Trump Only Gets Worse as Billionaires Panic Behind the Scenes

0:04Okay, joining me today on IHIP News is Tom Steyer, an investor, climate activist, and progressive Democratic candidate for Governor of California. How are you today? Great, Jennifer. Just great. Okay. You're a billionaire. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows who all the billionaires are. And I have a theory about billionaires. And I think that they all are suffering from some sort of like psychosis. They all seem nuts. They all seem absolutely batshit crazy. So Tom, are you suffering from this billionaire psychosis? Are you a crazy person? So let me say this, Jennifer. Okay. I'm going to start with no, but of course I'm not objective about it.

0:51Of course. Look, I didn't inherit any money. I started a business in one room with no windows. It worked out well. I walked away from it 14 years ago, leaving billions of dollars on the table. And my wife and I took a pledge that we'll give the money away while we're alive. So any money that I made from business is going to go to the progressive causes that I'm talking about in my run for governor. And we've been doing it for 14 years for me full time, but Kat's been doing it forever. And I was doing it when I was running in a business. So let me say this. I think if you're addicted to money, you are batshit crazy.

1:30I go along with that. And I think it's critical. And I think that Catherine and I aren't addicted to money. In fact, we're addicted to getting rid of it in the ways that have the most positive impact. And I don't think that's batshit crazy. And I think it's exactly in line with the way I was brought up. My mom was a school teacher in Harlem. And then when she retired from being to the public schools, she taught in prison. My dad was a lawyer. He was in the Navy. And after World War II, they drafted him to be one of the prosecutors of the Nazis at Nuremberg. My brother's as a career of being an advocate for at-risk kids.

2:05So I believe that I come from a family whose values are very much about giving back. And that's exactly what my wife, Kat Taylor, and I are doing. So I think if you're addicted to money, you are batshit crazy. I think it's a sickness. And I think you can see it very, very clearly in a lot of these people. But I also think just as an example, you know, Warren Buffett's giving all his money away. Yes. And I've, you know, I wouldn't say I'm a friend of Warren's, but I certainly know him and respect him. And I've been to Omaha. He lives like a normal person. Do you see him like the billionaire water fountain?

2:39Like, hey, Warren, are you giving the billionaire water fountain? You know, like the. Hey, Warren, how much are you giving away? No, but my only point being, look, you can let things twist you. You can let yourself start to think about yourself as different or you can choose to control it and try and stay a good person. OK, you're talking about something that I think is super important. And this is a cultural moment for us, Tom. and it is that the this particular billionaire class I call them the billionaire bedwetters because they if you look on Elon Musk timeline it is bed wet city somebody needs to get that man a diaper I have never seen such a titty baby complaining who's almost a goddamn trillionaire and then you go to the guy that Zoran called out who has the 257 million dollar pied-a-terre And I thought, what a moment for this man to call the mayor and say, hey, you're right.

3:40The system is kind of messed up. I have a penthouse who's, you know, that's worth$250 million. I agree with you. I'm going to set an example. I'm going to fly on my private plane to New York. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write you a check to fund these kids, these working class kids that need childcare. And he doesn't do that. Instead, he gets on camera and he wets the bed. And it's that culture of entitlement when they already have so much that it's easy to hate these individuals. Like it's easy to hate Elon. It's easy to hate Peter Thiel because they're such dicks. But beyond that, it's a cultural problem.

4:21Well, Jennifer, can I say this? Yes. They hate me. You'll be happy to know. I'm relieved. When the seven candidates, leading candidates for governor of California were on a stage, they asked if you were going to tax billionaires. And one person said yes. And you're looking at the one person. I've been saying for a long time, we need to be taxing billionaires like me more. We need to be taxing the big corporations more. California is an incredibly successful state. On average, we have the highest poverty rate in the United States of America. Something's not right. Tom, what would happen to your net worth if you were taxed more?

