[applause] poll, he is in second place ahead of the primary. [applause] good morning. [applause] mr. Steyer hey guys, good morning. Good morning. Mr. Steyer wow friday morning. Whoo. So i want to thank all these guys. I want to thank katherine and councilman calvin and derek for those very nice introductions. And what i really want to do this morning is take as many questions from you as i possibly can. Ill do a short introduction, but what i really want to do is talk to you whatever you want to talk about. Let me say that i was asked on the debate stage on tuesday night what i think people misunderstand about me. And i said that people think that im defined by my money. I am not. You know, i am from a family my mom was a teacher in the new york public schools. She when she retired from being , a teacher in the new york public schools, she went and taught prisoners at the brooklyn house of detention. She was someone who the is what defines her with service to other people and trying to give young kids a chance to get ahead in the world. My dad was somebody who was the first generation in his family to go to college. Lets my grandfather was a plumber. They were people who thought that education was the chance to get ahead. And so my father graduated from college at the age of 18, graduated from law school at the age of 21. He was a young man in a hurry. He went into the navy in world war ii. And at the end of the navy as a at the end of the war as a naval officer, he prosecuted the nazis, the nazi war criminals at nuremberg war trials. My parents were people that thought that the point of life was service. Actually doing things for other people was the way that you justified your life. And so when we were being brought up, the other thing that was true about my parents, they had a strict sense right and wrong. Trust me. It wasnt easy being the son of parents who had a strict sense of right and wrong. But my fathers point about being a nazi prosecutor, you have to stand up against what is wrong. What he saw at the end of world war ii was a country that hadnt stood up against the nazis. And had let them take over the whole society. Started the need to impeach and honestly that is why i started the need to impeach movement. When you see something really wrong in your society, it is going to flourish if good people dont do anything about it. [applause] mr. Steyer let me say south , carolina was way overrepresented in the 8. 5 Million People who signed the need to impeach movements. People from South Carolina stood up in need to impeach way beyond the numbers of the people in this state. Just so you know. But if you look at whats happening, people ask me, are you sad that mr. Trump got exonerated. And i say mr. Trump has never been exonerated and never will be exonerated. [applause] thats what you call a republican coverup of the facts. I mean we had a trial where they , didnt allow witnesses. Theyre the jury. We had a trial where the jury said before the trial is the evidence is brought in, he is not guilty. The senator from this state, lindsey graham, was right out in front saying those things. I dont view that as an exoneration. I view that as them breaking their oath to the constitution and the American People. [applause] mr. Steyer look, i started a business. I started a business. My parents had a deal with us. Well get you through school and thats it. Nothing after that. Youre on your own when you graduate. I never got a penny from my parents. And i started a business, i built a business, i walked away from the business. I took the giving pledge to give the bulk that i made to good causes while im alive and spent 10 years putting coalitions of people to fight what i think of as the unchecked Corporate Power in our country. Let me say this. We have never lost. We can win every time. You know, i started taking on a fight against two Oil Companies in my home state who are trying to repeal our very Progressive Energy laws. And they thought that they could get their way because no one would fight them. And honestly, nobody wanted to fight them because they thought the Oil Companies are so rich theyll do whatever it takes, well lose. And if you leave the fight against them, you will lose, you will be embarrassed and spend a lot of time and money doing it. I did that. We got 70 of the vote. By the time it was over the , president of one of the Oil Companies was complaining about what a mean person i am. My feeling is, you know what . I want all the Oil Companies and all the Drug Companies and all the Insurance Companies and all of the private hospitals to be saying what a mean person i am. That is exactly what i want to hear from them because that means i stood up to them successfully. I want them to complain, whine and pout. So we have never lost. I took on Tobacco Companies in my home state. They had won 17 times in a row over 20 years. I got them to give up 3 billion to 4 billion a year in tax money and gave it to medicare to to medical to the lowest income californians. They didnt think they were going to have to do that but now they are doing it every single year. [applause] mr. Steyer i think we have a broken government in washington, dc, its broken. Our problems have to do with a government thats been bought by corporations. And i spent 10 years as an outsider taking on those corporations, and i have never lost. Thats why i want to go to washington, dc, and i dont have any conflict. You know, i am not as an outsider, im not tied to the washington establishment. You know, im the only person in this race who is for term limits for congresspeople and senators