Katie Porter
Appearances
Morning Wire
Trump’s Canadian Tariff Win & NIH Vaccine Hesitancy Research | Afternoon Update | 3.11.25
What California needs now is a little bit of hope and a whole lot of grit. Fresh blood and new ideas and leaders with the backbone to fight for what's left. That's why I'm running for governor.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
It is actually my kitchen. You've been asked about that. People have actually asked me that. Like, is that actually her kitchen?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Yeah, and I think that people have this expectation that... things are shiny and new. And like, this is it. This is actually my kitchen. And so, you know, it's the same thing when people are like, do you actually drive that minivan? And I was like, yeah, it was my only car until a few months ago.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Yes, that was actual pee. Thank you. Thank you for advertising that. Yes.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, look, I think Californians are hungry for leadership. I think the country, half of the country anyway, is really, really hungry for leadership. They're concerned about what Donald Trump is doing, and they want to make sure that we're going to have a plan to deal with that. A plan not only for the next several months, but a plan for what could be a very, very long four years.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Look, I think it's exactly what I said in my launch video, which is I will say yes to anyone and I am willing to say no to anyone. I will work with anyone who has a good idea, regardless of what else we agree or disagree on. Look, I had a lot of bipartisan bills in Congress. I didn't agree with everybody on those issues.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
At the same time, people want to know that you'll have their backs, that you're willing to stand up and that you're going to go toe to toe with Donald Trump and that you're going to come up a winner. So Look, bipartisan disaster relief, wildfire relief, that should be bipartisan. I think that Governor Newsom did the right thing to walk with President Trump, to get him here on the ground.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
That's what fighting for California looks like in that context. But when we have a president who's saying, I'm going to cut off health care for a third of your population, then that's time to push back and time to fight.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, I think people want to see a common sense approach. They want you to call a spade a spade. Where we have come up short, we need to do better, not try to convince people that there isn't a problem. Anybody who's walking into a grocery store today and walking back out with any number of groceries understands the problem.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
People who have kids who are wondering if they're going to be able to afford to stay in California. As a mom, I feel that personally. So I think you have to be straight with people. This is where we've fallen short. Governor Newsom, when he got elected, said he was going to focus on housing. Kudos to him for seeing and talking about housing at a time when very few Democrats were.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
But I think we've taken the tools that he's used about as far as we can. Now we need a set of fresh ideas.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Yeah. So one of them is, look, we in California, we need to fight to get good, high paying jobs here, not just keep the ones we have, but actually bring new industries here with good jobs. So we always say, well, we're the fifth or sixth biggest economy. I want to be the fourth biggest. I want to be the third biggest. I want those jobs to be there and I want to attract new and amazing talent.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I think the other lesson is, coming from the Trump administration, is people want to see things done. So you have to be willing to think a little outside the box, to prioritize, to have a tight agenda. You can't be the everything everywhere all at once. You have to have some priorities. You have to tackle them and you have to be straight with people. This is how far I got.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
This is what needs to be done. Here's the lesson learned. Here's what I'm going to change to deliver the rest.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, look, you're talking to someone who during the COVID pandemic, in the early, early days, was the second to last person to question. 50 people had questioned. And the CDC director and all of the executives danced on the top of it. The government officials had said, we're trying. This is what we're working on. We're operationalizing it. And the truth was, there was a law.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
that allowed for make testing free in a public health emergency. And I stuck with the CDC director until I got him to yes. Not yes for me, yes for everyone in America for free testing. So I think that's a good example of being really true to our values. If you believe that government workers do good work, put them to work, let them thrive, right?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
And so I think believing that government can do things and holding it accountable to achieve those outcomes are entirely consistent. So Democrats should own the issues of things like government efficiency. We should own the issues of modernizing government so that it works better for people and it inspires confidence.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
We should own the issue, I would argue, even of things like taxpayer rights and making sure that taxpayers are seeing return for what they do. We want to see outcomes. We're Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody want to see outcomes. And I think Democrats need to be laser focused on that. So part of the reason I care so much about oversight is that's what oversight's about.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
