June 4, 2025 • 40 mins
Self-described "least political person" he knows, Dr. Phil on embedding with ICE and what we get wrong about the Middle East.
IG: @ThisisGavinNewsom
Email: ThisisGavinNewsom@iheartradio.com
Phone: 855-6NEWSOM
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is Gavin Newsom and this is doctor Phil McGrath. Well,
I appreciate you coming on, doctor Phil, and it's I've
been eager to have this conversation because I've been watching
a number of your conversations. You've been having very public conversations,
but also just in the media and obviously now with
(00:29):
your own new Merritt Street media enterprise. It's really interesting
to read the punditry and try to read between the lines.
What's doctor Phil up to? Is this a big shift
to the right or is he just self actualizing a
little bit more in terms of his personal points of view?
Or is it completely consistent with the person we watched
(00:51):
for twenty one years on Daytime TV. What's your overall
sentiment around the independent analysis of pun entry about all
things doctor Phil?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Right now, Well, you know, Governor, I'm glad you asked
that question because I have to say I'm probably the
least political person I know, although I have certainly been
painted with that brush of late and not completely hard
(01:24):
to understand. But and I say that I'm not political
because I deal with cultural issues, psychosocial issues, and I
differentiate that from politics because frankly, I'm not very sophisticated
(01:44):
in the political arena. I don't know a lot about it,
you know. I can watch that after school special about
how a bill becomes a law in all of that,
and I learned something every time I watch it again,
and I'm not I'm not. That's not false humility. I
(02:06):
really don't understand politics. I certainly don't understand geopolitics on
the international stage, and I really don't seek to. I
really am focusing on cultural issues, and politicians talk about
(02:30):
cultural issues a lot, and so that creates an intersection
of content and values. And to me, when I'm focusing
on those issues, those values, I could care less whether
somebody is a Democrat or a Republican. I'm not sure
(02:51):
there's a whole lot of difference when we really boil
it down to where people really stand. I don't think
we're nearly as divided as I think the legacy media
would lead us to believe we are. And so really,
I'm of a strong belief that the strength of any culture,
(03:16):
any society lies in the family. And I think family
and family values have been under attack in America. I
wrote a book in two thousand and four called Family First,
and I said in that book that I thought family
in America was under attack, and I certainly think family
(03:37):
values have been increasingly under attack. And admittedly a lot
of that attack I think is coming from the extreme left,
from what I think are the what I call the
tyranny of the fringe. It's not really mainstream America on
(03:59):
either side of the aisle. I think it's from really
extreme activists, and I don't think they really represent the
mainstream on either side of the aisle. So I think
it's I think we've got the tail wagon the dog
on a lot of these cultural issues. To tell you
(04:21):
the truth, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I want to go back to you your consistency on
the notion of family and the challenges there. And I'm
curious just you know, over the last few decades, I
imagine people tried to pull you in twenty years ago,
pull you into their campaigns, pull you into their rallies,
pull you into their point of view. You know, were
(04:45):
you were you tempted ten years ago to find your
way into this or if you really always tried to
sort of maintain a status above and you know, sort
of separate and above.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I've always tried to stay out of it. You know,
people made a lot of it when I went to
the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, you know, this
time around. But if people listen to what I said,
I started my comments and remarks during that appearance by saying,
(05:24):
I'm not here to endorse President Trump. I don't agree
with everything he says or everything he does. I said.
The first things out of my mouth. If you go
back and listen to what I said, is I'm not
here to endorse him. I don't agree with everything he
says and does. What I don't like is people bullying
(05:46):
those and ostracizing those who do support and say they're
going to vote for him. And I said, I'll give
this identical speech at a Harris rally and volunteered to
do so. And they actually contacted me and talk to
me about doing exactly that, and I said, absolutely, let
(06:10):
me know when, let me know where. I gave them
all the contact information to set it up, and then
they didn't follow up on it after that. But I
wanted to speak at that one of those events as well.
I think we need to talk to each other. I
think we need a dialogue that we're not having and
(06:34):
if we stay in our bubble. I don't think we're
ever going to get a unity in this country.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And I appreciate that. I will say, having listened to
the speech, I don't think you would have referred to
Kamala as a tough old boot.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
No, I wouldn't have done that. I would changed that line,
for sure, change it.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
There'd be a few lines by the way.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Was that was it?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Was it the President himself reached out directly to you
to get you to speak at that rally, or was
it members of the campaign team. Were they aggressively seeking
your participation?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
They were? And you know, I had already interviewed President Trump,
and I've known him for twenty years. I haven't spent
a lot of time with him, but I've known him
for a long time, and i'd interviewed him for my
show in the past and had known him, like I say,
(07:33):
not well, but had known him personally away from television
and away from all that. But his team asked me
to come and interview him. And I had asked to
interview him when he was during running his campaign, and
he agreed, And then they asked me to make an
(07:53):
appearance there and I said I would, but I'll decide
what I say, and it will probably be different from
what you hear from everybody else. And they said, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
They agree, No, well, it's I mean, it's it's you know,
the answer is no unless you ask. And I certainly
appreciate the fact that they were able to diversify the
number of voices that were participating in not only those rallies,
but you know, some a little more toxic than others,
including at that rally sort of infamously.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
But some how about you are you going to run
in twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Just you're jumping right into that. I want to jump
first though, into what you just launched, which was Merritt
Street Media. And so after twenty one ridiculously successful years
running your own show, you decided to move and did
this pivot, and you did it as well writing a
book that goes to a lot of the issues that
you're raising, including on the issue of family, called We've
(08:55):
Got Issues. But tell us a little bit more, because
I'm not sure everybody is fully familiar with this larger
media company, not just sort of the work you're doing
as a host yourself, but what you're trying to achieve
it in Merritt Street.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, you know, I did spend twenty one years at CBS,
and I have to say it's was a wonderful experience
and I made wonderful relationships at CBS. It'll forever be
(09:31):
a warm place in my heart. And got nothing but
good things to say about my experience there. I was
led their daytime lineup. Of course, it was syndicated, so
they weren't all CBS stations, but that was my primary
(09:52):
station group. I had great primetime shows on CBS as well,
and they're working on some with them now we're still
in business together. But I wanted to do more than that.
