PBD Podcast - Steve Hilton: How California Became America’s BIGGEST Political Failure | PBD #803

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Patrick Bet-David sits down with Steve Hilton to discuss California’s economic decline, Gavin Newsom’s leadership failures, the state’s $425 billion in alleged fraud and waste, businesses fleeing California, high taxes, the housing crisis, teachers unions, energy policy, the high-speed rail disaster, and whether Republicans can win back the state.------🗳️ SUPPORT STEVE HILTON FOR GOVERNOR: https://bit.ly/4tO8ECG💬 TEXT US: Text “VAULT” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates on speakers at The Vault Conference 2026!🦁 THE VAULT 2026: AUG 31ST TO SEPT 1ST: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mZdLhD⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4kSVkso ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ⓜ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4lzQph2 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🇰 KALSHI: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://kalshi.com/pbd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to take sweet with the truth. I know this life's meant for me. Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever size, right? You are one of one? My son's right.

I don't think I've ever said this before. She is, she is. And a couple other people are as well. Okay, so today we have a special guest who is trying to do the impossible. I would say you're trying to do the impossible. The reason why I say that is because California politics is so controlled by so many different people, but to take somebody with courage who was willing to go and drive some conservative, common sense ideas to people in California who've been devastated the last four to eight years,

who love their state, who don't want to leave, who want to see this place, become the state. Everybody would flock to, instead of not looking at the numbers back to back to back the last six years, number one state in America for negative net migration. They had so many different issues, most expensive homes, average homes. in California right now is about $906,000, number one in homelessness, 13% in population, but 28% in population of homelessness. You can go highest prices of gas, so many different things. And then comes a guy like you that wants to run for governor, the state of California,

and it's great to have you here with us. One and only Steve Hilton. Yes, great to have you here. So before we get into the story, I want to ask you a very open-ended question. Yeah. Who runs California? Is it the governor? Is it the unions?

Is it the money, the billionaires? is it the NGOs? Who runs, who's the most powerful institution or individual in California when it comes on to politics? What a great question. I'm going to answer it with this story, which is almost the reason that I'm doing this. Like, it's the closest thing to an actual moment

when I thought I'm going to go for it. So many people know me from Fox News. I hosted a show there for many years. But most of my career before then was in business. And I worked a little bit in the government as well in the UK before moving here. with my wife and my two sons in 2012, I was senior advisor to David Cameron in Ten Downing Street,

responsible for implementing our policy reform program along with many other people in the team there. So the reason I'm saying that is most of my career has actually been doing things, like trying to make change happen, in the private sector in government. And so over the years of being on TV, it was an amazing opportunity, I loved it,

but I had a itch to get back to doing stuff. And so a few years ago, I got back involved in policy and politics in California. And the first issue I looked at was housing. You just mentioned it. Housing costs actually is the number one reason people are leaving the state. It's just impossible. You know, like hardly anyone can even imagine owning a home now in California.

$960,000. It's insane. It's something like, you know, I mean, we have the lowest home ownership in the country. Anyway, so I started working on the issue. Yeah. Really learning about what's been driving it and so on. And it took me to try to get a. initiative qualified for the ballot that would address two of the big drivers of this insane cost. One of them is a hidden tax on housing called impact fees, the development impact fees.

The second is something that's talked about a lot, which is, by the way, this really does answer your question. So just... Please. Now, I'm with you. I'm getting there. Something called CEQA, the California Environmental, Quality Act. Passed in 1970, and it was all about when it started out regulating pollution from big factories and so on. But over the years, it's basically turned into a nightmare that blocks anything and holds up

everything. And one of the main problems with CEQA, this law, is that they've given this, what they call a private right of action. It means that anyone can file a lawsuit to enforce this environmental law. normally with stuff like that, it's the DA or the Attorney General. You've got this private right of action, anyone can file a lawsuit. 70% of SQL lawsuits are used to block housing. Most of those are filed by unions in order to negotiate with developers

what they call project labor agreements, where you have union workers only or what they call prevailing wage, which is two or three times higher than market rate wages, etc. Yep. So the second component of this ballot initiative was ending this private right of action. So at a stroke, you stop all these nuisance lawsuits that block housing. Didn't raise the money to get it on the ballot. Then I started engaging with Sacramento.

I thought maybe we can make it happen through the regular political process. And that's when I ran into the answer to your question, who runs California. I started having meetings with the legislators, one particular person. They said, you've got to talk to this person. They're really good on housing. You work with them. You're going to make some progress. We had a great meeting.

This person really, the Democrat member of the state legislature. Said your plan is fantastic. If we make this happen, it's transformational. That was the word. I said, great, let's work together on it. I'm a Republican. This person is a Democrat? Is this a heavyweight person?

No, you wouldn't have heard their name. And I'm not going to say their name because actually it was a private meeting. But privately, is it a heavyweight person? Not publicly because there's a lot of heavyweight private people. It's a midway. I'm going to say mid. Fair. But a legislator.

An elected, but anyway, I said, let's work together. Well, I couldn't support you publicly. She's telling you this. Why not? Well, the unions would hate it. I said, yeah, but you just told me it'd be transformational. We were in an office overlooking the state capital like this with their arm, like this. Well, the unions run this place.

That's an elected member of the legislature saying the unions run this place. And you just think, what is this? It's ridiculous. And that's the most clear answer to your question, the unions. And when people ask me, how did California get like this? How do we go from having the most amazing opportunities anywhere, not just in America, but in the world? If we agree that America is the greatest nation on earth, which is what I think, California is the greatest state, there's something I always say, which is California means to America, what America means to the world. It represents everything that's amazing about our country,

ambition and opportunity and energy and hustle and all those things. And yet it's been crushed. That spirit's been crushed over the years. And people say, well, how did it get? I wrote a book last year, it came out last year just before my campaign called Califalia, reversing the ruin of America's worst run state. I tried to trace it back.

And my conclusion was it all started when the unions were given collective bargaining rights, and over the years built up this incredible power, There's a lock on policy. It's the government unions, not just government unions, non-government unions as well. And so they do run So unions run California, basically. Give me a specific three unions. Is one going to be the teachers union? Teachers union, which means that now the education,

so let's look at the outcomes. We spend nearly the most of any state. Newsom brags about it. He just did his budget last week. $28,000 per student per year, one of the highest in the country, for the worst results, pretty much. We have now 47% meet basics of K through 12 students meet basic standards in English. With math, it's 35%. 65% don't meet the standards.

When you look at Latino and black kids, it's even worse. Most money at worst results. Why? Because the teacher unions have a lock on anything to do with education, and they've completely distorted the system, so it's not about education, it's about indoctrination. And that's not some exaggeration. You go to their conferences and you see what their sessions are about and their training and all the stuff they're pumping out.

It's ideological indoctrination. It's colonialism and gender extremism, all this stuff. Meanwhile, the kids don't get taught to read. You've got techniques for teaching kids to read that work, that we've seen work elsewhere. The debate over that was settled decades ago. Phonics. It's a technique for teaching kids to read, barely used in California public schools. because the teachers don't like it

because they think it's racist or something. You know, it really is, it's not every single thing, but the best answer to your question is the unions. So, okay, if we say unions, right, and teachers unions, number one, you've got a couple other unions there as well. It was a big driver of the budget crisis.

For sure, but one of the biggest things that helped, if you look at the five monumental moments in Trump winning in 2024, one is Bobby Kennedy joining his camp, massive will never forget Arizona. He walks out with charge. Kirk, Tony, from USA, that's one, right? You can see the event at Butler.

That was definitely number one, okay? And then you have to put, and as much as this may seem like a small one, is when Sean O'Brien, the president of Teamsters, came out and spoke at the convention, and he was going to talk something, and then they said, no, we need you to submit your PowerPoint to prove it, and he calls Susie Wallace, says, I'm not speaking. He says, just call the president.

I don't care what you say. He even said some of this. I don't give what you. you say, just say whatever you want to say. He got up, gave a speech, bashed a couple of capitalists, got off the stage. But it was the first time in 120-something years that a Democrat didn't, the union didn't support the Democratic Party. So for you to win in a state like California, what are you doing to win over the union? How do you do that? Do you go and sit in front of these guys and trying to get, or is it an impossible thing to do in the

state of California? Well, you look at the, there's, you know, of course, two categories. The government unions, non-government unions. And, And in terms of the lock on power, one way of thinking about it is using Gavin Newsom as a proxy for Democrat politicians. Remember, it's 16 years now of one party control. 16 years, continuous. All the statewide offices, two-thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature, all the big cities and the counties, state Supreme Court, 6-1, Democrat. Isn't representative even more than two-thirds? It's like a... In the legislature.

Isn't it 43 to 9? Yeah, no, it's more, but at least the two-thirds of what gives you the minimum, to be able to do whatever they're going to do. So they call it supermajorice. So 16 years of that. In those 16 years, Gavin Newsom's been, you know, eight years as lieutenant governor, you look at his donations as a kind of proxy for Democrat politicians and the categories. Number one category of donors to Gavin Newsom, government unions. Non-government unions number three.

And so they control the politicians. and that's representative of the ones in the legislation or the other Democrat politicians. So they drive it, and it's the government unions that are the biggest. And that drives the budget crisis because you get over the years, all these, it's not the only reason. They've just massively increased spending. They've doubled spending in the last 10 years.

The size of the budget in California is nearly doubled. But the unions, of course, are you getting these luxury pensions and health care deals and all these things. Okay, here's another thing that I get on the road the whole time. We're doing town halls up and down the state, hundreds of people coming out, bigger and bigger crowds. A question I get nearly all the time from parents. We pay all these taxes, and yet we're being asked to pay for school supplies, to chip in as parents, to buy books or paper, pens. But we pay the highest taxes in the country.

What's going on? What's going on is that 19.1% I think of school district's budget goes straight out the door to pensions, nearly a fifth. before anything is spent. So the government unions are definitely the bigger problem, no question. You look at the prison officers, for example, another huge donor, the corrections union.