It's about closing that gap between what people stand at a press conference and say they're going to do and then what's actually happening. If you don't close that gap, you're going to lose people's trust. You're going to lose their confidence.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, I think there's two challenges with that. One is President Trump is trying to take back the promised federal funding that is the foundation of the project. So you can't push it ahead when it's when it's being sort of abandoned. cut down from the bottom, right? So you can't build something where it's being eroded from the bottom. And that's what he's doing with that funding.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So that's my second point. There are real costs. to delay. There are real costs to being overly cautious. There are real costs to deciding that you have to make everybody happy all of the time. I think Governor Jerry Brown was a little bit of a good example of this. Governor Schwarzenegger, a little bit of a good example of this.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
They made some people unhappy when necessary to get their top priorities done. And so I think with this high-speed rail project, we have to decide, are we gonna build this? And if so, I have every confidence that California can do it. And if we're not, then we need to cut bait and quit wasting taxpayer dollars.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, look, people need to understand there are consequences to all of us, whether you're currently a homeowner, whether you want to be a homeowner, whether it feels way out of reach. There are consequences to every single person in California of not building enough housing.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
We have a mindset problem and we need to call it out and to shake it up, which is this idea that if we do something to lower the cost of housing, that's helping only the people who can't afford housing. Nonsense. Our whole economy is being held back by our housing challenges. So this is the exact same argument we have about things like school funding.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
People say, well, why should I pay for schools? I don't have kids. Because that's the future workforce. So I think we need to get out of this, who benefits? It's this little sliver and get into talking about things that, for instance, if we build more housing, Every single person in California is going to benefit because it will increase. Our businesses will come here. Jobs will come here.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
People will be able to spend more. We'll have more sales tax revenue. All of those things are up. It's not a zero sum game. And we have to get out of that conversation.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Those are roadblocks. And you need to be clear. We are building a road. Right. And so I think that's exactly what you need to say. All of these things, the environmental laws, the local the local processes, it's too much.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
If we want to get problems solved quickly and there is a real hunger from voters in California to tackle some of these things that we have dealt with now for too long, then you're going to have to be willing to make hard choices, to have hard conversations. And to own the consequences of that. And I think you do that.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I think how you do that in a way that doesn't sort of tear down things and leave things in fragments is you're honest with people. Look, this is a priority. This is Californians' top needs. This is not my pet project. I work for Californians. And so this is what California needs. We all have to get on board. And I hope you will. What does it take to get you on board? How do we get you there?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
What are your concerns? You have that conversation. But at the end of the day... They just want to be in the way of California thriving. And what it means to be a leader is to is to get them out of the way.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, I give Governor Newsom a lot of credit. When he ran in 2018, it was my first time as a candidate too, right after Trump had gotten elected. And he was really one of the only people in the Democratic Party talking about housing. And at the time, I remember talking with my consultants and being like, I want to be a housing candidate.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
And they were like, eh, you know, that's not really a big issue, which was nuts because it was the big issue then. It's a big issue today. It was a big issue when I came to California and started helping people in the foreclosure crisis. So I give them a lot of credit for really making that a big issue. I think we've started to hit the limits of Thank you so much.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
a lot of different kinds of housing in a lot of different places. So I think we need to start moving forward. One good example I would give you is we're gonna have to innovate in how we build housing. Housing are one of the only industries that we still build them the same way now that we built them 300 years ago. We don't build anything else that way.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So then there's an opportunity to create good high paying jobs, to create research design jobs, innovation jobs, to do some 3D printing work, to do this with innovative materials. we're kind of hitting the limits of what we can do by simply trying to do more within the framework we have. I think we have to move the framework.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Look. We need so much housing. And look, housing for people in the middle makes housing for people one rung down the ladder more affordable. So the answer here is we need more housing for seniors. We need more housing for college students. We need more housing for workforce development. We need housing for people who are coming to college.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
We need housing for workers that we are recruiting into California from states where housing costs less than And so the answer has to be this is this is not a politics of scarcity. This is a politics of abundance answer. More is more for everyone here, not just more for the person that gets that particular housing unit, but more for us all.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, look, I think the governor's had his hands full with a number of challenges recently, but I think we are at the limits of kind of what we've done. So we're going to have to develop, for example, a plan to make sure that every student at our state universities has stable, secure housing so they can focus on learning. We're going to have to have...