(10:12):
I felt like an hour a day was not enough
time to really do the things that I felt like
I wanted to do because I was not comfortable and
was very troubled by a lot of what I was
seeing going on in this country. And I'll tell you
(10:35):
a story. I was sitting in our kitchen in California,
where we were living at the time, and I was
flipping back and forth. Robin and I were sitting there
having dinner, and we were kind of flipping back and
forth and going from one kind of news channel to
another news channel to another news channel, and I was
really frustrated by saying, you know, this is so much propaganda,
(11:01):
so much spin, you can't really tell. You'd be on
one channel and flip to another and they're talking about
the same events or incidents, and you can't even tell
they're talking about the same thing. Amen, because they're spending
it so much. Yep. And I said, you know, this
just drives me crazy. The media is driving me crazy.
(11:24):
Why won't they just tell you what happened? And without
even looking up dinner, she said, well, why don't you
do something about it? You are the media, And she said,
your ratings are bigger than both of them combined. Why
don't you do something about it? And that was really
the genesis of it, because I wanted to own the
(11:45):
debate lane in America. I wanted to have a platform
where I could bring two sides together, or three sides
or four sides if necessary, to give people the facts
and let them make up their own mind. And you know,
because it's such a big issue in California, homelessness, for example,
(12:11):
there are more than two sides to homelessness. People have
different theories about how to resolve this. You know, why
is housing so expensive? Do you do home first? Or
do you work on getting people back on their feet
and they earn their right to be given housing and
(12:34):
shelter or is that a fundamental human right? You know,
there are different sides to those issues. You think, well,
you know, how could you be debating over that? But
they're hugely passionate different sides on even that issue. And
I do give both sides a chance to talk about that,
(12:55):
and we have great and intelligent decisions. You know. Right now,
this is Israeli Palestinian conflict. I've taken very bold positions
on that, and it is astounding to me. I'm hearing
(13:16):
things on our college campuses that I never thought I
would hear in my lifetime. The anti Semitism that I'm
hearing and I have given a platform to. At one
time it was pro Palestinian, now it's pro Hamas. Is
just straight up demonstrations in favor of a terrorist group
(13:40):
that has killed forty eight Americans since its formation in
the early nineteen eighties. And I find that difficult to understand.
How we have young American.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Students violating the two conflating.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Protesting for Hamas, which is a terrorist group that has
killed Americans and until recently was holding American hostages. They
still have four that are not alive, but the last
American hostage was just released in he Don Alexander and
I spoke with his parents the next morning on the
air and had a wonderful celebratory interview with them. And
(14:20):
I'm hearing things on these campuses that tell me that
we're just not teaching critical thinking among our young people anymore,
and that's very troubling to me. So and I've given
a voice to those and been criticized for given a
voice to the pro Palestinian pro Hamas side, but I
think people need to hear what they think and how
(14:40):
committed they are and how misguided I believe they are.
But I do give them a voice so people understand
what we're up against.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Not that I've stress tested what you've been saying along
these lines, not specific to the conflict in the Middle East,
but more broadly about trying to find a lane of
a little bit more balance. I watched specifically your one
hundred day analysis of the Trump administration, and I thought
it was extraordinarily fair. You made some points that were,
(15:17):
you know, were very not revelatory to me, but I
thought important to make, particularly on the issue of immigration,
of which you've received criticism. At the same time, you're
hardly anti immigrant, but you made a point on that
One hundred Day show that I think underscores the point
you're trying to make, and that is what is omitted
often in our discourse, particularly in some of these platforms
(15:41):
and these cable shows, is the fact that the Biden
administration was deporting has been at least through a period
that marked I think around February more people being deported
on the Biden administration, even the Trump administration, not something
you see necessarily on some of these cable shows in
order to sort of highlight and reinforce the importance of
(16:02):
not just misinformation or disinformation, but what is omitted from
our conversation.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Now. Listen, we're embedded with ICE and they've allowed us
full access at Merit TV. And let me tell you,
when I say full access, there are no guidelines now there.
To be completely fair, there are some rules in terms
(16:29):
of not disclosing certain investigatory techniques that they have, but
other than not disclosing things that might put agents' lives
in danger, there are no rules. We can show every case.
(16:50):
They're not cherry pick cases. And we're able to show
everything that is going on. And I just watched the
MISCA characterization, and I've come to know Tom Homan very well.
This is a very sincere and compassionate man. And they
(17:10):
have three primary goals. Number one is the worst. First,
they talk about these cable networks, talk about their going
in and sweeping neighborhoods and kind of anybody with a
ten is subject to getting picked up. That is absolutely
not true. I have seen that they are going after
(17:32):
the worst. First, that they build a file, they know
where these people are, they know what they're guilty of doing,
and they target them. These are targeted arrest warrants that
they're executing and taking these people out. So that's their
number one goal. They wanted to close the border. They've
(17:55):
effectively done that. And then number three is to find
them missing children, because there are hundreds of thousands of
children that have gone missing. Many are known to be
sold into the sex trade or the forced labor trade,
and those children need to be rescued. Now, some of
(18:15):
them have found their way to family that is already here,
but I fear there are probably a couple of hundred
thousand that are being forced into lives that are horrendous
and that they don't want to be in, and those
are their three primary objectives. And I hear they're just
(18:36):
outright misinformation about what they're doing. And if you've seen
interviews I've done with Tom Homan, I ask him straight up,
are you raiding schools and taking children out of school
so they can be deported? Are you sitting on doctors'
offices and hospitals to catch these people when they go
(18:57):
to get healthcare? Or are you going after the worst first?
And I asked the hard questions and they give me
straight up answers and the support for those answers. I'm
very pro immigration. Look, our birth rate has dropped below
what we need infrastructure wise. I mean to sustain our
(19:20):
infrastructure here, we need a birth rate of two point
one and we've dropped to a little below one point six.
We better get immigrants into this country. We need the talent,
we need, the diversity, we need the headcount and the
birth rate. We desperately need immigrants in this country. But
(19:41):
there's the right way and the wrong way to do it.
I look at America as my home, and I wouldn't
let anybody into my house if I didn't know who
they were, would you. I don't think anybody would. But
we've done that. We've let millions of people into this
country without knowing who they are, and clearly some of
those are on a terror watch list and they're here now.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I think everything you said, dark phillis I think
the vast majority of people would find particularly rational. But
you have to acknowledge. And I don't say this lightly.