I mean, they've got this massive prison closure program in California, which is a whole story in itself. A big part of the story on crime is that because they've released tens of thousands of dangerous, violent criminals into the community. Would any of these guys ever support you? Well, I don't think on the government side, but at the point of the point of,

I was going to make up that prisons is basically they've cut the number of prisons and reduced the prison population nearly by half, but the budget's doubled. It's classic California. But the non-government. The budget is doubled, but the amount of people are split. Yeah, basically. So it's classic. If you look at the non-government unions, for example, involved in construction, I think that's where you're right there should be an alliance because all my career, you know, when I was on Fox, the theme of my show was, I called it positive populism. I wrote a book, positive populism about how we need to, you know, the ideas that drove that populist movement, Trump, and you can see it on the left as well, lifting up workers,

working people have been left behind by the policies we'd seen before. 100%, that's where I'm coming from. And a lot of my, the whole themes of my campaign, three dollar gas, cut your allowance, electric bill in half, your first hundred grand, tax-free, a home you can afford to buy, very much with workers in mind, workers in small business. That's really who are. If there's one group, of course you want to help everybody, but that's really the focus. So I agree with you.

I think you've got to flip, though. I think so, because here's the challenge, right? But the government unions, I think it's their machine. They've built this political machine. They've got huge amounts of money. A billion dollars a year's in election cycle, spent. by the government unions. It's crazy. Did you see the clip, Rob, of who was the fellow, the African-American fellow in the chamber

that twice got up and got kicked out of the, when Trump was given the speech? You know which one I'm talking about? He was holding signs. Elon Musk is a racist or he's this. What is his name? He's got a unique name. He said something. Al Green.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know what Al Green said yesterday about Trump? The first time he met Trump what he told him. Did you hear this, Rob? Can you type in Al Green first time meeting Trump? Al Green first time meeting Trump. He's telling this story.

The guy asked him a question. Maybe it's the lady. I just saw what he said. So what was your reaction the first time you met Trump? He said something very interesting. I wish I saved this. That could have been it, Rob. That could have been it.

Go a little bit more. Zoom in a little bit. Yeah, this is it. Watch what he says here. Go for it. Turn on the audio. Have you ever met the president in person? Yes, I've met it.

Watch this. And what is that name? meeting the light. Well, let me tell you. I'm glad you mentioned it. The president that I met, first time we met was right here in Houston, Texas. Watch this. When he landed, and he left, he deplained from airport one, and he and I talked to each other, he took my hand, pass your hand over, show you how to quit. He took my hand and said, you're going to like you're going to really like me. Yep. Those were his words. Okay. Very personable, very personable guy. Okay, you can pause right there. So, so, so you know, you know why I wanted to play this

Here's why I wanted to play this clip. There's something unique about him that I don't know why he's convinced he can flip everybody. Yeah. Whether it's him growing up early on in church, he used to go to Norman Vincent Peel's church. I don't know if you're familiar with Norman Vincent Peel, you know, the guy that wrote the book, Power of Positive Thinking, which is a book everybody needs to. It's one of the first 50 books I've read in my life.

He would go. So the idea was positive thinking. I can convert him. I can convert him. I can convert them. You have that level of optimism. There's something very unique about your energy and your personality, which is attractive. So to me, it's, you know, what is your strategy to go talk to these guys that there's a 99% chance. They're going to say, screw you, Steve. We hate your type. You're a Republican. You're the enemy. You're a conservative for you to say, look, you may not like me on all my policies, but I think you're going to like me because I want to make the state better. But that is how I am.

I get along with, I do get along with people. I mean, that's exactly what I'm very interested. That's how I think. And I think it's obvious to me. I mean, let's just go back to the workers' point in unions as it's just a focus. Like, it's so obvious that these 16 years of Democrat policies, even if they think, yeah, the Democrats, they're my guys, have just been a disaster for the average working person in California.

More for them than anyone else. the rich people can kind of deal with it. I'm going to go, they're leaving now as well, of course, because this ridiculous insane billionaire's tax, I'm sure we'll get into that. But for regular working people, I mean, look at the gas, you know, it's exactly those people who are being hurt the most.

Who does gas price, who's hurt most by these insane gas prices? Low middle income families. Regular driving their trucks. That's right. Two, three, four, five hours a day for work. That's who really is suffering. And that's the point I make the whole time. And I find,

And when I'm in those communities and we do events there, and I love doing events and I mean, you know, restaurant owners and bars and just regular places like that. And it's blue-collar workers. Often the, I mean, we were just chatting before the show about, you know, who comes up to you and who says hi. It's often workers. See, I think California needs a guy like you that's optimistic that gets out there.

But I'll tell you this one part because as the audience in California is watching, I call out of California all the time. The reason why I call out of California, Listen, you want change, get behind somebody, do the work. You got to go do the door knocking, find a candidate, support him financially, support him with your community, support him with, hey, I like this guy, I support this guy, go put your name out there. There's been a lot of guys that have endorsed you. I think the president endorsed you. Yes.

I think Peter Thiel endorsed you. I want to say Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, whom we've had on endorsed you. There's been a number of people that have come out that I've said they want you to be the governor state of California. But I want to talk about this. And I think the audience is going to like this. you said you want to lower taxes for those making under $100,000 to zero. Okay, so I want to read some of these numbers up. State income taxes, which is a good amount to zero.

So I looked up with Rob and I, what percentage of Californians make less than $100,000? That's about 70 to 75 percent make under $100,000. And I said, tell me how much revenue the government collects from these folks, which is mainly the 17 to 75% that make a less than 100,000. It's about $12.5 billion to $25 billion, low, high in on how much income revenue they collect. So your policy will eliminate that. By the way, that's not controversial policy because Katie Porter duplicated you.

Other people want to do the idea that you imposed. Let's go to the next one. Then you want to lower the 13.3 to 14.4 that they have right now to 7.5 flat tax, which is a flat tax that you're introducing, which a lot of, you know, know, people that are independent, libertarians, Republicans would say, hey, we love the idea of a flat tax, right? Milton Friedman, this has been talked about. If you cut the tax, flat tax, you end up taking the revenue that they're collecting about $120 to $129 billion of revenue from income tax, they lose another $65 billion. Yeah, that's all numbers.

So if we go and we eliminate under $100,000, and then you lower the 13-3 to $7.5, you lose another $60 to $65 billion, So now you got $75 billion of revenue that's gone, give or take. Where are you going to take the $75 billion to weigh? It's interesting because our number was 60. I did some basic costings. It's just like that. I was for a while. When we moved here 2012, I was at Stanford teaching at Stanford for a couple of years.

And I was also a fellow at the Hoover Institution. So I worked with some of the people I knew there, some of the economists, to do a basic costing. And our number was, I think, $65 billion for the whole package. So was that 10 years ago? It was last year. Oh, it's last year. So if you do less than $100,000? So that's right.

It's a big number. And the other way of looking at it was, I remember when we did the math, this is last year. We haven't actually updated it for this year's budget. But when I, because I didn't want to say something crazy and unrealistic. Well, yeah. But by the way, this is a great idea. But where does that money come? What takes a hit?

So we had a revenue reduction of 18.5%. That was at the time when we did that. costing last year's numbers, that was roughly what it was. And here's the way I put it. This is not some crazy thing. This is taking the budget back just a couple of years to roughly what it was before the pandemic. Remember, they've nearly doubled the budget.

The budget this year that Newsom submitted, $350 billion. Can you go to California budget last 10 years? It was $180 billion, not that long ago. It depends where you look at it. There's the... Yeah, there you go. So it went from 2017, 2018, 124 to $250 billion.

That's the general fund. And then there's these other, the total budget includes these special funds, bond and things like that. So you get $350 billion is the total. So I think the comparison is $180 to $3,000 nearly doubled. $180 billion to $3 million. What should he put there so we can look at that? Instead of saying general fund. Total budget.

Put total budget, Rob. Total budget. There you go. So $350 billion is what they proposed this year. and you go to 2017-2018-1817 billion, exactly doubled in less than 10 years. Right. And everything's worse.

I mean, really, that's not an exaggeration of some political statement. Everything's worse. You mentioned homelessness. You could run down the list. I mean, I don't even want to do it now because I want to get to this point about the budget. In other words, it's just bringing it back

to some level of sanity. So there's a general point that they've doubled the budget and everything's worse. Surely we can do better. Getting specific about it. the first place you look, of course, is this phrase that's become very well known, rightly so, fraud, waste, and abuse when you get specific.

So at the beginning of this year, I set up something, basically, as part of our campaign, it's a volunteer thing, it's not an official, I'm not elected yet, Cal Doge, California Department of Government Efficiency, borrowing the name. Muslim Trump. Exactly. So we set that up. There you are. And so we've done a number of fraud reports.

And there's a couple of specific ones we can get into. But I'll start with the total. We made an estimate. Our fourth fraud report was an estimate of the total fraud, waste, and abuse in the last five years. We looked at it over five years because these programs often have that kind of lengthy characteristic to them. Our estimate based on published data, so a combination of things like the state auditor report that says $24 billion of homelessness spending was wasted, Medi-Cal error rates, et cetera, et cetera. We looked at all this published data. Our estimate for the total is $425 billion in the last five years.

80 billion a year, 85 billion a year. Yeah, roughly, exactly. About 20% of the budget. And so that's where you start. But of course, here's another example. One of the things on the debates you may have seen, some of these exchanges, I've called for free for suspending the gas tax and over time reducing it. We have the highest gas tax in the country, the worst roads in the country.

Another classic. 71 cents. Another, the 63, it's just gone from 61 to 63, the gas tax. Gas tax in California. Can you type in top 10 highest gas taxes in America by state? So, it's amazing what California... Javier Bissera, who looks like he's going to be my... opponent in the general election.

71 cents. Oh, that must be including something. Yeah. Trust me. I'm trying to help California so much. Yeah, yeah. Follow the number super closely. Yeah.

