Well joining us now as John Cox, as I said, he is a
CPA, he's an attorney, and he has been a candidate for California governor,
and he's written a book mount Gavin Newsom, Newsom's Nightmare, and so
it's good to have you on. John. I'm so sorry that you live
in California. Thank you, thank you. Well, you know, the
weather's pretty darn good, David. That's why that's why I stay out there,
and that's why there's a whole bunch of great companies that are out there
despite Gavin Newsom. And that's I think the message of the book. The
book is called, by the way, the Newsom Nightmare. So it's available
on Amazon and any place good books are sold, and I hope people get
a chance to read it because I think mister Newsom is going to make a
play to be the president of the United States. If not in twenty four,
it'll be twenty eight. I agree. People want to know about his
record. They don't know about his background, they don't know about what he
will do to the country or how he will lead the country. And I
think that's very germane. I agree. And of course we all know that
even if he doesn't run for president, and even if he doesn't get elected
president or whatever, what he does there is governor of California has a tremendous
impact across the country. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Let's
talk a little bit about his possible presidency this year. For example, you
know, Biden is eighty one, and he's not a young eighty one either.
He's failing the full effect of all those years. He'll be eighty six
by the end of the term. And so you know, people are looking
at this. I look at even at his running mate, La La Harris,
I call her but because she's kind of in La La Lamb, but
she's you know, I look at this. They might replace her, they
might replace both of them. And you know, Trump is also getting pretty
old. He's he's seventy seven. He'll be eighty one by the end of
this next term, so he would end up the same age as Biden,
but he seems to be physically in better shape. And so there's a lot
when you look at this, and if they get rid of Biden, and
a lot of people in the Democrat Party are really pushing for that, the
likely candidates, I think to replace Biden would be either Michelle Obama or Gavin
Newsom. But Gavin Newsom is in office and he is having an effect as
he is. You know, the things that he's doing right now are having
an effect right now on everybody across the country. How did you think he
did in terms of the debate that he had with Hannity and DeSantis unfoctionated.
I think he did what he wanted to do, and that is he wanted
to introduce himself more to the nation, to a different audience. Frankly,
I mean, he's been on MSNBC and CNN quite a bit, so he
doesn't need to introduce himself to those audiences. To Fox audience. Obviously,
there are different people that don't or rarely see what he's doing. They see
a lot of the criticisms. But you know, Newsom came off clib came
off well spoken, He came off citing a whole bunch of statistics that sound
great. Gee, it's no revelation that a lot of great companies have started
in California. Sales Force, Apple, Google, all these great trillion dollar
plus companies are based themselves in California. And who wouldn't you know, I
live in California because I just love the weather and the ocean and the natural
beauty. And if you know, if you're a smart guy with a great
business idea, sure you're going to want to start your business where you can
live the best life you can and that's the place for the best weather.
But they quickly, they quickly discover, however, that the government that knew
some leads, is nothing short of spectacularly involved in your life. They want
to tax you to death. And so a whole bunch of those companies have
decided to ultimately leave, like Tesla, but Nestlee, Toyota. You know,
I can name a whole bunch of companies and people that have left.
They've moved to Tennessee or Florida or Texas where there's obviously zero tax and where
regulation is not going to strangle their future. And you know, they may
still keep their homes, by the way, in California, I'm I'm certain
that most of them do. But the government of California does its best to
chase productive people out of the state, or productive businesses, and and also
make it very very difficult for the rest of the people. If you're not
in the top one percent in California. You're living a very difficult life.
The cost of living, shortages of energy, water, housing, homelessness all
over the place, wildfires, crime regularly. I look at the it's the
home issue, right and the homelessness, but even the fact that people can't
afford to buy a home, and this is absolutely amazing. The pictures of
people that you see living out of RVs and just lining the road for the
as far as you can see living out of their RVs, and then the
homeless people who don't even have an RV, and all that is really a
function of when you've got a state that is as prosperous as that, and
you see that kind of abject poverty contrasted with amazing amounts of wealth that happens
because of government policies and because is doing that. That's not a natural situation.
I'm in the housing industry, David, that's my business. I build
and manage apartments. I don't own anything in California right now, I'm building
about twelve twelve hundred units outside of Indianapolis, India. Indiana is a great
example of a state that treats business well, that isn't owned by trial lawyers
that doesn't have huge deficits or pension deficits. And I can build wonderful apartments
in Indiana for under two hundred thousand dollars a unit, just gorgeous granite countertops,
beautiful appliances. Those same units in California, David, would be five
six hundred thousand dollars in most of the state. And you know, that's
a very big difference in terms of your lifestyle and what you're able to afford
and how competitive you are on the rest of the country. It's just so
sad. And it's mostly, as you said, government that drives up that
cost difference. And yeah, lumber and windows don't cost a whole lot more
in Indiana than they do in California. It's the other things, Yeah,
And it's it's stuff like fuel, Right, Fuel is more expensive in California
that it is in other places. They got their own special it's like having
an own special wood or something, right, they have to have bespoke gasoline.
That so they've got some refineries that only produce the special blend that California
demands. And so between that and the really high taxes is I've reported on
the prices of gasoline going up and everything. California is way ahead of even
the number two and so it's even more than the taxes, it's also the
regulations that he has on the formulation of the fuel. There this gets to
the essence of Gavin Newsom, and that is he appeals to people on a
gut level on some very high emotional issues like abortion, guns, and climate
change. It's part of this whole thing to scare the Bejesus out of people.