I say this with intimate familiarity. I mean, we've had
quote unquote wellness checks in the public schools. We've had
some folks that are going to immigration courts that are
(20:26):
being picked up in and around immigration courts. There's been
a chilling impact across the country, not just in states
like California, but a lot of day laborers picked up
in California way a federal judge intervene under a lawsuit
and actually admonished some of the border patrol for their
activities and respect to that or or ice. But I
(20:48):
do I do appreciate there's intensity of anxiety and a
lot of rhetoric that is thrown around that is not nuanced.
And I don't know that the president himself is aiding
and embedding and finding some common ground here uses some
pretty extreme language, which I think kind of chills the
(21:09):
conversation and chills I think our capacity to sort of
find some common ground on legitimate concerns around border security
and thoughtful and comprehensive strategies to get the best in
the brightest from around the world.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well, I think there's the right way and the wrong
way to get into the country. And I don't think
these people are being picked up that are here legally,
And if they are here legally, then they don't have
anything to worry about. If they came in illegally, not
at a point of entry, then they are subject to
being removed. That in and of itself is a crime,
(21:45):
is it not?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
No, And I'm not denying that, But are you asked?
I mean, and again, I'm now looking to get a
debate about immigration policy. I'm just seeing some nuance in
terms of the language, and I think some of the
rhetoric and the reality on the ground. As someone that
is on the ground addressing some of that reality, it's
not just the worst first. It may be that may
(22:08):
be the policy, but that's not necessarily the practice as
it relates to those that are here without documentation. I mean,
you know, you've got folks from nuke Ingridge that was
supporting amnesty in nineteen eighty five, Reagan himself that did
the amnesty bill shortly thereafter, and U And obviously we've
got to address those that have been here for decades.
I don't imagine we want to get all of them
(22:30):
because they're quot on here illegally and send them and
support them all back. I'm not imagine you're arguing for that.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Well, but here's the thing if if, and let me
argue another side of this, We've got an immigration court
that is horribly dysfunctional. Yeap takes seven eight years. Yeah,
ridiculous court date, and that is a broken system. We
need to fix.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
That one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
When you've got somebody that maybe they have a legitimate reason,
a compelling reason to get out of their home country
for safety reasons, for fear of violence from gangs or whatever,
and so they make applications in the United States and
we say, great, you know, here's a here's a court
(23:20):
date in twenty thirty two. Well, I'm sorry, I got
people coming by my house threatening to cut off my
arms and legs on a daily basis. Twenty thirty two
doesn't really work for me. We've got to fix that.
I want one hundred percent acknowledge that. The other hand,
(23:42):
if we've got people that are here illegally, they're either
here legally or they're not here legally, and so we
have to take some ownership in the fact that we've
got a broken system for getting process into this country.
Doesn't change the fact that we have people that are
here illegally, and most of them are not fleeing they're
(24:05):
here fleeing violence. They're here for economic reasons, and this
is the greatest country in the world. Of course, if
I was in El Salvador or somewhere and had a
dirt floor and pennies a day for wages, would I
want to be in America? Of course I would want
to be in America. We've got to do some things
(24:26):
on our end to make this more functional. But I
agree with that, and I hate these sanctuary guidelines where
they will not cooperate with ICE agents to get someone
that is currently in custody, which means they've broken the
law and local law enforcement has had reason to pick
(24:49):
them up and detain them. If you tell ICE about that,
and they can come get them and take them out.
At that point, you're going to have a whole lot
less of the people you're talking about get arrested when
they go into the community. Then you have one ice
agent on one bad actor and they're gone. If they
(25:11):
have to go into the neighborhood, they're going to arrest
that person and they're going to check everybody that's around them.
And that's as.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You knew, doctor Phil. I mean in California, I can
only speak for myself as governor. We've cooperated in that
respect with folks that are in custody in state prisons.
Over ten thousand specific gamples of that kind of cooperation.
So not a lot of daylight on that. I guess
I'm just more concerned about the larger rhetoric that everyone's
here quote unquote illegally, which I get on the technical terms,
(25:42):
but the notion of what the heck we do about it.
I agree with you on comprehensive need for a comprehensive reforms.
I think the asylum system is broken. There's been all
kinds of bills rejected by both parties to address this issue.
There was a bipartisan immigration package that Rubio himself many
others support it to deal with immigration backlogs and judges
(26:04):
and address some of those concerns, but they seem to
get just watered down or eliminated because of the toxicity
of our politics. And that's my concern now is how
the hell do we soften that edge, which I think
you want so we can find unity and common ground
and unify the country, which you talk a lot about.
But how do we begin to do that in a
(26:24):
more rational way? I mean, I think rhetoric still matters,
does it not.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Words are powerful, Yeah, words are absolutely powerful. And you
know when I see things happening, and I see a
lot with the death threats and hate speech and rhetoric
that I get when I come out and condemn what
(26:51):
happened on October seventh in Israel.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, and by the way, just for the record, I
flew to Israel right after the seventh and met with leadership.
We actually brought a hospital, a field hospital with us,
So I appreciate that condemnation. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, and I know you made that trip, and I
was so glad to see you do that. I spent
twenty one years in California, and I was proud to
see you take the initiative to do that because you
didn't have to do that. And when I say words
are powerful, but thank you for doing that, I didn't
(27:35):
finish my sentence thank you for doing that. I think
the rhetoric has gotten way out of control. When you
shoot two people on the street in Washington, d C.
A museum. You know Milgram, the young woman, she grew
(27:59):
up in over in Park, Kansas. I mean, this is
not an activist that is really out driving the story here.
And the young man was an Israeli Christian, for God's sakes,
and they kill these two people and then start yelling
(28:23):
free Palestine, Free Palestine. Can I say that that those
shootings were due to out of control and fiery rhetoric.
I have no proof for that, and I don't make
claims that I don't have empirical evidence to support it.
(28:45):
But common sense suggests that this kind of rhetoric that
people that maybe were deranged to begin with, marginalized to
begin with, looking for a cause celebrate. Uh. The same
individual was active with b l M before this, so
(29:08):
you know it was that the cause at the time.
Now this is the bandwagon that he that he's jumping on.