5:00Would you feel that? No. The only thing I could say, Jennifer, is maybe I'd have less money to give away, but it wouldn't change. Look, so my mom and dad, I told you about my mom and dad, my grandfather was a research doctor and a professor. Never made more than$2 ,800 in a year. My grandmother hated him for it. She was like, George, you could make a lot more money if you going to private practice he didn't want to and so he he they lived in minneapolis and when i was like 40 years old my mom was visiting us and i said hey mom do we have a nicer house than the house you grew up in in minneapolis where her father was a professor at the university of minnesota and she goes i think you have a nicer staircase it's the exact we live exactly the same way And that's exactly how I like to live.

5:56I love California and California is expensive, but I don't want to live differently from the way my grandparents lived or my parents lived. I don't want to be someone who's isolated from human beings. You know, the joy, the privilege and the education of being a candidate is getting out and meeting Californians face to face all over this incredibly diverse state and learning about them and learning how great they are. And that has been people say, is this hard? And I'm like, I am having a ball. I am meeting so many great people and learning. you know and i'll give you an example you know there was a terrible tragedy yesterday at the islamic center of san diego it's terrible just so you know we had been down to san diego at a different mosque right near there last week we were in touch with those people that community had endorsed me i got a chance to meet a whole bunch of people that was such a treat, such a positive experience.

7:05And you realize how great the people are across this state. And that is, so when you say, that's the thing that I treasure. It's important to do because you really need to look people in the eye and know what their issues are, know what is not happening for them, knowing what they need for government to make their life better. But it's also amazingly reassuring to understand how great these people are across so many. We're such a rainbow coalition in this state. And it is just so fun. It is just ridiculously fun. And how important is it for you to platform universal human rights, to stand up against Islamophobia, antisemitism, transphobia, anti-black racism, all the same, that they're all interconnected.

7:56Because I see some politicians, particularly Democrats, that are capitulating, mainstream centrist Democrats are capitulating some right-wing narratives like, oh, we shouldn't talk about the bathroom, or we see this rise here and we're not going to squash this one down. To me, they're all intricately connected. And I think diversity protects us and helps us cooperate and helps make a better place for all of us to live? Well, Jennifer, just so you know, I'm that score. Everybody's nice to you 90 % of the time. Every politician is going to say, mom, apple pie, the flag. You know, I'm absolutely 100 % behind those.

8:39What you need is the person in the 10 % of the time when it's not popular to say. And so, you know, I think it's critical. You talked about trans people. I'm totally into the paper of trans athletes in high school. I think when you understand the vulnerability, the stress, the danger of being a trans kid, and you understand that almost half of them try to commit suicide. Yeah. And then you think we're going to punish those kids. We're going to cut them off from team sports. We're going to cut them off from participating in the community. We're going to cut them off from fun. It's like, no, we're not.

9:15No, we're not. And, you know, as someone who played sports my whole life and love sports and love playing sports, they're more important things than whether you start on your high school basketball team. And that is standing up for people who are under threat of death. And so if you want, you know, and so there's a perfect example, but so is the example in terms of, you know, Islamophobia. look clearly yesterday was a story of two very young people with absolutely controlled by hate and absolutely you know i think if you look at that story the way i understand it is they went out to kill the kids they went out to kill the kids in a school and because they were muslim and one of the guys there who was a security guard basically saved those kids and died.

10:06And it's like, come on. As much as those kids, those killers who committed suicide were consumed with hate, that guy did an amazing job and stood up at the cost of his life for the lives of innocent kids. And isn't that great? Yeah. And so, you know, as I look at it, I view this as in standing up for people, you know, standing up for immigrants under threat from ICE. I mean, I'm the person, I think I'm the first person that's right to say, we should be abolishing ICE. There's no excuse for a criminal organization. What about prosecute ICE? Look, I've said, I don't know if you've had, I hope you've had a chance to spend hours and hours, maybe days going over.

10:50I pulled an all-nighter, Tom. Jennifer.

10:56But on my website, I've said, we should abolish ICE. It's a criminal organization that racially profiles and victimizes and terrorizes communities. But I can't just sign a pen and do that. But I have said we should be prosecuting ICE agents for racial profiling, which is illegal in California. We should be prosecuting ICE agents for committing violence against California. That's illegal. And we should go up the chain. We should go up the chain to whoever is sending them. As far as it goes, if you're sending someone out to do violence, you're doing violence. and if it goes to Stephen Miller's, that's the way it goes.