Why would I think 61 to 63? Well, it's better. It's higher now. So it could raise in the last 24 hours. Yeah. He always says this. Steve, if you cut the gas tax, how are you going to pay for roads? Because that's where it's supposed to go.

Well, first of all, we have the highest gas tax and the worst roads on one, some of the measures. On one measure, we're 49th out of 50 on roads. There's another way we're 50th. I was talking to a contractor. I talked to business owners the whole time. This lady runs a big company doing public works construction, literally builds roads. She told me that they operate in multiple states.

It costs four times as much to build the exact piece of road in California as in Texas, four times as much. So that's not what you would call. So when you look at the $425 billion number for fraud, waste and abuse, that specific programs where you can literally find things that shouldn't be spent at all. For example, actually this connects to the gas tax. There's a program that's been running for over 10 years, started in 2015. It actually gets money from the, not necessarily the gas tax,

but the cap and trade system for part of their climate policy, some climate change mitigation fund or whatever. But it's basically from what you pay for gas. And this program was supposed to install solar panels on low-income apartment buildings. $100 million every year since 2015. So $1 billion total been spent. We looked at where that money's gone.

Of that $1 billion, actual spending on solar panels, $72 million. 928 million going to these non-profits this this one exactly going to you know democrat non-profit environmental justice campaigns all this bullshit and so that's an example of out and out that just shouldn't happen just stop it stop spending that money the roads is not even included in that 425 billion total the 425 billion estimate over five years roughly 85 billion year is things like this the fact that the roads are four times more expensive to bill.

That's not even included in that. Why is it four times more expensive? Because they layer on all this nonsense. For example, what we mentioned earlier, is public works, it's public money, so you have to do prevailing wage, union members only, community workforce agreements, where you have to hire endless nonsense,

environmental reviews, audits, inspections, this is what's going on. The amount of bloat and nonsense people have to deal with on a small scale, I met a lady, she runs a small independent winery, wine country, Sonoma. I think it was either Sonoma or Napa. She told me she just wanted to expand her patio for more guests, from 30 to 50 guests. Yeah.

It took her six years, a million dollars, fees, permits, environmental reports she had to pay for, all this. That story is typical. I tell that story to other businesses. and so and is, oh, yeah, I've got one like that. Just everything is layered on to make it so expensive. And so that's why that budget is so high, because everything costs so much because of this insane over-regulation. And a lot of it is driven.

I mean, if you ask me that, where's the real cost and hassle of doing anything in California comes from, come from? Basically, over the years, I've been studying it now and traveling the state and meeting businesses and regular people. It's really, there are three underlying drivers. The unions, we've mentioned them. The second one is litigation, lawyers. Endless lawsuit costs.

Huge litigation. Everything's a lawsuit. Like there's an estimate, the insurance policies, for example. That's one of the biggest, one of the most annoying things for people. You can't get insurance, so it's so expensive. The Fair Act, or you sound like the homeowners insurance leave in? It's regular homeowners, they've left the state, but one of the reasons is you've got this massive.

insurance litigation risk. It's called the tort tax. Some people refer to it. An estimate of 3,000 to 15,000, just the cost of litigation that the insurance companies have to deal with. What do you mean by this? Tour tech. So insurance companies are having to pay this? Yeah, it's a... Zoom in? It's a, it's known as that. It's a, exactly. The tort is a term used to describe how excessive litigation and legal system abuse and infiltrate insurance premiums raising costs. So insurance companies are already adding this as a cost that they're probably going to get sued. And so because of that, they raise their rates to be able to profit,

or else what's the point of being the state of California? Yes. But everyone has. I was at a small manufacturing place. He was saying they have to put aside millions of dollars a year for lawsuits. I mean, endless lawsuits. There's, oh my goodness, I don't know. I want to do the sort of headlines and then maybe dive into it.

So the three big drivers of all the cost and nightmare of doing anything in California is unions, lawyers. trial lawyers and all of this, litigation. And then the third is the climate agenda, as they call it. The climate stuff is really driving a lot of this. The obsession with meeting this net zero 2045 goal, totally arbitrary, actually makes no difference to the actual climate. It's not, you know what I mean?

Well, I mean, the report came out this last week that Trump tweeted saying that was all BS. I don't know if you saw that or not. I didn't. You didn't see this? Oh, you're going to have to see this to be able to use it while you're out there. Rob, do you have the story of what you showed it a couple days ago on the podcast? I think you had to tweet. Yeah, Trump literally came out in the claims of the RCP 8.5.

If you want to go back, you just had it right there, Rob. Go back to all right there. Fact check. There was a tweet that came out about this, that climate change. They got the numbers wrong, and they were claiming that it was all this, that we have to be worried about. Oh, I did see a report of that. Yeah, I just didn't see what the president said.

Yeah, the president tweeted about it says, we were right all along. Well, the thing about this is... After 15 years of Democrats' promise of climate change going to destroy the planet. It's the top climate committee just admitted that its own projections of RCP8.5 were wrong, wrong, far too long.

Climate activism has been used by Democrats to scare Americans, push horrible energy policies and fund billions into their bogus research programs. So look, and the reason it's so important to focus on this, again, these are examples of the bigger picture. They layer this climate. stuff into everything.

So we just talked earlier about housing costs. Gavin Newsom pitched these two pieces of legislation last year, AB130, AB1301, as we're now solving the housing crisis. We're going to have abundance with housing. Fantastic. We're going to build more housing. And the centerpiece of it was exemptions from that environmental law I mentioned, CEQA for housing.

Except you only get the exemptions if you use union labor. So already you're adding back in a whole bunch of cost from that. And the second thing is that because they've got, part of the climate story is that they don't want sprawl, as they call it, because if you have sprawl and people

drive more, that's bad for climate. So they've got this mechanism, this regulatory mechanism called VMT. Vehicle miles traveled. It's a calculation that's put into permitting for projects. If

you want to build, this is in the new legislation that Newsom touted as the solution to the housing crisis, they put in a VMT charge that's an actual cost that's paid, basically a tax. If you want to build a new single family home, the cost of the VMT that they will put in, the developer pays it, obviously then goes to the price, the purchase price, $325,000 over 20 years. Just for this, extra. So like the climate stuff is just embedded in every, obviously in obvious ways like gas prices, and of course gas prices affect and diesel affects business, you know, delivery costs, all of that.

That's why groceries are the highest in the country. Electric bills, more than double the national average. With gas prices, we're the highest in the country, higher than Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, even though we have abundant oil reserves. And can you? Electric bills, we're the second highest only to Hawaii. we have gas-fired power stations in California, natural gas-fired power stations

that are deliberately being run at 10 to 15% of their capacity because they're only being used as backup for wind and solar. So we've basically got this infrastructure for energy that we're not using. And we have abundant natural gas in California that is just being kept in the ground. And we're now importing nearly 80% of the crude oil

we use and 90% of the natural gas. We're from. Where are we importing? I can tell you. I was just at a refinery. So for crude oil, it's coming mainly from Iraq and South America, the Amazon rainforest. We're in Ecuador and Brazil. Right. So we, just when Newsom was in Brazil for the climate conference, the latest data came out,

we're now buying half the oil that's being drilled in the Amazon. because it's heavy and the refineries it's a particular kind of crude oil that fits the refineries that's like California or it's heavier. So in the name of climate change

California is driving an expansion of oil drilling in the Amazon rainforests. So that's the crude oil. The refined gasoline is worse than just the crude oil because they've shut down the refineries

because there's not enough business for them and because of the cost of doing anything. We're now importing not just crude oil but refined finished gasoline. We use about 800,000 barrels a day in California. We're now only refining about 550,000. The rest is being imported. That's coming from mainly India and South Korea. Where does India get its oil? Russia. So in the name of climate change, California is now funding Putin's war

machine. It's just insane. By the way, here's another thing. This oil, whether that's crude oil and finished gasoline that's being shipped halfway across the world, those ships run on bunker fuel. It's the most polluting form of transportation you can imagine, the dirtiest form. Spewing out carbon emissions, these ships, when we could be sending it in a nice clean pipeline

a couple of hundred miles from Kern County near Bakersfield, where Bakersfield is. I literally was there last night. I was in Bakersfield last night. The heart of our oil industry. Padres Hotel, were you at I didn't say the night's on a flight to come here, but But the, so instead of taking it in a nice pipeline to the refineries in Long Beach or wherever, and the ship 7,500 miles across the ocean, spewing out carbon emissions to make all that insanity work.

Here's another, the regulatory agency for a lot of this stuff is called CARB, the California Air Resources Board. They're insane about making businesses report on their carbon emissions through the supply chain. Like you've got to account for your carbon emissions. except for this, they only count the carbon emissions for these ships bringing the oil once they're 12 miles off the coast of California. So 7,500 miles, ignore it, 12 miles. That's when they start counting the carbon.

It's crazy. They are actually increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate policy. What are you going to do the day? Say you become the governor. What are you doing the day you get, you become the governor? So it's going to be a very busy first day

because one of the things that I think, well, there's many things I'm doing differently in this, but one of them is being really well prepared because I do actually understand how policy works, how government works, I've got experience of that, and I'm a business-like person. I wouldn't be practical.

Specifically on this way, here's a good example. And it goes back to what you're saying, what we're discussing about the legislature and the supermajority and what can you get done because there's all these Democrats controlling the legislature. There's a huge amount you can do just through your control of the executive branch and these regulatory agencies.

Opening up oil production is a good example. So the way that they've shut down oil and gas production in California is not actually the legislature is through an agency called CalGEM, the California Department of Geologic and Energy Management. And they have refused to issue permits.