You know, the gasoline formulation that California uses, David makes the tiniest
little bit of difference in the atal pollution of the world. I mean it
is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. In India and China are
spewing carbon into the atmosphere like nobody's business these days, and the tiny little
difference that California makes is ridiculously small. Yet this is what drives Gavin Neusseom
and this is what the media loves. The media loves to herald this stuff
and why because it gets clicks and it gets eyeballs. And this is the
essence of Gavin Newsom's entire political agenda, and that is focus on these emotional
scare tactics and highly emotional social and other issues ignore the stuff that truly makes
a difference in people's lives, like energy, water, housing, safety,
cleanliness, homelessness, all these things that really have an effect on people's lives.
And he's able to roll to electoral victories because so many people just pay
attention to these highly emotional issues and they don't think that you can do anything
about these other bread and butter, meat and potatoes issues. And that's what
I talk about in my book and what I'm also proposing in my book,
David, is a way to get the electorate to finally pay attention to these
things and get involved in the process so that they really pay attention to who
they're voting for and why they're voting for these candidates. It is so hard
to get people to focus though on their policy right and on their records.
And I beat my head against the wall trying to get Republicans to do the
same thing. It's like, Okay, yes, you hate this policy,
you hated the lockdown, but you're supporting the guy that did the lockdown.
What is going on with all this? And of course you know with Gavin
Newsom, he is very telegenic. You know, he looks like he came
out of Central Casting there in Hollywood, and you know, he and his
wife, and yet you know, when you start looking at what he did,
it's like, WHOA, I was so disappointed to see. You know,
in California the people voted him in again, even with everything that had
happened there. And yet it's not surprising because the Republicans are doing the same
thing. They don't want to hold anybody accountable for anything that happened the last
three years or even before that. And why is that, David? The
reason is is that most voters don't watch your podcast. They don't get any
kind of a glimpse of the detailed issues that they ought to be focused on.
All they get fed is a diet, a steady diet of twenty or
thirty second ads or memes on social media. They never have a chance to
have a conversation like you and I are having right now. They just sit
there and they mindlessly look at their phones and they see something and they say,
oh gee, I don't like that, and they vote for a guy
based upon what his opponent says. They don't get a chance to actually discuss
issues, so What I'm proposing in my book, and this is really important,
David, is a revolution in how we elect our elected leaders. I'm
proposing that we change that, we tweak our election processes with regard to Congress,
especially to get people more involved in getting to the essence of a lot
of these issues, where it's more than just a thirty second TV ad and
it's more than just a me it's an actual conversation that every voter can have
with their representative, which they don't get a chance to now. Yeah,
tells me that key thing because you lay out the problems. But you know,
unlike, we've got to get past the point of just laying out problems.
We've got to have some solutions because things are changing very quickly. So
that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about that. You've
got an organization hear thepeople dot Org. Yes, tell us how that your
vision for how that would change the electoral process. The essence of this is
the People's House, David. The Congress it was intended by our founders to
be the people's House, but because they limited the number to four hundred and
thirty five about a century ago, the average congressional district is seven hundred and
fifty thousand people. Now it's just impossible for people to actually know their congressmen,
and they don't. They only see them on TV. That's right.
So yeah, let me just interject thirty thirty five years or so ago when
I ran for Congress, it was about a half a million, and now
it's gone to seven hundred and fifty or half a million. How's going to
seven hundred and fifty thousand, and so you're getting less and less representation as
you will. Sorry, Yes, and so the idea is very simple,
David, plice that big district into one hundred little tiny districts. Yes,
so that each district's only seventy five hundred people. You're not going to use
television to reach those seventy five hundred people. You're not going to use social
media, you're not going to blast radio ads to all of them. What
you're going to be forced to do is actually go and have a conversation.
Because seventy five hundred people is only about three thousand households, and you can
have a conversation with a couple thousand people. You just have to spend a
few weekends doing it, but you can actually get to know your constituents,
and more importantly, your constituents can know who you are, and they can
know what your background is, and they can know that you have the character
and the confidence and the leadership ability to actually do something. Now, as
a practical effect, what ends up happening is that these hundred people who are
elected in these little, tiny districts, they get together at a meeting and
they select one person to go to Washington. The other ninety nine stay home,
and they don't have an office, they don't have a pension, they
don't have a staff. Their entire job is to get together every two years
and decide on the guy to go to Washington, and then they monitor what
that guy does in Washington. But you know what that guy in Washington is
not gonna do, David. He's not gonna spend six hours of every day
on the telephone begging for money. That's right, that's right. He's gonna
he's going to study the issues. He's going to communicate with his constituents.
He's going to communicate with the ninety nine people back home who sent him there
because he's got to get re elected, and those ninety nine hold the keys
to that right, so he's going to keep them informed and each of those
are going to in turn keep their own constituents informed. What this does,
David, is it really puts the people back in charge of the people's House.
