours to do the audio,
reading the book and reading about your own,
dyslexia as you're talking, as you're saying,
you can't read.
Go through 25 times, that same sentence.
So, you know, it's just an interesting,
you know, the writing process is difficult,
but the opportunity to work with a writer, Mark Erichs,
was how I was able to.
That's why this was a five year process of writing this book
and constantly editing and iterating and stress testing.
And we were joking backstage.
When you're writing about your family,
when most of your family's alive,
that not so easy, you better get it right.
Because you got to go to Thanksgiving dinner
and explain, you know, why the story is this,
not the what you're all saying the story was,
here's the real story.
And so this was, yeah, it's an imprecise art writing,
it's particularly a memoir.
So, you didn't grow up wealthy,
but your family's close relationship with the Gettys,
put you in proximity as you write about to obscene wealth.
How did that shape your view of wealth, extreme wealth
as you got into politics
and sort of how you look at the world right now?
Well, it certainly shapes the way I look at the world right now.
I'm with the single moms in terms of, you know,
where that, where the fundamental decision points are
in that respect.
But it was really interesting.
You know, my father grew up, one of his best best friends
is my dad described in his best best friend describes,
Gordon Gettie, they grew up together in high school
and became just best friends.
And so much of their lives cross paths.
My dad, Godfather of the Gettie kids
and their travails, their triumphs.
One of, you know, my dad's God's son
was tragically kidnapped in a very famous kidnapping
where his ear was cut off.
And my father, you know,
marks so much of my early memories.
In fact, a little cute story.
Paul, Jr. was his name.
He came back from the kidnapping
and his Godfather, my dad wanted to drive him
and his two kids were visiting down at Chestnut Street
in the Marina district.
And there's a story that I tell my sister and I
in the back of the car, relative to the young age
and my dad just pleaded with us.
Whatever you do, don't talk about Paul's ear.
Just whatever you do.
And within a few minutes of Paul getting in the front seat
and we're driving along, my dad's driving.
And I'm looking at my sister Hillary.
I'm like, you know, shh.
And my sister just couldn't help herself.
She's staring and she goes,
Paul, how many ears do you have?
I'm like, oh, God.
And luckily, Paul had a great sense of humor.
But it really marks my first memories of the family
and again, some of the tragedy, not just the tribe.
And these are still, my days,
some of my closest friends are members of that family.
But I never was a member of the family.
And there's a scene in the book, this crazy
and there's some wonderful stories in here.
And it's really honestly worth taking a look.
Some that are, you know, just rather ridiculous.
Including a trip to Spain that I took.
And King Juan, I was one of those trips.
I don't know, forget all these fancy things.
You were the, yeah, I was a kid, as in high school.
Quite a party.
I'm thinking I'm all that.
You know, again, young man are hurrying his little suit.
Like he needs, you know, Pierce Brosnan
from Remington Steel.
Up.
Like actually, literally, up.
And just discovered hair gel.
That's a whole nother chapter in the book.
Forgive me.
And I'm saying, you know, I'm with Anagorn's four kids
on this trip and, you know,
relative to the same age and the getty boys, you know,
people are, you know, oh, it's wonderful to meet all of you.
Which one are you?
This, I'll never get, which one are you?
With such pride.
And I said, well, my name's Gavin.
Newsom, she goes, which one is that?
I said, Newsom.
And she literally immediately turns.
Go away, young man.
And it was such an imposter moment.
Like you knew your status.
You knew your standing.
And so that was my relationship to that.
You know, I walked into those doors,
but I walked back home into my mom's arms.
And I'll never forget all those trips.
Once a year, we would go on these amazing trips
with my father and the family.
But I'd always come back home.
And when my mom opened the doors,
she was not on those trips.
She would go and very basically go,
oh, welcome back.
I hope you had a wonderful time.
Good night.
And literally never talk about it again.
And that was the reality.
And so it, you know, it just, it shapes, you know,
there was, it shapes the consciousness of wealth
and but in different layers, in a different understanding,
the proximity to it, the relationship to it,
but never absorbing it.
