Pod Save America - Dallas Bribers Club

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

At the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Donald Trump promises that he'll give every American adult a $5,000 check if — and only if — Republicans retain control of the Senate and House, a plan so absurd that even his own defenders can't explain it. Jon and Dan process the most ridiculous moments from the 18 hours of speeches, including JD Vance previewing his presidential campaign, Mike Rogers and Ted Cruz using the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to paint Democrats as terrorist sympathizers, and Democratic Senator John Fetterman's surprise video appearance. Then, to cap off a Republican-filled episode, Lovett talks to Steve Hilton, the Republican nominee for California governor, about his relationship with Trump and what it'll take to tackle California's housing crisis.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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On today's show, we recorded late so we could bring you our analysis of every single minute of the unprecedented first of its kind, world historic Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump bribed voters with $5,000 checks he can't deliver. J.D. Vance tried to both position himself as the heir to Trump's legacy, but also run away from it. Republicans marked the 25th anniversary of 9-11 by accusing Democrats of supporting terrorism, and even John Federman made a cameo. Then because this episode is dedicated to Republicans trying to sell themselves, you'll hear Love It's conversation with the Republican candidate for governor of California,

Steve Hilton. That thing's still happening? Not a joke. Reached out, we said, sure, we'd love to chat. Javier Bacera, if you're out there, call us back maybe. We'd love to talk to you too. We've been trying. Okay, Dan, let's get right into it.

On the off chance that you all weren't glued to the special two-night run of Donnie Does Dallas, here's a taste of what you missed. And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a caretaker, so God gave us Trump. God bless the greatest president in the history of this nation. Donald J. I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail.

Nobody knows that dumb has a bee at the end of it, mostly most of it most of it. D-U-M and that's fine. Democrats, extreme candidates won't rip that heart out of our chest. They hate our culture. needs to be American. Please, if you don't mind, don't anybody go to the bathroom? The Democrat Party are advocates for evil.

I am not going to be in the same party. He ran a campaign to beat meat. He called it beat meat. I don't know what the hell he meant by the... Mohammed Al-Fayat. It's never Mohammed Jones. I think we should call the Hormo Strait.

We should call it the Trump Strait. I should get something out of it. The Trump straight. Because you know, Lake Ontario, we're going to call that now Lake American. New Mexico, we think it should be called New America. Someday there'll be a time when I don't get back to the original subject, and then you can say he's had it. These people are sick.

So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. Please pretend that I'm running and get out and vote on November 3rd or sooner. Because in actuality, I really am. I'm running. Now, I'm biased, but I think that was a fantastic representation of all the programming from both nights. That was mostly from the first night.

If you're wondering what happened the second night, we watched, same thing. Yeah, same thing. Same messages, sometimes the same exact lines. Sometimes the same people. You see that supercut, you watch that supercut, you got the gist. You got the gist of the two-day convention in Dallas. We saved you about 18 hours. The Fox News viewing.

Yep. A lot of glazing of Donald Trump. A lot of scaring people about the terrorist sympathizing commie Democrats in Hassan Piker. A lot of Husson Piker. And that's about it. Dan, you were telling me earlier how much you loved those last couple rhetorical flourishes from Donald Trump in that supercut about how he is on the ballot. Pretend he's on the ballot. I'm on the ballot.

I'm actually running. He did it. He again, he repeated it. There was a refrain tonight. He reprised that in his speech. We're recording this Thursday night because we hate ourselves. But he repeated that tonight many times as well. So the message is clear.

He wants to, he wants everyone to pretend he's on the ballot. I think it's important to set the stage here for how all this happened. But as Trump gave a two-hour speech last night. Two hours. Which wasn't even on the schedule to begin with. Just shy of two hours. On Wednesday night. Just shy of two hours.

Tonight, J.D. Van speaks for a long time. in J.D. Vance's speech. And then Trump gets up there and says, I'm going to be brief, tired of speaking. I have invited this opera singer to perform for you, and I'm going to stand here, and you're going to listen to his music. And then he gave, I think, about 30 minutes of the same speech from the night before. Yeah, just a condensed version in his mind condensed. And we were watching it and we're like, should we add some clips from this to the supercut? We're like, no, because it's literally all the same shit, except for one part that we may play at the end. Yes, which is truly a phenomenal part.

So now I think we have to play it. It's hard to take any of this seriously because it was so absurd and so bad. But the fact that Donald Trump stood up there at a time which his approval rating is in the low 30s, at a time in which we are mired in a war in Iran that has caused oil prices went up $10 today during the Republican convention. Diesel hit its highest price ever. at many gas stations. It hit $9.99 a gallon and it can't go higher. They don't have another space to do it.

I don't know why I'm laughing. They never anticipated diesel this expensive. It's awful. It's going to make all our lives more expensive. And the Houthis are out there just about to control another straight. And that Trump would say, go out there and say, I'm on the ballot, which is the Democratic message. That is what we want.

We don't want this to be a race necessarily about Susan Collins or Mike Rogers or John Hughes said. This is about whether you want Donald Trump in charge of everything else. You want to send a message Donald Trump. And he's saying send a message to me. The 60 some percent of you who are unhappy with my presidency, I'm reminding you today that I am on the ballot, that it is about me. So if you are unhappy with me, you should vote. Now, some Republican candidates in tough races did attend the event. John Hustead was there.

Mike Rogers was there. Many did not. There was no Susan Collins. A lot of House, front-line House Republican candidates were not there either. Do you think that skipping this event as a Republican candidate was D-U-M? I'm trying to understand the... strategic logic behind Mike Rogers and John Hustead going. Yeah, me too.

Is it that you need money and all of the Republican money is in Dallas? And so there were a gazillion fundraisers in and around this. Is it that you were afraid that if you didn't go, you would anger Trump? Yes. And that he would then take it out on you in some way, shape, or form? I think I picked that one. I think that's the most logical answer there. Or is there some kind of calculation?

that swing voters are never going to watch this anyway, and that if you are, especially for Houston, Rogers is a real head scratcher, but especially if you're John Houston and you're in a state that Trump won by double digits, that swing voters aren't going to watch this speech or watch any of these speeches of this convention, but base voters who might be upset with you

or might be thinking about staying home, they're not going to vote for Sherrod Brown, but maybe they're not going to vote for John Houston, and they voted for Trump in 24. Maybe they're tuning in on Fox, and now they see John Houston at the convention, or I don't know. Yeah, it's, I mean, I... Maybe they're like, it doesn't hurt.

Like, so why wouldn't you go if it doesn't hurt? Yeah, I think that probably comes out. You're going to get... I mean, they've stood next to Trump a thousand times. They've praised Trump. They have, like, debased themselves for Trump. So it's not like you need this moment to do it. But the whole...

It kind of gets at the entire... sort of idea behind the convention other than just Trump wanting to feed his own ravenous ego. But I think the way that Republican strategists are like recounting this is our base is incredibly disenchanted. If you look at the CNN polls in Michigan and Maine that came out, Democrats have a double-dissue enthusiasm advantage. You see this across the board. We got to get the Republican base fired up. Here's the fundamental problem with that logic is that the sort of the Faustian bargain of Donald Trump for Republicans always was. He fires up Democrats, but he fires up Republicans. What is not true anymore is that Republicans are as enthusiastic about Trump as they used to be.

