Name: Arnold Schwarzenegger on Being Governor of California, and What It's Like Now
Uploaded: 2025-06-10T22:13:38.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger on Being Governor of California, and What It's Like Now' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Arnold Schwarzenegger on Being Governor of California, and What It's Like Now' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-10. Transcript available.

um yeah do you know bobby pretty good bobby kennedy's a friend of mine yeah
yeah bobby i
mean is uh let me tell you something about bobby oh he's a great guy oh he's
one of my favorite
he's one of my favorite guys thank you thank you i know him from recovery we go
to recovery meetings
together but think about this for a second i'm running for governor in 2003 and
then all of a
sudden they get a phone call from bobby who i knew very well and bobby and joe
kennedy uh his
brother his older brother and they were always really kind of nice to me and
kind and inclusive
and stuff like that well you're the damn terminator they gotta be at least no
no but i mean you know
some people are kind of like who is this new guy coming into the family oh i
see especially their
family because it's a prestigious thing that's right yeah so but they were
really nice so bobby calls me
and he says arnold you're republican republicans are not known for the
environmental records he says
i'm an environmentalist he says yes you know i'm the head of the river keepers
and all that stuff is
and uh i have a guy that you should have a new team that can educate you really
about the environment
i said well thank you bobby that's really nice who is it terry taminen he says
let me send him over
to your office he sent over terry taminen we hit it off right away really well
and the next thing i know
is we're working together he's part of the team and then when it became
governor and i think that
contributed to me becoming governor because i saw this whole idea that i want
to be environmentally
friendly i want to reduce greenhouse gases i want to get the envo that
renewable energy up in california
and all of this stuff so the next thing i said i become governor he becomes now
terry taminen becomes
the head of the epa and all of this but this all happened in my knowledge about
the environment all
this happened because of bobby kennedy so that's the kind of a guy he is i mean
he's like didn't say
oh you're republican i'm going to campaign against you no he was 100 on board
he wanted to wish me good
luck and he did wish me good luck and he wanted me to win uh not because i'm a
republican he just felt like
oh i like i want the good guy to win no matter what side he's on exactly so
that's the kind of a guy
bobby is you know so i'm i think the world of him yeah he's cool we had him on
the podcast when
everybody was thinking he was kind of crazy during the pandemic and stuff and
he was concerned about
just people's health and well-being with vaccines and stuff we had him on and
um but yeah i've always
known him to be just a neat guy you know he's my friend um yeah i'm excited for
him i'm curious
to see what it's like once you get into office how can you still keep your
beliefs or not or do things
get heavily compromised do you feel like yeah it is compromised you have to you
have to come because
because the whole world doesn't think exactly like you remember what eisenhower
said eisenhower said
that politics is like the road the left the right is the gutter and the center
is drivable and that's
exactly the way it is in politics you have to understand that there's a sweet
spot you know
like the teacher in golf hit the sweet spot doing tennis to hit the sweet spot
notice there's a sweet
spot to find exactly so you can get a deal made and then you can move things
forward it's not exactly
your way i mean i remember with the infrastructure i wanted to build 100
billion dollars worth of
infrastructure but they only agreed and end around 60 billion dollars so i didn't
get my way
uh with the financial situation i wanted to wipe out you know the the deficit
and i was not able to do
that uh with all these democrats around it they love to spend money so so i was
i was stuck with it so
but the fact of them is we could improve the situation and i was able to work
together with
the democrats on environmental issues and infrastructure issues and so many
other health care issues so many
other issues education and all of this stuff and we really really find that at
a great time up there
being governor of the state of california but it's about compromise i mean you've
said before that you
can't do everything you can't do it all by yourself no it's not a dictatorship
you know so you have two
parties you've ever in within your own party they think differently uh so that's
you have to face reality
the trick is just to be to not hate the other side because they think
differently uh it's just kind
of like figuring out how can we work together and how can we do something that's
really good for the
people that's the bottom line they just had do you think we'll ever have a
republican governor again in
california well you know if someone has a good program and if uh someone is
organic um i mean with me it
was possible because i had a great mentor number one which was uh pete wilson
who was a governor of
california two terms and he helped pete wilson yeah pete wilson yeah and he
helped me uh you know with
the race a lot and then i also was organic because you know people saw that i
did not come out of
nowhere where i always said and went from acting to politics i mean i had i was
working with special
olympics for decades going around to the world to help special olympics and to
get recognition for them
and to be able to do get jobs and to have you know be able to live everywhere
anywhere they want and to
get into sports special olympics sports programs nor is power lifting and
orders so i was always fighting
for equality including in south africa with nelson mandela we were there
together fighting for special
olympics so the people in california saw all of that right and also me studying
the after school
programs and having an initiative that i went to the people a year before in
2002 and the people voted
57 in favor of that initiative after school programs so i was already in there
and i was
working with president bush being the chairman of the president's council on
physical fitness and
