Tom Steyer Discusses Affordability and Governor’s Race

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2:25Ben Meiselas:Relax. We're exactly on the trajectory where we want to be. That's what MAGA Mike Johnson is saying when he was asked a question about affordability and the struggles of the American people. Melanie Zanona asked him, so what do you make of the concerns of people who are struggling living paycheck to paycheck right now, people feeling psychologically tortured under this Trump regime? What's going to happen? He goes, just wait until next year. The budget bill is going to kick in. The direct quote was, relax. We are exactly on the trajectory where we've always planned to be. Stay at the wheel, everybody.

3:02Ben Meiselas:It's going to be fine. Our best days are ahead of us. Melanie Zanoni then asked whether Johnson agrees with Donald Trump's assessment that affordability concerns are a hoax or a con job, to which Magamite goes, affordability is a real concerned. But you see, Republicans, we're the ones that are dialed in like a laser with a laser focus on the cost of living and affordability. What he's referring to as a hoax is that the Democrats are trying to pretend as if it's a Republican problem. Oh, OK, well, let's see what Donald Trump actually said in the Oval Office, MAGA Mike. Let's play it. It's a conjoint.

3:42Ben Meiselas:I think affordability is the greatest kind of they look at you and they say affordability they don't say anything else everyone says oh their prices were so low no they had the worst inflation really i mean because you seem to be bringing the inflation up and you seem to also be having a jobless rate that looks like the great recession right now and seems that all of the people in your regime are focused on some of the strangest things in the world regression bringing us back to times when there weren't safety standards. And you have Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary says, you know, the real issue is people don't say please and thank you enough when they go on airplanes.

4:22Ben Meiselas:And he goes, what we need to do is bring back the station wagon of the 1970s. Now, who right now, while you're struggling is saying, you know what we really need right now? That 1970 station wagon. That's what I'm missing in my life. Here, let's play this clip. And also, I think if you're building a car, developing a car that Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg wanted you to build, that's different than market demand. I want the market to decide what kind of EV I should offer, what kind of what kind of vehicles do the American consumers want to buy. This rule will actually allow you to bring back the 1970 station wagon, maybe a little wood paneling on the side, Phil.

4:59We can bring back toys to consumers.

5:01Ben Meiselas:Okay. And then Sean Duffy says, make sure you say please and thank you when you're in the airport. No more pajamas, everybody. Here, play this clip of Duffy. We've asked Americans to bring their better selves, to bring civility back to travel, to say, listen, let's say please and thank you. And if someone's pregnant on your flight and you're as strong as Pete is, we'll pick up the bag and help her put it in the overhead bin. Let's be nice to each other is what we've asked. Maybe not wear pajamas or slippers on the airplane. And I think it's been received fairly well. And I think we can all have a better travel experience when we do that.

5:35Ben Meiselas:Let's be nice to each other. Donald Trump's out there calling people the R word. Donald Trump's out there attacking the Somalian people and saying that they're garbage human beings. How about you look in a freaking mirror and then you've got MAGA Republicans bragging about how they want to do stock trading and how important it is for them to buy and sell stocks. because otherwise, how could you get good Congress members if you can't sell stocks? Here, play this clip. Take a look at it because right now, from a financial standpoint, it's not easy being up in Congress. And I think that we can't limit the ability for people to do business and operate their lives.

6:13Ben Meiselas:So I want to take a look at that, but I want to be careful we don't squeeze it too hard to where nobody wants to come up. Squeeze it too hard. All right. I want to bring in Tom Steyer, Democratic candidate for governor of California. you. Tom, it's great to see you. But Tom, you're a billionaire. That's not something that, you know, I think you hide or people will know that about you. And I'm thinking to myself right now, candidly, I said, do we need another billionaire hedge fund successful story running the state after we're seeing what's going on? And you're saying, look, tax me more. I, you know, I hear your claims of affordability.

6:51Ben Meiselas:So talk to us, Tom, about your campaign. Can a billionaire right now understand what the American people are going through? Look, the issue in California is affordability. I don't care what Donald Trump says. The working people of this state who have built this state and make this state run are getting run over by costs, starting with ranked. What I'm talking, the question is not who knows that problem. Everybody knows that problem, accept Donald Trump. The question is who can get results for the California people. And yeah, I am a business person who started a very successful business and walked away from it 15 years ago so I could give back to the state of California, which has given me so much.

