Gavin Newsom is trying to become a "moderate" to run for president. But is anybody fooled? California exile and Passage Press founder Jonathan Keeperman, aka Lomez, joins Charlie to talk about the implosion of the Golden State and how Gov. Newsom accelerated it. Would anyone want to pick a president from the state that hates ordinary people? Watch ad-free at members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Lomez and what is Passage Press?
Hey everybody, we have Lomez here as we go deeper into my conversation with Gavin Newsom. And I think you'll really enjoy it. Lomez talks about Passage.Press, his publishing company, and we go into so much more. Email me as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast. That is the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page. And as always, email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Joining us now is Lomaz, otherwise known as Jonathan Kieperman, a great guy. Welcome, man. Thanks, Charlie.
How are you?
This is wonderful to be here.
Thank you.
Yeah. You publish books amongst other things, right? That's right. So tell us about... Some of these great gifts you've just given. OK, so I got you three books. These were on my shelf. This is Gray Mirror from Curtis Yarvin, Fascicles. Curtis Yarvin, as you know, as people are finding out, is a kind of intellectual, you know, forebearer to some of these new trends in right wing thought.
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Chapter 2: Why did Lomez leave California?
Always With Honor is the memoir of the great white army general from the Russian Civil War, Peter Rangel. What side was he on? The bullshit? No, no, no. Peter was our General Rangel was our great white army hero who, despite the odds and despite everything coming against him, was one of the few people in that conflict who maintained his sense of integrity and fought valiantly.
And despite the fact that, of course, as we all know, the Bolsheviks won, he managed to save hundreds of thousands of lives and getting his fellow countrymen to say he was on the czar's side. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
I'm not as familiar with the Russian Civil War. Yeah, well, it's a really fascinating story that is becoming, unfortunately, increasingly relevant to our own time. Now, I think this election, we probably forestalled the worst outcomes and replaying the devastating and sort of catastrophic events of the Russian Civil War. But I think the takeaway lesson is not so much the historical analog, but
How, as a man, as an honorable person with some influence, you are required to behave during times of great stress and when people are looking to you in periods of chaos to restore some order to the polity. And it is always with honor. Always with honor. So I sat down with Gavin Newsom yesterday. Now, do you live in California? I don't anymore.
So I fled along with hundreds of thousands of other Californians around 2020. COVID was the catalyst for a lot of people to leave California, but it was going to happen one way or the other. The trends were already in motion. California had become a place that was hostile to middle class families. And my wife and I, we had started our family.
Our oldest son was starting school and we had to get out because this is not a place where you can raise a family on a middle class income. And a lot of that, frankly, is because of some of the policies that either Gavin Newsom was responsible for authoring or enabling. And so this is something that I think, as Gavin Newsom very clearly seems to be making a play for 2028.
A little slippery pivot.
A little bit. We have to remember what he did to the state of California. And despite everything he might say to try to pivot to the center and make peace with some of the radicals on his side, he ruined California in a lot of ways. And I think it's how would you say he did that? I completely agree. Well, so firstly, the proof is in the pudding.
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Chapter 3: How has Gavin Newsom impacted California?
You have this kind of radical leftist cultural agenda that's infecting the schools and that was enabled by Gavin Newsom. And I don't know if it was brought up in your interview, but I would encourage people, for example, to look up AB 101. AB 101 was an education bill that got put before Newsom in 2020, which he signed, which mandates DEI education for all California high schoolers.
OK, a semester of DEI education for high schoolers. So all he might say about his sort of animosity or, you know, certain hesitation he might have about pursuing some of this DEI agenda was, Well, he didn't really act on that, okay? And he signed this bill into law, and now starting in 2024-25, this year, all high school kids have to take DEI classes. Okay, so you have homelessness, crime.
You have the cultural degradation. You also have a state that doesn't work financially. Housing is incredibly expensive. Part of that is the demand for housing, but part of that are these onerous regulations that are imposed not just on business owners but on anybody who wants to build anything. It's just a state that is hostile to people. to ordinary people.
It's very friendly to criminals and homeless, but it's hostile to ordinary people. It's also very nice if you're very wealthy. So you can find a nice strip along the beach all the way down the coast. It's very comfortable if you can afford that. But for ordinary people, it's just not a good place to live. I think you'll get a kick out of this piece of tape here.
This is about the University of California higher education system, the UC system. And Gavin Newsom, I say something, he doesn't even know what they're teaching. It's a little bit of a fun moment. Play cut 190. Also, half the kids that graduate college will not even end up using their degree when it comes to the affiliated job. So the numbers are true at the highest income.
So about 10% of kids that go to college stretch out the averages to be really, really high. Got it. And so, for example, you go to Caltech to study computer engineering and applied AI. Next level. You're crushing it, right? You go to Cal to go study North African lesbian poetry.
Is that an actual degree there?
You tell me, Governor.
I don't know. I mean, we funded, but I'm not sure that's one of the courses. See, the fact that you don't know. Well, I don't know every single damn course.
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Chapter 4: What are the issues with California's education system?
Well, the fact that a lot of people have explored different disciplines. That's fine.