sports so i was already giving back and giving back and giving back so when i
said now i'm not
interested anymore in just doing another movie i'm more interested in getting
the state of california
back on its feet because we had blackouts with huge deficits you know the illegals
were getting
driver's license there was all kinds of crazy stuff that was going on here and
i said myself you know the indian game
they didn't pay taxes and they did all the gaming and made billions of dollars
and their workers
compensation costs were high and people were moving out with their businesses
in california
i said i will bring california back no matter how many people were campaigning
for gray davis who
was governor then you know clinton came out and campaigned for him gore came
out and john
carrey came out al sharpen all of those guys came out to campaign for him i
said the bush i said no
no no don't come out i don't need that it's between me and the voters yeah and
so i convinced
the california people and that's how i became governor that's why i got a huge
majority of votes
and they were but it was organic so many of the guys come from from real estate
and they say well
i want to be governor i have the money now and i want it people don't buy in on
that stuff right
you can't just buy it yeah you can just buy it you had bloomberg tried to do it
a few years ago it
didn't work yeah you have to be real you know and you have to be able to have a
vision remember again
it goes back to the book you know uh be useful you have rule number one is you
have to have a clear
vision you can't just say i want to be governor what is your vision if someone
sits down and says
what is your vision of your california right you know remember that teddy kennedy
the problem he had
when they asked him roger mudd asked him when he announced to run for president
and roger
mudd asked him he says why do you want to be president teddy couldn't answer it
you know
what i'm saying so he was like well my mother rose uh she uh always taught us
to give something back
you know so it didn't work people didn't buy and even though he was a great
public servant he did a
great job you know senator but he couldn't sell it so you have to come out of
the gate and really be
very forceful and know and let the people know i know what i want to do and i'm
gonna fight for you
let's fight for me i'm not i don't want to be a political hack i don't want to
be just another
republican that wins the thing no i want to fight for you so that was the whole
theme of the campaign
they have like they just had where um they found like 20 something billion
dollars that was like
it was supposed to be earmarked for homeless help in amer in california that
went missing right
how does money go missing once you're in these places do you think is it just
like
people yeah what does it say newsom confronted at press conference about 24
billion spent on
tackling homelessness like how does how does stuff like that and it didn't have
to be this specifically
but once you're in office and you see these huge amounts of money how does how
does stuff like that
just go by the wayside where it gets you know lost or missing hypothetically do
you think
well first of all let me just say none of those politicians i would want to run
my company yeah
none of those companies none of those politicians i would like to hand over my
checkbook my bank
account and say you manage it now yeah right so that's where it starts so then
none of that
they're not uh that smart when it comes to solving problems and so i can
totally understand how 24
billion dollars is missing because it's wasted they cannot even show it they
cannot even have any
accountability yeah but this has been going on for 20 years now i know it's
been talking about just for
the last few years this has been going on and on everyone has been complaining
about the homeless but
they don't create they don't really tell you that this was created by the
politicians the homelessness did
reagan create it though no no it was it was created by having people go and say
we don't want no growth
in california so when you have 90 when i came over it was 19 20 million people
in california
well if you had six lane highways so now when you go to 40 million people you
would know mathematically
now you need 12 lane highways meaning six lanes and then on top of you to build
another freeway right
so that you don't have to traffic congestion but that's not what they did right
then when you have to
you know when you go from 20 to 40 million people then you need twice as many
houses yeah you need
twice as many apartment buildings you need twice as much of everything schools
and everything they
didn't they didn't they give them because the environmentalists thought that if
we say no
growth then no one will come but in the meantime no one gives a about that they
come anyway
and then they somehow then live three people in one apartment or five people in
one apartment
or sometimes you know uh uh workers that sometimes live 10 people oh yeah they'll
really be laying on
each other's back then what happens now is when you have a limited amount of
housing now the prices rise
so now when the prices go up the value of the apartment building goes up so the
unit that used to
cost six hundred dollars now costs three thousand dollars a month but the
salaries the wages didn't go up
accordingly so now you have people that are economically homeless they cannot
afford paying for their rent anymore so this is created by the
politicians and now remember what einstein said the people that created the
problem cannot solve it
so they are doing the same thing over which is another thing einstein said if
you try to do the
same thing over and over again and expect different results that's the
definition of insanity and it feels
like that's where we're living so this is what we're dealing with here so we
have you know the city
here is not able to manage which is that this whole thing that on a state level
we are not able to
manage this whole thing so it's like i had to go i mean we had the homeless
veterans
camping out in front of the veterans administration up there in westwood oh
yeah right over there 405 in
in santa monica in front right in front of them for in wilshire years they're
camping out there and no one
is helping them so i went and i started making a deal and i said can we not put
inside some houses