It just makes it easy for people to get involved
in and we've got to tone down the rhetoric. And
when you see you know, Harvard and Upin and Columbia University,
(29:29):
the leadership there not only con condoning but in some
ways I think enabling and empowering this. I think we've
lost our way. I mean, these people, these young people,
I think are being agitated from the outside as well
(29:52):
as the inside. And this isn't free speech, Governor, this
is this has gone beyond that when they're I was
on the UCLA campus when they took down the encampment
there and I talked to those protesters there and was
their hate speech, yes, but it was still speech. But
(30:12):
I also saw them surrounding Jewish students and not allowing
them to move across campus. Some were assaulted, they occupied
in defense, and vandalized buildings.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And by the way, doctor Phil, just for the record,
out of so much frustration, we had to send the
California Highway Patrol in because they were not enforcing these
laws and they were not protecting those students. So we
were very critical and I appreciate your critique of what
was happening on the UCLA campus. You're absolutely spot on.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Well, we were with law enforcement as they were staging
to go in and take them down. And I will
say this about all of the law enforcement agencies that
were doing this. I was speaking with them moments. You know.
They were staging a couple of miles away from the campus,
and they had their buses there and all the troops there,
(31:08):
and we were speaking the leadership over there at two
thirty three o'clock in the morning. That was I always,
trust me.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I was up at two thirty three in the morning
when we finally pulled the orders.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, I was asking them, tell me what your plan
is and what your number one objective is. And there
was nobody there but us, and they allowed me to
be there because they know how pro law enforcement I am,
how much I support their sacrifices that they make to
keep the rest of us safe. And every single one
(31:43):
of them, and I talked to them individually, you know,
forty fifty yards away from each other, they all said
the same thing. Our number one objective is that everybody
gets home safe tonight. You see LA students, the protesters,
all all of our officers, even these protesters that were
(32:04):
hurling these insults at them and calling them every name
in the book. Their number one objective was that those
people get home safe. They weren't say, oh, well, we're
going to win in there and kick some ass. No, no, no,
They said, with great sincerity, we just want everybody to
get home safe tonight. You know, tomorrow's another day. Let's
get everybody home safe tonight. And I said, will that happen?
(32:25):
They said, well, that depends on them. If they follow
our directions, then they'll get home safe tonight. The second
worst thing is we'll detain them and cite them and
then they'll get home safe. But we want everybody to
get home safe tonight. And I had such great respect
(32:47):
for them that there's number one, even the protesters. They
absolutely wanted them to get home safe.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I know they did it. They did a really
admirable job that night. And while there was a few
modest in sentences, they conducted themselves extraordinarily well in terms
of how they reacted to those incidents. It only reinforced
their stewardship, and not just on the UCLA campus, on
many other campuses, not just in California, of course, all
(33:15):
across this country. One of the things that you know,
I think it's the conversation we're having here around how
you work through these things and how we work through
our differences and how we find commonality. You began with
you opened up by saying you don't think our politics
is you think, you know, mainstream media sort of you know,
(33:39):
it sort of exacerbates the conditions this divisions that we're
not as far apart as we may appear. Tell me
a little bit more about what you're thinking. Is in
that respect you mean that more broadly about sort of
universal values of being loved and need to be loved,
being protected, connected, respected, or do you mean that on
issues like immigrat issues like human rights and social justice
(34:04):
are on what topics?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Look Conflict sells tickets. You know, if you're doing the
news and your lead headline is today at third and L,
nothing happened, that just doesn't sell tickets, right. But if
you can say today at third and L, chaos broke out.
(34:30):
Throw to the throw to the video. Now, everybody turns
around and looks, and that's just kind of how we
have been shaped and fashioned into following the news. But
the truth of the matter is, I believe anytime I'm
(34:53):
negotiating with somebody, the first thing I do is say, look,
we've got differences. I agree with that. I think you
and I have some differences in the way we look
at things. But if we were going to try to
find some common ground, the first thing I would do
is say, you know, Governor, let's first talk about everything
(35:14):
we agree about. Let's talk about the things that we
agree about, because I think if we do that, we're
going to find that we're not near as divided or
different as we might think we are. And let's look
(35:38):
at it on a from a broad standpoint. If you
sit down with the most polarized folks and say, let's
talk about what we agree about. In America, everybody wants
a safe and healthy country. Nobody would just disagree with that.
(36:01):
Everybody wants to leave a good, green, clean, prosperous country
for our children. Nobody would disagree with that. Everybody wants
us to have a strong economy. Everybody would agree with that.
Everybody wants us to be a good leader in the
(36:24):
world and set a good example for other countries. Everybody
would agree with that. Now we might disagree about how
we go about achieving those things, but everybody would agree
with where we're trying to get and I think one
of the most critical days in this country's history was
(36:50):
nine to twelve, not nine to eleven. Nine to eleven
was one of the darkest days in our history, of course,
but on nine to twelve, everybody woke up and we
were Americans first. There weren't Democrats, there weren't Republicans. We
(37:11):
were all Americans. And I just pray that something like
that doesn't have to happen again for people to remember that, Hey,
wait a minute, we're all wearing the same color jersey.
We may have some differences on issues, but we're all Americans,
and we all love this country and we all want
(37:35):
fundamentally the same things. And if we remember that first,
then I think we have a foundation to work from,
a foundation to build on. And I pray we don't
need to be reminded of that by being under attack.
(37:57):
And I I think if we do remember that, if
we do take that approach and we go, hey, well,
we've really got something here to work on. You know, people,
I've I've followed you for a long time and there
(38:20):
are things that you know, people look at you and
you have kind of an affluent image, and all people
don't know that, and I learned one of the things
that you and I have in common is we both
come from pretty poor backgrounds. I've had to work real
(38:40):
early in our lives, and we shared some common difficult
experiences early in life of trying to make it and
and get by and find this job and then that job.
And when I learned those things about you several years ago,
(39:01):
all of a sudden, I said, you know, I understand
how he's gotten where he is because this guy understands
hard work and putting the time in to get where
he's going. And my whole opinion changed when I learned
some of those things. And there are things that I
disagree with you on. I disagreed with you on some
(39:26):
of the things you did concerning COVID and shutting things
down and how long and this, that and the other.
But I didn't have questions about your intention, your choices.