11:32That's where my brain went. So let's talk about this, Tom. Obviously, I think we're probably in 100 % agreement that Donald Trump is an incompetent, dementia-ridden fascist who is just horrible. I mean, I know that's funny. It's just not that deep. It is what it is. So the states are going to have a lot of power because accountability is going to come. It is going to come. I believe ultimately that the American people, even some of those that voted for him, are fed up. And this is a criminal regime. And the states are going to have power and the accountability that a federal pardon might not cover.

12:17And so as it pertains to all of this Trump stuff and protecting California, you know, he likes to play. if you're not nice to me, I'm not going to give you federal funds. He likes to play those types of childish, cruel, evil games. How does a governor, Tom Steyer, stand up to a petulant, idiotic Trump? We fight. We stand up to him. We use every instrument we can. We use the courts. We use public opinion. And, you know, Jennifer, I will remind you as an American of what Thomas Jefferson said at the beginning of the 1800s when the Barbary pirates were bedeviling American shipping and they were they wanted ransom money, basically.

13:09And he said millions for defense, not one penny for tribute. When people are trying to blackmail you, don't pay. Stand up for your principles. And that's what we're going to do. I think that we don't have a choice. Giving in for money to someone who is basically extorting you. And what you're talking about is extortion. Do what I want, or you don't get what you are owed. That's what he's saying. He's holding up FEMA payments to the people in Altadena and Pacific Palisades for a fire that took place last January. So does the governor, Tom Steyer, does he say, okay, you do that. I'm not sending the federal funds that we were collecting in income taxes.

13:55We will push every single way we can, Jennifer, that what we can see is someone who is extorted. Look, I don't know if you remember this. I'm sure you spent also did an all-nighter studying how great this was. In 2017 and 2018, I put together there's something called need to impeach. And we've got 8 million signatures saying, this is a criminal who's stealing from us every day. And he hates America and he wants to end it. And, you know, no one was happy. The Democratic Party was mad at me because they felt like they had this under control. We know how to handle this guy. You're muddying the waters with.

14:33And I was like, wow, it seems to me like the sooner we stop this guy, the better. And if we wait, Right. This could really get out of control. But I'm just saying I haven't changed my opinion. I mean, he is the person behind dice. He is the person who conceived of that and is sending masked assault rifle armed people around the country to terrorize. And do I think that's I think that's just beginning. My my rule on Trump, Jennifer, is he only gets worse. I agree. If you think you've seen the bottom, I assure you, wait till tomorrow. Today is his best day until he's no longer president. Every day he's going to get worse.

15:15And if you give in to him, your question was, do you give in for money? Do you give up your values for money? You were asking about standing up for trans kids, standing up for immigrants, standing up for the Black community, standing up for Latinos. And you're saying, do you believe in that or do you believe that when it's in your interest, you should throw them under the bus. I don't believe in giving up on the values of California. I'm doing this to stand up for working people and the values that seem to me like the traditional American values, democracy, liberty, hard work and success, inclusion.

15:55I'm talking about shared prosperity for everyone in the state of California. He's throwing people off Medicaid and Medi-Cal so that he can give tax breaks to the billionaires and the biggest corporations. That is the exact opposite of what I stand for, that you could not more perfectly describe someone who believes health care is a right for every Californian and someone who cuts health care for millions of people so that he can give tax breaks to his cronies. So I've noticed that you and this happened to me. So I was pretty liberal. And then after a couple of Trump terms, I've gotten more left.

16:33And some people can say I've been radicalized, but I say I've been kind of deprogrammed off of the corporate messaging and the way Democrats are supposed to be. I love that. I love that, Jennifer. Have you been deprogrammed? I think so. That is a great point. And I've never thought of it that way. But let me say this. So look, if you look at me, I went to Stanford Business School. I started a business from scratch and ran it for 27 years. I mean, I was inculcated with this sense that democracy and capitalism is what gives people freedom and gives people material success. And what I can see as I'm deprogrammed, I may steal that word, although I don't know.