My father, when he passed away, he gave us a second mortgage
and a lot of beautiful books in a small town
in Dutch flat, California, and Placer County.
So even his relationship, he never created the abundance
that so many people I think believe in terms of my life
and the perception of remarkable privilege, plenty of privilege.
Plenty of doors that were open.
I'm not naive about that.
But again, a very different reality than those many believe.
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Speaking of extreme wealth,
I mean, you knew a lot of the big luminaries in tech
when they were broke, right?
I mean, you write about Steve Jobs showing you
the first iPhone at a party with like,
we, wow, Sir Dave Rain was there.
I think you said Elon Musk gave you a ride
into the set of current TV in the first day of the world,
Sir.
So I know I've heard you say and I agree that like tech writ large,
there hasn't been as big of a metamorphosis as people might
think given where some of the CEOs are,
but it does seem like there was an inflection point
maybe around COVID, maybe around Trump's election
or re-election that radicalized, changed some of them
or made them speak out.
Elon Musk obviously being the number one example.
Do you have a theory?
No, not only in theory, I actually, interestingly,
that's part of the book that we're not publishing
and I write about it in detail,
particularly Elon's relationship to me and the state
and stories around how he got us ventilators.
She never did.
And how that breakdown started occurring,
I started seeing there was libertarian tendencies,
but we saw something that came out the other side
very, very different.
And I'll for a lot of people,
not just some of these more well-known tech luminaries
and it's been hard to see in every way, shape, or form
because I write about those early days.
Cara Swisher, she wrote an amazing book in this space
and Cara, we're talking about it the other day
in San Francisco and comparing notes to the old days
and it was do no harm back then.
There was a sense of idealism
and we were connecting the world.
And San Francisco was in the center of that entire universe.
I remember doing Uber Day and Yelp Day and Twitter Day
and it was like a big deal and the CEOs would show up
and I got a t-shirt and I was like the first guy on Twitter
and I was like, you could go back to my first tweet.
I'm jogging in the marina and I didn't know
what does this even mean.
It's like in a coffee.
Wow, this is the way I attend followers.
And it was when Larry and Sergei were talking about
we need to do free Wi-Fi in San Francisco
and so it's just so radically different
and it feels so much darker because it is today.
And that darkness came on an inaugural.
When I saw all those guys up there and it wasn't just those guys.
I joke about that Patriot site and the knee pads.
The good news is we have new ones in
because the last, they're the new Trump signature series
knee pads because the last ones sold out
just like many of the tech CEOs
just like the lawyers, just like the universities,
just like the law firms, just like so many members
of the media have been selling out this country, our republic.
And so, you know, we got to call that out
and we got to call them out and that's and that's why.
And that's why.
Okay, yeah.
Anyway, all right.
We're going to continue the conversation.
Let's please let the governor talk.
This is, we're going to have a conversation up here
about the book.
That's what we're here for.
So, governor, continue, please.
Oh, appreciate it.
So, look, I think it goes to the zeitgeist of this moment
and the moment all of us are feeling,
the anxiety, the stress, you know,
and I think so much without, you know,
getting into last few years.
I mean, I think it's been the last 10 years
since Trump came down the escalator.
And just, you know, the stacking of stress that's reflected
and, you know, I signed the first bill banning private prisons
including Corsific in California.
So, that was legislation I advanced.
I signed with respect.
And I don't know that there's many.
I take a backseat to no one being a fierce opponent
to what's happening on American streets.
It happened here first in the state of California.
We saw 4,000 of our national guard troop here in Los Angeles,
federalized 700 active duty Marines.
We're not sent overseas.
They were sent to the second largest city
in the United States of America.
And what did we say last June?
We said it was a preview of things to come.
You saw exactly that happen in DC.
You saw it happen in Chicago.
You saw it happen in Minnesota.
But you also saw the steel and the spines of Minnesotans
that stood up in the retreat of Trump and Trumpism,
which should give us pause to reflect on some optimism
that we can defeat these guys.
He's in retreat.
And so, I appreciate the advocacy.
I appreciate people standing up.
