CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom

Interview

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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump delivered a budget to the Democratic controlled House today. Not surprisingly Democrats declared it dead on arrival in part because it calls for $8.6 billion for the wall, the one that Mexico was going to pay for and one of the point, the one that the President declared an emergency to finance right now.

He did that over the objection of many people in both parties and he is expected to lose a Senate vote on it in the next few days. One of his biggest critics is California Governor Gavin Newsom. He spoke with our Gary Tuchman just the other day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you think he's xenophobic?

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: I think a lot of the actions that we've seen over the last few years, by definition are textbook, nativist textbook xenophobic, textbook racists in many respects and --

TUCHMAN: Are you at war with the Trump administration?

NEWSOM: It's not just the Trump administration, broadly Trumpism. I think more broadly a lot of the rhetoric we're hearing just on the streets and sidewalks, you know, that there's something going on. We -- there's a lot of toxicity in our body politic right now and it's inflame for purely partisan political purposes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, that report first aired on the program Friday night. It aired again on Saturday and the President must have seen that airing because moments later he tweeted, "I hope the grandstanding Governor of California is able to spend his highly -- very highly taxed citizens money on asylum holds more efficiently than money has been spent on the so-called Fast Train, which is billions over budget and in total disarray. Time to reduce taxes in California." So that was Saturday. Earlier today, we spoke again with Governor Newsom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Governor Newsom, I want to start by reading something back that you said to our Gary Tuchman just last week about President Trump and his actions. You said, "I think a lot of the actions over the last few years are by definition or textbook, nativist textbook xenophobic, textbook racists in many respects." Do you then think the President is a racist and a xenophobe?

NEWSOM: Well, he's certainly acting like it. He's certainly advancing policies that are intended to divide, policies that are very familiar to Californians. These are the same policies that are being advanced by not a president at the time in the '80s and '90s. But substantively in a contemporary sense, 1994 when Pete Wilson was governor of California running for re-election and he advanced initiative prop 187. We had three strikes reform on the ballot, fear the other, politics of fear and anger. It was on the ballot and it won. It was situational, but long-term it was devastating to the Republican Party. The Republican banned in California and I think the same will happen across the nation.

COOPER: You think that's what is at the core of President Trump's kind of strategy, hitting people against each other?

NEWSOM: Of course. I mean, it's textbook. None of this is novel. None of this is new. It's very familiar, not just to people in California, all across the country. Politics, again, of fear and anger, and it works situationally. It doesn't work long-term, but it works short-term. It's all about the base. It's all about the base. You hear that over and over publicly, privately. And it's sad and tragic.

And it's incumbent upon people like myself that feel that we can elevate ourselves and we can rise above that to stand up and stand tall and have the backs of our diverse populations, particularly in a state like California that practices pluralism, a word you never heard uttered from the White House.

We are a universal state. We're the most diverse state and the world's most diverse democracy and we want to celebrate our differences, but we also believe in uniting around the things that bind us together and our common humanity is at stake when you have politics and politicians who want to divide us. And I'm just not going to stand for that.

COOPER: In the interview with Gary, you also talked about the services California is now providing for asylum seekers, services which you say should be the federal government's responsibility. You actually open up a center for asylum seekers.

The President responded to you over the weekend tweeting, "I hope the grandstanding Governor of California is able to spend his very highly taxed citizens money on asylum holds more efficiently than money has been spent on the so-called Fast Train, which is billions over budget and in total disarray. Time to reduce taxes in California." To that you say what?

NEWSOM: Well, we're going to need two segments to unpack all of that and the conflation of issues. But the bottom line is, it is the federal government's responsibility. It is the federal government's role.

Look, these are human beings, these are parents, these are children that forgive the vernacular or otherwise dumped and not -- you know, I'm being a little pejorative, I'm being a little, you know, little obtuse in my language, but otherwise, they're thrown in bus stops to fend for themselves that came through here legally, legal asylum seekers. Not here illegally, legally.

And they have ankle bracelets on their legs. They have children in their arms and they're out in 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning at a Greyhound Bus Station. And the federal government turns its back to them, turns a blind eye to them, California will not.

[20:35:07] And if they won't do their job, we'll do their job. And to the extent the taxpayers of California, 40 million strong, one of the strongest economies in the world embrace that, I enthusiastically will advance that. And $25 million seems a small price to make sure that those children are fed and to make sure that those folks have a safe journey to whatever destination legally they are going towards.

COOPER: It certainly seems a part of the President's strategy and the administration strategy is to make legal asylum seeking as difficult as possible. I mean, it seems like it has slowed. They've, you know, slow it down to a trickle so it's only a few people a day. So you have thousands of people waiting on the other side of the border for a process, which is a legal process.

NEWSOM: Yes, it's a legal process. They try to make it difficult as possible. Look at their results with all -- forgive me, Anderson, I get a little intense about this. I've got four young kids. My youngest just turned 3, my oldest is 9. We find out again today that thousands, potentially, of children were separated than the administration has publicly at least, well, acknowledged.

And yet all of these efforts by the administration are a complete failure. Everything they've tried to do from zero tolerance, everything, is making things worse, not better. There's no accountability for just simple governance in humanity and decency.

And I think its incumbent upon all of us, not just Democrats in California, Republicans, human beings that care about the human condition to demand and expect more and stop the politics and the tweets and let's come to some conclusion of the consequences of our failure in this country to advance comprehensive immigration reform and then deal with the root causes, the root causes particularly as it relates to asylum seekers.

And that is what's happening in Guatemala, what's happening in El Salvador, and what's happening in Nicaragua and get to the core of this in terms of truly trying to solve this issue.