And I think it would change politics up and down the political spectrum because
people then would feel like their voice would be heard and their elected leaders would
actually respond to their voice and would have an interest in doing that, and
it wouldn't be in through the media. I think the media. The media
has gotten way too much power in this country. I hope you agree with
that, even though you're a member. Oh yeah, No, I don't
consider myself being media a member of the media, and they don't either to
be that. Yeah, And what you're saying is so true. And I
remember in the early nineties we talked about the New Hampshire State Legislature and it
had Yes, that's where I got this idea. Yes, I got that
idea in the early nineties. I don't know what it is right now,
but they said if you spent more than a thousand dollars running for office,
that accus you're trying to buy the election. And yet at that time,
you know a routine and you know, for people to spend you know,
over one hundred thousand dollars running for Congress at that time. And that's the
problem is that we've allowed this. If you look at the Constitution, it
said, well, we're going to have like thirty thousand people, one representative
for every thirty thousand people. We're not going to go past fifty. And
then they just they didn't even go without at the very beginning. They just
kind of threw that away, and then they fixed it and said, we
don't care how rapidly the population grows, and we don't care, you know,
about any of this, except we're going to have this fixed number of
representatives. And I think you're exactly right. That's the one of the ways
that we actually get a representative government is to increase the number of people.
And when we would talk about this thirty years ago, people say, well,
it's just not practical to do it, and it's like, no,
you could do it today. And you could certainly do it today now that
you've got the zoom technology and all the rest of the stuff that everybody had
to live by over the last three years. It is not even a question
as to whether or not that be a viable way to do it, and
you'd have the people living in their district instead of maybe traveling to Washington.
You know, they could still do their work by telecommuting or something like that.
But you're so right. The Internet actually multiplies the opportunity for this because
let's say I'm the representative of my own little tiny district of seventy five hundred
people, it's a few thousand households. Well, you know, once I've
met every one of those people, they know me, they trust me.
I'll be able to send them emails. I'll be able to ask them questions.
They'll be able to ask me questions. If any of them as a
crackpot and ask me wild idiotic questions, I can certainly put them in the
background, and I'll be able to focus on the people of my district who
have real concerns, and I'll be able to then communicate those concerns to the
guy that we sent to Washington. That guy that we send to Washington,
he's gonna listen to me because I'm one of the ninety nine who sent him
there. And it won't be It won't be because I gave him a whole
bunch of money, right, like a union boss or a big corporation of
something like that. He'll listen to me because he knows on one of those
ninety nine and I can unelect him as much as I can elect him.
And that's really accountable, responsive government, which is what we ought. And
it's republican. It's a small, our republican government. Remember, we're not
a democracy. We're a republican We're a representative republican democracy, which means that
we vote for people to represent us. But that only works. That only
works, David, if those people are actually responsive to us, if they're
only responsible to the people that give them money for their campaigns, which we
know they are. That's right. We've lost our representative republic, we really
have, and my goal here is to get it back. Yeah. It's
interesting, you know when we look at what has happened in the government,
it is so rapidly distanced itself from us. And I think about you.
We're just watching some old movies for Christmas, and you have these situations where
you got, you know, the cop on the beat and he would walk
the beat and he knew everybody, you know, he knew the grocer,
this person and keep on the street. He knew them, and so you
know he and if you see somebody that he doesn't know, he's kind of
keeping an eye on this. Who's this guy? You know that type of
thing. But we've lost that personal touch with everything, but nowhere more so
than with the congressional representatives. We don't know these guys. They don't know
us. And and that's why it is so amazing when you see the details
of these people's lives that are running for office, that you don't know these
people at all. They're so distant from you. And what and what do
they focus on? Each of these people at wants for office. What they
focus on is getting on television, Yes, getting stamous. I mean,
look at California right now. I'm supporting him because I want to support a
Republican. But you know, Steve Garvey, a former baseball player, is
running for the US Senate. God love him. He'll be a million times
better than Adam Schiff or Barbara Lee or Katie Porter. Okay, but why
is he Why is he running? Why is he the main candidate on the
Republican side. Well, because he was in baseball for thirty years or twenty
five years, he got name recognition being in baseball, and so that all
of a sudden makes him a great candidate for the Senate. I'm sorry,
he's a celebrity, probably the celebrity, and you know what, we need
people who are true leaders. You know, look at Gavin Newsom and frankly,
Donald Trump are the same kind of person. They really manipulate the media.
Why do we know Donald Trump so much because he's been in the media
for forty years and you know, Gavin Newsom grew up with the media.
You know, his family goes back to governor in California and being part of
that whole media thing. But do they really have the leadership qualities that we
look to to be real leaders and real truth tellers and real competent character,
character filled leaders. I'm sorry. We need good leaders. We need people
of good character. We need people who can empathize and communicate with us and
give us the background of why these policies are important, not just staying close
the border, but tell us why that's important, tell us how we're going
to do that, tell us the benefits and the burdens of doing all these
things. We don't get those kinds of discussions David, we just get some
sound bites somewhere, and I think that's really really damaged our democracy and damaged
our country. And I think that's one of the reasons why, you know,
when you look at Iowa and New Hampshire, they don't necessarily have great
track records in terms of picking who's going to go on to when in the
nomination. But in those environments you have a situation where they go into a
pizza ranch and they talk to people one on yes, or they have you
know, even the caucuses or the voters interacting with each other, or in
New Hampshire. You know, again, it's that that that retail touch that
you can have, and that's just not doesn't happen anywhere else. Everywhere else.