because i am the only person who thinks more about what is good for the American People than has allegiance to the system as it is. Look if we are going to change , things, we need new and different people in charge. People, the to sixword argument for term limits is Mitch Mcconnell, ted cruz and lindsey graham. We need a new group of people running the United States of america. I am fighting for stuff in this election that i have been fighting for for decades. Im fighting the things im promising to do, i have been doing for over a decade. If it really comes down to beating corporations, you have to ask who you can trust, someone who has done it successfully for over a decade . From the outside, or someone from the system . Is the system going to reform itself . Do those systems ever reform themselves . No. Mr. Steyer no, i know. Thats the question. Look, i have three simple things i am fighting for. Im fighting for economic justice. All right. Mr. Steyer im fighting for Environmental Justice and im fighting for racial justice. All right. [applause] mr. Steyer thats what, all across this country look trump said he is good on the , economy. He stinks on the economy. No one ever faces him down on the economy. Every time i go on fox news, we go through something, and then the anchor the fox anchor says , to me, but he is good on the economy. I say no, he is terrible on the economy, and then they have a conniption fit because no one has ever said that to them. There is a meme in the United States. He is good on the economy. He is incompetent. He stinks at his job. [applause] his economy move is he has done two big things and he is about to do a third. Big tax cut big tax cuts for , rich people and corporations that is going go to grow the economy and trickle down. Not true. Not true. Mr. Steyer and by the way, we are not going to have a deficit. Not true. No trickle down. Trade war, we are going to force these people, im so smart and im so tough. False. Terrible idea. Even the administration is now admitting it is a total flop. And third thing, he has done those two. Here is his not respond to the third. Coronavirus. That is a big deal, you guys. Do you remember katrina . George w. Bush. We have an actual crisis and the president totally flops. We are in the middle of an actual crisis, and we are watching the president of the United States show us in realtime that he has no idea what hes doing. He is two months late. The coronavirus was announced publicly to the world, to all of us, in december of 2019. He decided two months later this was a problem. That is the problem. He was two months late. He put in charge mike pence. Mike pence was in charge of the aids epidemic when he was governor of indiana and his response we need to pray. ,that is not the answer to a medical scientific problem. So we are watching in realtime a president of the United States show us that he is deeply incompetent. And we are going to see the results medically and we are going to see the results economically. And we have to make sure he is going to explain a million different ways that its not his fault, i promise, because thats what he does. And the press is going to repeat what he says. And we have to make it clear. Actually, it is your fault, sir. You blew it. You got rid of the center or disease control, you are two months late and thats how you get in front of problems, anticipate them, not if you are competent. Im talking about doubling the minimum wage at least. I have been fighting for 15 for years, but i think it should be 22. A tax cut of 10 who make less than 250,000. Easy to pay for. Easy to pay for. We charge rich people and corporations a fair rate and 4. 5 Million Union goodpaying jobs. We have to rebuild the United States. It is not an option not to. We have a Climate Crisis. We have to do it. We have to do it fast. Millions and millions of good paying union jobs. Think about an economy with double the minimum wage, people paying 10 less taxes where we have millions and millions of good paying union jobs everywhere in the United States. That is a growing economy where working people are making more and keeping it in their pants pocket. That is actually what we are supposed to have in the United States of america. [applause] mr. Steyer and so Environmental Justice. I am the only person state of person who says state of emergency on day one. Using the powers of the presidency and a state of emergency it is an emergency. This is exactly like coronavirus. Deal with the facts. It is an emergency. We have to get ahead of it. Day one state of emergency, do it through Environmental Justice. Start in the communities like denmark, South Carolina, where you cant drink the water without getting sick. Places where you cant breathe or drink the water without getting sick. Start in those communities because thats where the energy is. Thats where the leadership is. Look, i have fought this stuff for over a decade. We have never lost. Why is it that i have passed 50 clean energy ask by 2030 in this country and nobody else has . The answer is we start with Environmental Justice. We start with black and brown communities who are in the fight and provide the leadership. Thats how you get things done in climate. [applause] its a completely different attitude. Its not a topdown attitude. It is a grassroots bottomup attitude. We will do it, we will create the jobs because if you are going to rebuild the country, people got to get paid to do it. Thats called work, jobs. You cant rebuild the United States without hiring people, and you cant hire people in beijing to rebuild the roads and bridges