7:35And what have I done? I have gotten results. I have taken on the oil companies in a proposition when everyone said no one beats the oil companies and I beat them. I took on the tobacco companies when no one was willing to take on the tobacco companies and beat them. And I took on huge out-of-state companies that were gaming their California state income tax and beat them too. Why was I willing to do that? Because I don't care. I understand that special interests are ripping off Californian citizens. And so the question is who's gotten results? I've put billions of dollars into California education and health care.

8:16every single year through those propositions without charging California citizens a dime. And do I believe I can continue to do that? I know I can. One of the things I'm saying I'll do is I will close the corporate real estate tax loophole in California that's been on the books for 50 years and no one wants to take it on. No one's been able to pass it, which is true of all the other props I did. What does that look like? It looks like 10 to 15 billion dollars a year closing a loophole that makes no sense, that has no justification. And that's money that can go to education. That's money that can go to health care.

8:58Californian citizens are challenged by rent. They're challenged by the highest second highest electricity costs in the United States. They're charged by insurance costs. Californian citizens are struggling in a state that's incredibly rich. We're not short of money, Ben. The way the money gets distributed, the way the revenues gets distributed has to change. And the easiest way to do it that I can do is to take on the special interests and close the loopholes they're using to rip off California families. That's what I'm going to do. And that's why I'm different, because I don't owe those people one darn thing.

9:34I can attack the corporate real estate loophole because real estate developers have never given me a nickel and I don't care. I don't owe them anything. I can absolutely do what's right for the California people. Just the way I didn't know the tobacco companies, anything or the oil companies, I'm willing to take on the entrenched interest in Sacramento to shake it up so that in fact, this can be the state where all of the success of the state that I love is shared with everybody across the state.

10:03Ben Meiselas:You know, my friend and a very strong leader in the House of representatives Ro Khanna gave you an endorsement and a shout out. Here's what he said about you. He said, Tom Steyer is for taxing billionaires like himself, for getting corporate money out of California, for passing single payer like Medicare for All and CalCare, for holding big polluters accountable and safeguarding California's against extreme weather. Let's talk about the health care plan, especially right now as the Affordable Care Act subsidies are set to expire December 31st. By and large, you know, people prefer Obamacare to what they had before, but that doesn't mean that they love it.

10:47Ben Meiselas:And it clearly is already too expensive without the subsidies. I mean, I think we saw that the exchange purchases right now of Affordable Care Act plans down like 33 percent right now or potentially even more. So what would be your plan to fix it and does it look like a medicare for all planning or a single bed in the short run look we're a revenue challenge state and donald trump's bill is a direct attack on working californians he's talking about throwing one to three million californians off the medicaid rolls of course the aca premiums are going up really dramatically which is why the participation is down so much.

11:30He's also talking about taking away food benefits from hundreds of thousands of Californians. In the short run, we've got to meet that revenue challenge, which is why I'm proposing to go after that corporate real estate loophole and close it and direct that money to the localities in terms of education and health. Longer term, what Roe is referring to is, look, we're getting run over by the increasing costs of health care. As an investor, I always knew compounding is magic, that when things grow and keep growing, it compounds and it gets to a place, which if it's an investment, it's really good.

12:09Our problem is that's what's happening in terms of our healthcare costs. They are escalating every single year, much faster than the economy and much faster than working people can afford and much faster than this government can afford. And that means we have to bring in a different system and we've got to drive out all the, we've got to drive those costs down so we can still deliver healthcare, but we can do it in a much affordable fashion, much more affordable fashion. And the only way that I can see is a single pay, is to bring in the government to force down those costs. And can we do that in the first year?

12:45No, that's why I'm talking about bringing revenue to deal with the short term problem. But long term, can we keep going on this health care system that we have, which is clued together over the last 80 years? We really need to change it. And that's going to be something we're going to have to start with in California. But really, we have to break this cycle of increasing costs at a level so that we can continue to deliver care and single payer is the way.

