The MeidasTouch Podcast
Gov. Gavin Newsom Drops the Hammer on Trump on His Own Turf (Interview)
Sat, 10 May 2025
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas sits down with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who delivers a powerful and urgent warning about the catastrophic impact of Trump’s failed policies on California—and the entire country. Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com Get Meidas Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Governor Newsom's stance on Trump's economic policies?
I'm joined by California's Governor Gavin Newsom. Governor, you are taking the fight against Donald Trump's disastrous economic policy to Trump's turf on Fox News. Tell us about what you're doing, Governor.
Well, it's getting really serious, and I don't think people fully have absorbed how serious. We're talking about school supplies not being on the shelves when kids come back from the summer. We're talking about just a few months away from having a real impact, quite literally, on toys being on people's shelves. We're seeing 60% decline in bookings for cargo, and California
is the recipient of 40% of the good movement coming into the United States and Long Beach and LA. So this is serious stuff. It's code red now. It's not just a yellow flag. And that's why we wanted to take this ad directly to Trump, knowing that he'll be watching Fox and have plenty of ample opportunities to understand and absorb the impacts.
Governor Donald Trump saying that if you're a little girl, you just got to be fine. You get one doll, you get one pencil, you're going to pay more for it and and just shut up. I mean, that's what he's saying. What do you think about that?
Will you imagine if Joe Biden said something like that, that the primetime lineup at Fox would be reacting to that? How it would light up every every one of the right wing networks? I mean, this is I mean, it's real. This is serious. And, you know, what happened yesterday was not very serious. And that was this so-called deal with the UK that actually hurts Americans.
American automobile manufacturers. Don't take my word for it. You saw GM and others came out with a statement saying this advantages imports of Range Rovers and Rolls Royces over American manufacturers. So it's time to sober up and it's time for this administration to sober up. They have done real damage and they cannot quickly undo that damage. And it's time to highlight the consequences.
We obviously filed the lawsuit. But I think now as consumers, we need to understand what Trump has done and the impacts, even if he reversed course tomorrow, the impacts of that over the course of the next few months.
What do you think they should do? I mean, obviously, this UK deal, to your point, the auto manufacturer is saying it's a disaster. I mean, they did this trade war against the world right now, and they seem to be a total mess. I don't even know what they're – do they think tariffs are great? They want to remove the – I don't even know what they're doing. What are they doing? What do you understand?
Yeah, look, if you use their theory of the case, if you want to impose tariffs to bring back manufacturing, industrial policy back to the United States of America, they have to be predictable. You have to have stability. You have to send a signal to small business owners that this is here to stay. And that means you have to radically change the way you're doing business. But every few hours,
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Chapter 2: How are Trump's tariffs impacting California's economy?
Governor, how serious is this scarcity issue? You know, I don't want I don't want to fear monger my audience and say there's not going to be things on the shelves. But I'm hearing from the Long Beach port director, the Seattle port director, that that ships aren't coming in, at least at the quantity they should be. What's really happening?
No, it's very real. It's very raw. I was walking with some of the dock workers and some meeting with truckers just in Oakland, California, the northern part of California, that's down 20%, down 35% in Southern California. Bookings moving forward down 60%. It takes days and days and days. It takes weeks and weeks and weeks
for decisions being made overseas and purchase orders to go into effect before they end up on the shelves. So decisions that are being made today or the indecisions around making commitments will have a profound impact on tomorrow. And that's why this can't be easily fixed. I think Trump's in a bit of a panic. He recognizes the damage now he's done.
I think he's trying to reconcile that with the markets, but there's something now bigger than the markets around consumer confidence. It's around investments and business decisions that are being made and the impact that's going to have over the course of the next many months, including, and yes, I'll highlight because I have kids and forgive me, I'll double down again on school supplies.
on issues around toys or 80 plus percent of our toys things under your christmas tree come from china and so this is uh it's not about fear-mongering it's about i think waking people up uh that this is already had a profound impact on the united states of america and our economy and budgets including the budget of the state of california when donald trump panics he tries to buy time and often that's through
efforts to distract and deflect. I don't want to fall into his distraction trap where he talks about Alcatraz this, Alcatraz that. But I think it's important to call it out for what it is, which is look there. distraction. What's his next trip? He's going to the Middle East to meet with sovereign wealth funds that he has deals with in Qatar, in Oman, with the Abu Dhabi fund for his crypto.
It's kind of, look there, here's what I'm doing. What do you think about it?
Well, I could not agree. I think this is the essential question that we have to answer as Democrats and how we address and deal with Trump and this wrecking ball of policymaking, particularly as it relates to tariffs. We have got to focus on the big thing that impacts us in more ways on more days, and that's the issue of these tariffs.
That's why we did the first state lawsuit against these tariffs. He does not have the unilateral right to impose tariffs, period, full stop. And that's why I'm doing this ad to maintain that focus and not get to your point distracted by distraction day on Sunday, just a few days ago, where it wasn't just Alcatraz. He was talking about tariffs on foreign films or films that are made overseas.
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