17:13You can have it. But as I've sort of seen more of life close up, I can see where corporate special interests are taking advantage of working people. I can see where they're trying to buy our democracy in California, where they're trying to buy the people running for governor. They're successfully controlling outcomes. The oil companies in California are trying to gut the cap and invest program that's been there since 2007. They're trying to delay its progress for five to 10 years, and they think they're going to get away with it. They're getting windfall profits, and they think they deserve them.

17:52And, you know, my attitude is like, your cost didn't go up a penny. Donald Trump, the candidate you put in the White House, started a war in Iran and now you're making an extra$70 billion. That doesn't seem right to me. But there's no sense. In fact, the head of the Western States Petroleum Association, WUSPA, which represents all the big oil companies in California, said in a meeting in Sacramento last week that it was the fiduciary duty of the oil companies to extract every penny from us that they could at the pump. Wow. So do I feel, that's pretty gross. It's disgusting. And here's what I think is some really important messaging.

18:34And I want to run this by you. I'm not a political consultant, although I play one on my podcast from time to time. I think it's pretty unbelievable that the Republican Party labels working class people as moochers, as lazy, as wanting government handouts. When I look at these corporations and the government handouts and subsidies and tax breaks and loopholes, it seems to me like they are the ones who are the moochers and who are the parasites. Elon Musk and the government subsidies is unbelievable. I saw an interview with Tucker Carlson of all people recently, just browbeating Kevin O 'Leary about these tax breaks for these data centers.

19:19And it causes me great pain to say this, but Tucker did an incredible job dismantling, I say this, it's very painful. He did a great job dismantling the bullshit of the, it goes back to that entitlement and the lies, Tom, the lies. I'm from Oklahoma City. I live in New York now, but I lived there for 51 years for my whole life. Republicans trot into these rural towns, suburban towns, and they lie to them. They say wealth will trickle down. These corporations deserve all this shit. Meanwhile, they just transfer any sort of work or wages that these people should have and pass it over to these entitled bedwetters.

20:04And I've had it from top to bottom about it, that the Democrats are not just browbeating this into the electorate. Look, I absolutely agree with what you just said. My whole campaign is about standing up. California is too expensive for working people to live in anymore. We need to take on the corporate special interest. There's only one person taking on the corporate special interest, and they're spending a record amount of money against me. And I can give you examples of what you're talking about, which is basically corporate welfare. Yes. That's what it is. They're sitting here. I go around California.

20:42I meet working people. They work their asses. They are very high integrity. You know, they do jobs for more than minimum wage, but not much more that are incredibly skilled and incredibly demanding. and i listened you know if you think about an oil company okay they don't pay for their pollution it's like it's true they don't pay for the when they pollute the air and water and make people sick that's free they don't pay for their impact on the climate that's free and we are spending 200 billion dollars in iran to protect oil we the u.s armed services are all about protecting oil companies that they don't pay for the taxpayer pays for so do i feel you know and they're still much more expensive without paying all those costs they're still much more expensive than clean energy it's it's nuts but the other thing in our state is we have legal monopolies for electricity and they charge us twice as much as the average in the united states of america twice as much and they're furious if they're spending tens of millions of dollars against me because i'm like no, no, we're going to introduce local competition.

21:50They're like, competition? Are you crazy? Like, that's communist. It's like, wow. So to a very large extent, my whole campaign is about representing working people to drive down costs that these corporations are driving up. They're making record profits at the expense of working people, and people can't afford to live here anymore. And someone has to take them on. And I'm the only person who's doing it and who wants to tax the billionaires, who wants the corporations to pay their fair share. but also wants to break the kind of structural monopolies that they've created for themselves and that they're wringing every dollar out of.

22:29So do you think out of your opponents, you probably have, I would imagine, corporate Democrats, centrist Democrats that are really terrified of you exposing the duplicity that I see that a lot of corporate Democrats have, where they take money from the same donors that also donate to one Donald J. Trump and the people who are buying into all of this fascism. And here's the thing, Tom, I always say about these billionaires, how is it that you have all this fuck you money and you can't look at Trump and say, fuck you? How is that? Like, what's the point? And it sounds to me like you're saying, fuck you to these people.

