Gavin Newsom reveals intimate phone calls with billionaires

Gavin Newsom said California’s ultra-wealthy have been on the phone to him opposing the proposed ‘billionaire’s tax’.

Gov. Newsom made the revelations at a Bloomberg forum event in San Francisco saying the state’s richest are pleading him with to stop the one-off 5% tax on those with more than $1 billion in assets.

Up to 250 billionaires would potentially be hit with the tax.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have reportedly transferred their wealth from the state,
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, tech investors David Sacks and Peter Thiel have also relocated their businesses to Miami and Austin.

The powerful union Teamsters California and its 250,000 members have formally backed the voter initiative.

The Teamsters said the tax proposal would hold billionaires accountable for “destroying our jobs and robbing families of our healthcare,” adding that Teamsters California is leading what it called a fight against Big Tech’s agenda to replace family-supporting jobs with robots.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says billionaires have begged him to kill the billionaire tax: “They feel they’re being attacked’,” he said.

It wasn’t a new argument for the governor, who has deep ties to the state’s ultra-wealthy tech barons and has emerged as a fierce opponent of the tax.

Newsom made headlines last year for sending burner phones to top CEOs in California pre-programmed with his digits, describing it as a way to stay in touch with the business community and help the economy.

But Newsom on Thursday described personal, almost intimate conversations with the state’s billionaires, whose concerns about the tax he said he has been fielding for months.

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“People that have no problem paying more income tax, people that literally are giving away all of their money, but want to do it on the timeline that their family has approved,” Newsom said.

The governor did not name the individuals.

“I’ve met with all of them, and they’re all in different stages of their lives, their careers and their abundance. Some will never give a penny away,” Newsom continued.

“Some I respect, some I don’t, some I never have,” he said. “But I met with them as well.”