And I've seen that. I've been to the oil fields. You've got these, just like that, that you're looking out there. and much bigger as far as you can see oil wells and they just refuse to issue permits

for maintenance you need a permit for everything if you want to do routine maintenance for expanding an existing well that's maybe running out of oil you do it I think they call it side tracking you can expand it and get

the output up from five barrels a day to 100 or whatever or drilling new wells in existing fields this is not drilling an oil well in the middle of Yosemite National Park This is literally, like as far as you can see, oil wells, there's a concrete pad ready for some new wells to be drilled in the middle of the oil field, and they're saying no. So actually, that's something where you could turn that around, I don't want to say overnight, but you put in new people. I'll be ready to go with the new people. You're going to appoint to this agency.

Any names of people that? We're just, we're gathering the names now. I have named someone who I would appoint to be the Natural Resources Secretary that sits above all of this. guy called John Dwarte, who was a member of Congress and very thoughtful on water, these resource issues are real drivers of the problem in California, the fact that we're killing our ag industry by refusing to give farmers the water that they need, this issue of oil and gas. So that comes under natural resources.

So we're going to have someone who believes in actually producing in abundance what we have. This is the point about California. We've got everything we need. We have incredible natural resources, human resources, in terms of the energy and hustle of our people. And it's all been crushed by this bloated nanny state bureaucratic government. Now, what, you know, some people may say, well, look, you're a Brit. You're from UK. Are you running because...

I'm American now, I have you know. UK is the equivalent of California and London is the equivalent of L.A. Do they have a lot of things in common? And what patterns do you see is the California on track to be what happens to UK? Yes, yes. Okay, share it out with us. What perspective do you have? There's very interesting.

So a very serious venture capital guy sent me a report. It must have been about six months ago on the UK. And he literally just put on the email, remind you of anywhere. And this report was going through just how impossible it is to do anything in the UK, to build housing, to increase. increase energy infrastructure to build any kind of infrastructure. And it just went through the incredible bloat, the regulatory bloat, the process taking so long for anything.

It's exactly where we've got to in California. And that's why we have this situation where right now you've got these two things going on. So Gavin Newsom's response to anything when he's challenged on everything going wrong in California, his go-to responses, well, we're the fourth biggest economy in the world, so things must be great. That's true, statistically. We are the fourth biggest. But remember, well, that's just the total GDP. That's driven mainly by two things.

We got a small number of giant tech companies that are great. And I want, of course, I want every business to thrive in California. So I'm a huge supporter of our tech industry like all our other industries. That's great that we've got these companies, generate a huge amount of revenue, but not many jobs. And then the second component that driven up the GDP number, That includes the government. So all this increasing government spending, that increases your GDP. But it's not a healthy way to increase your economy.

So at the same time as having the fourth biggest economy, we have the highest poverty rate of any state, tied with Louisiana. 28% of U.S. homelessness is in California. Poverty rate is massive. Poverty rate is the highest in the country, tied with Louisiana. Unemployment with the highest in the country of all 50 states. I think the District of Columbia is slightly high, but in terms of states, we have the highest unemployment rate. So that's not a healthy economy.

I mean, most of the jobs that have been created since the pandemic, I believe the net job creation in the private sector is almost zero in California. It's government and stuff like that, healthcare. And so you've got a really unhealthy economy because it's just so impossible to do anything, and that's exactly what you're seeing in Europe and in the UK. I mean, one of the things I say,

I mean, I became, we moved here 2012. I became a citizen 2021. And this, you look at what's going on in the UK. I've now renounced my UK citizenship. You want to be clear that I'm all in for this country and California. But I actually truly feel this on an emotional level. I don't want to see California, the way I put it, as I'm fighting to make sure this state that I love does not turn into the country

I left. That is a really bad, and that is the path we're on. No question. What do you see happening right now with UK? Go specifically to UK. Well, I haven't spent much time. What I really don't understand. You were heavily involved. You were there with cameras. So you saw the invasion when it was coming in. It went from 1.6 million to 2.7 million. Because I think camera went and went. 2010. 2010. And then it skyrocketed. So what patterns did you see? What mistakes did you see they were making?

Is it just too tolerant? So this is where we really fell out because we, I was very much part of the, a senior advisor. I was strategic, yeah. Yes. Everything is smaller and more of a shoestring in British politics.

So there's not much money there and I basically did a number of jobs. The strategy, policy, communication is the whole thing. And we had a commitment, I think I'm getting this right, in going into that 2010 election. This was his, he particularly, It was his idea, actually, to say this, make this commitment.

Net migration into the UK to bring it under 100,000 a year. That was the pledge that we made, and it was David Cameron's idea. I think that's right. Net migration under 100,000 a year. And one of the main reasons that we, yeah, we are never achieved the pledge. Yeah. Yeah. hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of so one of the reasons that that was never met and it was

very clearly explained to me we had a policy you know this was a policy commitment so of course you're there once it once he became prime minister you're in 10 Downing Street you're really focused on delivering your promises one of the things we kept look at why you know we said this is it happening making you know checking on progress on this particular one I remember a meeting where the officials, the bureaucrats came in and said, look, basically said, you're never going to achieve this target as long as you're in the EU.

Impossible because of the free migration rules within the EU. Never going to be delivered. It's one of the reasons that I was in favour of Brexit. That's when we really fell out. I'd left the UK by then. We moved here in 2012. Brexit was 2016. That was one of the main reasons

because he'd made this commitment and his own government official said, you can't meet this commitment as long as Britain remains in the evening. Now, the really crazy thing, which I just don't understand, I wasn't there. 2016, Brexit was voted on. A few years later, three years later,

finally they did the deal. They left under Boris Johnson eventually. But it seems to me that immigration just went up. The central argument of the Brexit campaign. He was a failure. Massive. Well, the first stage of failure was when the UK was part of the EU, it was a failure. And the government officials really looking at the issue of immigration said, you're never going to meet the target as long as you're in the EU.

Then the UK left the EU, Brexit. And the main argument, I mean, there's lots of arguments for Brexit. But if you really ask people who are involved there and whatever, the biggest one was immigration, controlling our borders. That was really, if there's one thing that Brexit was about, it was that. And yet, since Brexit, I think it's accelerated. Kierce Farmer yesterday tweeted saying, our net migration is the lowest it's been in years.

I don't know if you saw that. I didn't see that. He tweeted yesterday saying our net migration has been the lowest in years, and we're still got some work to do. Right there, four hours ago, Rob. Go, go, yeah, net migration has fallen 82% the last. five years. I promise you to restore the control of our borders. My government

is delivering. I know there's more to do. We're introducing scale-based migration systems that rewards contribution and ends our resilience on cheap overseas workers. That's exactly what the conservatives used to say. I mean, that exact message. But they didn't deliver it. Johnson, they have those prime ministers that

lasted about five minutes. So you've been in a space of knowing you want to get things done and it's hard to go through the gridlock of... Yes. How do you do that then? How do you do that in California. Well, because I've seen how it work. I mean, I'll give you a specific story of that really open my eyes.

I mean, it's a silly story, but it kind of showed me. So one of the projects that I led, initiated and led, was we called it the red tape challenge or something like that, to reduce bureaucracy in the UK. This is going back, must have been, when was it, 2010, you know, around that, the first, I was only there for two years. There we are. So I'm saying, look at that. This is our ancient history, but they were.

Steve Hilton was the primary architect of the red tape challenge. Right. So the idea was to, it's actually a technical term for it. Now you would say is reverse sunsetting. Where we all know about sunseting regulations. You pass something, you say, this only lasts for five years. Unless we renew it, it expires. I wanted to have a concept of reverse sunseting

where we just take the whole stock of regulations that are on the books and change the default. So instead of saying we're going to get rid of this one and get rid of it, you basically said we're going to get rid of all of it. Let's choose the regulations that we want to keep. That was the concept. I remember we had input from the public, we crowdsourced some stuff, whatever. And then we started having the meetings with the officials, the bureaucrats and the civil servants.

And we divided up the whole regulatory code into different sections, like about 29 different categories. The first set that we looked at, consumer protection. I remember we had this big meeting. They all come in the room. Dozens of different government officials leading the different bits of the relevant departments. And there's a lot of paperwork on the, you go through the packet.

And I remember I just went, I didn't want to just go in order. I went into the middle, pick something at random. And it was color-coded. And I can't remember which way around, red, green. And most was one color. And I said, oh, that's great. So that's what we're getting really.

of. No, no, that's what we have to keep. Okay? That's not the point of this exercise, but still, let's look at one of these. It was men's pajamas just randomly, I just, why do we have to keep that, whatever? There's the guy around the table who

was head of the, whatever, apparel division. We have a 40-minute discussion about the regulations on men's pajamas. Stop it. And then at the end, this is, I'm not making up, he says, well, I don't want to mock the voice.

If anything, the public interest demands that we level up regulations from a gender equality perspective because the regulations for women's pajamas were actually lower than... You just think I can't believe it. We spent 40 minutes talking about one thing out of thousands. And it's at that point I realize

you can't do it this way. You'll never beat them at that kind of game of process and paperwork because they are better out. So how do you beat them? There's more of them. They wait you out. And I'll tell you another story that fits with this.

Before the 2010 election, when we came into, before David Camber became Prime Minister, you know, London's a small, everyone's very centralised, everyone knows each other, and we had a lot of friends overlapping with the former Labor government

of Tony Blair. Tony Blair, who really was a reformer. And we ended up having a meeting a couple of months before the election, myself and Tony Blair. And he said this incredibly interesting thing. And he'd been out of power for seven years by then, I think, or something like that, maybe a bit less.

And he said, look, there's just one thing you need to understand. All these senior officials around you, they're very smart, very good people, but you've got to understand that they believe that it is their patriotic duty to stop you from, doing whatever you want to do, because they see themselves as the guardians of the national interest.

Yeah. And their job is to stop these idiot here today, gone tomorrow, politicians from doing their thing. He said, you've got to understand this. I didn't understand that till too late. And putting those two things together and looking at California today, the only answer, actually, is to massively reduce the size of these bureaus. Because if there's fewer people doing less, there's less capacity.