The number to watch here is his strong approval among Republicans. That number is right now 20 points lower than it was the beginning of his presidency, 20 points lower than it was right around Election Day in 2024, and 20 points lower than it was on election day, 2018. Yeah. And so now you're just, Independence and Swing Voters, Hage. you, Democrats are fired up to run against you, and you don't have the same impact with Republicans that you did before. And you can kind of feel that at the convention when Trump was

speaking, too. Yes. Because even if you're not pissed at Trump, like this is why the, as you said, the strong approval is important, even if you're not pissed at him. Like, the whole feeling I got from that convention and his speeches especially is like, man, they're just out of gas. It's over. Like that party, like our party right now is there are debates and there's the center left, versus DSA and the progressives and old and young and everyone's having. But like, at least everyone's like fighting about something. The Republicans are just like, there's nothing new there. We've been dealing with this.

We've been like 10 years of this now. And it's like, it is. It's glazing Trump and the Democrats are going to kill you. That's it. They don't have anything else to say about anything. And like their culture warship that they sprinkle in. That is like also sounding extremely old and tired in all the lines we've heard before. In terms of people actually tuning in, obviously, we're recording this Thursday night

so we don't have the Thursday night ratings, but Wednesday night where Trump gave his two-hour speech, I think it was two and a half million people. Which is flat over what Hannity gets normally at the exact same time on Fox. Right. So that's from Fox because CNN and MS didn't carry it. The networks did not carry it. OAN and C-SPAN and Newsmax, I guess. You could probably catch it there.

but, you know, that's just kind of speaking to the choir. So it doesn't sound like this. And I was looking at that, you and I always look at that what's resonating newsletter. Yeah, what's happening online? Nothing, not nothing about the convention was being discussed online today at all. It's a real, nothing. It's just, it's, this gets to your point that just everyone can feel that the Trump era is essentially over. He's not gone.

He's still very dangerous. You can do very, very bad things from the next two years. We're living that. That's right. But his political relevance is over. He's less interesting to people. He's less frightening to people. His ability to dominate the conversation is greatly diminished.

He's just, he's still talking. Fewer people are listening. If you're people care. And that just you can feel that through the entire convention. Now, speaking of non-official party conventions, have you heard of any big gatherings coming up the Democratic side, perhaps a history-making, incredible gathering that's going to come up in just a couple months. Well, it would have some of the smartest strategists, some of the least boring politicians?

And us. Are you referring to the one, the only CricketCon, 2026? I am. I am. I am referring to the one and only Cricket Con here in an organic plug. Yes. Because we love an organic plug. and to let everyone know that there are still tickets available. Not many, but there's still tickets available.

There's still discounted tickets available if you become a crooked subscriber. And by the way, it is a perfect time to become a crooked subscriber. There's no better time. There's no better time because you get ad-free episodes of all your favorite podcasts and you get to support all the great work we're doing here to try to push back against right-wing media. And so you just have to go to cricket.com slash friends and become a friend of the pot. I'm going to add to this because we did not do a good enough job pitching this.

Recently, and Elijah yelled at us. Yeah, he did. Which was a weird, you see that's not here nor there. Look, we are 60-some days in the election. Polls are coming out every single day. Some are good, some are bad, some are frightening, some are hopeful. if you want to survive

these next few months here there's only one way to do it, John. Polar coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. How do you get Polarcoaster with Dan Pfeiffer? You subscribe. Anyway, I think that was a good plug, Elijah. Yes, just hopefully Elijah will get off our ass for a minute. So believe it or not, Dan,

buried around the one hour mark of Trump speech on Wednesday night, there was something of an announcement, probably too generous to call it a policy proposal. Let's listen. Only I can make this promise to you. And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,

because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a huge. dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Yeah, sure, pal. Even Trump's biggest fans didn't seem totally sold on this one, in part because it would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion, and also it will never happen. Here's Fox's Laura Ingram, asking Trump a pretty reasonable follow-up when she interviewed him on Thursday after the speech. Why not just give the money now? If you have the money, why not give it now? I'll tell you what, because the Democrats can't do it.

Because with them it's negative growth. With us, it's so positive. What? What? What? What do you think of this one? What do you think of this one? I was saying this to love it earlier.

We did a YouTube thing. Like, it seems to me that the entire purpose of this was, there's a lot of people out there who don't pay a lot of attention to politics. And I'm going to try to fool them because if they are scrolling through their phones or looking at a screen and they see Trump wants to give $5,000, maybe they will have no idea that I could have given them a dividend over the last two years and in fact promised to do so, never did, even though I've had a Republican Congress for the last two years. And maybe they'll just not know any of that and just think, oh, I'll vote Republican and get

$5,000. And they're just counting on those low information voters who don't pay much attention to politics to just to fool them, basically. No one is that dumb. What goes along with being a low information voter... This is America. I'm confident. There are people who are already in Trump's cult who will believe him.

There is no one who is skeptical of Trump who thinks he's going to give them $5,000 that they vote for Republicans. It doesn't survive like one Google search. Yes. Well, it's not even that. I mean, every person knows that paying someone for a vote is a crime. That's one. Two, Trump has already promised them a $5,000 doge dividend, which he did not give.

He also just has already been giving out money to people from the tariffs, but not to people, to corporations. Like, it's so stupid. The people who he's trying to fool are the people who are the most skeptical politicians making insane promises. This is another example that everyone from Trump to his aides and the entire Republican Party are just fucking mailing it in. This is one of the stupidest, most embarrassing ideas that any politician has ever offered in United States history. It's so insane. It's so stupid. It can't be done.

It costs basically the entire non-defense discretion, non-entitlement portion of the entire government budget for this. It would massively increase inflation. These are checks three times larger than the stimulus checks, which were limited people who made $75,000 or less. So he wants to give $5,000 to Elon Musk for voting for him. Like, what a stupid fucking idea. This is not a, he's going to give the $5,000, pretend to give the $5,000 to people who don't vote for him. Yeah, that's the other thing, too. Everyone gets it.

It's fair. This is fair. Everyone gets the $5,000. The billionaires, the millionaires, everyone. But no one's getting it because when he wanted to give like a $1,000 dividend or a $2,000 dividend or less, reporters went and interviewed all the Republicans in Congress. And they all said, no, we don't want to do this because it would increase the deficit and increase inflation because we are in still an inflationary environment, thanks to Trump and his tariffs and his war.

And so Republicans don't want to do it. And then he also said in an interview Thursday, oh, well, I don't think I need the Republican Congress to do this. I can just, I can just cut the check and give the money, which is also not true at all, not legal. There's no money. There's no money. There's no money.

There is the cost of, they said they pay for it with tariff money. 300 billion. The cost of this is an order of magnitude greater than the entire. the tariff money that we have brought in. About four times. About four times the amount. And we're already giving, we're already giving that money away back to Amazon, Apple, Walmart, etc. Because the tariffs were illegal. Yeah. It has been enjoyable listening to various Republicans try to defend this or at least answer it. I think Ted Cruz was like, well, it depends on how it's structured. J.D. Vance was like, well, I think that maybe we could we could make it so that the

rich people don't get the 5,000. And also, you know, I think, oh, he said, I think he just said, yeah, maybe the rich people won't get the 5,000 and then didn't mention it at all in his speech tonight. In fact, no one mentioned it in their speech, but Trump, I don't think. The Times story about how Republicans were really super into this idea, had this great line about how defending the policy was left to Trump's more intellectually versatile allies. Who are they? Ted Cruz.

Oh, yeah, that's true. That is true. Ingram did manage to get one clear definitive answer out of Trump on a related issue. Take a listen. Are you going to campaign harder than you've ever campaigned in this month? But isn't this just as important, Mr. President? I mean, your whole legacy is on the line. It's never as important. Look, I'm campaigning for other people.