It becomes about the advertising budget. And I know when I ran,
the first question that anybody in the media would ask me was what's your budget?
How much money? Yeah, exactly, how much money have you raised?
I'm not interested because you're not going to be running ads on my TV
show, you know, so I'm not interested in you anymore. I can
get the money somewhere else. But you know, that's what it's all about,
the money, And it's about the fundraising with the exception of those two
places. But we can see that you've got to have that personal touch and
people have to know you. But they you know, when you've got a
celebrity like Steve Gary, or you got somebody like Donald Trump, because they
watched them for years on a program, and even if it's not a reality
program, even if it's not sports, even if it is like some scripted
TV show, they think they know that person and they think they know them
exactly you say it. When the person dies, everybody's like, Oh,
I'm in mourning for this guy that was in Friends or whatever, you know,
and it's like, you don't know anything about him, But they get
as upset about that as they do over their friends dying or something good.
They do think that they're friends with these people on TV. And that's very
true with Gavin Newsom. People think that they know this guy. They really
don't. They don't know anything about his background. You know, his grandfather
helped Pat Brown get elected governor. His father helped Jerry Brown get elected governor.
They have fed at the troth of state politics for forty years. The
Newsomb family goes back. Oh gosh, actually more than sixty years at the
power table of feeding off of government in California. Squaw Valley, which is
now called the Palisades, a big ski area, used to be owned by
the Newsomb family, and why because they leveraged their political connections. Newsom's father,
Gavin Newsom's father was the lawyer for J. Paul Getty, the first
billionaire, and he opened doors and he maneuvered the legal system to help the
Getty family get you know, and keep their money. So you know,
there's so many connections here, but people don't know that. They just think
that Gavin Newsom is this good looking guy with great teeth and great hair,
and he spouts statistics that sound good. Yeah, I mean if you look,
if you look through those statistics, by the way, I mean,
I think he sat a whopper. During that DeSantis debate, he said somehow
California's middle class pays lower taxes than Florida, which you know, I heard
this and I say, what planet is he on? I mean, this
is nobody. Property taxes they've got to be the same, you know,
I know what Florida's property taxes are a little bit higher because they don't have
an incompact, but they don't have an income tax, and I don't think
that even their property taxes are as high as California. I may be wrong.
Well, no, not when you look at the cost of housing in
California. I mean, our tax rate is only one percent, but the
average house here costs two million dollars versus one million in Florida or Texas.
So I mean that means your taxes are still one percent of two million,
which is twenty thousand. In Texas. It might be it might be two
percent of one million, which is still twenty thousand. So you're not going
to be paying much of a different tax bill. But you know, that's
kind of lost on Gavin Newsom. I guess you know he doesn't expect people
to look beyond the headlines there. Well, certainly he can get away with
it. And again it's because you know he's been trained and he's slick.
Now, did you run for governor? Are you going to run for guests?
You did well? I did. I ran. The seat was open
in twenty eighteen after Jerry Brown left, and I figured people were going to
be sick Democratic policies, and so I jumped into the race. I had
an idea about remaking the California legislature in the same way that I'm talking about
the Congress here. And unfortunately, people just didn't pay attention. And you
know, the media knew some raised millions, tens of millions of dollars from
the unions, from Hollywood, from Silicon Valley and you know, the people
that feed at the troth and he buried me. But I'm staying involved and
I think this is the right thing. Well, you're throwing it over absolutely,
And I've mentioned this many times over the years. That is the path.
And when you talk about doing that in California, it needs to be
done at the state levels as well, because the same thing happened at the
state levels. We've frozen the number of representative to the State House and the
state Senate and that type of thing. As a population everywhere has exploded.
I mean, you go back and you look at the you know, seventeen
seventy sixty, what the population was of just like three or four million or
something like that, and you know, and there was real representation because people
really did know other people. Uh. And that's the key thing. If
it gets really big, as you point out, it's just going to be
the people with lots of money and organizations that are going to manipulate them.
That's who they're going to answer to. They don't know us, they don't
share our concerns. They don't live in our area. And as I've said
many times, you know, even if you were to go back and say
we're going to limit it to fifty thousand people, you know, you'd wind
up with like eight thousand congressional representatives and yeah, and that's that's unwieldy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that would that would be unwieldy.
I mean people would look at that and they would say, gee,
a body of eight thousand congressmen would be just you'd never get anything done.
You know, there'd be they be just too much tough. That might be
that's why nature that might be a nice s feature. I get that.
But you know, the structure that we've come up with here, where you
have one hundred subdistricts and then you extend one person who's responsive, I think
that probably works in a in a higher population area. People can learn about
this, by the way, by going to Hearthepeople dot org. We're going
to try to get this done in a couple of states. I think we're
going to start, maybe with Arizona, and we're going to try to get
the state legislature to enact this. By the way, that's an important thing,
David. I'm sure you're a constitutionalist, but you realize the Constitution in
Article one gives each state the ability to decide how to elect their congressman.
Yes, so this is this is entirely constitutional, and a state, all
the state legislature has to do is enact this and it will be done for
the next election. And so that's what I like about your planning there,
because you know, if you wanted to say, well, we're going to
go back and we're going to have you know, let's say, maybe not
eight thousand, we're going to have you know, two thousand members of Congress.