13:13Ben Meiselas:Now, Tom, is that an evolution of your thinking? I mean, what do you say to critics who say, I remember when Tom ran for president and he was running ads against Bernie and saying that I don't support the Bernie Medicare for all system. And I don't support single payer or because I've seen that pushback before and I'm sure you have as well. So has there been an evolution of the thinking or what do you make of it? I think I believed incorrectly that, in fact, bringing new information technology and business to the health care system could make that curve go down, could stop the inflation of health care costs, could let us deliver it more efficiently.

13:58Didn't happen. The truth is I was wrong. And when I look at the data and see I'm wrong, it's like, OK, I change. And so I give Bernie Sanders a ton of credit for being right. And it's like, okay, 20 years ago, I didn't realize that climate change was a real problem. But when I looked at the data and visited it and heard it and understood it, I was like, okay, got to deal with it. Same thing with healthcare. I was wrong. I've changed. We're going to have to solve it. And we're going to have to solve it by getting into the details and understanding it. And that's something, look, we can see that this administration and Donald Trump are never going to be willing to do their homework and understanding healthcare.

14:40And I can tell you, I'm a results-oriented person who is data-driven. And that's why I changed. I looked at the data. We need to bring this under control. We're on an unsustainable path. That means structural change. I am willing to do structural change. We have the second highest electricity costs in the country. We also have, it's delivered through enforceable legal monopolies. We have to introduce competition into that system because monopolies always produce the worst service at the highest cost because they're a monopoly. And if you don't like it, you don't have a choice. I am willing to make the structural changes that are necessary.

15:25I'm willing to attack the special interests who are ripping off Californians. I don't think they're bad. I don't think the people who work at utilities are bad people. I think structurally they're doing the job they think they're hired to do, which is deliver returns to their shareholders. Okay. My job is to stand up for working Californian families at every single instance. And that's my only job. And that means I'm going to change things that need to be changed at a structural level. As someone who's an outsider and who succeeded in changing things from the outside as governor, I will do that every single day.

16:00Ben Meiselas:You know, one of the things that a governor of California is going to have to do is it's going to have to stand up to Trump and these MAGA Republicans who I think Governor Newsom rightfully diagnosed the problem of California derangement syndrome, that despite California being the fourth largest economy in the world, if it was a country, it's constantly under attack and being used as the heel or the foil in everything that MAGA says to the rest of the country. So one of the ways we're seeing, and let's get into this, one of the ways we're seeing that is Trump sending ICE, Gestapo, Border Patrol agents to terrorize the communities here.

16:37Ben Meiselas:As the governor, how would you handle what Trump's been doing to places like Los Angeles and elsewhere sending National Guard in and sending ICE agents in to harass and terrorize people. Would you do something differently than Governor Newsom? Would you do like his approach? How would you handle it? Look, I give Gavin Newsom a lot of credit for standing up to Trump and to going online and to dealing with them every day and to trying to protect Californians. I started the Need to Impeach program in 2017. we collected 8 million signatures to oppose an illegal criminal administration, including a million in California.

17:16I have been standing up and organizing against Donald Trump for a long time. That's why I piled on to Prop 50, because we need, we cannot let him use the means of democracy to destroy our democracy. And so, of course, I will stand up every single day as aggressively as I possibly can legally and also in the attention economy to expose him for what he is, which is someone who's trying to invade his own country. Okay. But there's something else going on here that I think is really important, Ben. He has stupid policies. The kinds of things that he's talking about that you were talking about today, we want to have 1950s cars.

17:58That's our answer in the 21st century. We're depending on the oil business to lead the United States of America, incredibly stupid. And I think it's really important as the governor of California, yes, to play three-dimensional chess really aggressively to oppose him when he does all the things to attack California. But more than that, we have to be willing to go toe-to-toe on the numbers because this is a failed president. He is somebody who runs his mouth, but knows virtually nothing about the real economy. When he says that affordability is a scam, That means he's completely out of touch with the people, but he's also completely out of touch with the way business works and how his economy works.