little houses and they said yes and we started i donated the money and we
started building houses and
since then there's now hundreds of houses inside the veterans administration
and the homeless are gone
because they they wanted to help their veterans administration but it took a
while and the city
kept saying oh it is too difficult to do and this is really challenging to do i
said watch that
within two months we had those houses there and we created homes for 25 people
so they could move in
just to show that the city it can be done amen don't give me this it can't be
done anything can be done
it can't be done anything can be done anything can be done anything can be done
anything can be done anything can be done anything can be done anything can be
done anything can be done anything can be done if there's a will to it with the
whole thing

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Being Governor of California, and What It's Like Now

um yeah do you know bobby pretty good bobby kennedy's a friend of mine yeah
yeah bobby i
mean is uh let me tell you something about bobby oh he's a great guy oh he's
one of my favorite
he's one of my favorite guys thank you thank you i know him from recovery we go
to recovery meetings
together but think about this for a second i'm running for governor in 2003 and
then all of a
sudden they get a phone call from bobby who i knew very well and bobby and joe
kennedy uh his
brother his older brother and they were always really kind of nice to me and
kind and inclusive
and stuff like that well you're the damn terminator they gotta be at least no
no but i mean you know
some people are kind of like who is this new guy coming into the family oh i
see especially their
family because it's a prestigious thing that's right yeah so but they were
really nice so bobby calls me
and he says arnold you're republican republicans are not known for the
environmental records he says
i'm an environmentalist he says yes you know i'm the head of the river keepers
and all that stuff is
and uh i have a guy that you should have a new team that can educate you really
about the environment
i said well thank you bobby that's really nice who is it terry taminen he says
let me send him over
to your office he sent over terry taminen we hit it off right away really well
and the next thing i know
is we're working together he's part of the team and then when it became
governor and i think that
contributed to me becoming governor because i saw this whole idea that i want
to be environmentally
friendly i want to reduce greenhouse gases i want to get the envo that
renewable energy up in california
and all of this stuff so the next thing i said i become governor he becomes now
terry taminen becomes
the head of the epa and all of this but this all happened in my knowledge about
the environment all
this happened because of bobby kennedy so that's the kind of a guy he is i mean
he's like didn't say
oh you're republican i'm going to campaign against you no he was 100 on board
he wanted to wish me good
luck and he did wish me good luck and he wanted me to win uh not because i'm a
republican he just felt like
oh i like i want the good guy to win no matter what side he's on exactly so
that's the kind of a guy
bobby is you know so i'm i think the world of him yeah he's cool we had him on
the podcast when
everybody was thinking he was kind of crazy during the pandemic and stuff and
he was concerned about
just people's health and well-being with vaccines and stuff we had him on and
um but yeah i've always
known him to be just a neat guy you know he's my friend um yeah i'm excited for
him i'm curious
to see what it's like once you get into office how can you still keep your
beliefs or not or do things
get heavily compromised do you feel like yeah it is compromised you have to you
have to come because
because the whole world doesn't think exactly like you remember what eisenhower
said eisenhower said
that politics is like the road the left the right is the gutter and the center
is drivable and that's
exactly the way it is in politics you have to understand that there's a sweet
spot you know
like the teacher in golf hit the sweet spot doing tennis to hit the sweet spot
notice there's a sweet
spot to find exactly so you can get a deal made and then you can move things
forward it's not exactly
your way i mean i remember with the infrastructure i wanted to build 100
billion dollars worth of
infrastructure but they only agreed and end around 60 billion dollars so i didn't
get my way
uh with the financial situation i wanted to wipe out you know the the deficit
and i was not able to do
that uh with all these democrats around it they love to spend money so so i was
i was stuck with it so
but the fact of them is we could improve the situation and i was able to work
together with
the democrats on environmental issues and infrastructure issues and so many
other health care issues so many
other issues education and all of this stuff and we really really find that at
a great time up there
being governor of the state of california but it's about compromise i mean you've
said before that you
can't do everything you can't do it all by yourself no it's not a dictatorship
you know so you have two
parties you've ever in within your own party they think differently uh so that's
you have to face reality
the trick is just to be to not hate the other side because they think
differently uh it's just kind
of like figuring out how can we work together and how can we do something that's
really good for the
people that's the bottom line they just had do you think we'll ever have a
republican governor again in
california well you know if someone has a good program and if uh someone is
organic um i mean with me it
was possible because i had a great mentor number one which was uh pete wilson
who was a governor of
california two terms and he helped pete wilson yeah pete wilson yeah and he
helped me uh you know with
the race a lot and then i also was organic because you know people saw that i
did not come out of
nowhere where i always said and went from acting to politics i mean i had i was
working with special
olympics for decades going around to the world to help special olympics and to
get recognition for them
and to be able to do get jobs and to have you know be able to live everywhere
anywhere they want and to
get into sports special olympics sports programs nor is power lifting and
orders so i was always fighting