These years said than done. I mean, the Doge idea was a idea that everybody supported until they try to implement and then they stopped it four or five months later. Yeah, but look in California, you've got a couple of things. First of all, it's, in a sense, more manageable because you can get your arms around it to a certain extent. Some would even say it's harder because you've got 43 to 9 on represent. Like, how are you going to pass it when they got control on the majority on both sides?

But the governor sets the budget. Okay. Right? That's the main policymaking vehicle. Who do you need to approve the budget? The legislature, you work with the legislature, you have a line item veto. Yes, they can overturn a veto. Two-thirds majority.

Yeah, I know, but you write the budget. You submit the budget. That's the first move. That will be right at the beginning in January next year. Yes, you negotiate. Of course, but let me just get to the point that you run the executive branch. You run these agencies. You appoint people to them, and you can direct their work through executive orders.

It's true that a lot of it is set up through legislation. You can't just delete legislation you don't like. But actually, when you look at some of these bureaucracies, that's why you've got to do the preparation work. Many of them have way exceeded what they were set up to do by the law in California. So you look at the carb, the area, I mentioned them, they're driving a lot of this climate stuff, the EV staff and mandates for everything, the vehicle miles travels. A lot of that is kind of, there's a way of looking at it that the most destructive agency has been this one, CARB, the Air Resources Board. That, it's been around for long before climate was the big driving ideological thing for the left. And so we just made an announcement.

So I'll go back to Caldoge. I spoke about the fraud reports that we've done. We've done five different fraud reports. We also didn't, we've only done one now, but we're going to be doing more of them, what I call bloat reports, where we're looking at the structure of the government. The first one we did was nearly two weeks ago now looking at the regulation of electricity in California. We have four separate agencies regulating electricity, the Public Utilities Commission, the Energy Commission, something called Kaiso, the Independent Service Operating, and KAB, the Air Resources Board. If you look at it on a per capita

basis, California has 35 times the number of bureaucrats regulating electricity. as other states, 35 times the number, just the numbers of people. The cost of that is $1.2 billion before you even generate electricity. So we obviously, there's massive scope to merge them, that's what we've proposed, to massively scale back these agencies. You can zero out their budgets or reduce them to very little. Yes, they can override that with a veto in the legislature. There hasn't been an override of a governor's veto since the 1980s in California.

It's actually kind of a tough thing to do. because as the governor, you've got the platform. They then have to defend it. And so if you're really aggressive and you're well prepared, and I'm both of those things, not about saying it's going to be easy, but I think the real learning point for me from what happened in the UK was you've got to be ferocious about this.

Yeah, I think when I went to Brazil, and I was with Javier-Yair Bolsonaro and his family, and we did a three-hour interview. At the end of the interview, they came in, tapped on his back, us back. He says they're getting arrested. He had to finish the interview because he was getting arrested. Rob, you remember this when we were in, where were we at in Brazil? What city? Brasilia. Brasilia, right? In the headquarters, you know, where all the politicians are, they build a city like a communist city, so nobody wanted to go there miles away from everybody else. But the thing that we

looked at there is how much the other side with this guy named Alessandro de Morais, who was like the most powerful guy in Brazil, he's like the Supreme Court God that everybody fears. You've seen face, you know who he is. They control Senate, they control House, and he couldn't do nothing. And they fought very hard. So you're going into a market where

you will be facing a lot of challenges and you're going to need some people that are going to want to have massive change in the state. Right now, the polls, if we look at the polls, as of right now, I think you're at 21 points is where we have when you look at the polls. I think you're at 21.

I think 22, something. 22 is where you're at us of right now. Then you got Bacera 21, then Steyer 15, then Bianco 5, and you got the rest of the camp, Katie Porter. But the reality of it is if one of these guys drops out, you're all of a sudden second by, you know, if you go to Kalshi's report, Kalshi gives a complete different number if you go to Kalshi.

Yeah, for the winner. Yeah, no, I see them. Have years at 65, Steyer's at 237, and you're at 9.4%. And, you know, Vegas doesn't lose money. And that's $35 million of money that's been wagered. Yeah. So you need some major, major, like,

Spencer Pratt, Ward got out that Jeannie Bus is supporting him. This person is supporting him. Oh my God, all these different people that are supporting him. Have you gotten some weird calls? Has Arnold called you? Have you spoken to some of these guys? I know Arnold. Well, I've known him for years.

Have you had a conversation with him recently? Not recently, but we will. We know each other. Well, and I know his team very well. Do you have a relationship with Newsome as well? I do know, Kevin, yeah. I don't think it's a very cordial one anymore, because I've been, you know, holding him responsible.

Wasn't that one point cordial? Well, here's, the thing is that we, yeah, because we had some friends in common. Those first two years that we were here, I taught at Stanford, and we had some very good friends there, who friends of the Newsombs from a family point of view. So that's how I know them.

And that's long before I had anything to do with California politics when he wasn't governor then. So I think that what you're describing is exactly right. Here's how I see it. Right now we've got this governor's race, which is because of this top two system, which means that the top two candidates go forward regardless of party, it makes the whole thing kind of unclear and messy. And the entire conversation, not the entire, but a lot of the conversation, is actually about math and who's in the top two, and is it going to be too, is it going to be too Republican, rather than the merits and the idea.

years and all of that. Once we're in the general election scenario, which we will be in a couple of weeks, and it does look like, I mean, I don't take anything for granted. I'm working even harder these last two weeks than the last year. But we're feeling confident, but, you know, still got to win it. People have to vote. But let's just assume I'm in the top two, and there's one other Democrat, looks like it's going to be Javier Becerra. Then it's a very different contest. Then it's a real, you've got a clarity there. What are we going to do? Are we going to keep going with this,

another four years of the same direction? By the way, there's no one who, Javier Bacera, who's their leading candidate right now, he's kind of the living embodiment of more of the same Democrat machine. He's 36 years, a career politician. I mean, he's done nothing else. He's a creature of the machine.

In the L.A. Merrill race, you're already at that stage. this kind of gladiatorial contest because Spencer, it's just Spencer against Karen Bass basically. Nitya Raman is really imploding. And so there's a clarity there in L.A., which we don't yet have in the governor's race,

but soon we will. And I'm very confident that we'll get, you know, you're already seeing it, people who've never supported Reparthe. I mean, Sergei Bryn is a good example. He's supporting me. He's also supported. And there's a lot of people who, in California,

have bought this narrative that a Republican can't win. So the best shot is a less crazy Democrat. And that's why there was a lot of support in the business community for this guy, Matt Mahan, who's the mayor of San Jose. But he's gone nowhere. And so I'm feeling confident

that once it's me against Bacera, or even more so, me against Tom Steyer, you're going to see a lot of support so many people who are not Republicans that should say we can't go on like this. I'm definitely seeing that in L.A. How many big... For myself, you know, Hollywood people...

How many Hollywood people are calling you and saying, look, a lot, a lot. Big names? Yes. Yes. That would be seen as a liberal. Yes, yes. And they're saying they would like to support you.

And some have. I mean, some have co-hosted events for me. And... Such as... Well, I don't want to... We said co-hosted event is a public name. So it's not... You know, it's a public...

private... Okay, Larry David's wife. Actually, David. You know, Larry David is not by anyone's... Standard or conservative. Exactly. Yeah. And there was... And, you know, so she...

Absolutely, there you are, Ashley. And so... And there are others who I don't want to say because they haven't got to that point of saying it publicly. But they've called you and spoke to you. Yes. And we've had meetings. And I feel...

And in the sports world as well, actually. and I feel very confident that once we're past the primary and it really is that clear choice, that it's going to be a whole different situation. And the whole thing that I'm saying is, I'm not an ideologue. I'm not a tribal kind of person going back to where we started. I really am open, happy to sit down with anyone, work with anyone.

It's just, I mean, it's an overused phrase. It really is just common sense. Let's just stop doing stupid things that make everything so expensive and so difficult. Did you have a, like, when's the last time you had a conversation with Newsome?

We had a very brief conversation. I remember it actually, at the second presidential debate in 2024. It was held at the Reagan Library. And they set, and the Biden people sent him in as a surrogate. I was there.

It was a, and he was going to talk on everybody. Exactly. That's all right. Well, he was literally going on, just off to the side. We were both with Hannity that night. And so we had a quick conversation then.

Did you whisper to him that you may run? Did anybody know? We didn't. I actually, I think we actually ended up. I was still then working on the housing policy that we spoke about earlier. And if I can, if I'm right, I think we had a brief conversation about that. And then he connected me to one of his team members to maybe follow up on that and so on. How dismal you think his track records been since he's been governor?

Well, you just have to look at the facts. I mean, it's that we are the worst performing state on every measure that matters. Like truly, we've... Under him. Yeah, I mean, you look at the... How else can you describe it? I mean, poverty, unemployment, cost of living,

and then, you know, more qualitative measures. So, U.S. News and World Report ranks California, 50th out of 50 states for opportunity. Think about that. Opportunity. I mean, that's supposed to be the definition. Last place for... Last place.

Wallet Hub, 50th out of 50 for affordability. Chief Executive Magazine. They do an annual survey. California, 50th out of 50. I think it's now 10 or 11 years in a row. It's just insane. Roads, I mentioned. 50th.

It's not just that we're doing badly with our worst performer of all 50 states on almost everything that matters at the same time as they've doubled the budget. It's insane how badly. It's covered up because, of course,

we're still an amazing state. I love California. We've got the most incredible advantages. Natural beauty, amazing. people, diverse cities, great. It's a wonderful place to be, but it's a very tough place to be if you're a regular working class Californian, if you're running a small business, that's why so much of what I'm talking about is very practical stuff to help the first hundred grand tax free. There's a, it just seems like a small thing, but it's a big deal to small business

owners. Remember, I used to, you know, I started a couple of restaurants in London. Restaurant owners particularly hate some of this stuff. $800 a year they charge you just for existing. Every business in California has to pay a registration fee of $800 a year. Now, that may not sound like a lot if you're, of course, and it isn't a lot if you're anthropic or Google or whatever, but if you're a small business and you're not making any money, you're just getting going, it's actually really tough. It's simple things like that that we just need to do to make life less of a struggle for everybody.