18:43And we need somebody who's not really understands business and the economy and how to put people to work and how do things work for working families to take him on to show there's a better way. We need to deal with our affordability crisis for darn sure and make sure that working families are taken care of. But we need to also make the point we have a different system. We have a system that includes everybody. And we have a system that's succeeding and competing on a world level. And that's something he can't show that he can't understand. We need to have somebody who, and let me just make a quick point here, Ben, just as an example.

19:20Okay, he thinks drill, baby, drill. Okay, that's his plan. Oil in West Texas is under$60 a barrel. The United States produces 13 and a half million barrels a day, which is a combination of Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. Our lifting costs for oil is over$60 a barrel. So when he talks about this is our big chance to build an economy, actually, the Saudis' listing cost is probably 12 bucks. We're the high cost producer in a commodity that's challenged. That is not the future of the United States. When we look around the world about what the 21st century looks like, it doesn't look one bit like a 1950s gas guzzling station wagon.

20:08It looks an awful lot like really inexpensive, really fantastic software enables electric vehicles. That's where the world is going. That's where the competition is. And as he lives in this delusional world of returning to the 1950s, the United States and California have to lead the way in terms of what's changing, in terms of leading that change, because that's what produces great jobs. That's what produces the kind of companies that come here to grow and explode here and drive our economy forward. So as governor of California, it's not just enough to say where he's wrong. We have to start talking about where we're right.

20:51We have to be shown that, in fact, he is an out of touch and delusional old man.

20:57Ben Meiselas:You know, and that kind of brings me to I want to just before we go talk about your business background here and contrast it with Trump's because, you know, Trump tries to say that he's this great negotiator. But it seems that he's just announcing a bunch of fake deals that actually aren't signed agreements by anyone. And specifically, we see him getting outmaneuvered by China at every which way, whether they're holding back their rare earth elements, whether they are hanging over the head of Trump. The fact that they'll just stop buying soybeans and produce from our farmers. By the way, these are things that China has threatened past presidencies.

21:39Ben Meiselas:It's not unique. Just past presidents and past leaders have used their negotiating power of the United States from positions of strength to push back. And it seems every time China pushes on these levers, Trump immediately folds without actually playing the cards that the United States of America has so much so that we wouldn't even let the president of Taiwan use American airspace because Xi Jinping says, I don't want you to do that. So I just wonder from your perspective as a business person who arose out of the hedge fund space, as you see Trump's approach to that, you must have strong opinions.

22:18Well, before I go into Donald Trump specifically, let me say what the Chinese call Donald Trump. They call him the nation builder. And the nation they're referring to is their own. They view him as the weakest possible opponent. it, the person who is letting them move to the front of the pack in the world. And look, what we've seen with Donald Trump is exactly what you see with every bully in the world. They only respond to force, to power, to strength. And the Chinese are showing strength and he folds. And that's exactly, you know, if you're nice to bullies, if you appease bullies, they think you're soft, they think you're weak, and they take more.

23:09The only thing that they respond to is strength because at their core, they're weak and scared. So there's no question here. California is the fourth biggest economy in the world. We lead the world and we compete successfully around the world. We need to stand up for ourselves every single day as strongly as we possibly can. He is a failed business person. He's a guy who inherited all peck of money. He is also a very talented communicator. Let's give the devil his due. He is very good at talking. In the attention economy, he is very good. Unfortunately, he's completely divorced from the real economy.

23:51And it's critical for California, for the citizens of California, for the working families of California, that we have a governor who lives in the real economy and delivers results the way I've delivered results over the last 15 years. I left my business to give back to California. I've done that for 15 years. The real question here is, do you understand deeply the numbers? because there's a real thing going on here. We don't have enough optimism and hope around this country and in this state. And people think that hope is something that descends from on high. It is not. The reason I'm optimistic is I'm willing to get into the details and study them and figure out how to get to a good place.

24:41And hope is something that is forged, that is built through work and struggle and attention to detail. And that's why I'm so optimistic about California meeting this affordability challenge, solving this affordability challenge, but more than that, creating a new model for success in the United States. We are this state that creates the future, but that future has to include everybody. It has to include every working person, and every family here, not just millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires. This is a state that succeeds, but we succeed together and we are data driven, we are hardworking, we pay attention to detail and we succeed.