for equality including in south africa with nelson mandela we were there
together fighting for special
olympics so the people in california saw all of that right and also me studying
the after school
programs and having an initiative that i went to the people a year before in
2002 and the people voted
57 in favor of that initiative after school programs so i was already in there
and i was
working with president bush being the chairman of the president's council on
physical fitness and
sports so i was already giving back and giving back and giving back so when i
said now i'm not
interested anymore in just doing another movie i'm more interested in getting
the state of california
back on its feet because we had blackouts with huge deficits you know the illegals
were getting
driver's license there was all kinds of crazy stuff that was going on here and
i said myself you know the indian game
they didn't pay taxes and they did all the gaming and made billions of dollars
and their workers
compensation costs were high and people were moving out with their businesses
in california
i said i will bring california back no matter how many people were campaigning
for gray davis who
was governor then you know clinton came out and campaigned for him gore came
out and john
carrey came out al sharpen all of those guys came out to campaign for him i
said the bush i said no
no no don't come out i don't need that it's between me and the voters yeah and
so i convinced
the california people and that's how i became governor that's why i got a huge
majority of votes
and they were but it was organic so many of the guys come from from real estate
and they say well
i want to be governor i have the money now and i want it people don't buy in on
that stuff right
you can't just buy it yeah you can just buy it you had bloomberg tried to do it
a few years ago it
didn't work yeah you have to be real you know and you have to be able to have a
vision remember again
it goes back to the book you know uh be useful you have rule number one is you
have to have a clear
vision you can't just say i want to be governor what is your vision if someone
sits down and says
what is your vision of your california right you know remember that teddy kennedy
the problem he had
when they asked him roger mudd asked him when he announced to run for president
and roger
mudd asked him he says why do you want to be president teddy couldn't answer it
you know
what i'm saying so he was like well my mother rose uh she uh always taught us
to give something back
you know so it didn't work people didn't buy and even though he was a great
public servant he did a
great job you know senator but he couldn't sell it so you have to come out of
the gate and really be
very forceful and know and let the people know i know what i want to do and i'm
gonna fight for you
let's fight for me i'm not i don't want to be a political hack i don't want to
be just another
republican that wins the thing no i want to fight for you so that was the whole
theme of the campaign
they have like they just had where um they found like 20 something billion
dollars that was like
it was supposed to be earmarked for homeless help in amer in california that
went missing right
how does money go missing once you're in these places do you think is it just
like
people yeah what does it say newsom confronted at press conference about 24
billion spent on
tackling homelessness like how does how does stuff like that and it didn't have
to be this specifically
but once you're in office and you see these huge amounts of money how does how
does stuff like that
just go by the wayside where it gets you know lost or missing hypothetically do
you think
well first of all let me just say none of those politicians i would want to run
my company yeah
none of those companies none of those politicians i would like to hand over my
checkbook my bank
account and say you manage it now yeah right so that's where it starts so then
none of that
they're not uh that smart when it comes to solving problems and so i can
totally understand how 24
billion dollars is missing because it's wasted they cannot even show it they
cannot even have any
accountability yeah but this has been going on for 20 years now i know it's
been talking about just for
the last few years this has been going on and on everyone has been complaining
about the homeless but
they don't create they don't really tell you that this was created by the
politicians the homelessness did
reagan create it though no no it was it was created by having people go and say
we don't want no growth
in california so when you have 90 when i came over it was 19 20 million people
in california
well if you had six lane highways so now when you go to 40 million people you
would know mathematically
now you need 12 lane highways meaning six lanes and then on top of you to build
another freeway right
so that you don't have to traffic congestion but that's not what they did right
then when you have to
you know when you go from 20 to 40 million people then you need twice as many
houses yeah you need
twice as many apartment buildings you need twice as much of everything schools
and everything they
didn't they didn't they give them because the environmentalists thought that if
we say no
growth then no one will come but in the meantime no one gives a about that they
come anyway
and then they somehow then live three people in one apartment or five people in
one apartment
or sometimes you know uh uh workers that sometimes live 10 people oh yeah they'll
really be laying on
each other's back then what happens now is when you have a limited amount of
housing now the prices rise
so now when the prices go up the value of the apartment building goes up so the
unit that used to
cost six hundred dollars now costs three thousand dollars a month but the
salaries the wages didn't go up
accordingly so now you have people that are economically homeless they cannot
afford paying for their rent anymore so this is created by the
politicians and now remember what einstein said the people that created the
problem cannot solve it
so they are doing the same thing over which is another thing einstein said if
you try to do the
same thing over and over again and expect different results that's the
definition of insanity and it feels
like that's where we're living so this is what we're dealing with here so we
have you know the city
here is not able to manage w