And I always knew that this was something I could
sit down and talk to you about because I knew
(39:50):
that you knew the value of hard work and what
families put in and how important it was. I felt
like people don't take time to find out who they're
talking to, what there and what their values
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Are and tune in for our continued conversation with doctor
Phil
This is Gavin Newsom and this is doctor Phil McGrath. Well,
I appreciate you coming on, doctor Phil, and it's I've
been eager to have this conversation because I've been watching
a number of your conversations. You've been having very public conversations,
but also just in the media and obviously now with
(00:29):
your own new Merritt Street media enterprise. It's really interesting
to read the punditry and try to read between the lines.
What's doctor Phil up to? Is this a big shift
to the right or is he just self actualizing a
little bit more in terms of his personal points of view?
Or is it completely consistent with the person we watched
(00:51):
for twenty one years on Daytime TV. What's your overall
sentiment around the independent analysis of pun entry about all
things doctor Phil?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Right now, Well, you know, Governor, I'm glad you asked
that question because I have to say I'm probably the
least political person I know, although I have certainly been
painted with that brush of late and not completely hard
(01:24):
to understand. But and I say that I'm not political
because I deal with cultural issues, psychosocial issues, and I
differentiate that from politics because frankly, I'm not very sophisticated
(01:44):
in the political arena. I don't know a lot about it,
you know. I can watch that after school special about
how a bill becomes a law in all of that,
and I learned something every time I watch it again,
and I'm not I'm not. That's not false humility. I
(02:06):
really don't understand politics. I certainly don't understand geopolitics on
the international stage, and I really don't seek to. I
really am focusing on cultural issues, and politicians talk about
(02:30):
cultural issues a lot, and so that creates an intersection
of content and values. And to me, when I'm focusing
on those issues, those values, I could care less whether
somebody is a Democrat or a Republican. I'm not sure
(02:51):
there's a whole lot of difference when we really boil
it down to where people really stand. I don't think
we're nearly as divided as I think the legacy media
would lead us to believe we are. And so really,
I'm of a strong belief that the strength of any culture,
(03:16):
any society lies in the family. And I think family
and family values have been under attack in America. I
wrote a book in two thousand and four called Family First,
and I said in that book that I thought family
in America was under attack, and I certainly think family
(03:37):
values have been increasingly under attack. And admittedly a lot
of that attack I think is coming from the extreme left,
from what I think are the what I call the
tyranny of the fringe. It's not really mainstream America on
(03:59):
either side of the aisle. I think it's from really
extreme activists, and I don't think they really represent the
mainstream on either side of the aisle. So I think
it's I think we've got the tail wagon the dog
on a lot of these cultural issues. To tell you
(04:21):
the truth, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I want to go back to you your consistency on
the notion of family and the challenges there. And I'm
curious just you know, over the last few decades, I
imagine people tried to pull you in twenty years ago,
pull you into their campaigns, pull you into their rallies,
pull you into their point of view. You know, were
(04:45):
you were you tempted ten years ago to find your
way into this or if you really always tried to
sort of maintain a status above and you know, sort
of separate and above.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I've always tried to stay out of it. You know,
people made a lot of it when I went to
the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, you know, this
time around. But if people listen to what I said,
I started my comments and remarks during that appearance by saying,
(05:24):
I'm not here to endorse President Trump. I don't agree
with everything he says or everything he does. I said.
The first things out of my mouth. If you go
back and listen to what I said, is I'm not
here to endorse him. I don't agree with everything he
says and does. What I don't like is people bullying
(05:46):
those and ostracizing those who do support and say they're
going to vote for him. And I said, I'll give
this identical speech at a Harris rally and volunteered to
do so. And they actually contacted me and talk to
me about doing exactly that, and I said, absolutely, let
(06:10):
me know when, let me know where. I gave them
all the contact information to set it up, and then
they didn't follow up on it after that. But I
wanted to speak at that one of those events as well.
I think we need to talk to each other. I
think we need a dialogue that we're not having and
(06:34):
if we stay in our bubble. I don't think we're
ever going to get a unity in this country.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And I appreciate that. I will say, having listened to
the speech, I don't think you would have referred to
Kamala as a tough old boot.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
No, I wouldn't have done that. I would changed that line,
for sure, change it.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
There'd be a few lines by the way.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Was that was it?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Was it the President himself reached out directly to you
to get you to speak at that rally, or was
it members of the campaign team. Were they aggressively seeking
your participation?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
They were? And you know, I had already interviewed President Trump,
and I've known him for twenty years. I haven't spent
a lot of time with him, but I've known him
for a long time, and i'd interviewed him for my
show in the past and had known him, like I say,
(07:33):
not well, but had known him personally away from television
and away from all that. But his team asked me
to come and interview him. And I had asked to
interview him when he was during running his campaign, and
he agreed, And then they asked me to make an
(07:53):
appearance there and I said I would, but I'll decide
what I say, and it will probably be different from
what you hear from everybody else. And they said, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
They agree, No, well, it's I mean, it's it's you know,
the answer is no unless you ask. And I certainly
appreciate the fact that they were able to diversify the
number of voices that were participating in not only those rallies,
but you know, some a little more toxic than others,
including at that rally sort of infamously.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
But some how about you are you going to run
in twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Just you're jumping right into that. I want to jump
first though, into what you just launched, which was Merritt
Street Media. And so after twenty one ridiculously successful years
running your own show, you decided to move and did
this pivot, and you did it as well writing a
book that goes to a lot of the issues that
you're raising, including on the issue of family, called We've
(08:55):
Got Issues. But tell us a little bit more, because
I'm not sure everybody is fully familiar with this larger
media company, not just sort of the work you're doing
as a host yourself, but what you're trying to achieve
it in Merritt Street.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, you know, I did spend twenty one years at CBS,
and I have to say it's was a wonderful experience
and I made wonderful relationships at CBS. It'll forever be
(09:31):
a warm place in my heart. And got nothing but
good things to say about my experience there. I was
led their daytime lineup. Of course, it was syndicated, so
they weren't all CBS stations, but that was my primary
(09:52):
station group. I had great primetime shows on CBS as well,
and they're working on some with them now we're still
in business together. But I wanted to do more than that.