All of us have that responsibility.
All of us have to roll to play.
But we are on edge.
Communities are on edge.
You know, when we launched that Prop 50 campaign,
little Tokyo, you know, the democracy center,
and people said, did you see the mass men out of front?
I'm like, come on, they're not mass men.
We literally ran around the side.
There were folks in masks.
We didn't know who the hell they were.
They weren't marked with any reference representation.
And then this guy dressed up, honestly,
like he came off a set in Burbank in 1930s garb,
literally with a Himmler haircut, guy named Bovino.
Gray Bovino.
And we said at the time that was a preview of things to come.
So I appreciate the relationship to this moment
is shaped by so many moments we have
and have had here in the state of California.
But it's also marked with the moment of resolve and conviction.
And so, I'm here, you know, in the relationship
to my truth and my past, you know,
this is not a story about perfection.
It's a story about perseverance.
That perseverance of a mom who, you know,
as a young child was thrown against a fireplace
by her father who put a gun to her head.
That same grandfather of mine, her father,
that spent years as a prisoner of war
after the Marching Corrigidor and how he came back
a different person ultimately took his life.
How my mom took her life in a moment of her own despair
because of her own pain.
Because she was struggling for the second time
with breast cancer and she just couldn't take it.
And at time when it was illegal to do assisted suicide.
And she found a doctor had the courage to give up,
you know, he was risking his license
in the relationship to that moment.
And those moments you never get again
and how precious this all is.
And so, I hope we're all standing,
including those that are speaking.
I appreciate them, that context.
We're all standing in this moment
that we all have agency.
And then we're not by standards in the world.
And I think that's my history.
That's my father's fierce advocate.
He was an environmental warrior.
I mean, we, our first pet, this is hardly relatable.
This is a weird pet, yeah.
This is not on your bingo car.
Our first pet was an otter.
What is the otter eat?
Your fingers and toes and...
Where'd you go with anything he sees in the house?
This jumped out at me in the book.
I literally wrote down you had a fucking pet
otter growing up, question mark.
And you eventually gave it away, right?
Did you have to, did you have to...
We had to give it away because he bit the mail man
and my mom.
That's fair.
That's the first act of resistance in my home.
My mom said, it's either the otter or you, dad,
my father.
But I say that to make a point.
By the way, his name was Potter, the otter.
And...
It's a good name.
Or not.
But it marks my father and just as a fierce
environmental warrior and environmental justice.
And racial justice, economic justice.
He was a Sarge Shriver Democrat.
He was a Bobby Kennedy Democrat.
He was an activist judge on the California Court of Appeals.
And he marks my sense of idealism and daring.
But that grit, that hard work and the energy of my mom.
And it's a combination of all those things.
And it's a combination that is allowed
me to get through a recall.
It's a combination allows me to wake up every day
and read another true social and try to sort of mark
a relationship to this moment, to do better, to do more.
And recognize that we have to do better.
And more of these people are suffering.
People are struggling.
And we all have to raise the bar of expectations
and accountability and self-reflection.
And so this is a book about self-reflection.
It's a book about taking a deep breath, letting go.
And just being yourself and putting it out there.
And I hope people you've seen with me, you know?
I'm willing to go out there on the limb.
I'm putting a mirror up to Trump and Trumpism.
I don't want you to check out my social media, you know?
Go to that Patriot store.
And, you know, and I'm in the arena, man.
And I'm not perfect.
And I know you want more and better.
I get it.
And I'm just, I'm not trying to be anymore,
it goes to your question.
Someone I'm not.
And I just, I'm who I am.
And, you know, you don't have to like the book.
I can't control the third thing.
I can, you know, I can only control what I can control.
And I, it's, it's what I learned in this process.
And, and that's why this, this why it's
been a really remarkable gift to, to be
able to tell my story and to be able to dedicate it
to those that will carry on this story.
And that's my precious four kids, the Dutch Brooklyn
and the Hunter and Montana, and to my extraordinary wife,
who's also here with me tonight, as you know,
from the introduction.
And to make sure I don't screw that up.