So well they determine right now this that's our determination how many are going
to be there. But with your system, it spreads out the representation without
in a hierarchical way. Right, instead of saying, well, now we're
going to send more people to Washington, we say can't do. You still
wind up getting that representation, but in a hierarchical way. That's great.
In your example, it would be up to the Congress itself to change to
go to two or three thousand people, and they're not going to do that.
And why wouldn't they do that because it would dilute their power. Right,
if you're one of two thousand, you're going to have a lot less
power than one of four hundred and thirty five. So that's the last thing
they're going to do. You're absolutely right. They're the ones that frozen at
four thirty five to begin with, you know, back in nineteen twenty or
so. So what this is going to be required to do is each state
legislature is going to have to meet and enact this statue. We have a
model statue, We've had drafts, so it's very easy to do. And
you know, think about the second. We're going to be able to make
an argument that who doesn't want this change. The people who will fight this
are the media and the lobbyists because they stand to lose that measure of power.
I think people will look at that and say, hmm, who do
we want to have the power. Do we want the people to have the
power or do we want media and the lobbyists to have power. I think
the people are going to say, gee, I like this idea because it
gives me a greater say over my future and about our leaders, not the
media or the lobbyists. And that's I think long overdue. So we're going
to start in one state. We think that once one or two states does
this and the rest of the country hears about it, every state is going
to say, hey, why don't we do this in our state. I
think this is I think this is a perfect time for this as well,
you know, because we're at a time right now where everybody is looking at
the institutions and they're saying, you know, this just isn't working. You
know, I subscribe to the ideas as trous and how in the fourth turning,
you know that this type of thing happens like every eighty years. But
we can whether you see this as a cycle or not, you can see
that this is really what is happening. That everybody is questioning the institutions,
and we're seeing at the state level a lot of innovative approaches to change certain
things. Let's come up with some different ways to It's kind of a backstop
of the financial system in case the Federal Reserve really screws up. As many
people are worried that it's going to do. So you're seeing moves in terms
of like a financial backstop to what Washington is doing, and many other things
like that to nullify what they're doing. And so I think the time is
ripe for people to look at this and say, wait a minute, let's
let's change the way that we select the congressman. We may not be able
to change the number of congressmen that we have, but we can certainly change
the way they're selected to make it more representative. And there's one word in
all this, David, and that word is accountability. The people don't trust
the major institutions, and why because they don't believe that they're accountable when they
mislead us, or when they give us bad information, or when they give
us half the story. The big deal with here the people, is that
you're going to have a guy or a girl in your district seventy five hundred
people who you know, and if that person gives you bad information, or
gives you information that you know is not true or doesn't pass the smell test,
or is just lacks common sense, you're going to be able to hold
that person accountable. And you're never going to believe them again. What that
means is that the person who you would interact with, you're going to be
able to hold accountable. And the ninety nine are going to be able to
hold accountable that person that they've sent to Washington, d C. At the
same time, and they're going to be able to hold that Congress accountable.
That's a really big thing. We've lost accountability because it's all about media.
It's all about these sound bites, and it's all about lobbyists and how you
shade the truth and telling half the story. We've got to do away with
that. We've got to make our leaders accountable to each one of us.
And I think this is a step in that direction. Yeah, that's absolutely
right. Yeah. When you look at the the presidential bates are a good
example. When they get together, they talk about the same issues, even
though the issues have changed significantly, the same issues that they talked about for
decades. They skirt around the issues, they talk past each other, as
we saw with Newsome and DeSantis and and and then they get away with this
because you've only got two choices, and it's like, well, I don't
like either one of these guys, but I really can't stand that guy because
I've seen all these negative ads, and also so I'll go for this guy
even though I don't really like him. And so all of these things combined
together, and we've got to find a way to break through that. And
I like the bottom up approach that you've got, because we've really got to
take this back from the bottom up. We can't take it back from the
top down. It's two corrupt just who's pointed out that Congress isn't going to
loot their power. They're not going to do anything to change what they're doing.
Instead, they're trying to put these tentacles further into our lives and to
micro manage more and more aspects of our life at the local level. And
that's why I think you're starting to see these approaches rising up at the state
level and below that are saying no, we're not going to do that.
We're going to start taking back some of our rightful power in all this.
And you're absolutely right, by the way, the answer to all this is
not media that's telling us what we want to hear in sound bites. It's
to get the people back involved. You know, Fox News was created as
a reaction to the liberal bent of ABC, CBS and NBC. Right,
But now we've gone to the Fox News silo and we only hear certain things
there, and then we don't hear it over here and on the major networks.
So we're kind of buffeted back and forth. And you know, the
people's reaction to all this, David, is to just turn off. I
mean you've seen you've seen those interviews that they do on the street, you
know, Jesse Waters or Jay Leno or one of these. They go up
and ask people, you know, name the Supreme Court justices or name your
US senator. Most people can't do it. Yeah, most people they have
no knowledge of politics. And why because they're so detached from it. They've
they've gotten moved so far away from it that they just don't even want to
get involved anymore. And you can't blame it because they don't have really any
input into it, right, you know, it's become so distant from us
it doesn't really matter. And I look at it even from that standpoint.