When you say my legacy, I'll be a block. I'll end up being a blocker. I'll block all their bad stuff for two years. It won't be the same, but I'll be a blocker. What can I tell you? That's interesting. I didn't see the end of that before. He's kind of resigned to potentially losing this thing.

It was a great question from Laura Ingram. It's not the answer she expected. That was going to say, yeah, it was not the answer to respect. More of a bad answer than a good question. But it kind of, he got caught in his own trap there because it's like, pretend I'm on the ballot. It's all about me. It's all about me.

She's like, okay, well, it's all about you. So are you going to campaign really hard? No. Well, the difference here is what was on the ballot last time was not just his presidency, his freedom. Yeah, his freedom, his freedom. And, like, he also is going to, I mean, he's going to, if he loses the midterms, he's just going to say the Republican sucked.

Yeah, they ran away from him. Yeah, they ran away from him and they weren't good candidates and he tried his best and he campaigned as hard as he could. But like, what are you going to do? It's not Trump. I tried to make it Trump, but it wasn't the real thing. People are smart and they can see when it's, when it's the real thing on the ballot or when it's not.

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statewide helix sleep.com slash crooked. Before Trump took the stage to close things out on Thursday night, Janie Vance gave the keynote address. It was hard to cut down such a masterpiece to just a few highlights, but we tried. Let's listen. Democrats are running candidates who will tell your children what they're allowed to say, how they're allowed to live, and importantly who they ought to hate. Because that's what the Democrat Party is about in 2026.

It's not about you. It's about foreign fraudsters, and it's about who they hate. And we got to send their asses packing in November. The country does not belong to the radicals. It does not belong to the bureaucrats. It does not belong to the highest bidder. This country was handed down to us by our parents and their parents before them. We received this national birthright,

and we are going to fight for it by elected Republicans this November. We just had a protester interrupting us and waving the Mexican flag. Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there, I'll buy you the plane ticket. If you ever feeling down about our country, ladies and gentlemen, just take a look at the beautiful ladies right behind me. Ladies, I'd like to know what you had to drink

because I'll take two of them when I'm done. What did that mean, do you think? I think they were drunk and they were being rowdy. And I didn't notice it until he said it, and then I was watching them for, for the rest of his speech, and they did seem a little boisterous, perhaps. I don't want to accuse them.

He was so surprised at people being excited at one of his speeches. He assumed they were drunk. What do you think, Dan? Did he win you over with that speech? He did not win me over. I am very curious of your take as a speechwriter on this speech.

I'm going to tell you right now what I think the reception is going to be. I think that the sort of the press in the establishment, sort of the political establishment writ large is going to be very impressed with at least the reception to this speech and view it as the

official, unofficial, I guess, kickoff of Fance's presidential campaign where he made his most compelling case for himself today. That's how I think it's going to be covered. I do think they'll definitely see it as the unofficial kickoff and I can't tell how they'll receive it, but why do you

think they will receive it well. Because people generally don't applaud when he speaks. And they applaud it here. And I think he... How would you describe the case he made for himself? Not breaking, not stepping on a rake in the middle of it. I don't think, like, I don't think he made a very good case for himself, but I don't think the people, that sort of the figure skating judges who grade these things, pay a lot of attention

to the consistency of the argument or how the message plays outside of the room. I think in this room, he did a much better job of sounding kind of sort of sane and coherent compared to all the other speakers who sounded fucking bananas, Trump most included. I think he's got a potentially unsolvable problem. Oh, yeah. That's for sure. Which is like, and now, I'll start with your first point about like how it, how it gets judged.

Like, my favorite line from you has been, the Democrats are like reading the stage directions. It's like all I can think about now when I see a Democratic politician. JD Vance to me is the Republican version of reading the stage directions. And he's also the Republican version of another problem we have in our party,

which is the too many front of the class students who are like, I'm going to study my way to the presidency, and I'm going to make sure I listen to all my strategists and do all the things that I'm supposed to do and that poll well, and I'm going to write the speech in the right way, and I'm not going to be crazy like this one,

and I'm going to walk this tight rope. And I think he is a smart person. I don't think J.D. Vance is dumb. I think he's very smart. And so I think he thinks that he is going to study his way to the presidency, write the speeches, work on the speech, deliver the speeches that he's supposed to give,

deliver the messages that he's supposed to give, and it is going to fall incredibly flat because it doesn't sound authentic. He sounds so phony. He doesn't have the problem of sounding crazy. That is absolutely right. But that is no longer, I think, how he is going to be judged as the 28 race goes on.

Like, there is no other Trump, right? And Trump is crazy. and then there's Republicans who sound crazy and all that kind of stuff. But, like, I just think that he doesn't, his problem is not that, like, he sounds too crazy. His problem is that he's too fucking boring and phony and smarty. And, like, I just don't, I don't believe that he sold any of those fine lines that I'm sure, like, I don't know if they pull well, but they're, like you said, I guess they're not crazy, right? But, like, I just don't think it's going to wear well. Yeah, I don't think it's going to get anyone.

I don't think it's going to get anyone excited, and I don't think he is going to be able to elide the, I think he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Correct. Which is he thinks that, like, he had this whole part in the speech about, he talks about Charlie Kirk, right? This is the day that, the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. And he remembers Charlie, and then he uses Charlie to talk

about the war in Iran. He doesn't say Iran, but he says, Charlie hated war. And I know that there are a lot of young men who loved Charlie, and we're big fans of Charlie now, are disillusioned. And, you know, if you're disillusioned

and maybe it's about war, just know that, like, you can have a disagreement and be on a different side of one issue and still not throw out the baby with the bathwater and vote for the crazy Democrats, vote for us. And it's like, and if he thinks

that he is going to solve, the problem of Donald Trump breaking his promise to not get involved in more wars by like some rhetorical flourish where he's like using Charlie Kirk's death. Like I just, it's not going to work. It is it is too cute by half. I want to stipulate a few things here. Sure. I was speaking to how I think the press is going to receive it. And that's a question of low expectations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the expeditions of J. Vance are understandably quite low because he's a pretty terrible public speaker. From a pure performance, right? Like the how he sounded, how he was received, how he filled the podium.

This was probably one of his better moments. And there aren't a lot of good moments. So it's not saying at times. I think I agree with you that J.D. Vance is not as smart as he thinks he is. But I think his bigger problem is that the voters are smarter than J.D. Vance thinks they are. Yeah. Because everything, like you can listen to it. And it is, like he really is like a softest.

Like, it is, he, like, is weaving these arguments together, and, like, each individual sentence makes sense. Then you step back, particularly if you ever knew and I both down this, you'd go back and read the speech afterwards, and it makes no fucking sense. And it's, like, full of inherent contradictions. His problem is, and this is nothing to do with the kind of species, like, how he delivers a speech, even becomes great to giving speech, is not going to solve the problem, is the only good politicians are politicians who truly understand who they are.

they've gone through some period of self-discovery. And JD Vance has no idea who he is. He is a shape shifter, a code switcher for whatever works in the moment. He is one way when he's at Ohio State, he's one way at Ivy League Law School. He is one way when it seems like Trump's going to lose. He's one way when he thinks Trump's going to win. And he is just constantly trying to do what he thinks makes sense in that moment. Because there is no set of values.

or morals or personal code that dictates how he should respond in a moment. And so that inauthenticity is what, that is like the core defining principle of every losing presidential candidate of this half century. It is what killed Al Gore. It's what killed John Kerry. It is what destroyed Mitt Romney. It is what hurt Hillary Clinton. Like, across the board, this is why people lose.