Because at the end of the day, you know,
we could talk about our resume values.
No one gives a damn about those.
It's your eulogy.
And it's that relationship to your truth.
It's your relationship to others.
And it's your relationship to the world we're trying to build.
And, and how we can, you know, be fierce advocates
for each other.
Well, speak of that world.
I want to start talking about something
in attention in politics that I think about a lot
that I think you have dealt with against the best wishes
of your mother.
You did go into politics.
You become mayor of San Francisco.
And when you were mayor, you were right about this.
You went against the law, the California Constitution,
the Democratic Party.
Most of the time with the law.
But even as Californians, when you allowed
the first same-sex marriage to take place in San Francisco.
No one was applauding back then.
I assure you.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's going to work.
And I think, you know, you know, reading it,
you get the idea of sort of the politics and the,
and sort of like the tidal wave of public opinion
that you were up against then.
And you said, and you wrote in the book,
that the reason you did it is because simply,
it was the right thing to do, which is refreshing.
And you also called the sort of go-it-slow,
I think you said, admonition, the mother's milk
of democratic politics.
And there is a lot of go-slow admonition out there.
But, you know, we also lived through elections.
You've lived through many elections.
After this last election in 2024,
we've all been going through this process,
what went wrong, what went wrong.
And you know, and you recently said, you know,
the Democrats need to spend less time on, you know,
identity politics and pronouns and more
on tabletop issues.
And the question is, because you've now been on both sides
of this, like how do you square those two
potentially contradictory ideas?
Yeah, I don't know that they are.
Look, my why is to stand up for ideals
and strike out against injustice.
And I don't come to that flippantly.
I've really absorbed that.
I don't stand up for ideals, strike out against injustice.
And if I'm on the fence on a bill or a fence
on a personal decision or a professional
even business decision, that's where the default is.
And that's reflected in marriage equality in 2004.
Remember, in 2004, we were just finishing up the debate
around domestic partnerships.
We weren't even into separate is equal,
which was civil unions back then.
And that's where, by the way, a lot of my family was.
Old Irish Catholic family, the West Side,
you get my drift to San Francisco, the Church.
The Irish Catholic Church, where my dad was.
And I describe in the book the scene
where he kind of had an intervention with his,
my uncle Brennan, his brother, in this fierce warrior
for justice, Joe Kachet, one of our state's countries,
great lawyers.
And Kachet had an intervention the night before I was
going to move forward with one marriage.
There's a whole other story there.
And they're like, why are you doing this?
You just got elected.
Like, things are good.
You're relatively young.
You were the youngest mayor in the 100 years.
You got plenty of time.
You don't need to do this.
No one asks you to do this.
Folks don't want you to do this.
We don't want you to do this.
And I really got into it.
And they started really challenging me.
And I couldn't answer in an affit of frustration.
That's when I said, I'm doing it because it's
the right thing to do.
And it wasn't, I wasn't trying to win an argument.
I was exacerbated.
And I was like, it's the right thing.
And I'll never forget, Joe looked at my dad and my uncle.
And he said, boys, it's the right thing to do.
And that was the end of it.
Next morning, I married Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.
They've been together 47 years.
And, you know, 4,000 and 35 other couples
from 46 states and six countries got married.
And what we refer to in San Francisco,
not as the summer of love, but the winter of love.
But there wasn't a lot of love to your point.
I was getting from the Democratic Party.
We had the convention later that year.
And, you know, I won't name names,
but folks like, you really should focus
on homelessness in San Francisco.
You don't have to go.
They're like, you really don't have to.
Certainly, you're not going to be speaking.
See, you really don't have to show up.
And in the heart, Phyllis was a lot of the folks
that showed up for me on election night
who all universally gave me the same advice.
It's the advice we all get.
Young man, just do what you think is right.
Those same folks were out there saying,
oh, you think you're doing it.
And there were folks that ultimately blame me.
And this is the serious part of your question.
And this is what I, back to scrutinize.
I'm not sanitized for the election outcome.
Too much too soon, too fast.
You know, I can wax on about letters
from Birmingham Jail, which I did, which I reread,
or maybe read for the first time.