(10:12):
I felt like an hour a day was not enough
time to really do the things that I felt like
I wanted to do because I was not comfortable and
was very troubled by a lot of what I was
seeing going on in this country. And I'll tell you
(10:35):
a story. I was sitting in our kitchen in California,
where we were living at the time, and I was
flipping back and forth. Robin and I were sitting there
having dinner, and we were kind of flipping back and
forth and going from one kind of news channel to
another news channel to another news channel, and I was
really frustrated by saying, you know, this is so much propaganda,
(11:01):
so much spin, you can't really tell. You'd be on
one channel and flip to another and they're talking about
the same events or incidents, and you can't even tell
they're talking about the same thing. Amen, because they're spending
it so much. Yep. And I said, you know, this
just drives me crazy. The media is driving me crazy.
(11:24):
Why won't they just tell you what happened? And without
even looking up dinner, she said, well, why don't you
do something about it? You are the media, And she said,
your ratings are bigger than both of them combined. Why
don't you do something about it? And that was really
the genesis of it, because I wanted to own the
(11:45):
debate lane in America. I wanted to have a platform
where I could bring two sides together, or three sides
or four sides if necessary, to give people the facts
and let them make up their own mind. And you know,
because it's such a big issue in California, homelessness, for example,
(12:11):
there are more than two sides to homelessness. People have
different theories about how to resolve this. You know, why
is housing so expensive? Do you do home first? Or
do you work on getting people back on their feet
and they earn their right to be given housing and
(12:34):
shelter or is that a fundamental human right? You know,
there are different sides to those issues. You think, well,
you know, how could you be debating over that? But
they're hugely passionate different sides on even that issue. And
I do give both sides a chance to talk about that,
(12:55):
and we have great and intelligent decisions. You know. Right now,
this is Israeli Palestinian conflict. I've taken very bold positions
on that, and it is astounding to me. I'm hearing
(13:16):
things on our college campuses that I never thought I
would hear in my lifetime. The anti Semitism that I'm
hearing and I have given a platform to. At one
time it was pro Palestinian, now it's pro Hamas. Is
just straight up demonstrations in favor of a terrorist group
(13:40):
that has killed forty eight Americans since its formation in
the early nineteen eighties. And I find that difficult to understand.
How we have young American.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Students violating the two conflating.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Protesting for Hamas, which is a terrorist group that has
killed Americans and until recently was holding American hostages. They
still have four that are not alive, but the last
American hostage was just released in he Don Alexander and
I spoke with his parents the next morning on the
air and had a wonderful celebratory interview with them. And
(14:20):
I'm hearing things on these campuses that tell me that
we're just not teaching critical thinking among our young people anymore,
and that's very troubling to me. So and I've given
a voice to those and been criticized for given a
voice to the pro Palestinian pro Hamas side, but I
think people need to hear what they think and how
(14:40):
committed they are and how misguided I believe they are.
But I do give them a voice so people understand
what we're up against.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Not that I've stress tested what you've been saying along
these lines, not specific to the conflict in the Middle East,
but more broadly about trying to find a lane of
a little bit more balance. I watched specifically your one
hundred day analysis of the Trump administration, and I thought
it was extraordinarily fair. You made some points that were,
(15:17):
you know, were very not revelatory to me, but I
thought important to make, particularly on the issue of immigration,
of which you've received criticism. At the same time, you're
hardly anti immigrant, but you made a point on that
One hundred Day show that I think underscores the point
you're trying to make, and that is what is omitted
often in our discourse, particularly in some of these platforms
(15:41):
and these cable shows, is the fact that the Biden
administration was deporting has been at least through a period
that marked I think around February more people being deported
on the Biden administration, even the Trump administration, not something
you see necessarily on some of these cable shows in
order to sort of highlight and reinforce the importance of
(16:02):
not just misinformation or disinformation, but what is omitted from
our conversation.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Now. Listen, we're embedded with ICE and they've allowed us
full access at Merit TV. And let me tell you,
when I say full access, there are no guidelines now there.
To be completely fair, there are some rules in terms
(16:29):
of not disclosing certain investigatory techniques that they have, but
other than not disclosing things that might put agents' lives
in danger, there are no rules. We can show every case.
(16:50):
They're not cherry pick cases. And we're able to show
everything that is going on. And I just watched the
MISCA characterization, and I've come to know Tom Homan very well.
This is a very sincere and compassionate man. And they
(17:10):
have three primary goals. Number one is the worst. First,
they talk about these cable networks, talk about their going
in and sweeping neighborhoods and kind of anybody with a
ten is subject to getting picked up. That is absolutely
not true. I have seen that they are going after
(17:32):
the worst. First, that they build a file, they know
where these people are, they know what they're guilty of doing,
and they target them. These are targeted arrest warrants that
they're executing and taking these people out. So that's their
number one goal. They wanted to close the border. They've
(17:55):
effectively done that. And then number three is to find
them missing children, because there are hundreds of thousands of
children that have gone missing. Many are known to be
sold into the sex trade or the forced labor trade,
and those children need to be rescued. Now, some of
(18:15):
them have found their way to family that is already here,
but I fear there are probably a couple of hundred
thousand that are being forced into lives that are horrendous
and that they don't want to be in, and those
are their three primary objectives. And I hear they're just
(18:36):
outright misinformation about what they're doing. And if you've seen
interviews I've done with Tom Homan, I ask him straight up,
are you raiding schools and taking children out of school
so they can be deported? Are you sitting on doctors'
offices and hospitals to catch these people when they go
(18:57):
to get healthcare? Or are you going after the worst first?
And I asked the hard questions and they give me
straight up answers and the support for those answers. I'm
very pro immigration. Look, our birth rate has dropped below
what we need infrastructure wise. I mean to sustain our
(19:20):
infrastructure here, we need a birth rate of two point
one and we've dropped to a little below one point six.
We better get immigrants into this country. We need the talent,
we need, the diversity, we need the headcount and the
birth rate. We desperately need immigrants in this country. But
(19:41):
there's the right way and the wrong way to do it.
I look at America as my home, and I wouldn't
let anybody into my house if I didn't know who
they were, would you. I don't think anybody would. But
we've done that. We've let millions of people into this
country without knowing who they are, and clearly some of
those are on a terror watch list and they're here now.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I think everything you said, dark phillis I think
the vast majority of people would find particularly rational. But
you have to acknowledge. And I don't say this lightly.