And he has all the makings of a losing presidential candidate. Now, Democrats have to dominate the right person because sometimes bad candidates do win, but he is a very, very flawed candidate. But you could, like, I was watching that speech and every single line, you're like, I know what he's doing here. He was like hitting the maha notes at the top where he's talking about checking all the boxes. Checking all the boxes there, exactly. And then even the way he handled the heckler seemed, I mean, we were all joking, false flag,

false flag because it was so like, there's the. heckler, I'm going to stop the speech. And I wrote this whole speech, but now I'm going to have to do, and he actually said this. Now I'm going to have to do something different and turn to the heckler and go back to me. And then he was like so proud of himself. And it's like, you know, maybe it was just in the moment and it wasn't staged or whatever. I'm not going to fucking throw out any conspiracies. But it was like even that, which was potentially ad-lib, seemed like it was staged.

And, I mean, it's just, it's so phony. It's so phony. You really saw that, not just in the speech, but when he had, doing that interview a few weeks ago where he's like decides he's like, this is the moment I'm going to defend Usha against Abdul, El-Sayed. And it just seems like even that. It seems the whole thing about it's Pawpal and Abdul. It all seems so fake.

And that part, like that would work his whole, you know, retort to Abdul. That would work if people didn't remember that he was the guy who went out there and said, yeah, we pushed these completely. unproven false conspiracies that Haitian immigrants were eating pets because I disagree with Joe Biden's policy of allowing them to legally be in this country. And so I'm going to admit that we just pushed false conspiracies because we wanted to get attention to that fact. It's like, we all remember you said that. So like you can't be all offended by accusations of racism now and xenophobia now

when we all just remembered what was happening in that campaign and suddenly be so offended by all this. I mean, even his like, like he had this line about Tala Rico, right? And he's doing the like, Tala Rico can't stop talking about

transgender children, which is crazy. You know, right. It's like there was one time at one interview where they were like, Tala Rico's like, I love transgender children because he'd just seen them that day and they've like made a whole thing about it, right? And so his line is a guy that age

who was so obsessed and focused on transgender children. I don't know about you, but I never want to see that guy's web browser history. It's not a good place. That is a line that also wouldn't survive one follow-up question from a new reviewer. It's like, oh, so you're saying that what evidence do you have that James Talarico wants to fuck kids? Is that what you're, because you're talking about his web browser? Like, what are you talking about? I would love to hear J.D. Vance answer that because he would fall apart. because it's a line. Trump could handle that.

You asked Trump that question. He would do his Trump thing and he would get past it and it would be like, oh, well, it's Trump, whatever. J.D. Vance couldn't get away with that because there is no answer to why did you say that line.

Yeah. Yeah. What did you make, put aside Vance's performance. Like this was the clearest distillation. And one thing I'd say about the speech is just it was really a lot about him for just a midterm campaign speech.

So he really was viewing this as this as sort of his introductory presidential election speech. But let's just put that aside for a second. This was the clearest installation, I think, of what their campaign strategy is, which is the, even if you don't love the Republicans

and the things we've done, it's not as good as you want, prices are still high, we are at war. The Democrats are fucking crazy. Do you, like, do you think he handled that part well? Is that strategy worry you at all?

I don't think he handled it. Like, again, he went through, you know, he went through the, the deleted tweets of, many a Democrat. Well, that's what I'm saying, though. It's like, if I was trying to make that argument, I think there are maybe not like, okay,

saying that, you know, he's talking about the deleted tweets from Will Lawrence and Michigan 7 where he said like, fuck the nuclear family in a tweet, right? I think it is hard to pin that on the entire Democratic Party since no one else has said anything close to that, even in their deleted tweets. And so, which is, again, is something that it's easy, for someone to find out. And so if I was going to make that argument, there's plenty of other positions

that Democrats have taken, and maybe a lot of Democrats have taken, that I would try to build an argument around about why those positions are out of step with the American people. Just like nutpicking a few tweets from like one House candidate here and one House candidate there, I just think that act is going to get old. The whole party has this problem. Trump had this problem, especially in 2020, which is like J.D. Vance talks like he is so fucking online. Yeah, that's exactly right. And the reason we all get it and probably the reporters too, I mean, to your earlier point about how they judge it, like everyone who is super online and super engaged in politics and political fucking junkies who can't get off their phones

know all the things J.D. Vance was talking about. He's going to get out on that trail as a candidate for president and start saying some of this shit. And most people are going to be like, what do you mean? What are you talking about? Yeah, this is that you've hit on his big Like, Trump is overly versed in the lore of MAGA stuff and right-wing media. That's because Natalie Hart prints out and hands it to him. But J.D. Vance is like in the dark corners of the Internet. His brain is – Trump's brain is not warped by the algorithm because he's not looking at the Internet in that same way. J.D. Vance is.

And he is emblematic of this much bigger problem that you see with Republican strategists, which is their brains are all pickled, too. And whenever I'm doing political experts react and reviewing Republican ads, they're all two steps over the line because they require some sort. They both require a belief in the worldview of Fox News about what is actually happening out there, that we all live in this dystopian world where, you know, MS-13 is killing everyone on the street corner. And you have to understand, like, chapter and verse of the lore of MAGA. and like that Jady Vance has it, but that speech had that problem.

Like you and I were like, that's Will Lawrence's tweet, but no one knows who Will Lawrence is or that's his tweet or what the fuck he's talking about. Right. Like, look, he's trying to put a, like, I think every vice president

who's running probably has to look at the president and be like, okay, what don't people like, even in my party about the president that I served with and like, how am I going to differentiate myself? Mostly. Not everyone does that, apparently.

Not everyone does that, but the successful ones. And clearly in this speech, you could tell that J.D. Vance, like, there's so much talk about family and kids. And he wants, like, a family-friendly MAGA version. And that's what he's going to try to put forward. It's very, like, national conservatism. He wants to, like, sand the rough edges off that. He doesn't want it to appear too mean. But, like, if he does have any kind of belief, it is the belief that he has espoused many times in speeches that we probably won't hear again, where he talks. talks about it's blood and soil nationalism. Yeah. Like that's, that is what he believes, if he believes anything. And I think he's smart enough to know that that doesn't wear well with the general electorate at all.

And so he's trying to sand down the rough edges on it, but it's just, I don't, it's going to be hard for him. It's going to be hard. But we'll see. Did you see Marco Rubio today asked about his potential plans to run for president in 2028? And he said, quote, I don't know what the future holds, but I have no plans at this time? At this time.

Did you take anything from at this time, or do you think it's just reading too much into it? No, I think I took it very specifically at this time, meaning he's keeping the door open. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how that friendship with Vance, that close friendship, wears over time, and then in the coming months. If we can get a Vance, Rubio, Hague-Sept, Ted Cruz primary? Oh, my God. Because Ted Cruz is deadly serious, and he's talking. Ted Cruz is running. He hates Vance. You know, we may get. Wow.