They've meant something very different.
It's always the right time to do the right thing.
King said.
And so fast forward to the conversations
we're all having today.
And what we need to do to get back into power.
And so it's a legitimate question.
So you have the tactics, the electoral question,
and then you have the policy-making question.
How, and I just think the Democratic Party needs
to be a little, and forgive this word, ruthless about winning.
We just have to be.
And so that's the second part of your question.
Yeah, we're just trying to win arguments.
Right after Donald Trump called Greg Abbott,
and said he was quote unquote entitled to five seats,
because he knows he's going to get slacked
in the midterm elections.
He knows he's going to lose.
So he's trying to rig the election.
That's one of 10 things he's doing.
We could talk about the other nine,
is doing mid-decade redistricting.
I imagine he thought, and frankly, I may have even thought.
Our reaction would be maybe like to call you guys up,
see if you can help maybe draft an op-ed.
That we can place in the New York Times, wow,
to try to win an argument.
God's darn it, this is so wrong.
And we responded very differently.
We said, look, we got to fight fire with fire.
We're going to lose this country.
We're going to lose our republic.
And so I just think at the core of my humble belief,
guys, at the core of our party problem,
it's my humble belief, is strength.
We've got to be stronger in our convictions, our courage.
We've got to start to dominate the narrative again.
We've got to win not just the argument,
but we've got to address the attention deficit that we have.
There's an asymmetry.
These guys have propaganda networks.
It's Provdus, prime time lineup.
I mean, my gosh, Laura Ingram is in business with Trump Jr.
That's happening in the United States of America.
I mean, it's Provdus listening to Hannity in these guys.
And Murdoch Inc., it's surround sound 24-7.
They're flooding the zone.
Donald Trump understands this.
So we can no longer be conventional in our politics,
this is ultimately what I'm arguing for.
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So the line that stuck out to Tommy was both the otter.
For me, it was this line,
you write this about becoming a father, quote,
I could count on one hand,
the times I actually changed a diaper.
You have four children, sir.
This was the first child.
How did you pull that off?
I, you know, this was the edit my wife made to the book.
It's a, I don't think, John, that it's that bad.
But like I said, I was scrutinizing, not sanitizing.
This young man in hurry was out and about,
you know, as mayor of San Francisco,
I was showing up at events,
and that was a pattern interrupt, you know,
in psychology, we talk about scratching the record
for those old enough to know what a record is.
And, you know, a pattern interrupt,
where Jen's like, get your shit together.
And there were a number of those pattern interrupts
that I write honestly about.
Look, one of the things that I imagine,
you know, Jen's here, gotta be careful.
That she was wondering when she married me,
like what, you know, what kind of husband are you gonna be?
And then shortly after, truly,
what kind of dad are you gonna be?
Are you gonna be your dad?
You know, she loved my father.
My father was present in my life later on.
But she was also deeply aware he wasn't
when we were growing up.
And that stress test came home
in this beautiful bundle of joy, Montana,
our first born, Montana, Tessa, who wasn't there,
my mom, Sebel Newsom.
And I didn't know until that moment,
that's, and you guys have had this, right?
You don't know.
You can intellectualize it all day.
But I had something that I'm not sure my dad ever had.
And I, boy, dad, you missed it.
I had this thing that went from here,
and it just burst in here.
And it was like this baritone, this deep, like, oh, whoa.
This light, this sort of, like, oh my God,
to truly understand love at a different level.
That said, I didn't necessarily love changing diapers.
And Jen, who's a fierce advocate,
has written and done all kinds of documentaries,
one called Fair Play,
which is about partnership in the household.
She got to remind me, you gotta get your shirt together,
you gotta step up your game.
And so that was marked for my first daughter's diapers.
I made up for it, sir.
John, with all of the other kids,
and continue to work harder to make up for equal time.
And in parody, though, equal, maybe illusory.
I'm still working on that.
What other thing that jumped out of me in the book,
is you talk about election night,
you get elected governor, you wake up the next day,
you walk out of the hotel room,
and there's two California state patrolmen
who then become your ubiquitous part of your life,
your security detail.