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
have a plan to make sure that looking at where California is going to grow the jobs, that we're going to have housing in those specific places. We're aging. We have a master plan on aging. We need to look at what we're going to do through that plan on housing. So I think there's just more conversations to be had here.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
And like I said, I think the limits on cities that are being recalcitrant, Huntington Beach, which I used to represent, they get sued by Attorney General Bonta because they're not willing to build housing as they should. They're breaking the law. But there's a limit to that tool.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
And I think what I'm excited about, it takes years, but also like when you're, there's a phrase when you're litigating, you're losing, right? So like absolutely Attorney General Bonta's job is to hold people who are breaking the law accountable. And to that, I say, Godspeed, glad to have him in the fight. But the job of the governor is to figure out what we can do proactively.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So that we never get there. So that we are addressing whatever concerns they are. We are creating more capital in the private market to help fund this housing. We are making sure we're recruiting the workforce that we need to be able to do this construction because we need to do it at a scale and at a speed that is going to require some out of the box thinking.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Yeah. I mean, look, I think that that race was a lot about people's anxieties about Trump. And Adam has a terrific record of taking on Trump. I think what we see now is we're living with it. So we are living with the political consequences. We are asking ourselves, how do we reach people that we don't always reach?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
How do we get a closer hold and bigger, stronger trust with people who were slipping away? And so I think that's where being sort of a messenger who's come into politics relatively recently, somebody who comes from a purple district, somebody who has spent her career doing other things in classrooms as a consumer advocate. I think that's the kind of messaging that we need in this moment.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
To connect with people. And we also need to do a lot of listening. And I think that is something that the joy of the Senate race, my happiest moments in that race, were listening and learning. One of my favorite days in the entire Senate race was the day I spent in Bakersfield. And when I say that, people are like, what?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I spent a whole day learning about how we can reduce the amount of water we use when we're growing nuts. I spent a day learning how baby carrots are made. So cool. And so we need to have those kinds of conversations. We need to listen. Businesses are concerned about staying in California. Workers are concerned about staying in their jobs. You got to have those conversations.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
You got to be willing to listen. And so part of the launching now is I want that runway to do exactly that.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, and this race is really different that way, right? So I've run big, expensive races here in Orange County, three times, a statewide race. So I've had the opportunity to connect with a lot of voters, to introduce them. myself to a lot of voters. And this race is an opportunity to build on that by talking to voters and listening to voters about what are they worried about with California?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
What do they love about California that they're worried that Trump is going to cause us to lose? What do they miss about a California maybe of the past? What do they want to see in a California of the future?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, so listen, what I've said and what I'm going to say again today is that I think if Kamala comes into this race, especially if she comes in tomorrow, she comes in now, it's going to have a near field clearing effect. It's just going to be, well, I'm not sure who all, there's a big field of people. Yeah, I know, I know. They're staying in no matter what. Right.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So I think it's going to shake up the field. I said it's going to have a sort of a seismic effect. That said, we got to start this process now. Kamala is going to make her decision in her own time. The vice president is owed that. That's her decision to make. And I've worked with her. I know that she's a careful decision maker. She's a thinker. And so she's going to make her decision.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
But in the meantime, it is full speed ahead. Right. Voters, I'm not waiting around. And I don't think voters are waiting around. They want to know how we're going to lead. They want to make plans for what we're going to do with regard to Trump. And so I think there's a hunger for people to lead in this moment. And I'm stepping up.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, I'm not sure that our leaders, people wanna hear our leaders say, I don't wanna give a half.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I do think, look, I am not waiting. for Kamala Harris. And I don't think anyone should who wants to lead. I think what it means to lead is to literally step forward, right? To be willing to be at the tip of the spear in this moment. That's exactly why I'm launching. That's why I've been working on this. I am not sitting back waiting to see what Kamala does.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I am not considering other races, hedging my bet. I'm going to be California's next governor. But it would also be, I think, disrespectful to somebody who went toe to toe month after month after month in a grueling race against Donald Trump.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