I'm trying to think of that. That's quite a stage. I don't think Rubio and Vance both run together, right? My suspicion is Rubio does not run, but Vance obviously runs and maybe Cruz runs too. Yeah, I think that's probably right. Anyway, we have enough time to talk about that later. You're hearing this on the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, and while Republicans chose not to align the convention with the day itself, the people on stage and on Fox News did take the opportunity to paint Democrats as terrorist sympathizers, particularly, Muslim Democrats like Abdul al-Sayed and Zoran Mamdani. Let's watch. I know what they're capable of, and I know what happens when America becomes afraid to call

evil by its name. September 11th isn't something that we deserved, no matter what Abdul's buddies say. Abdul's is funding his campaign with money from terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. He wants to represent Palestine. I want to represent Michigan. And on 9-11, Could anyone have imagined that Comrade Mondami would be the mayor of New York? When he goes down to 9-11, I hate to even say this, Laura, but you know, it's a message to Osama bin Laden that, look, we conquered New York. It's going to be a tough message to deliver. Yeah, there's a lot of... To Osama bin Laden.

There's a lot of questions about what's going on there. One... That crazy woman was an Izzy City Councilwoman in New York, so that's not... elected official. That's cool. That's not just a fucking, you know, random guest on Fox. I had seen that clip a thousand times, and it was until you told me that she was an elected official, paid for it with taxpayer dollars. People in New York have voted for her. She has received some votes from people.

There's just, like, when we are afraid to call evil by its name, is this name evil? Is that what Mike Rogers is saying? Or have we stopped saying evil now? Like, I'm not sure what is going on there. It is true that no one on September 11th, 2001 could have imagined my Dono B. Mayor because he was nine. So that was surprising. I mean, what do you make of all of this?

This has been a real drumbeat that is now crescendoed here on the anniversary of 9-11 with, and mostly it's about Abdul and Michigan. I mean, they're still doing it to. It's about Asan Piper is what it's about. It's about Asan Piker. Well, it's, I think it's mostly about Abdul, but it's trying to, they're using Hassan Piker as the easiest way to try to stop Abdul from winning. I just am not sure.

Like this is Fox has been doing this for 25 years now. There is this a, there's been this sense that after 9-11, like the way to win was to portray Democrats is on the side of Al-Qaeda. And that worked in 2002. It worked in 2004. It stopped working in 2006. It hasn't really worked since then. And with every passing year, it's less effective.

And I just, there are a lot of things that they were going to do usually. I'm not even that is just pure anti-Muslim bigotry. Nothing else. It's just incredibly offensive and just openly racist in every way, shape, or form. There are a lot of things they're going to do to try to paint Abdul outside of sort of the mainstream American political conversation. A lot of it is going to be racist. It is going to be quite offensive. I really don't think the one thing that Hassan Piker said, which he has apologized for, about 9-11, is a particularly effective attack.

Do you think it's even more effective when they spent a lot of time at the convention showing giant photos of Hassan and Espido? I don't know how that would affect the Republicans. I'd like to see their web browsers. All right, one last topic to touch on here reluctantly. On Wednesday evening, John Federman made a surprise appearance by video to introduce his fellow Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick. Let's watch. Big room of Republicans in Dallas. Yes, I'm Senator John Federman, Pennsylvania.

Yes, I'm a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I'm a common sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life. I have this opportunity to introduce this great American, a great senator, and yes, he's in a different party,

but I'm proud to count him as my great friend. So for everybody in Dallas, I'm here to introduce Dave McCormick. Compelling piece of content, regardless of how you feel about his appearance. So this got a lot of attention. Of course, Democrats were already fuming at Fetterman for cozying up to Republicans.

Love it and I talked about this on YouTube on Thursday, but would you like to weigh in on this? Yes. I find it very irksome. that he did this. I think that the fact that John Federman today is the exact opposite of what John Federman ran on only four years ago. And that is incredibly frustrating. And it is a real disservice and betrayal to the virus Pennsylvania. But people don't let you in on the secret. We have one goal and one goal only. Keep John Federman in this party for the next two years until he loses his primary in 2028. But she will certainly lose because his approval

when Democrats is like 45 points underwater. Yeah. So it sucks. It is annoying. He still votes with us 90% of the time. He's mostly just trolling us all of the time by going on Fox News and doing very, very annoying things. And obviously the things he has said about Israel and about people who are good faith

critics of Israel are incredibly offensive and terrible. But, like, we're stuck. We're stuck with John Federman for two years. Because if he leaves, makes it that much harder to get the Senate of majority. I, yeah, I thought it was. and then I saw, like, he put out a statement right afterwards and said, I'm still a Democrat. And if we win and take back the Senate, I will be the 51st vote for Democrats like I promised I would be or something to that effect. And so, like, now, he could change his mind, of course.

But if that's where he is right now, then that's where he is right now. And, you know, yelling about it, flipping out about it, like what I can. just what is it going to do? What is the purpose? What is the, what is the, what is the usefulness of this? Each individual person can be mad and should be mad, particularly if you're a voter Pennsylvania, should be mad. The people of power and influence from the party who are like, get out of the party. Not helpful. We need him in the party, unfortunately. No, and the reason we need him is, I said this before, but say it again, like having him as the 51st vote, if that's what he, is, could be the difference between, you know, replacing Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or God

knows someone else with Eileen Cannon for 40 years on the Supreme Court or not. So it's like, you know, and yeah, he has broken, he has voted to confirm a lot of Trump's appointees, cabinet officials. He's broken with the Democrats on some like government shutdown stuff. but judges, 42 out of 46 Trump judges, he has voted against. And he is not voted for a single appellate court judge from Donald Trump. So even if it's just judges that he's voting with Democrats on and just voting with Democrats to make a Democratic majority leader, leader of the Senate, that's good enough until 2028. It is good enough. It's not fun, but that's what we got.

Yeah. All right, Dan, before we go, the Republican Convention did. wrap up with Trump's very similar condensed version of his Wednesday night speech given again on Thursday night. There was one new part that we should leave you all with. Let's take a watch. Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves her so much he can't even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends. I'll do it anyway.

I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. And we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that. You know what happens if you don't vote. You go to hell. You know that. Take it from that guy. That's what I'm taking religious advice from.

That's our message to all listeners too. Go vote. Go vote. Do register. Yes, no cheating. I don't think you go to hell if you don't vote. No, I don't think so either. But go vote. Go vote. All right. When we come back, Republican candidate for governor of California,

Steve Hilton. Pod Save America is brought you by Built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. Becoming a Billed member means earning points on every housing payment. No matter where you live, built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, lift rides, Amazon.com purchases. future housing payments and more.

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First, download the built app. Second, link any credit or debit card to the app so purchases at your local spot become even more rewarding. And third, ask the neighborhood concierge in the app pretty much anything, and it'll alert you about exclusive member benefits near your home. Download the built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com slash crooked. That's j-o-in-b-l-t.com slash crooked. Use our link so they know we sent you. He's the Republican nominee for governor in the state of California. Steve Hilton, welcome to the pot. It's great to be here. So I want to start by saying that I appreciate that you reached out to the show to come and talk to us. I give you a lot of

credit, especially when we have not been able to book Democratic candidate, Javier Becerra. Is that right? We have, we have, we tried in the primary. We are still trying. I believe we have not heard back from our most recent inquiry. Well, maybe he'll do it. Maybe the best service I can give you is like, finally, you'll get Avia now that I'm. I think it's going to work, actually. I actually do. Now, I want to start with this. What is your pitch to Democratic voters in this state? Yeah. who may be frustrated with democratic governance here, but cannot imagine voting for a candidate endorsed by Donald Trump.