I say this with intimate familiarity. I mean, we've had
quote unquote wellness checks in the public schools. We've had
some folks that are going to immigration courts that are
(20:26):
being picked up in and around immigration courts. There's been
a chilling impact across the country, not just in states
like California, but a lot of day laborers picked up
in California way a federal judge intervene under a lawsuit
and actually admonished some of the border patrol for their
activities and respect to that or or ice. But I
(20:48):
do I do appreciate there's intensity of anxiety and a
lot of rhetoric that is thrown around that is not nuanced.
And I don't know that the president himself is aiding
and embedding and finding some common ground here uses some
pretty extreme language, which I think kind of chills the
(21:09):
conversation and chills I think our capacity to sort of
find some common ground on legitimate concerns around border security
and thoughtful and comprehensive strategies to get the best in
the brightest from around the world.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well, I think there's the right way and the wrong
way to get into the country. And I don't think
these people are being picked up that are here legally,
And if they are here legally, then they don't have
anything to worry about. If they came in illegally, not
at a point of entry, then they are subject to
being removed. That in and of itself is a crime,
(21:45):
is it not?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
No, And I'm not denying that, But are you asked?
I mean, and again, I'm now looking to get a
debate about immigration policy. I'm just seeing some nuance in
terms of the language, and I think some of the
rhetoric and the reality on the ground. As someone that
is on the ground addressing some of that reality, it's
not just the worst first. It may be that may
(22:08):
be the policy, but that's not necessarily the practice as
it relates to those that are here without documentation. I mean,
you know, you've got folks from nuke Ingridge that was
supporting amnesty in nineteen eighty five, Reagan himself that did
the amnesty bill shortly thereafter, and U And obviously we've
got to address those that have been here for decades.
I don't imagine we want to get all of them
(22:30):
because they're quot on here illegally and send them and
support them all back. I'm not imagine you're arguing for that.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Well, but here's the thing if if, and let me
argue another side of this, We've got an immigration court
that is horribly dysfunctional. Yeap takes seven eight years. Yeah,
ridiculous court date, and that is a broken system. We
need to fix.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
That one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
When you've got somebody that maybe they have a legitimate reason,
a compelling reason to get out of their home country
for safety reasons, for fear of violence from gangs or whatever,
and so they make applications in the United States and
we say, great, you know, here's a here's a court
(23:20):
date in twenty thirty two. Well, I'm sorry, I got
people coming by my house threatening to cut off my
arms and legs on a daily basis. Twenty thirty two
doesn't really work for me. We've got to fix that.
I want one hundred percent acknowledge that. The other hand,
(23:42):
if we've got people that are here illegally, they're either
here legally or they're not here legally, and so we
have to take some ownership in the fact that we've
got a broken system for getting process into this country.
Doesn't change the fact that we have people that are
here illegally, and most of them are not fleeing they're
(24:05):
here fleeing violence. They're here for economic reasons, and this
is the greatest country in the world. Of course, if
I was in El Salvador or somewhere and had a
dirt floor and pennies a day for wages, would I
want to be in America? Of course I would want
to be in America. We've got to do some things
(24:26):
on our end to make this more functional. But I
agree with that, and I hate these sanctuary guidelines where
they will not cooperate with ICE agents to get someone
that is currently in custody, which means they've broken the
law and local law enforcement has had reason to pick
(24:49):
them up and detain them. If you tell ICE about that,
and they can come get them and take them out.
At that point, you're going to have a whole lot
less of the people you're talking about get arrested when
they go into the community. Then you have one ice
agent on one bad actor and they're gone. If they
(25:11):
have to go into the neighborhood, they're going to arrest
that person and they're going to check everybody that's around them.
And that's as.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You knew, doctor Phil. I mean in California, I can
only speak for myself as governor. We've cooperated in that
respect with folks that are in custody in state prisons.
Over ten thousand specific gamples of that kind of cooperation.
So not a lot of daylight on that. I guess
I'm just more concerned about the larger rhetoric that everyone's
here quote unquote illegally, which I get on the technical terms,
(25:42):
but the notion of what the heck we do about it.
I agree with you on comprehensive need for a comprehensive reforms.
I think the asylum system is broken. There's been all
kinds of bills rejected by both parties to address this issue.
There was a bipartisan immigration package that Rubio himself many
others support it to deal with immigration backlogs and judges
(26:04):
and address some of those concerns, but they seem to
get just watered down or eliminated because of the toxicity
of our politics. And that's my concern now is how
the hell do we soften that edge, which I think
you want so we can find unity and common ground
and unify the country, which you talk a lot about.
But how do we begin to do that in a
(26:24):
more rational way? I mean, I think rhetoric still matters,
does it not.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Words are powerful, Yeah, words are absolutely powerful. And you
know when I see things happening, and I see a
lot with the death threats and hate speech and rhetoric
that I get when I come out and condemn what
(26:51):
happened on October seventh in Israel.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, and by the way, just for the record, I
flew to Israel right after the seventh and met with leadership.
We actually brought a hospital, a field hospital with us,
So I appreciate that condemnation. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, and I know you made that trip, and I
was so glad to see you do that. I spent
twenty one years in California, and I was proud to
see you take the initiative to do that because you
didn't have to do that. And when I say words
are powerful, but thank you for doing that, I didn't
(27:35):
finish my sentence thank you for doing that. I think
the rhetoric has gotten way out of control. When you
shoot two people on the street in Washington, d C.
A museum. You know Milgram, the young woman, she grew
(27:59):
up in over in Park, Kansas. I mean, this is
not an activist that is really out driving the story here.
And the young man was an Israeli Christian, for God's sakes,
and they kill these two people and then start yelling
(28:23):
free Palestine, Free Palestine. Can I say that that those
shootings were due to out of control and fiery rhetoric.
I have no proof for that, and I don't make
claims that I don't have empirical evidence to support it.
(28:45):
But common sense suggests that this kind of rhetoric that
people that maybe were deranged to begin with, marginalized to
begin with, looking for a cause celebrate. Uh. The same
individual was active with b l M before this, so
(29:08):
you know it was that the cause at the time.
Now this is the bandwagon that he that he's jumping on.