in South Carolina. The huge union job program. And the third thing is racial justice. It is impossible i have been traveling around this country fulltime for eight years as a political organizer. I started up one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the United States, nextgen. It is all about registering and engaging and turning out voters. And we are focused on young people and sporadic democratic voters and overwhelmingly people of color. It is one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the United States. I have been traveling around. It is impossible to look at the major policy areas in the United States, any of them, education, housing, health care, criminal justice, every single one has a gigantic, unspoken racial component to it. And unless im telling you, climate. People think climate is a science issue, and it is. Parts per million, rising water levels, melting ice in antarctica, threatening charleston. It is a science issue. If you want to solve it, its a human issue with a gigantic racial subtext to it. You want to solve climate, i just said, you have got to start with Environmental Justice if you want to solve climate. Thats true in every single issue in the United States. If you want to solve them, you have to get down to the Grassroots Level and understand there is an unspoken racial component to it, that people are too scared, or awkward or too selfish to want to talk about it. I want to talk about it because thats the way you solve problems, and that is why i for am reparations for slavery, because i think if we are going to move forward and be the just society we want to be, we have to tell the truth. For 400plus years of whats happened to the Africanamerican Community in this country, and that is a story. It is a story about systematic legal discrimination, cruelty and injustice and is a 400plusyear story of enormous contribution both in terms of building the country and providing the moral leadership not just for the Africanamerican Community, but for everybody in the United States of america. And that story has to be told. [applause] and the reason that we have to tell the story is so we understand how we got here so we understand together how we got here. And so we understand together how to repair the damage that has been done so we can move forward together. And what derek was talking about in terms of historically black colleges and universities, im proposing to give the hcbus 125 billion over five years. 10 years. That is, just so you know, that is 40 times what they get right now from the federal government. 40 times. It is not up 40 , its not four times, its 40 times. And why would i do that . Because thats whats right. These this is a system that has worked, was put in place for reasons that black kids werent allowed to go to the mainline colleges and universities. Last night i was talking to an allafricanamerican audience and one of them said, do you think we dont know hcbus have turned out over half of the black generals, doctors, engineers, judges and teachers . I can tell you the white people back in california dont know. They really worked. Its a huge part of this society. They are starved for cash. Theyve done the job, theres a reason to exist, i think we need to take them to the next level in terms of support. And last thing i want to say is this. We need to beat trump. We need to beat trump. We need to beat lindsey graham. We need to get rid of Mitch Mcconnell. We need to pull the Democratic Party together, and people think the press wants you to believe we are either going to have a socialist or republican mayor representing the Democratic Party. South carolina gets to reset this. South carolina gets to decide that maybe what we want is a democrat at the head of the ticket for the Democratic Party, strange as that may seem. So i believe i can do that. I believe South Carolina can show that i can pull a Diverse Party together. Im asking you to help me do that on saturday. And i believe if we do that and we do grassroots that we will not beat the republicans, but we will sweep away the republicans which is exactly what we need to do. So i know its friday morning. I said i was taking questions. Ask a question put your hand up , and we will bring you over a microphone and i will answer your question. We have mr. Steyer please send your name. [indiscernible] we have right now i president in the white house who causes a lot of hatred in america. We have a lot of groups who would like Nothing Better than to see a nazirun country here. What can be done by the next president to bring together all of america . We need to bring the democrats together to get a president in there but what can we do to bring america together . Mr. Steyer so chuck, everybody is asking that question. I think everybody is disturbed at the partisanship. Let me put it this way. The democrats are disturbed about the partisanship in this country. You know, i never heard anyone ask Mitch Mcconnell what are you going to do to get along with democrats . I have been asked a dozen times, what are you going to do to get along with Mitch Mcconnell. It is true. Let me think two things. One, we are going to treat White Nationalism as domestic terrorism. [applause] it is domestic terrorism. And the f. B. I. Came out with a report this week that said White Nationalism is more dangerous to americans than isis. That isnt the way its reported in the press, i assure you. But White Nationalism is more dangerous to americans than isis. What are we going to pull together . Look, i think every single thing i stand for is good for republican voter