I totally get that, just to be clear. I'm on the road the whole time in California, and we're doing events up and down the state, town halls, hundreds of them now, and increasingly Democrats are coming. And they ask questions about that. And so I really understand, most of my friends are Democrats, and most of my life, actually, my friends have been on the other side of the,

political divide, so I totally get it. That's the first point. And it's a totally reasonable question. And I think the simple answer for me is that I'm not, first of all, I'm running for governor, not him. Secondly, I'm not an ideologue. I'm not particularly tribal, actually, when it comes to politics. Most of my career has been in business. I'm a pragmatic kind of problem solving kind of person. We can all see things are going wrong in California. I just want to, fix what's wrong about this beautiful state that's so amazing in so many ways. But we can all see it's frustratingly off track. Everything's so expensive. We can get into that. But you're not going to get someone who's trying to tell you how to live or what to do or impose any kind of,

you know, worldview in that sense. You're just going to get someone who wants to make it easier to live, to run a business, do something about some of the visible problems we have, like homelessness. That's the pitch, really. You don't have to, you can, still be anti-Trump, as many millions of Democrats in California are strongly so, and vote for me. You don't have to change your party. You don't have to change your politics. You just have to vote for change in this election. And there's one last thing I'll say, which is a very important way.

I mean, you hear the word change, you know, better than most, in elections the whole time. Actually, in this instance in California, there's another word that I think is just as important, and that is balance. So we've had 16 years now where one party's been running everything. And I just think most people would agree that's not healthy, whoever it is. In history, when you've got that kind of political dominance by one party where that's right or left, it ends badly. And I just think having a bit of balance in the mix, you know, it's very likely that not just that Democrats will control the legislature after this year's elections, but they'll continue to have a supermajority. So we're just talking about, you know, this is not a MAGA takeover of California.

just a bit of common sense balance in the mix. So I think for me, and I assume for a lot of others, to be open to voting for someone who's not just endorsed by Trump, but supports, do you continue to support Donald Trump? You believe he's a good president? No, I don't agree with everything he's done, not at all. But do you support Donald Trump right now as you're sitting here at this table? Well, would I vote for him again?

I mean, he's not on the ballot. I haven't really thought about that as a sort of operation. You don't know right now. I'm saying, do you support Donald Trump? Donald Trump is the current president. Do you support him? I think that's too broad of a question. I disagree with a lot of the things that he's doing.

I think that, again, I think these are too broad, right? I think it comes to specific things. And that's fine, but the reason I'm pushing on that, I'm sorry, I want to move off of Trump, but I think the problem, right, is that it'd be nice if we could separate what's happening in Washington, what's happening here. But I think it matters, right, because there's a threshold question for people who may be bothered by what they see as kind of feckless misrule that we have in California. I am, right?

But I worry, right, that, like, I would love to vote for a change, right? I worry that Javier Bessera doesn't represent that change. But there's threshold moral questions that anyone I could possibly support would have to pass. And I want to challenge you as to whether or not you pass those. That's why I'm asking us. So ask me specifics. Let's do it. What are you worried about?

So you said recently that Joe Biden won the 2020. election. Yes. Right. However, in 2020, you said it wasn't a fair election right after. You said that you wanted McConnell to have a full Senate investigation into the 2020 election to be a majority leader. You said the FBI directly interfered in the 2020 election. As recently as May, you refused to answer as to whether Biden won. Now, I understand why you would say now, and I'm glad in July you did say Joe Biden won the election, fine. I always said that, by the way. That May thing is weird. I know exactly what you're talking about. It was a, it was a classic kind of on the campaign trail thing. I was in, we were on the road and it was, I think you're talking about the MSNBC, MSNLB, exactly.

And I mean, I've always said that, I've always given that answer. I've never maintained any, that, I've never said anything different. And so they kept going on about it. I said, I've already said it. I've said it. So I don't think I've ever... You haven't evolved on this issue. Not on that one. Now, the other thing, on the, on the who won the election, no, I've never believed anything different. On those specific things like immediately after the election, when there was a lot of conversation about what happened and so on, everyone was saying what I was saying then, which is, okay, let's say, Biden was saying that. Mitt Romney was saying that. Everyone was saying what? Everyone was saying what?

that we should have a, you know, that questions have been raised about the election. We've got to make sure everyone's, you know, those questions are put to rest and properly investigated. This is where I think you're very smooth. No, but that's what Romney and Biden were saying. Very different than what you were saying. You were saying that the election is in dispute, that America is becoming a banana republic. You've recently said our electoral system is a joke. Well, it is in California.

Even the New York Times said that. We take too long to counter ballots, agreed. But what I'm hearing, right, is you're saying, that, oh, I always believed that Joe Biden won the election. However, there have been times that I've been reluctant to say so, and I support someone who is lying about the outcome of something fundamentally sacred in a democracy. But I believe Donald Trump, I supported Donald Trump's election in 2024, even though he denied the results of an election that you're saying Joe Biden won fair and free in a democracy. Again, I think we've got to be really precise about it.

I think everyone can see that the 2020 election was really messed up. It was in the COVID was going on. You had a large number of last-minute changes were made to the voting system that were done in a bit of a rush, driven by the need to accommodate COVID rules. And people couldn't, you know, like, okay, we've got to do mail-in voting because people can't show up. All these things were done. But you've also, see, this is what I mean. Now I think you're saying better things.

I think it was a uniquely messed up election. But you also said it was because Democrats wanted to boost Democratic votes to have an unfair advantage. I think the Democrats believed that more mail in voting would help them. Yes. I still believe that. I think that's what. And that wasn't because of the sort of a once-in-a-century pandemic. You don't, you think it was a crass motivation. I think, you know, there's no question that they believe. I think they still believe. You know, why did Democrats enact ballot harvesting? For example, in California and all these different rules, the seven-day counting after election day, I think, think that they believe...

Because they're postmarked by election day. Well, but not necessarily postmarked. You can hand-write it. You know, there's all these things that people just look at it, including the New York Times, as I say, and say, look, come on. These things just don't pass the smell test in terms of what makes sense for making sure people... You have elections that people have confidence in.

We get a result quickly. And I think 2020 was a uniquely messed up election. And I think that the criticisms are. made at the time and still have a totally reasonable. Now, in terms of the outcome, I mean, I've never challenged the outcome. I really haven't. But the points I make made then, I still would reiterate now that I think that there were problems with how those changes were made.

They were rushed through. That meant that you had all this kind of swirl of, you know, complain and uncertainty and whatever. Well, you... And I think that that's... It was, but I think that's, you know, that was 2020. It was the middle of the pandemic. You're trying running an election in the middle of a pandemic.

Changes were made to the system. And I think that they were done in a rush and in a way that undermined confidence in the election. I really believe that today. And so when Donald Trump, if questions results in other elections, you think that is wrong? Yeah, I said so here. I said it in relation to our elections here in California, even just recently, for example, And you don't have, and, but you see, like, this is someone that is for, for Democrats like me, it's like, we are trying to run a democracy. And one of the, the great, important things about a democracy is

you fight to the end, but you have some forbearance that if you lose, you go home and you lick your wounds, and then you try to fight another day. Donald Trump doesn't agree with that, right? Right. And that's morally reprehensible. Okay. Is it, what, is it reprehensible? Look, I want to, I, I, say, I am mad. Is it, yes, yes. But this is why, but it matters, right? I speak. This is. This is a little bit like the MS Now conversation, which is the reason that I find this conversation, I think it's an extreme view to take this particular issue and make it the determinant of an assessment about who you are and what you believe. I think it's one of many things. There's lots of reprehensible things about what politicians say and do. And so I just don't think it's how I don't, it's not how.