And and I saw this firsthand personally serve California very, very ably as our attorney general, not to acknowledge that this is somebody who would be an incredibly strong candidate. And there are practical realities that anyone faces. Right.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, look, if I didn't think I would be the best governor that California could have, I wouldn't be in this race.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
What do you think about that? It's the same plan that we need to get tech jobs back here, to get manufacturing jobs here, which we were once a center of kind of highly skilled manufacturing in California. It's to make sure our agricultural sector flourishes. It's all the same. We are in a competition with other states and other countries now. And it's a competition that we need to win.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
California is amazing. The people of California are amazing. The history of California is amazing. The resources of California are amazing. So let's not get down in this. This is a battle that we can win, but you don't win the fights that you don't start, that you don't enter. And so we need to be understanding. We need to bring California's treasures and our talents to those competitions.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I think California can win those jobs back for production, back for Hollywood. I want protecting writers against AI. We need to be aggressive about doing this because frankly, other states are.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Well, I'm in fighting shape, so I'm ready for this. I really feel so lucky to have had some time after the Senate race, you know, a year now, to think, to learn, to get healthy, to spend time with my kids, to think about what I did well and what I didn't do well, what I learned, what I listened, what I heard and where I maybe wasn't listening enough.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So I think this is going to be really, really exciting and fun. Look, I love campaigning. One of my... Campaign staff once said, you know, they were doing a training for volunteers and they said, now, when you get to the event, Katie's just going to get right out of the car. And I thought, well, what else would you do? But apparently some people don't want to get out of the car.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I love to get out of the car. I love to get stopped in the grocery store. I want to hear. I want to listen. I want to connect. I love campaigning. So. To me, to take the minivan, to get a chance to go back to Bakersfield, to spend some more time in Fresno. I didn't get to make it to Merced last time. I didn't get to make it to Reading.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I'm personally going in the minivan because that's how I like to roll. But I do think we should make sure that if we're spending money on a train, we get a train. And how do your kids feel about this next run? So my kids are very excited. And I was a little surprised about that. They've been through a lot. There was a lot of negative advertising spent against me in the last race.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
That's hard on kids. It's frankly hard on the candidate, but it's really hard on kids. So I was surprised. I asked them each about this. And I think what my oldest son said really stuck with me the most. He's 19. He's a voter now. And he said, I want a governor who's going to fight for California values. I am not going down without a fight.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
Like people cannot just sit around and say, oh, you know, I'm going to emerge in four years. I'm just not going to read the paper till Trump's gone. He's like, I want someone who's going to do the work to be tough. And he's like, and mom, you're really tough. Sometimes I'm tough on him. So he knows. And how's your driving been lately? How are we doing? How's the road rage out there?
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So not only did I, I mean, I also don't have to fly to Washington anymore. So now I walk to work to the campus and I've been loving teaching. So I just finished grading my midterms Monday night so that I was all ready to launch today. Okay.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
I'm probably a little tougher than average. But part of it is this is midterms. So I think this actually says something about what we were talking about, about how I would lead, about the honesty I try to bring to things. In these midterms, I was pretty tough with them because I'm trying to help them know what needs to change.
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
So I'm telling them straight up, if you do this same thing again, you're going to get another C. Here's where you need to pick it up because that B plus, maybe even an A minus, it's in your grasp. And I'm going to push you to get there. And I think when you think about the governor and leading all these different agencies,
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Trump's All Pain, No Gain Economy
That's what people who are in the cabinet, the Katie Porter governor cabinet can expect. We're going to set goals. I'm going to listen to you about what your challenges are. I'm going to try to clear them out of the way. We're going to set goals for you. And then I'm going to ask you, why isn't it done? And what do I need to do to help you?