I've got to the point where where it's like I'm trying to focus on my
local elections and things like that, even to the extent that you know,
I look at the national elections and there's lessons to be learned there about the
directions that they're going to come at us with. But I'm you know,
if for the real practical stuff, you got to focus on what's local,
and so we've got to grow this from the bottom up. That is a
great idea. I love that and and so that is also discussed in your
book about Newsom is a solution. This is good. And there's also a
website there as well. We here thepeople dot org. Here the people dot
org is the plan laid out there that people can see what that looks like.
But before we leave, you know, tell us a little bit more
about you know, just just talk about how California, whether or not Newsom
runs for president or god forbid, gets elected president, the the impact that
he has on all of us, whether it is you know, the kind
of car that we drive or the appliances that we have. And it falls
back to the activist government in California and just how big they are compared to
other states and how they can throw that weight around, isn't it. Well,
Listen, Gavin Newsom will survive Gavin Newsom if he gets to be president.
We survived Barack Obama. I think our system is strong enough, but
you know what, we won't make the same amount of progress. People won't
have the same opportunities, and I think our country will get weaker. And
if our country gets weaker, I think the world is worse off for that
reason. You know, I'm involved in a movie about Ronald Reagan right now.
It's going to come out in a couple of months. And you know
Reagan, you know, took over for Jimmy Carter. We were a weak
nation made weaker by Jimmy Carter. We had inflation, we had an oil
crisis, we had threats from the assuviet Union. Reagan turned us around and
said that we could do better, and we could grow and give more people
opportunity. We just to get government out of the way. Well, you're
absolutely right. Gavin Newsom is one of those that wants to empower government.
You know, Hugo Chavez was the same in Venezuela. He promised people better
stuff through the government. You know Castro did the same for Cuba. Oh
you're going to get better healthcare, You're going to get better this than that.
And guess what spectacular failures. I don't want to see the United States
go down that route. And let me tell you, Joe Biden has taken
down us down that route. Jimmy Carter tried to Ronald Reagan saved us.
I don't necessarily see another Reagan on the horizon to save us from Joe Biden.
And if it turns out to be Gavin Newsom, I think that could
lead us further down this road to more government, more mismanagement, a lower
standard of living, a weaker country, a weaker, more dangerous world.
I don't want to see that happen. I want to see us become a
better country. And that's why I'm warning people about Gavin Newsom. That's why
I'm publishing this book. That's why I'm appearing with you and getting this idea
out. We'll talk a little bit about you know, we're all I talk
about this a great deal on this program. You know, his energy policies,
his car policies, and things like that that have to effect on other
people. But also the immigration policy that he has there. You know,
the you come in as an illegal immigrant. As you point out, you've
got Hugo Chavez and you've got Castro promising all this free stuff to everybody,
which is what the socialism and Marxists do. But now we've got Gavin Newsom
and other people. I am promising it to people in other countries. At
least Hugo Chavez was promising it to the Venezuelan's He wasn't promising it to you
know, the people from Als Salvador or Peru or Mexico or whatever. But
you know, Gavin Newsom is promising it to the world. Just come here,
get across that finish line and you're done. You can collect unemployment,
you get free medical care and all the rest of this then, and of
course that's going to bankrupt us very rapidly. I think that was the plan.
You know, Cloud and Piven economists talked about this years ago. So
the welfare state's not growing quickly enough, and we can make it grow even
faster and make people even more you know, poorer and more dependent on government
if we can do this. And I think that's the real strategy that's there.
Talk about you know what is happening with the immigration issues with Newsom?
Yeah, the border. Well this is this is a prime example of a
false choice that gets demagogue all the time. David and you know. I'm
a jack temp Republican. I believe that the United States has benefited tremendously from
bringing people who want to contribute to us into the country. Most other countries
do the same thing. They have a very strong immigration policy that welcomes people
who want to contribute to our growth and our opportunity. But that's not what's
happening with our southern border. I mean, anybody, and anybody can come
across that border without any restrictions and without any knowledge of who they are or
what they're plan to do. That's just as wrong as a total closing of
every input to our country. We need to certainly, you know, get
more people. Our kids are not having enough kids. I don't want to
see us end up like Japan, which has a no growth economy and has
terrific problems caring for its elderly. We need to have some growth, We
need to have controlled immigration, We need to know who's coming into the country.
This is a false choice. The Democrats are just letting the borders completely
open, which is just so incredibly wrong for our future, and frankly,
it's misleading to everybody who's coming in as well. They think they're going to
come here and live a wonderful life, and a lot of them discover that
they're just not going to be able to. We need, you know,
we need to make sure that our borders are secure. You can't have a
secure country without it. And you know, this is another example of politicians
who just aren't leading. They're they're just not leveling with the people, and
on both sides. Frankly, I agree. I agree, yeah, because
there's a lot of you know, again, if you point out legal immigration,
knowing who the people are, that's one thing. But no matter what
they do at the border, if they've got this massive welfare magnet pulling people
across and promising them free stuff, that's the real issue. And we shouldn't
have a problem with people who want to work and people want to be a
contributing to the to the economy, but we ought to know who's coming in.