I think about stuff, where you have a kind of litmus test that this is the one thing where you say, because this or that person thinks that, says that, whatever, I'm not going to pay any attention to anything else. And I just, that's not how I think about it. So I'm reluctant to give these sweeping assessments of things. I disagree with what has been said about the 2020 election. Yeah, I've said that many times. I also disagree with how it was conducted.

Both things can be true. Okay. So you are the son of Hungarian immigrants. And I think you've talked quite movingly about why your family left Hungary for the UK and ultimately for the United States. And you've also talked about what it was like to be detained when, because you had a problem with your passport and there's a problem with, I believe, your son's visa. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I would just, I think people would be interested to hear sort of. like, why did your family leave Hungary, right?

And, like, what are some of the ways in which that has reflected in your politics? So there is three people involved, actually. My mother, my father, my stepfather, also hung here. My parents divorced when I was young. In England, my dad went back to Hungary. I really grew up with my stepfather. And so they came in different ways. My mom came.

I don't remember the story now, but she was, I believe she was studying English at university in Hungary and then had an opportunity to go to England for a few months. I think this is right. I don't have to check with her after this. And then met my dad who'd come to Hungary via Australia, where he went. He was a famous sports guy in Hungary. And he was the gold for the national hockey team, played in the Olympics, winter Olympics. And then when he stopped playing, I remember that there's one story that I really remember. I mean, he died when I was much younger as well. But I only spent like vacations with him.

But I do remember him telling me that after he stopped playing, he got into business, he had a paint factory. And I just remember that going, I didn't really understand what he meant. He went on and on about how the communist took his paint factory. and he was quite a stride and anti-communist, and he's quite well known. So he left after 1956 when the revolution was crushed by the Soviet Union, went to Australia with his first wife, they split up, he went to England. So they all came slightly different ways.

I think then they met in London working in the – I think they were both working in the restaurant at Heathrow Airport. Then my stepfather grew up in a village, in a rural, you know, setting in the western side of Hungary, and then his story is different as well. So he was 14 years old, and he and his brother and his classmates heard on the radio that the Russians were coming. That was the Yunnhekazor Rosok in Hungarian.

I remember him saying that phrase. And then they just ran. They were not far from the border with Austria, and they ran. And they literally climbed barbed wire fences and whatever. And he says, I mean, again, he's probably doesn't know for sure, but he says that many of them were killed in the attempt, you know, getting out. And he ended up with his brother in a refugee camp in Austria. So they all had a slightly different pathway.

So on immigration, you have sort of drawn, I think, a right distinction between illegal and legal immigration. And you've basically said some version of, in many times, that there ought to be more cooperation with ice because the lack of cooperation of what leads to the chaos and the targeting of people who are nonviolent offenders. Am I summarizing this? And the general kind of antagonistic, toxic

brew of hostility. Yeah. So the problem I have when you say that is it would be nice if that were true, but California may be attacked by Republicans for being a sanctuary state, but the sheriffs and police still notify ICE about removals. Yeah, Gavin makes that point.

Right. And ICE can still enforce removal orders here. And there doesn't seem to be a difference between cooperative and non-cooperative states. So if you're in Florida or Texas, huge a number of deportations, same as in other places. We're still hitting about something in the 70s percent of which are sort of nonviolent offenders or no convictions, right? Five percent violent. And that's true regardless of the level of cooperation. The cooperation just seems to increase the number of deportations, right?

And if you accept that as true, would that change how you think about the role of California's governor? I think the number one thing I believe is that we just got to lower the temperature. We've got to find ways of handling this better. And I think there are examples in the past of where this was handled better. Clearly, everyone is grappling with a situation where you've had 50 years of terrible. broken immigration policy in loads of different ways. And so that's just hard. You know, you're dealing with a difficult problem

because you've got a legacy of an unaddressed problem that everyone just passed the buck for years. And so I think that it's not easy. None of it's easy. But I think that the way it's been so, you know, the confrontation and the demonization and all this rhetoric, I think it makes it even harder

to deal with a hard problem. So my number one thing is, can we just lower the temperature a bit and sit down and try and figure out how we handle it? First of all, of course, as everyone knows, federal immigration policy, you don't affect that. The question for the governor is like,

how do you respond here? And that's my goal. It's like, let's find a way to work together, which Gavin already says he is doing, and if you look at California's sanctuary state law, SB 54 passed in 2017, there's a whole section in there, which I've read, a long section, which lists all the different areas where you can have, at the discretion of the state, cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

In fact, California's sanctuary state law was criticized by the left for being too accommodating on that front. But see, but this is the thing, it doesn't really just boil down to cooperation. it's, well, what kind of immigration enforcement would you support as governor, right? Because whether the kind that does, no, I don't like at all, if this is what you're getting at, just be direct about it. I really don't want to see raids into communities, into workplaces, any of that. That is not, I hate to see that.

So you oppose that? Well, I don't, I, yes, okay, I oppose it, but it's nothing I can do about it because you're not in charge of it. But if you can decide whether to coordinate, whether to, whether to deploy that. state resources to coordinate in those enforcement actions, or you can do what the Gallup, California has done and said, we're not going to break the law, but no, we're not going to participate in these actions. And then that is described as a lack of cooperation, which leads to the deployment of federal

agents in a big kind of sweep. Yeah. So I know Tom Homan, well, I've known him for years. And I, you know, his argument, you can challenge it, but I'm just, you know, his argument is that we wouldn't need to do those kinds of enforcement actions if we had more direct cooperation. And it's not true, actually, that the cooperation is as Gavin would want you to have it, because regularly in California we see stories where that hasn't happened, where people who, and we just saw a case in the Bay Area just the other week,

a brutal murder of an elderly gentleman in the community who was just a, the life and soul of the community's family bereft, the community is bereft by someone who everyone watching and listening would agree should not be in the country. An illegal immigrant who'd get multiple violent crimes and was led out by a judge and was in the community. That shouldn't have happened. And so I hear what they say that, well, actually,

this is all bullshit from the Trump administration because we do cooperate on the cases where people agree, which is the violent criminals. That isn't the case because you see stories regularly, another one just, I think, this week or last week, where you see examples of that not happening in California. Let's say those cases are wrong, but cooperation outside of those cases. Why would the lack of agreement between California and the federal government mean you need to do enforcement actions at home depots and work sites and all the rest? Because they're looking

for people that they should have been able to be, that they wouldn't need to look for because they would have been handed over by California, state, and local law enforcement. That's the argument. And so you would, would you, would you sort of deploy state resources as governor to support enforcement operations? Because here's a problem, right? Regardless of whether you would go after criminal. I wouldn't want to see them.

I don't like seeing, and I would want to not have in California those kinds of operations. Correct. Absolutely. And so I would, you know, what would I actually do? I would get on the phone with Tom, who I know, and say, right, how are we going to handle this? Because I don't want to see that. Californians don't want to see that. You know that. It's obvious that Californians don't want to see that. You've got a job to do. I've got a job to do. How are we going to do this in a calm and reasonable way?