It just makes it easy for people to get involved
in and we've got to tone down the rhetoric. And
when you see you know, Harvard and Upin and Columbia University,
(29:29):
the leadership there not only con condoning but in some
ways I think enabling and empowering this. I think we've
lost our way. I mean, these people, these young people,
I think are being agitated from the outside as well
(29:52):
as the inside. And this isn't free speech, Governor, this
is this has gone beyond that when they're I was
on the UCLA campus when they took down the encampment
there and I talked to those protesters there and was
their hate speech, yes, but it was still speech. But
(30:12):
I also saw them surrounding Jewish students and not allowing
them to move across campus. Some were assaulted, they occupied
in defense, and vandalized buildings.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And by the way, doctor Phil, just for the record,
out of so much frustration, we had to send the
California Highway Patrol in because they were not enforcing these
laws and they were not protecting those students. So we
were very critical and I appreciate your critique of what
was happening on the UCLA campus. You're absolutely spot on.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Well, we were with law enforcement as they were staging
to go in and take them down. And I will
say this about all of the law enforcement agencies that
were doing this. I was speaking with them moments. You know.
They were staging a couple of miles away from the campus,
and they had their buses there and all the troops there,
(31:08):
and we were speaking the leadership over there at two
thirty three o'clock in the morning. That was I always,
trust me.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I was up at two thirty three in the morning
when we finally pulled the orders.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, I was asking them, tell me what your plan
is and what your number one objective is. And there
was nobody there but us, and they allowed me to
be there because they know how pro law enforcement I am,
how much I support their sacrifices that they make to
keep the rest of us safe. And every single one
(31:43):
of them, and I talked to them individually, you know,
forty fifty yards away from each other, they all said
the same thing. Our number one objective is that everybody
gets home safe tonight. You see LA students, the protesters,
all all of our officers, even these protesters that were
(32:04):
hurling these insults at them and calling them every name
in the book. Their number one objective was that those
people get home safe. They weren't say, oh, well, we're
going to win in there and kick some ass. No, no, no,
They said, with great sincerity, we just want everybody to
get home safe tonight. You know, tomorrow's another day. Let's
get everybody home safe tonight. And I said, will that happen?
(32:25):
They said, well, that depends on them. If they follow
our directions, then they'll get home safe tonight. The second
worst thing is we'll detain them and cite them and
then they'll get home safe. But we want everybody to
get home safe tonight. And I had such great respect
(32:47):
for them that there's number one, even the protesters. They
absolutely wanted them to get home safe.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I know they did it. They did a really
admirable job that night. And while there was a few
modest in sentences, they conducted themselves extraordinarily well in terms
of how they reacted to those incidents. It only reinforced
their stewardship, and not just on the UCLA campus, on
many other campuses, not just in California, of course, all
(33:15):
across this country. One of the things that you know,
I think it's the conversation we're having here around how
you work through these things and how we work through
our differences and how we find commonality. You began with
you opened up by saying you don't think our politics
is you think, you know, mainstream media sort of you know,
(33:39):
it sort of exacerbates the conditions this divisions that we're
not as far apart as we may appear. Tell me
a little bit more about what you're thinking. Is in
that respect you mean that more broadly about sort of
universal values of being loved and need to be loved,
being protected, connected, respected, or do you mean that on
issues like immigrat issues like human rights and social justice
(34:04):
are on what topics?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Look Conflict sells tickets. You know, if you're doing the
news and your lead headline is today at third and L,
nothing happened, that just doesn't sell tickets, right. But if
you can say today at third and L, chaos broke out.
(34:30):
Throw to the throw to the video. Now, everybody turns
around and looks, and that's just kind of how we
have been shaped and fashioned into following the news. But
the truth of the matter is, I believe anytime I'm
(34:53):
negotiating with somebody, the first thing I do is say, look,
we've got differences. I agree with that. I think you
and I have some differences in the way we look
at things. But if we were going to try to
find some common ground, the first thing I would do
is say, you know, Governor, let's first talk about everything
(35:14):
we agree about. Let's talk about the things that we
agree about, because I think if we do that, we're
going to find that we're not near as divided or
different as we might think we are. And let's look
(35:38):
at it on a from a broad standpoint. If you
sit down with the most polarized folks and say, let's
talk about what we agree about. In America, everybody wants
a safe and healthy country. Nobody would just disagree with that.
(36:01):
Everybody wants to leave a good, green, clean, prosperous country
for our children. Nobody would disagree with that. Everybody wants
us to have a strong economy. Everybody would agree with that.
Everybody wants us to be a good leader in the
(36:24):
world and set a good example for other countries. Everybody
would agree with that. Now we might disagree about how
we go about achieving those things, but everybody would agree
with where we're trying to get and I think one
of the most critical days in this country's history was
(36:50):
nine to twelve, not nine to eleven. Nine to eleven
was one of the darkest days in our history, of course,
but on nine to twelve, everybody woke up and we
were Americans first. There weren't Democrats, there weren't Republicans. We
(37:11):
were all Americans. And I just pray that something like
that doesn't have to happen again for people to remember that, Hey,
wait a minute, we're all wearing the same color jersey.
We may have some differences on issues, but we're all Americans,
and we all love this country and we all want
(37:35):
fundamentally the same things. And if we remember that first,
then I think we have a foundation to work from,
a foundation to build on. And I pray we don't
need to be reminded of that by being under attack.
(37:57):
And I I think if we do remember that, if
we do take that approach and we go, hey, well,
we've really got something here to work on. You know, people,
I've I've followed you for a long time and there
(38:20):
are things that you know, people look at you and
you have kind of an affluent image, and all people
don't know that, and I learned one of the things
that you and I have in common is we both
come from pretty poor backgrounds. I've had to work real
(38:40):
early in our lives, and we shared some common difficult
experiences early in life of trying to make it and
and get by and find this job and then that job.
And when I learned those things about you several years ago,
(39:01):
all of a sudden, I said, you know, I understand
how he's gotten where he is because this guy understands
hard work and putting the time in to get where
he's going. And my whole opinion changed when I learned
some of those things. And there are things that I
disagree with you on. I disagreed with you on some
(39:26):
of the things you did concerning COVID and shutting things
down and how long and this, that and the other.
But I didn't have questions about your intention, your choices.
And I always knew that this was something I could
sit down and talk to you about because I knew
(39:50):
that you knew the value of hard work and what
families put in and how important it was. I felt
like people don't take time to find out who they're
talking to, what there and what their values
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Are and tune in for our continued conversation with doctor
Phil
Host
Gavin Newsom
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.