What happened recently? This is like a few days ago with Javier Riserra's a strategic, Dana Williamson, who used to be the previous chief of staff, I believe, for Newsom, just got three felonies. This is just a few days ago. Yeah. What happened? This is a really...

Big scandal. It is a big scandal. I mean, it's little... Here's what happened. Bacera was the point... He was the California Attorney General. He was appointed by Biden to be health secretary, HHS, at the beginning of the Biden term. Bcerra wanted to take his chief of staff, Guy called Short.

McCluskey with him to D.C. He was going to be too, he was going to, the salary wasn't high enough and there was, this guy wanted to come back and forth to his family. And so they wanted more money for this guy to be able to go with Bacera. The, the salary was the salary, whatever the federal salary is. So they cook up this scheme to take 10 grand a month from Bacera's California campaign account, transfer it to a consulting firm run by this person, Dana Williamson, and then that money, that 10 grand, goes straight out the door to the guy's wife, to Sean McCluskey's wife.

So it's like a backhanded way of topping up his pay. That's against California campaign finance law because you can't use campaign money for anything other than campaign expenses. And it's against federal law because you can't get income from another source. Now, the argument from Bersera is he didn't know about any of this. Can we see what she looks like? Can you go a little bit lower? Now, do you think he knew about this? What are the chances he knew about this? I can't believe that he didn't know.

I mean, look, his argument is I'm not in the indictment. I'm not in the federal indictment. And the federal indictment says he didn't know. Katie Porter, who's been very aggressive on this and some of the other Democrat candidates, It's saying it's ridiculous. And just because you haven't been indicted yet doesn't mean you won't be. And just on a human level feels to me impossible to believe that he didn't know. The whole point of the scheme was to enable him to take his chief of staff with him to Washington.

That's the whole reason for doing it. So he knew. Who knows? I mean, he's saying he didn't. Is that it, Rob? That clip right there between the. two of them? Yes, that's the one. I would have seen it, but I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of ads that's going to

come on first. Within three, two, one, there's an ad, yeah. So if something like this is tied to him, how big of a scandal would this be for him? Well, this is what a lot of the Democrat rivals have been saying. You're going to nominate

this guy who then could be indicted in the middle of his campaign for governor. Can you go to the part where Katie Porter's calling him out. Fast forward a little bit to where Katie Porter. So my line is more of a political. I said, look, you shouldn't be in this race.

You should be preparing your criminal defense. Is this it? Go forward. First play. Respectfully, Mr. Bissera, your quote at the end drifted off a little bit from the words. What the quote was was that you had not been mentioned in the charging documents. That is in the indictment of Dana Williamson, your long-term. Chief of Staff, Sean McCluskey, or Greg Campbell.

But as you know, that does not preclude, because you are also a trained attorney, you know, that does not preclude an indictment from being issued against you. We do not know what Dana Williamson said about your involvement, and the government will have the ability to reveal that later. Ryan, the same way I did it when I was Attorney General, we established a Bureau that dealt with Medi-Cal fraud. Working with the federal government, unfortunately, Trump is a problem because Trump took a trillion dollars out of the health care system out of the Medicare or the, excuse me, the Medicaid and the Medi-Cal system. Trump is now trying to deprive California of another billion dollars in health care for MediCal.

He doesn't have the right to do that. He's not answered the question. He just went to a different place. Yeah, yeah. So that's their argument. And it's not just Katie. It's also Antonio Villargoza, the former mayor of L.A., making that argument very strongly. like this guy could be indicted. It's a massive risk to have him as your candidate.

That's their argument. Yeah, it was overnight when he all of a sudden spiked up. Yeah, when Swalwell dropped out. Yeah, when Swalwell dropped. Everyone was surprised. No one expected it. Yeah, so the worry today Democrats have in California is, holy shit. Yes.

If something happens here, is it Katie? Because they're worried about Katie. She's a wild car. Well, she seems to be fading. Is it going to be Styre? It looks like Steyer is the, I mean, look at the data. I mean, it's me and Bacero, on most of the polls, me and Bacera at the top,

then there's a gap, then it's Tom Steyer, then there's another gap as everyone else. There was one poll last week, which I take very seriously. That one, there's the second one there, Emerson College, which had basically a three-way tie at the top, myself, Pesera and Stey,

all roughly the same. And so, yeah, you see it there, 2019, 18. So, who knows, Most of the polls are not that. Most of them show this gap between myself and Bacera and Stey. But Stey is definitely number two and Katie Porter is well below.

So I don't know. I mean, look, things have changed very quickly. It feels like we're less than two weeks to the election. Voting's already started. It feels very unlikely to me that Katie Porter is going to pop back up. It would be catastrophic for Democrats if she does. It would be phenomenal for you if she pops up. You would love a Katie Porter opposition.

It would be great for TV because To me, she's gifted. She's a natural villain to the core. She's so phenomenal. I mean, she will get a job the day she doesn't make it to the view. And she'll bring the top of views to the view that haven't seen for a long time. I think she is that talented. Natural.

By the way, what do you say about Chad Bianco? Because I have a lot of friends from Kern County, a guy named Ricky Aguilar, who's spoken to Chad Bianco, and they've had different conversations. And a lot of Californians love Chad Bianco, because he has got more, he's an OG California, so people will say, Steve's not in California.

He's not an OG. He's an immigrant as well. Where did he come from? I think he's from Utah, is it? How long has he been in California? Longer than me, a lot longer. No, no, it's fair enough. So, hey, you know, he is in the system.

He has done this. He has done that. But it's at a phase right now where he's kind of calling you out a little bit. You're not really saying much about him. But what do you say about Chad Bianco? Because I think he's got a lot of respect from a certain audience in California. Yeah, I mean, it's an election.

We're winning. At this point, it's not about, I've nothing against Chad personally. We have perfectly good personal relationship. And it's just a simple point now. We're less than two weeks to the election. The time for a kind of debate over who'd be better and who's got, on most policies we completely agree, to be honest. And you can see that in the debates.

And you'd expect that in a way. but it's beyond that now it's like we've got to be real about this situation if that other poll is correct the Emerson poll or let's say it's closer to that reality which is a three-way tie

then there is a very real possibility of the outcome of this primary being two Democrats, Berser and Steyer. That is not an impossibility I don't think it's likely it's not the most likely outcome but it's certainly not impossible. And so that's why I'm going all out.

You know, we've got to get a report. If you have two Democrats in the top two, imagine that in California. No chance for change. They'll be outbidding each other on the left to pander to the unions and the activists. Right, it'd be going further and further left. Are you suggesting Bianco drop out?

Very much so. Have you spoken to him? I've reached out to him and we were going to meet and then it didn't come together. I wrote a piece for the California Post about this just two days ago. It seems to me he's not in that place. That's, of course, his right.

But we've just got to be real here. There isn't, just like we said, it doesn't look as if Katie Porter's going to get there up into the top two. Same with Chad. So whatever. Reason for that, it doesn't matter. We are where we are.

Could the Sliwa drop out at the NRAB or no in New York? Do you remember when it was him, Cuomo and Mammani that Sliwa ever dropped? out. Do you remember that? I don't think so. I don't think he dropped out. I think he went to the very end. He didn't. He didn't. He was offered 10 million to withdraw. Well, that's the story that he told. I remember that. Yeah. So he didn't drop out. And obviously, we know who ended up winning, which is Mamdani. Yes. So in this case, it would be interesting because the president has already endorsed you. He has. Yeah. He has. How recent was the endorsement from the president? That was

Easter Monday. I remember it very, a very memorable day for me. Yeah. And I'm sure in the next, you know, two weeks, he's probably going to make some more noise and put you out there as well, because we saw the president's endorsement two nights ago was 37 and 0. So he's got a pretty good track record still today, no matter how much people say about it, and when he endorses somebody, carries a lot of weight. So that would be interesting to see. So he said two weeks, today's what? Today's May 22nd or 23rd?

What is today's date, Rob? Today is May 21st. So if it's the 21st today, the day is what? June 2nd. June 2nd that you guys are voting? Yeah, and then you're going. But voting's now. Right, it is.

And then you got 166 days to the whole shebang if you're in it. Yeah. Well, look, I'm feeling confident. And it's, you know, it's a weird thing for me. I hate talking like this because I just feel I've never run for office before. I have this, this, I don't quite understand how. And it's funny, people coming up to you say, I voted for you. It's an amazing.

It's a real, it's very humbling, truly. I know it's a cliche, a little bit of a pompous thing to say. but that's truly how I feel about it. And a strong sense of responsibility. People put a lot of faith in you. But that question of, okay, yeah, if these polls are coming out and I'm leading in the polls,

great. How that turns into actual votes is something that, you know, I just don't take for granted at all. So we're going to be fighting very hard. Keep raising money. Keep getting our message out right until the end. But it's close now.

Here's a question for you. Here's a question for you. So 441 businesses have left. relocated since 2018. There's going to be many more than that. Well, that's the number of big business. Fox Business 2026 reported on this. Net domestic loss, 3 million people net since 2010 to 24.

And then we know they lost another trillion dollars that left with the new wealth tax that they have in place. Here's an idea for you. Sergey Brin endorsed you, right? He's a guy that came out and he's worth a couple hundred billion dollars. I think he moved in Miami, bought a 200 million dollar property. He's building something for himself. Ken Griffin left Illinois.

He came down here, Mom Dani, tried to docks him with his property that he lives. And there's a lot of weird things that's going on. We saw now Mom Dani's trying to beg people to come back. We're seeing the mayor of Seattle, Rob, if I'm not mistaken. Correct. She is now worried about Seattle, Starbucks leaving, hey, can you please come back?