You just had this massive an Ecuador, just massive prison prison breaks and
drug cartels and everything. So what are they doing in neighboring Peru and other
countries. They're saying, well, we sent police to the borders and we
said you're not coming in here unless you've got some kind of paperwork from your
government showing you don't have a criminal record. We don't do any of that
stuff. So they'll just come up here, you know, and come in
and they are yeah, and they are yeah, yeah, they are coming
up here. And you know, again the politicians just di their and demagogue
and they don't get the job done. They need to be secure in the
border, but then they need to make it easier for quality people, for
people who are interested in working hard and contributing to America. And you're absolutely
right, by the way, the welfare state in America is what's going to
destroy us. I mean, we have got we're spending what six and a
half trillion dollars this year. We're only and I say only raising four and
a half trillion from the tax revenue, which by the way, is a
record, that's a record amount of tax revenue. But the politicians in Washington
are spending it. And what are they doing. They're maintaining a welfare estate.
You know, something like eighty percent of the people now are on Medicaid.
They've expanded that all the way through all the states, and governors like
Newsome have willingly taken this money. Interestingly, of course, you know,
DeSantis Abbott a lot of red steak governors have refused it. And why because
they know it's a drug. It's going to be there for one or two
years and then it's got to go because it's unsustainable and they don't want to
get tied into this drug. They don't want to, you know, balance
their budgets on medicaid. They want to make sure that they're sustainable. And
it's not sustainable for the government to have our entire medical systems supported by the
government. Our medical system should be free market, just like cars, just
like energy, just like every other good or service. It ought to be
free market, ought to be driven by the private sector. It ought to
be driven by innovation, it ought to be driven by competition. Putting it
in the hands of the government is the surest way to destroy it. Well,
I agree, and yet you look at this last three years. They
don't want your physician to even have a say so in your healthcare, not
a loan you. And when you look at the strings that come attached to
this money that they give you, that was kind of the way they rolled
this thing out. First, they gave a massive bonuses, you know,
to follow the Fauci protocols in the hospitals, you diagnose somebody as a COVID
patient, will give you twenty percent bonus, and then the next year after
the bribery, what follows is the blackmail. We're not only going to take
away that bonus, but we're going to take away all your Medicare and Medicaid
patients and bankrupt you if you don't get all your staff shot. You know
with the vases who Yeah, and guess who are some of the guests who
are some of the biggest supporters of Gavin Newsom in California? Healthcare? Yeah,
healthcare, healthcare entities. Yeah. That's one thing we should talk about
is how they rolled out the vaccine mandates in California. And I believe that
was under Newsom, wasn't it where they started saying you're not going to have
any religious or medical exemptions for any of these childhood vaccines. They've been laying
the groundwork for this kind of stuff for a long time, and I think
that's one of the reasons why Washington is pushing so hard to get everybody addicted
to this Medicare, because that's going to be one of the most effective ways
that they can use to control us and say well, now you're going to
have to get the ID or you're not going to get any medical care.
We've already seen that done by Gates in India with the Adhar system. We'll
give you welfare, we'll give you medical care, but you're going to have
to take the digital ID. And so there's all these strings that are attached
to it. But they begin by bribing people. It's always the federal And
guess what, David, everybody is going to need healthcare at some point now.
And so the more government can control a service like that that almost everybody's
going to need, the more the government then control your life. This is
an old playbook and Hugo Chavez, you've used it, Castro used it.
You know. You promise people something that they know they're going to need,
and you tell them that government is going to provide it, and they'll give
you their power. And that's what this is all about, David. It's
about a small of people trying to control the population. And it's the story
of human history. You go back to the Pharaohs, it's the story of
human history. The United States has stood out among all the countries that ever
existed as a place where government was limited. The Constitution was about limiting the
scope and size of government, and along the way, we really have lost
that idea. We really let that idea slip, and I think it's time
to bring it back. That's what our proposal is all about with here the
people putting those limits back on government. And I think the people, you
know, they do want to run their own lives. They don't want government
telling them how to live. That was Ronald Reagan's plea to us. That
was the key to his success and appeal. We did another Ronald Reagan,
and that's that's my and that's in the book too, by the way,
so you'll get a chance to read that. Well, you know, when
you look at the Rights, and as you correctly pointed it out, it
was about prohibiting government from interfering with our God given rights of what the Bill
of Rights was about. It's very clever. I remember when Obama was running
for president and or shortly after he got elected. I can't remember exactly when
he said. It was at the very beginning, and he said, and
he taught this, and he knew exactly what he was doing. But they
have they control the way that you perceive things by the terminology, and so
they would say he said, well, you know, I know that this
was set up and we got prohibitions there for government. We call that negative
rights, but you know, a positive right is your right to healthcare,
or your right to an education, or to housing or to this. And
it's like, oh, well, I want the positive stuff. I don't
want the negative stuff. And he completely turned it upside down by using those
labels. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution. He knew
that. But it was great at selling stuff, isn't he. I knew
I knew Obama very well. I'm from Illinois, I'm from Tobago, and
I ran. I ran for the US Senate and I once debated Obama for
an hour and a half just on those ideas education and healthcare. And you
know, David, you know what his big response to me was, we
need government to help people with education and health care. We can't let people
and these are his words, fend for themselves. We can't let people.
People are too stupid in his world, people are too stupid to choose their
own health care or their own education. Government has to do it for them.
And darned if that wasn't his program on becoming president of the United States.