COOPER: The President sent his budget proposal, as you know, to Congress today. He's now asking for $8.6 billion for the border wall, which is almost 3 billion more than what the government was shutdown over. I'm wondering what that says to you. I mean, maybe it's just an opening gambit, but in a further negotiation. But that he's now asking the American taxpayers for substantially more money for his wall and that any notion certainly Mexico paying for it has completely disappeared.

NEWSOM: Yes, thank you for reminding the (INAUDIBLE) Mexico will pay for the wall. Look, this is nothing more than what it obviously is. It's pure political theater. It's a perpetuation of a conversation like you and I are having that we're going to have every single day. It's exactly what the President wants.

He wants this conversation, because he can't have the real conversation about solving some of the deep and structural challenges in this country because he's not interested enough in creating political conditions where he can engage the other party and actually produce real results.

So he creates these side shows, this political theater, this political grandstanding. Of course it's absurd. $5.7 billion led to a shutdown and now he asked for $8.6, doubling down on it. He knows exactly what he's doing and he knows how we're going to react. He knows how folks like I will react, like you and others and how we'll consume the nightly news.

And meanwhile, he will be less impacted by the consequences of his complete failure to address all of these other issues because we are here exactly where he knew he would send us down the vortex of this political theater on something he knows he can't deliver but will continue to perpetuate as a theme to satiate his base.

COOPER: You know, I mean, just past month, though, there were 76,000 unauthorized border crossings at the southern border. It's an 11-year high. Customs and Border Protection, they have said the system is well beyond capacity and remains at the breaking point and whatever one labels at a crisis or an emergency. Do you acknowledge there is a problem at the border? And if so, what is the solution to that problem?

NEWSOM: You know, problem of our own making. The complete incapacity for Democrats and Republicans to come together on comprehensive immigration reform to deal with this not situationally but sustainably, to deal with this fundamentally, to deal with this at its root cause.

It's no longer Mexicans jumping over the border, in fact, in California where they're 10-year low in a number of undocumented residents in the state. I'll repeat that, a decade low in a number of undocumented residents in the state. The challenge has changed and now it's about Central America.

And if you're going to get serious about it, let's get serious about investment and economic development and opportunities in Central America. Let's secure our border. Let's also secure our consequence of our zero tolerance policies and let's make sure we have more judges and we make sure we have more staffing to address legal asylum seekers. Let's make sure we're communicating more effectively to our neighbors to the south.

[20:40:02] Let's make sure we're maintaining a sense of decency, and honor, and humility, and humanity when people cross into our country, because when they're in our country, they're in our state and our values are at stake if we deny them and look past them, talk down to them, or dumped them on the streets and sidewalks. That's how you begin to substantively address this issue.

Creating the conditions and having the decency to move past the politics and the situational politics that is being advanced here in a more sustainable way and forgive me, Anderson, for belaboring this, just start being human beings again, decent, honorable human beings and not politicians and put down the swords and all of this, you know, this anger and divisiveness.

COOPER: You were down to San Ysidro border crossing last week saying that there is no crisis, no national emergency. You got criticized because at that crossing there is a wall. Do walls work?

NEWSOM: You know, I think they do work in urban settings. I think they do work on the southern border here in California, particularly between Tijuana and San Diego. But here's one of the reasons they work, it's a cross border engagement, 100,000 people going back and forth legally every single day.

People that live in San Diego and work in Tijuana, people that work in Tijuana and then come into San Diego for exchange, for not just cultural exchange. but economic exchange for jobs and opportunity. It's one region. You talk to folks down there, they talk about it in a regional construct.

We had a century program that fast tracks people to move across the border. It's a completely different narrative than the one that's dominated in the national news. And it's a narrative that people have live with for decades. There's a vibrancy that's part of that narrative. Not just security issue that's part of that narrative, but in terms of security, absolutely.

We believe in appropriate security measures, but 2,000 mile wall is a monument to stupidity, not just vanity, stupidity. It doesn't solve the problem. There's ways of isolating structures. There's ways of providing barriers and security that can solve the problem. But this president is not creating the conditions where we can have that thoughtful debate. Instead, he's advancing purely a political one.

COOPER: Well, speaking of not a thoughtful debate, my last question, you told us last week that you don't want to spar with the President, that you want to work with him. I just want to play something he said last week about a phone call allegedly with you. I just want to play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But he called me up the other day, recently, let's say four weeks ago or so, because I just want to tell you, you're a great president and you're one of the smartest people I've ever met. That's what he said. Now, that's what he said. Will he admit it? No, I doubt it, but that's what he said. And you're doing a great job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Is that your recollection?

NEWSOM: You can't make this up, Anderson. Look, I called the President because I wanted to extend to him my appreciation. And I said this publicly, not just privately of his visit out here in Butte County. We've had these historic wildfires out here primarily because of climate change and I want to express the fact that the people in those communities were grateful to him. I was grateful to him.

The people in those communities appreciated not only his time and attention, but appreciated his commitments that he made, somehow that got conflated. I think we hear what we want to hear. So, no, I can't admit "what I said" to the President privately because that's not what I said.

That said, I do want to work with him on emergency preparedness, emergency planning. I do want to rise above this politics and I think that's important. I think people expect that and to the extent we can continue to have an open hand, not a clenched fist, I'm all for it.

But if you're going to attack the people in the state, you're going to attack our values, you're going to attack our diversity, I'm going to have the back of those folks and I'll stand up tall against anyone that tries to advance a contrary narrative.

COOPER: Governor Newsom, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

NEWSOM: Thanks for having me.

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