What do you think about hosting an event in the state of California? And here's the event. Yeah. The event is calling some of these businesses that have left. Yes. And bringing them back. for an event in California because I lived in California

24 years, five years down, five years here. I lived in Glendale, California. I went to Glendale High School class of 96, so I lived there since 1990. I'm an OGL guy. But imagine if you run an event and you say, Sergei Bryn, all these businesses,

they're in Texas, they're in Florida, they're in Tennessee, they're in Nevada, all of the Mark Wahlberg, who's down here right now, who is an LA guy, he moved to Vegas. And you ask these guys, and these are conversations you have before and say, what can we do to bring you back? So if an event like that took place,

where you are now bringing customers back, all the people in California that are worried about the big business owners leaving, now they're going to say maybe this is the guy that can do something with that. I love that. And that's how I feel. Like, when I think about the campaign and the story, of what we need to do to bring California back. There's different levels of it,

different ways you look at it. For example, there's the campaign, there's the simple promises and commitments you make that are going to help people in a practical way in their daily life. That's the campaign. I call it Cal Affordable. $3 gas, cut your electric bill and half, etc. Then you look at, as we talked about earlier,

what are the underlying policy drivers that you've got to deal with in terms of the chaos and cost. Climate extremism, litigation unions, we talked about that. But actually, when you think, well, what's the mission? What's the really, what's the central mission

that's got to happen, that's got to be achieved if we're going to turn things around? It actually is this point about the business climate. Because without that, we don't have anything. That's the underlying. If you can bring customers back, Exactly. And if we make it really clear that we are now not, we are not just not hostile to businesses we are now,

but we are positively going to roll out the red carpet. We want you back. We want to make your life easier. What can I do to help? That's how I see my role as governor is being there to help business create jobs and wealth and opportunity in California. That is the, that's actually the central mission. everything else will flow from that because if you do the things that will make California once again the best place to start and grow a business then all those

other things will happen so I love that I've got some very serious conversations going on just think about that event visually that's beautiful I love a great location pick a great spot they're all sitting there and they're talk these are all you put them expats I don't know where you want

you got to find a unique thing to put like ex- Californians who left and they're in different spaces that who love Rogan, Musk, you know, you got Sergei, you got all these guys. Yeah. If it gets to that point, because if you can, if you can convince people who left, those are the biggest stories. Because let's talk about the wealth tax, right? Hey, let's tax these billionaires. We're in Aspen and all of a sudden I get a story comes out saying they need this 882,000 signatures to be able to pass on a 5% well tax. I'm like, of course they're going to get the signatures.

What do you mean? Because it's only 200 billionaires. Of course they're going to come up with this. So guess what ends up happening? They get 1.5 million plus signatures on a 5% tax. So that's going to be on it for people to vote. And then one by one by one, people like Bryn and others are leaving saying, you're not going to tax me on this.

I'm out of here, right? Yeah. And yesterday, Jeff Bezos is doing an interview with Sorkin, which, by the way, I thought this was a phenomenal, phenomenal interview. If you haven't watched this whole thing, you ought to put it on the list of things to watch the next couple of days. Here's what he had to say about taxes.

Go ahead, Rob. Elizabeth Warren has made this point. I think she's made any reference to you and others are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am, for example. Sometimes say that, you know, I don't pay taxes. It's not true.

I pay billions of dollars. in taxes. And it's a perfect, again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that that's going to solve the problem. You could, you could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. This is, so you can't connect those two things, not logically. You know, there are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blamed, on Airbnb. Okay.

Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost nobody's finished here. One second. It's already been outlawed in New York City and rents are still very high.

So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention. Yeah, exactly. Thoughts on what you have to say. Well, 100% correct. And we are the proof of that

in California because we have taxed the rich in California. That's one of the reasons that our fiscal situation is such a mess in California with massive volatility in state revenue and year to year because so much of it is dependent on the stock market because so much of it is dependent on the wealthy. I mean, the number is something like the top 1% of California earners pay about 50% of the income of the income tax. And so that's already happening in California. And as we said earlier,

they've doubled the budget. Look what happened to school results? I mean, he's bragging Newsom about $28,000 per student per year for the public schools. And the results are terrible. So that's exactly right. And we've been through all the reasons. And Bezos is right that the drivers of these costs in California, certainly on housing, is all these endless regulations and concessions. to the groups that control the Democrat politicians, the unions, the climate activists, the lawyers, that's how we've got to this point. Yeah, I mean, look, when you're seeing,

he continues to say the top 1% pays 40% of taxes, the bottom 50% pays 3%, and I think that should be even zero. Rob, if you go to that one on percent taxes, yeah, there's another clip. it's not going to be a quarrel there's one that you have to find Rob where he says

go to the one with Mamdani see if it's that one go back and see if it's the Mamdani one billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect again if people want me to pay more billions there's a part that he specifically says go to his account go to Bezos X account just type in Jeff Bezos

go to his account because I think this is becoming more and more logical second one there you go go a little bit lower go lower lower lower he writes it in the account in the video that's it so he puts

yes do you not okay press this one see if it's the same one or if it's a different one start by having the nurse and queens not pay taxes at all at all why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month

in taxes that's $1,000 a month that help with rent or groceries or anything. Exactly. And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%.

So we don't have, it's a small amount of money for the government, you know that. And really, it's, the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her to talk about... This aligns with what you're saying. No tax is under $100,000. Right, right. Because look at California's tax schedule, right, where you look at the rates.

It's insane. You start paying, I think that his numbers are right, you start at $72,000 of income. Yep. You're starting to pay in California 9.3% state income tax. That is higher than the top. rate in most states of America. At 72 grand, I think it kicks in. Yeah, you're right.

Insane. Like, 9.3 on 70. So I'm paying $7,000 on 72K. I could have kept that money. Car payment, food, gas, whatever it is, that stays with me. It's really bad. It's a common sense idea that you have. So, by the way, what do you stand with the, you know, the rail, the high speed rail that he was supposed to build?

I was just there. I lost track of the days, two days ago. We just stood in front of literally a bridge to nowhere. I drive up and down the Central Valley all the time. It's the 99 highway or the 5 freeway. It's mostly in the middle, the 99. And we haven't put it out yet, so you won't find this. But the infrastructure they've built is just all,

you can see up and down. Here are the numbers. They said that it would be open by 2020, two and a half hours, San Francisco to LA, and total cost of 30 billion. Here's the latest, they laughably call it a business plan. This was just published like two weeks ago by the High Speed Rail Authority. Budget from 30 billion to 231 billion, the budget. The plan is now from San Francisco to Merced, which is at the top of the center.

You go inland, top of the Central Valley. on the existing trains, not high speed. Then you get on the high speed train at Merced, and you go down to Bakersfield, high speed train. Then Baker's Field to L.A., bus. Stop. Bus. Can you verify this? There's no way that's what they're saying. That's the plan. For the $231 billion? Yes. So they went from the two and a half hours to me having to have multiple stops before I go to San Francisco. And like I point out, the two and a half hours. Sometimes you'll do that just if you're driving, Bakersfield

to L.A. can take that long. There's no way that's what they're saying. That is. Rob, zoom in. Let me see. The revised draft plan outlines a commitment of full nonstop, high speed connection between L.A. and Bay Area by 2039. Construction span 190 miles. No, go a little bit

low because I'm trying to see, is there a stop future long-term extensions connect North Sacramento or Sacramento? There is no way they're telling you to go, come back with a bus, and then go to that's the thing if you look up bust there's a whole Cal Trends consider 140 mile an hour bus that's a different story route

if that is true that is pathetic that is absolutely pathetic that is absolutely pathetic if that's what they're saying it was older this is a business man this is a couple of years a couple of weeks ago

wow so it's insane and also another thing bullshit sorry I mean the things he says so he did a press conference I don't know when it was a couple of months ago

he's trying to sort of because obviously the only thing he cares about Newsom is running for president that's very obvious and so he's trying to clean it all up so they did a event there

where he stood in front of trains just some engines to make it look as if he was doing something with actual trains and he was trying to announce that they were doing laying of tracks because one of the points that we make is that this is like

more than a decade into it, two decades nearly and there's no track been laid. They've built a bunch of stuff but no tracks and he was trying to announce that he was doing tracks but even then he actually if you look at his words

he didn't say we're laying tracks and we are entering the tracks the track-laying phase. The gas lighting over this is just, there we are, look, a critical step in the track-laying stage. They're not actually laying in track. This is how they do. And by the way, they're still pretending

this is realistic and going to happen, and we are still paying for it. So earlier I mentioned the cap-and-trade thing, cap-and-trade scheme, which is one big component of the high-gas prices, on top of the gas. tax. There's this thing called cap and invest, which is the carbon trading, ridiculous bureaucratic schemes, basically a tax on energy production and use. One quarter of that goes to high-speed

rail. So we're still paying for it. I mean, the federal bid has been ended. Good idea, a bad idea. The high-speed rail. Yeah. High-speed rail is, in other places, works well. In Europe, it works really well. I've used it a lot. It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense in California because of the way that we've developed in California. Because you could take a train from, let's say it all worked fine. You have San Francisco to L.A. Well, when you get to L.A., what do you do?

Let's say it's Union Station, which is, you know, over downtown L.A. It's like another 45 minutes to get to the West Side or whatever. So what do you do then? just not how California, this is what I really, it's a really good example of what's gone wrong in California, which is they've been trying to impose ideological blueprints on practical life as it's lived. They, they have this ideology, which is they want everyone in trains, public transportation, cycling, walking, let's be more like Europe. That's what, because of climate. That's why I say the climate stuff is a real driver.

Let's be more like Europe, let's have density. That's not how California was built. And whether you like it or not, the way that California was developed was outwards. And that's a part of the beauty of California life. A single family home, you have a yard, the kids can play outside, enjoy the weather. That's just how we grew. And so this model of public transit doesn't work in California. You'd have to sort of completely redo.

no, certain cities, San Francisco, very dense. You get at work there. But even there, how do people get around in San Francisco? I mean, yeah, there's the Mooney and the butt, whatever, but people, now you've got Waymo. And you've got so many, you know, it just doesn't make sense in terms of how people are going to, even on their original estimate,

I looked into it for my book. When they actually sold high-speed rail, they did sell it as a getting cars off-the-road idea. Who's doing this drive? I mean, do people fly? That's crazy to even think about. I mean, I know Palmdale, I know Bakersville, I know Fresno, I know all these streets, all these cities.