23:11Do you think getting 8 million signatures to try and throw them out of office in 2017. Look, Javier Becerra, who's one of the other leading candidates, Democratic, has taken the maximum amount of money from Chevron. He's taken a ton of money from the second biggest oil driller. He said the oil companies aren't bad guys. We need them. And he's drilling more oil in the state of California. And he has no environmental policy. That's a Democrat. We had two fires yesterday in California outside what is normally considered fire season. We are definitely suffering from the changes in the climate. The fires are raising everybody's home insurance rates.

23:56And there is no sense that that's just something that happened. We should deal with that's not true. We need somebody in the state who's going to be pushing for the future of what's good for Californians not being paid to keep the status quo. And that is exactly what is happening. And it's amazing because we're heavily democratic state. It's happening with Democrats. That is so, you know, to a very large extent, what you're, what you're saying is the status quo doesn't work for working people. And that's definitely true in the state of California. And unless we take on the people who run the status quo, which are these corporate special interest, we're not going to change it.

24:39And I agree. And we have to do that. I mean, I know that across the board, big political action committees and independent expenditures from billionaires and big corporations are dominating our politics and people are absolutely scared of them and they won't say boo. Don't you think that a lot of these corporate Dems, Obviously, I'm going to say, I think Republicans are far worse. I lived in a Republican supermajority state. It's not even close. I'm not one of these people that says, oh, Kamala Harris would have been the same thing as Donald Trump. Bullshit. Kamala Harris would be a million times better.

25:17I'm a realist and a pragmatist about this shit. But I will say one point that I will cede on, and that is that the Democratic Party playing patty cake with these donors like AIPAC, like Chevron, who ultimately want the Republican Party because they're so much more, such more savages about, you know, everything and anything, and they value profits over everything. But these centrist Democrats that play patty cake with these same donors helped prime the working class angst that fueled this fascist takeover. And I think we have to, as Democrats, call out these do nothing, uh donor sucking uh democrats that take the same money from palantir and all of the aforementioned packs that i was speaking about but i think the other thing and i i think i completely agree with what you just said jennifer and i want to say this for the last i guess it's eight years no 10 years democrats basic point is that the sort of status quo we're not donald Trump.

26:27It's like, okay, that's good. What are you? What are you? And there's been no vision of what America is supposed to look like that works for working people. And that's very much what I'm trying to do in this campaign to talk about how are we going to make it possible for working people to buy a house? We have to be able to do that. How are we going to make sure that healthcare is a right that everybody gets at a price they can afford. How are we going to do that? That's why I'm for single payer. But it goes right down the line of in order to do some of these things, you're going to have to take on the corporate powers that be that have it their way.

27:05And if you're not willing to do that, then what's your vision? Our vision is sort of like more of same, but we're not going to be thieves and we're not actually vicious. I agree. Okay. There's been some pearl clutching recently over you. You were called out for paying influencers to support your campaign, some of whom didn't disclose that they were being paid. Do you think that there is a double standard between Democrats and Republicans doing this? I don't know. Jennifer, look, we never pay anybody for endorsement. We pay people for their time. If they're doing work, we pay them. We disclose every single part of that.

27:47The other people who I'm running against do all of this through independent expenditures and disclose nothing. And so we're exactly following the rules and I have no apologies to make for it. But I want to say this, honestly, this is a diversionary tactic. Javier Becerra doesn't want to meet with reporters. He doesn't want to take questions from Californians. He is running away from any sort of scrutiny because he can't withstand it. And they're trying to come up with issues to divert. And this is a perfect example. Look, I want to talk about what's going on with working people in California. This is an attempt to change the subject from what actually matters in California to something that it's just a diversion from a campaign that has nothing to offer.

28:37And they're the people pushing this. And from my standpoint, it's like, look, why don't you tell us what your environmental policy is? How about if you tell us your policy on regulating data centers? You know, what do you have to say about AIPAC? And they want to say, no, no, no, this is about, you know, an influencer. No way. I think it's pearl clutching and I'll probably get a bunch of pushback from the left on this, but here's what I like, because I know how ruthless and myopically focused on winning campaigns Republicans are. And I think we have to show up and we have to fight fire with fire.