And you're then followed by staff everywhere you go.
And you lose your anonymity, you lose your freedom.
I think you say freedom is the price you pay
for the privilege of the job.
I was wondering how that impacted you,
and if you thought about how there are other jobs,
where that problem may be exacerbated,
even the process of running is exponentially worse.
And if that bothers you, if that worries you,
is that something you think about?
You can't go for a walk, you can't drive yourself in a car,
you can't go to fucking drive through.
Yeah.
Look, everyone's rolling like, whatever, yeah.
Oh, it's so tough for you.
But that is, there is a thing, you know,
so in the book I describe, you know,
just running for office and being able to run around
on the streets and be able to go to coffee clutches and stores
and have some anonymity here, a little bit,
you know, people angry and pissed off yelling here.
And you know, you should do this, that is fine.
And then there's an election.
And I literally went to bed.
And then, truly, I'd walk up the next morning
and didn't get a lot of sleep.
And sort of blurry, I'd walked out and there's like,
these two strangers right outside the door.
I'm both, I'm like, oh, sorry, what's, you know,
excuse me.
And I walked out and they're like,
they started walking with me.
I'm like, who the hell are you guys?
And it literally was that moment
that I have not had one without some semblance of that.
You know, guys in the car, you're trying to make a phone call.
Hey, honey, how are you?
I'm fine.
You want to talk about, I'm fine.
What's wrong?
Nothing.
You know, we're sitting right there
in sort of this relationship to anonymity
where, you know, there was, there was a year and a half
where literally I wouldn't get on an airplane
not for me, but for everyone else on the plane.
Because I'm like, I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry.
I know, I know, you know, people, you know,
there's that, the whole thing, can I get it?
Like, back to the stacking of stress,
back to the intention that we're all feeling.
And so, you know, it allowed me to drive back and forth,
the LA more often and spend more time in the Central Valley
and any governor in history, which was also important.
But yeah, it is, you lose that, you lose the serendipity.
And I remember his mayor, I lost a little bit,
but not a lot.
So every week, a true story, like,
and I wrote about it a little bit, every Friday,
I would walk to work and I'd walk through
the tenderloin of San Francisco.
And I didn't need to focus, group.
I didn't need to see where the polls were.
You got the pulse of how people felt
in that relationship to people's struggles
and aspirations and desperation,
especially in that part of San Francisco.
And I miss that.
And I think our politics misses that.
You want your elected officials.
It's management by walking around.
You want to walk through a skid row,
but not with an entourage.
You don't want to be that guy.
You want to be able to absorb and feel and understand
how you're really doing.
And I think you're right with the president.
I mean, that's something I can't even imagine.
And you guys were up close to that.
How that disconnection to your truth
and that relationship to that truth
and how you absorb it and how you feel it differently
than intellectualizing and pole testing it.
How I think it does shape our politics
and how do you overcompensate for that?
Now with the violence, especially with your Trump
people shooting at Trump,
you're the Charlie Kirk assassination.
I mean, the distance between politicians
and the people who they're serving
or trying to get votes from is only getting greater
and greater and it's,
I mean, don't even, this is like an actual real thing.
And this is where I think about any future
I think about an relationship to my kids.
When I talk about that, recall,
we had a homeschool my oldest daughter
and I will never forget.
I helped her with her speech
that she gave in our living room for eighth grade graduation.
And I was so proud of her
because she looked up the whole time.
And I said, look above someone's head
because they'll see you thinking
and she was staring at me with a big smile
as she gave this beautiful speech
but she gave it just to Jen and the kids
and her brothers and sisters
because they attacked the school.
You know, I hate your daddy, I hate this and this and that.
And we had, you know, this again,
I mean, we all did, all had this.
Protesters for almost a year and a half
and now to your point about what's happened.
This is another level of stuff.
And like, trust me, you don't know an infinitesimal amount
of the stuff that comes in.
And that's why the temperature definitely,
I mean, we have to take that temperature down.
And I do worry about it.