I've driven all over these places because I was selling insurance for 20 years. Right. And, you know, so. Also, here's another thing, just really annoying. So you look at that map there, the bit that goes down to Anaheim, which is a fantasy. This is just insane.

They can't even build the... Okay, if you look at that map, the easiest bit from MESD to Bakersfield through the Central Right, totally flat. Nothing, you know, that's taken forever and nothing's happened. Let alone in the city. Right. Or through, that's why they're doing the bus, because from Bakersfield to, you know, the other side,

you've got big mountains there. That's hard, engineering-wise, which they haven't figured out. And then the Anaheim bit, which is just a fantasy, the other week, they published an environmental impact report. Here's a really good example. of the bloat and nonsense in California. They published an environmental impact report for this leg of the thing from L.A. to Anaheim

that no one thinks is going to happen. The summary of the environmental impact report just for that was 100 pages. Someone's paying for that. Like some consultant, well, we're paying for it. That's what I mean. There's no check or control on this bloat in the government.

They keep, because they don't have people who think like that. They don't have business-minded people who look at all this and say, what are you doing? Why are we commissioning an environmental impact report for something that everyone knows is never going to happen? I want to show you something, and I want to wrap up on this. Here's a clip from Newsom. And he says some things that a lot of people have been taken in a weird way. I want to see how you interpret this.

He says he has a secret plan to break the glass. Rob, if you want to play this clip for the audience to see, and I don't know if he's talking about you. I don't know if he's talking about, you know, whatever, because, look, a candidate running Republican, that small that he has, he looks like he's up to something. Go ahead, Rob. But you're talking about accountability. Do you think Democrats will hold you accountable for standing by this principled neutrality, by withholding your endorsement in this non-possible scenario where you're too Rupkins take the tickets? Yeah, look, my focus has been making sure that doesn't happen, and I've exercised not just a focus, but I've exercised through some action efforts to encourage that doesn't happen by making my case and will continue to make my case. I do not see that scenario taking place.

I've said this before, so I'll repeat it. I don't anticipate this need to be the case, but there is a break-the-glass scenario. And there's many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out. And we're going to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen. What do you think he means by that? What do you think he means by that? I think what he means is that because remember, it's all about him. It's only about him.

It's only about his presidential ambitions. It's the only thing he cares about. I think what he wants is two Democrats in the top two. because if I'm in the top two, he knows that the rest of this campaign, a big part of it will be a prosecution of his record. Because that's the whole argument. Going into election.

Yeah, she doesn't want that. All this stuff that we're talking about will be even louder volume because I will be there saying, we can't go on like this. This is insane. We are done with this. We cannot have another four years of this.

Whereas if he's, it's two Democrats, none of that, his record won't be an issue. It'll be, you know, are we going to have single-payer health care? Are we going to tax? How much are we going to tax the rich? Et cetera. The other point is this. If I'm in the top two, if there's a Republican in the top two, then there's a chance, of course, that I'll win. I believe I can when we haven't really talked about my path to victory, but I can see it because, and it starts with the fact that you've now got a majority, a clear majority of California, do you think it's time for change, who think the state's on the wrong track. That's the starting point. And then if you look at

the numbers of votes that you need, even President Trump in California, without campaigning there in 2024, got more votes in California than I would need to win in a midterm year. And there's other things that fact that we've got voter ID on the ballot in November in California. That's going to bring out a lot of Republican voters and so on. So I can see a path to victory. And that's Newsom's worst nightmare. Imagine if this is the scenario in early 2027, just as he's launching his presidential campaign, you've got a Republican taking over as governor. He's just lost California to Republicans.

That is it. And as I'm cleaning up the mess that he's left behind, I will be exposing what he's done in the process of cleaning it up, which will be a disaster for his presidential campaign. So he wants to avoid that at all costs. What he wants is Staya Berserra. So I think what's going on here is that he is raising the specter of two Republicans in order to continue to give Republicans hope that that can happen.

In other words, encouraging Republicans to try and get to Republican voters to try and get two Republicans in the top two by voting, by continuing to vote for Chad, Bianco. I think that's what's going on here. So you're, okay, got it. So the more Bianco goes up, you go down, then the top two will become Democrats. Exactly. That's their strategy.

Yes. Because he's desperate to see two Democrats. What do you know about Steyer? Because he also came out of nowhere. What I know is. Billionaire Steyer, you know. The billionaire climate for here's a couple of things. First of all, we talk about costs and he keeps going on about affordability.

Yeah. Most of the climate stuff, I'm talking about that's given us insane gas prices, electric bills and so on, housing costs. It goes back to a piece of legislation passed in 2006, AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. A lot of this framework was set up then, the cap and trade system, all of this. In 2010, four years after it was passed, there was a ballot initiative to overturn it. And the main funder of that ballot initiative, the opposition to it, was Tom Steyer. So we could have avoided all this pain and cost, but it was Tom Steyer who defeated that initiative.

So he's honestly, there's a way you could put it, which is he is personally responsible for this insane level of cost of everything in California. The other thing we know about him is how obsessed he is with trying to get elected to something. In this campaign for governor, the numbers are published all the time. Here's the latest. Here's how much he spent. $193 million. In this?

Yes. Since like when he entered the race. I don't know, November. In this? Yes. 193 million. That's his latest filing. Okay, 192.4.

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To put AI to work for people, visit service now.com. Oh my God. Wow. So far. Oh, my goodness. We haven't even got to the primary. And I mean, listen, fire your marketing team. $192 million.

Spencer Pratt could have done it for you for $300,000. Incredible. Oh, my God. $192 million. And where is he out on the polls? He's third. Your two, he's three. Look at that one.

They're mostly like this one that you're just seeing them. Got it. Got it. So he's three. And Bianco is at 10 for this one. Yeah. Man, Villegroza, what a disappointment. One percent.

Like literally. Nobody wants them. Nobody. At one point he was so famous, popular, you know, would walk around. I like it, by the way. What do you like about him? I just like it.

I get on with most people. But there's something, I like Antonio. He's, I think his heart's in the right place. He's definitely challenged the Democrat orthodoxy in a lot of issues. He challenged the teacher unions on education. He's actually the only one who's really called out the climate stuff. He's talked about opening up oil production.

Why is he doing so bad? I don't know. It's interesting because, you know, you'd think he's run, you know, two-term marathon. Yeah. It's a heavy way. I don't know. I truly don't know. I like him. All right. Sounds good. I think there was some strategy endorsement there for Villegroza. You like it and we'll see what it happened there. But final thoughts here for Californians. If they want to support, what can they do? How can they support you if they want to help? So first vote, you've got to vote. I mean, none of this stuff will happen unless we've, vote for it. And I think one of the big things that we have to have to make this change in

California is belief that it's possible because I think people have got conditioned to this idea that, well, a Republican can't win. And so you're stuck with this choice of putting up with the insanity or leaving the state. And that's a terrible choice. It's a ridiculous choice. And that idea that things can't change, I mean, I say this sometimes as a new American citizen, It's a very un-American attitude that you just can't be done. Of course it can be done. It's obvious that it needs to be done. It's obvious that we need change, that we need balance,

but you've got to vote for it. And one of the reasons I've been so, you know, I've been campaigning so hard and up and down the state for a year now, working really hard, is just to give that sense of energy and belief. And so number one is vote, vote, vote, and tell all your friends. We've got to do this and come out of this primary with energy. and we always need money. Look, we don't have steyer money.

We don't have any of that. We're very frugal. It's a lean startup kind of deal, but we're spending a little bit on advertising, and we've got to get that message out because, you know, if the truth is somewhere between those polls, that it's still too close for comfort, and you could end up with this two-democrats scenario,

which is a disaster for California and for the country, because we can't have our biggest state, our most beautiful, amazing state, that's generated so much incredible innovation and leadership for America from Hollywood to tech to our great farming industry, life sciences, biotech, you know, just so much that comes out of California.

And imagine how great it would be for our country if we have a California that is firing on all cylinders again. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. What most people don't know since the last 100 years, I just pulled it up with the team, what percentage of the last 100 years in the state of California? California, the governor was a Republican versus a Democrat.

You know, 61%? Interesting. Republican, only 39% Democrat. That's amazing. And if you look at all time, Republican 20 to 17, I think it's time for California to go back to what it is to your original Republican governor days. We had an Armenian governor, Duke Median. I don't know if you knew that or not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a governor. Glendale, very big. Massive. Massive. Armenian, and by the way, there's some crazy Armenians that are leftists join the trans LGBTQ camp, but there's a lot of Armenians to the core that raise their kids in a conservative way.

I hope they get behind you. Exactly. And folks, if you want to support, I saw the number 30,000 plus donors already, right? No, no, no, 65,000. Okay, the report here says 30. 65,000 plus donors. And probably more. I mean, that's one of the most beautiful things is I've never run for anything before.

And we've gone from nothing to. 65,000 from nothing to it. That was the last number that we put out. Great. Yeah. Go visit the site, Steve Hilton for governor.com. And if you enjoyed what was talked about today and you want to see more support, share this message with others, share the link with others, share the link with others, give financially, knock on doors, talk about it at dinners, talk to your friends, talk to your peers, get the message out there. Steve, excited to see what happens with you the next two weeks.

Thank you, you. You're obviously doing the work, and I wish you nothing about the best. Really wonderful to be with you. Thank you. And I look forward to that event you do. Yes, that's great. Well, you'll be that, right? I look forward to you doing that event.

I think it's a massive publicity stunt for everybody to say, are these people really talking about bringing their money back? I think that would be massive. And a lot of Californians would support it. Thank you. Great having you on, sir. Take care, everybody. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.