He convinced the media that it was a great thing that government should control
your education, government should control health care. You're too stupid to choose it
on your own. My answer was, people can choose their healthcare. People
can choose education if they're given the tools to do so, and they want
to choose that, And frankly, they should be able to because that means
you have competition. And when we have competition, you have quality and you
have lower costs. Yeah. Right, But Obama didn't want to hear that.
I mean, he disagreed with me on that, and we debated on
it. I wish I wish I had a tape of that debate, by
the way, because it was an hour and a half and he and I
were the only ones there. And I wish you would have beat him.
I wish you would have beat him in the election. I'm sure you beat
him in the debate, but I wish you'd beat him in the election.
It would have been a very different world, wouldn't it if we'd had John
Cox that Barack Obama. But you know that is a very that's the same
kind of argument, John that if you go back and you look at Civil
War history. We talked about Civil War a lot. Everybody wants to talk
about the Civil War. Now, well you go back and you look at
it, and you've got a lot of people who were plantation owners and slave
owners, and they said, well, we realize this really isn't a very
good system, and we feel bad about the fact that we're controlling these people
and enslaving them. But you know, it's for their own good. If
we let them loose, they just wouldn't be able to survive, right,
you know, kind of paternalism that Obama is selling. That's a slave plantation
mentality. Uh and and it's actually the mentality of the plantation owners. Well,
I have tonslave them for their own good. And that and Reagan,
and that's why Reagan's message was so wonderful because it was just so simple.
You know, the eight most dangerous words in the English languages. I'm from
the government. I'm here to help you. You know, the stuff that
Reagan said was so true to so many people. You've got to get government
out of the way. Government can't be all things to all people. Government
should do our defense because we don't want people owning nuclear weapons and tanks and
other things like that. So government should provide national defense, and that's what
the constitution specifically says. But on all these on all these other things,
healthcare, education, uh, government shouldn't be providing those things. Government should
create the avenues for private industry to be able to provide those things. And
and that's what we got to get back to. And yet, as i'm
that's where you're aware. You know, you're about educational allies that we just
had Biden's education secretary, So you know that's our mission statement. I'm from
the government. I'm here to help you. Totally oblivious to the fact that
Reagan used that as the fearfulness that everybody doesn't want to hear. I'm sure
you're aware of that. It was really funny that he bought it. He
bought into that, and so a few people call them on it. It
truly is amazing to see that. Well, I think you've got a great
plan. I'm sure that it's a very well I know that it is a
very relevant book. Gavin Newsom, whether there's a presidential race or not,
has a tremendous impact on everything across the country. People need to understand where
he's coming from a good example of an elitist politician that we don't want to
keep promulgating that system. And it's great to see that in your book you
have a plan for how we can start from the bottom up to reform this
without having to beg Congress to reform themselves, which of course they will never
do. Here Thepeople dot Org is where people can see that plan, I
guess you know. Then find your book on Amazon. You also selled it
here the People dot Org. Okay, good, so great talking to you,
and I'm so grateful that you come up with this plan. We need
people to think outside of the box that they have put us into, and
we need to look for state solutions, and we need to look for ways
that we can I look at this as essentially a way of nullification, and
you know, a positive way to nullify this calcified system that has become so
self interested and that it can't be that it won't respond to us and it
can't be reformed. So I think that's a very important way to do It
is fun and let me and let me and let me make this clear by
the way, here the People is not partisan in any way. Bernie Bernie
Sanders and Donald Trump would agree on the same thing in one sense. Bernie
Sanders talks about corporations and millionaires and billionaires. Donald Trump talks about the deep
state and the media and the fate news. Right. Well, you know,
here the people gets rid of both. Yes, here are the people
puts the power back in the people's hands, gets rid of the media influence,
and gets rid of the big corporations. And so I think people can
look at it as a bipartisan, as a solution that both sides that all
the people can can get around and believe that's the right way for us to
go. I agree. And even as we try to engage and debate ourselves
on social media and they try to censor us, this is a way that
people can get directly involved and it is something that is a personal, direct
person to person type of thing, grassroots moving up. These are all the
things that we need to be looking to. These are all elements of what
I think are going to be any successful solution. So thank you so much
for doing that again. Here thepeople dot Org and the book is Newsom's Nightmare,
The Newsom Nightmare, and then you'll find that on Amazon. Thank you
so much. For joining us, John Cox, appreciate it. Thank you,
David. Really pleasure to be with you. Thank you. We got
just a little bit of time left and just enough time for me to thank
Steven Patterson. Thank you again, Steven. That is very generous. I
appreciate the tip on rock fin and we will. We're about ready to go
out, so I'll just cut this short. Tomorrow we're going to talk a
little bit more about the pharmaceutical stuff that I did not get to today,
because there's some very important updates on that. Yes, Fox News is out
there trying to sell measles panic again. We shut that down once and for
all, but that's always the way they begin, and they keep going back
to that. That's their bread and butter, that's their pharmaceutical sponsors that they've
got there. Thank you for joining us. Let me tell you the day.
The Night Show you can listen to with your ears. You can even
watch it by using your eyes. In fact, if you can hear me,
that means you're listening to the David Night Show right now. Yeah,
good job. And you want to know something else, You can find all
the links to everywhere to watch or listen to the show at Thedavidnightshow dot com.
That's a website.