I mean, we talk about, you know,
when you send troops to American city, not overseas,
this sort of lack of civility
and this concern that we all have,
are we crossing those red lines?
Are we at war with one another and forgive me
because I know and forgot the long wind in this.
But we've had this conversation
when I went on your podcast
because you were asking me about mine.
And thank you, the one of you.
Yeah, listening.
Oh, that's, please applaud.
That's like, the man has a podcast.
That's the sound of the download.
But I was, people felt I crossed the line
because I was reaching across the aisle
because I was making the case Bill Clinton made
for years and years, divorce is not an option.
We're just, you know, it's not.
Just because I don't want you to exist
doesn't mean you're not going to persist.
And we just have to define the terms of the future.
And so I started reaching out to people
I vehemently disagreed with.
And a lot of folks were angry saying,
how do you platform in these people?
Why are you talking to that son of a bitch?
But it's honestly, it was in my relationship
to this reality, man, we've got to take the temperature down.
You know, we can punch Trump back.
We can have the live at the same time, man.
You know, we don't want to be loved.
We all need to be loved.
We don't want to be protected, connected, respected.
And we've just got to move.
I appreciate the resistance frame.
But I think all of us back to, you know,
we want to talk about renewal.
We want to talk about the rebirth of our civic spirit
and civic pride and our civic duty.
And we're all waiting for that moment.
That moment's going to come.
I don't think it's here yet.
You know, we're in this struggle.
So many ways the obstacle is the way Trump will define that.
But all of us look forward to when we can turn the page
on this moment.
And we can restore some civility in grace.
So the epilogue of the book, you write a lot about your relationship
with Trump, your interactions with Trump.
We could talk about it forever.
We will not do that.
The only one I talk about my tour with Trump in the bedroom.
Well, that's one.
So the thing that Tommy and I really want to know
is tell us more about the reaction on Jared Kushner's face
when Donald Trump said in front of him and you
that he wished Ivanka had married Tom Brady instead.
Yeah.
It seems to be mean.
Was he crying?
It's a weird thing to say to your son.
I was crying for Jared.
I thought, I mean, how could someone
it was so dehumanizing in front of his own son-in-law
saying it wasn't his first choice?
And if Trump can do that to his son-in-law in Marine 1
in front of strangers, that sums him up, man.
That sums him up.
And it's an interesting, it's a fun little story
where Trump talks about how Ivanka didn't call Tom Brady back.
And she's like, what the hell?
Why are you calling Tom Brady back?
It's Tom Brady.
And she goes, well, dad, I'm in love.
And Trump is telling the story.
And he goes, well, who even loved with Jared?
He goes, you mean the guy whose father was in jail?
He says it in front of Jared.
Right there.
He said, can you believe it?
And he hits me on the legs and can you believe Tom Brady?
She didn't do Tom Brady.
I'm like, there's Jared's right there.
Damn.
That is so weird.
Damn.
So weird.
So weird.
It really brought me, the story brought me joy, though.
It's petty, but yeah, I know Jared sucks, but I mean.
No one deserves that.
Also, Tom Brady's everybody's first choice
if we're being honest.
It's a good experience.
Take a number, Ivanka.
Let me talk about it.
Governor, you've been so generous with your time.
Everyone, the book is Young Man in a Horry.
It is honestly, it's a really good book.
I appreciate it.
It's a really good book.
Thank you guys.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for reading the book.
Thank you, John and Tommy.
Thank you guys all for being here.
I appreciate you.
Thank you guys very, very much.
That's our show, thank you to Gavin Newsom for joining us.
One little housekeeping note before we go, love it or leave it is coming to DC April 23rd
at the Lincoln Theater.
It's love its traditional pre-White House correspondence dinner show, and it's always
a ton of fun.
Maybe even more so this year, since Trump will actually be attending the correspondence
dinner itself, love it will be announcing some big guests soon, and if you can't make
it to the DC show, love it or leave it is live in LA every Thursday night.
Pickets for DC and LA are on sale now at Cricket.com slash events.
Love it, Tommy and I will be back on Tuesday.
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