It's just the taxpayer shouldn't have to fund it. Your reaction to that? You know, I think Gavin Newsom, first of all, what that reflects is he has no idea what's going on in his state. OK, I almost like fell for it. Like, yeah, you know, I wouldn't be surprised was the thing. So, you know, I have some experience with this. I taught in the UC system for 10 years.
I was a lecturer in the English department at UC Irvine. I spent a lot of time with undergrads. And so I want to say a couple things here because I have some insight onto this as someone who was inside of it for a long time. You're right. There's a dichotomy. The 10 percent of the institution of higher ed in California, really anywhere across the country, is still doing really great stuff.
They're producing knowledge. They are teaching kids how to work with. technology that they're going to need for successful and useful lives, useful careers. But the 90% of it is just a waste of time and money. These kids don't know anything. They don't learn anything. The professors don't care to teach them anything.
The university has failed at its two basic functions, which is either to produce knowledge or to preserve knowledge. It no longer does either. And it's especially the latter that is a real problem. I love that. I've never heard anyone say it that crisp. So, yeah, preserving knowledge, preserving our intellectual and cultural heritage.
Not only have they neglected to do that, there has been an active effort to erase that intellectual and cultural heritage. And so I think, you know, if you really get into sort of granular details of it, there's all sorts of room for plausible deniability. Someone like Gavin Newsom can say, well, that's just some one off crazy thing. It's not reflective of the entire institution.
But I will tell you, as someone who spent a lot of time with these kids, they are not coming out any better than they came in and in fact are coming out a lot worse. And of course, then in tons of debt, too. So they're saddled with this tremendous debt.
And they haven't improved what we call their human capital, their ability to actually perform in the workplace and make good use of their lives and skills and talents. If pain is affecting your life, make 2025 the year of feeling good again, the year of moving better, sleeping better, feeling more alive and do it with Relief Factor. Relief Factor is a daily supplement that fights pain naturally.
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Chapter 5: What is the future of higher education according to Lomez?
So, you know, I have my own view of what college should be. It may not match up with everyone else's. I don't think that college needs to be a place where it becomes the default next step for every kid who graduates from high school. I think it's great if people want to pursue a higher education. They absolutely should.
But we should construct a system where kids are given an opportunity that doesn't reflect on their value or moral worth, where they can be funneled into vocational training or even like very high end career paths. You don't need college. You can get the training you need just going by, you know, being an apprentice at a law firm even. And I think AI is going to change a lot of this, by the way.
I hope so.
Yeah. So I want to play that tape, actually. Let's play cut 176. Are you arguing for the disestablishment, the end of higher education? I think it's going to happen no matter what. I mean, in 10 years, artificial intelligence is going to change everything. And I don't know what these four-year degrees are actually doing to prepare these kids for that.
But as far as like I'm not I mean, my advocating for the end of the pursuit of learning, of course not. That's one of my big critiques is that at a lot of these schools, they're not pursuing what is good, true and beautiful. It's become the oppression Olympics and a weaponized complaint seminar of people sitting in the circle and finding out who's the who's been offended the most that day.
That's not doing anybody any good. No. Yeah, so I think that's right. And I think the promise, the ideal of college is we all get together with fellow smart people who are intellectually curious, and we sort of work through difficult and old ideas and try to make better sense of the world. That's simply not happening. I think you're right. AI, social media is going to give us alternatives.
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Chapter 6: Why might Democrats struggle with long-form podcasting?
You could say that, but maybe you should convene a special session and say no more race-based teaching against white people in the schools of California or Asians. I'm just saying, though, that this is not a conjecture. It's not a hypothetical. It is embedded into the DNA of the Democrat Party. Is that correct? Okay, now this is where Gavin Newsom is at his slipperiest, in my view.
He knows exactly what's going on. And he was kind of playing like, oh, I don't know what's going on.
Oh, how dare you suggest.
That AB 101. I wish I would have had that armed with that. So yeah, AB 101 is a skeleton key, one among many, that kind of unlocks precisely what's going on in California. And at Gavin Newsom's lead, he signed this bill. It's not like he's ignorant of what's going on. AB 101 mandates, mandates that all high school kids take a DEI semester in their classes, just as they would take econ or civics.
They now have to take a DEI class. He signed this in 2020. This goes into effect in 2024-25. At the risk of repeating myself, this is all you need to see and read about to know where Gavin Newsom's heart is at or where his lack of spine is at. He may actually want to not have these things in place. I don't think he has any core beliefs.
Exactly.
I think it's the most transactional. That was my impression. I mean, which in some ways is the most dangerous of all. It's very dangerous because he can kind of shapeshift according to whatever's most expedient in the moment. But, you know, he has a track record.
And so all we got to do is point to that track record and say, wait a minute, you're saying X. But clearly what you actually believe or are willing to do is the exact opposite of X. And he'll have no way to really reconcile that except to just kind of dissemble and, you know, smile on camera, which, you know, may be appealing to a certain amount of people.
But I think most voters and most people on our side who, you know, might be looking at Gavin Newsom as someone they could convert to, I really hope not, please. That is not going to make anybody's life better. But they'll see through that. I really think the American voters are smarter than that. And they see through that kind of transparent sort of political actor type behavior. I hope so.
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