That's what I would actually do. Right. And then the current policy is to pursue a level of deportation. that requires going after non-criminals. You can't hit the numbers. You can't do the numbers that they want to hit. But I don't know if that's still the case. I totally accept that there's been a shift over you, just the numbers, the data is clear. That in the early period of this Trump administration, the balance was mainly the kind of,

the kinds of people that the vast majority of California's Americans would accept shouldn't be here. And then that shifted, and the balance has gone in favor of those who don't, aren't in that category. And I, but I sense that it's going back in that direction. You sense it? Yes, because of the response to what happened in Minnesota, those response to what happened in Maine. Well, they've turned on the public temperature for sure. I don't think there is any evidence to suggest they've changed their enforcement priorities. They've certainly done less of the Christenome, Bavino kind of whatever, shock and awe.

glad that's gone. But they have not replaced that with a less draconian overall policy and goal. Again, my response would be to sit down and say, right, what's the deal here? What are you doing in California? We're the biggest state, with the highest population, a very large immigrant population. What's the plan? And just tell me what you're trying to do. And I'm the governor. And I'm going to make sure that we don't have these scenes and we don't have this confrontation. And yeah, we don't have those kinds of raids. I don't want to see that. Pod Save America is brought you by PolicyGenius.

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With Policy Genius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage, head to policygenius.com slash crooked to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policy genius.com slash crooked. So if you were the governor, a lot of what you'd want to do, the tax break for people making under 150, is that the number? It's not a tax break. It's no state income tax. And a number of other changes. You'd have to work with the legislature. Have you thought about how you would do that, how you would approach that? Yeah. I mean, it's a huge question. because, I mean, there's basically two questions, which is, how are you going to win?

And I do appreciate, like you said, you appreciated me being here. I appreciate you having because, you know, you're probably sitting there thinking, well, am I talking to this guy? He's got no chance of winning. But I think that there is a shot. I know it's an uphill battle, but I think that there's a level of frustration. And I think we can do this. But the second big question is, well, what can you get done in the context of a legislature

that's pretty likely to continue to have a Democrat supermajority. And the first point I'd make is that I'm used to that, right? People may know me from TV or whatever now, obviously, is a candidate. But while most of my career has actually been in business, running small businesses, doing startups and whatever, I did spend some time working in the government in the UK. I was senior advisor to the prime minister, David Cameron. He's a conservative prime minister, but it was a coalition government.

It was two parties. There's a conservative party, the liberal Democrats. And I helped, I was part of the team that negotiated the coalition agreement, I shared an office in 10 Downing Street with my opposite number from another party, from the Liberal Democrats. And so actually, temperamentally, I'm a, you know, I think that they'll find when I get there that I'm perhaps not the caricature that they've heard about, and I'm easy and constructive to work with.

That's the first point. Attitudinally, I'm looking forward to working with them. The French call it cohabitation. You know, that's, it's normal. It's not that unusual in other systems. The second point, in Washington, it's not unusual. You know, you've had examples of presidents and legislatures of, you know, different parties. So it's just unusual in California.

The second point is that in the primary here in California for governor, there were many examples where some of the other dem, not the ones that made, not necessarily Bacera, but some of the others, we constantly were agreeing with each other. I was constantly agreeing with Matt Mayhan on housing policy, for example. Katie Porter actually said at one of the debates we had that she adopted my tax plan. Now, just to be clear, then it was your first hundred grand tax-free. Now, one of the points of feedback we got in the primary was that given how expensive everything is in California, the fact that in many counties now, the official level for being low-eastern, income is 100 grand or higher, we raised it to 150 and reduced another, the flat rate tax above

that to make the math work. But, you know, Katie Porter agreed that we've got to, you know, the quickest way to get more money in people's pockets, particularly working class people, who's just paying 9.3% income tax. That's higher than the top rate in most states, is to eliminate them from state income tax altogether. Katie Porter agreed with that principle. And so I think that actually there will be things where we can work together. The other point is that you do run the executive branch and doesn't mean you can do everything. But on the regulatory front, there's a lot you can do through appointments and giving you direction to some of these agencies that are making everything so expensive and complicated in California. Are there any specific Newsome executive orders on, say, abortion access that you would repeat?

appeal? No, there'll be no change to any of that. And you support, would you be, there's obviously the looming threat of the Trump administration trying to crack down on access to abortion, abortion care. Yeah, but it's in the California, not in California because it's in the state constitution. I mean, that was passed by referendum, very overwhelmingly. Right, but there's all kinds of mechanisms the federal government can use to try to claim certain Medicaid funding can't go towards health providers that provide abortion care or family planning. Would you say clearly that you will stand up to the Trump administration to protect the access to abortion in California if they try to undermine it?

Yes, no, but I'm not sure, yeah, in principle, yeah, I haven't seen the specific things you're talking about. And do you support the right of Californians to, you? make decisions about gender affirming care? Adults, yes. Adults. So you don't, if a parent and a doctor and a teenager come to a difficult decision that a transition is in their best interest, you believe the state can stop that.

So I think that the most important work that's been done on this was actually in the UK in the National Health Service, a model that Democrats, well, certainly on the left, want to see here, universal health care, taxpayer-funded, Medicare for all. And it was the longest study, the most detailed and in-depth study, it's the Cass Review, two years plus, because there's a lot of concern about it in the UK.

And Hillary Cash is a very respected doctor in the field, and just that report is very thorough and impressive. And it says very clearly and strongly, and this is now the policy in the UK with the National Health Service that up till, you know, for children, gender dysphoria should be treated through therapy and so on, but not through irreversible surgical procedures. That's the policy now in the UK, and I think that's right. So regardless of what the sort of, that's a policy around access to state funded care, right? Yes. In the UK, yes. Right. And so what I'm saying is in the United

States where we have a different sort of sense of freedom, right? In part, that's why people oppose universal health care. They don't want the government making those kinds of decisions. You would say that regardless of who's paying for it, do you believe doctors, parents have the right to make these decisions, or can the state come in and tell them the kind of care they can't provide? Just to take an extreme example, you know, we have freedom is not unconstrained. Of course. But there's obviously, you understand it's a place to disagree. Of course.

Of course. We have many policies and laws protecting children, including protecting them from things their parents might want to do to them or with them. Of course. And this falls to that category for you. It does for me. Okay. If you were governor, would you have signed or vetoed SB 79 for housing on transit?

Because I actually don't, I can't find you having a clear position on the law. Yes. You would have signed it. I was strongly against it. I would not have signed it. I campaigned against it. You would have vetoed it. Yeah.

You don't believe in building more, enforcing states that are, forcing municipalities that are refusing to approve more housing at a time when we have a massive housing shortage. You would not support forcing them to do it. No, so just to be clear what, look, we've got to build more. I just did a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago called a new decade of building.

And we absolutely. have to build more because we have the highest housing costs in the country and the lowest time ownership. It's an absolute crisis. But I think right now, the attitude to that, and this bill 17 falls into exactly what we've seen. So the Turner Center at Berkeley, the real source of expertise on housing in California, this is actually the first issue that got me involved in this whole era of politics in California. I didn't intend it to run for governor, but I could see that this was such a massive issue. It's the number one reason, are leaving California, the housing costs.

And so I worked on a ballot initiative. This is going about four years or so now. And the components of it were to cap developer. They don't need to go into the details. The point is, although we should, because it actually gets into why housing expenses, we want to answer your question first. At that time, this is like four years ago,

there had a hundred plus bills passed and enacted in the last, in the previous, five years trying to encourage more housing to be built. And they'd barely move the needle. Things like the ADU bill and so on, just all these things. Well, one of the reasons because of obstinence at the local level preventing building, which is why this law was meant to address. Exactly. And it won't because what it's got fundamentally the wrong approach, which is that we're trying to, because of this argument about density, I completely disagree with the density argument. I think rather than try, that I think we should be expansive and open up building in places

where people actually want things to be built. And I travel all of this state, there are many, many areas where people and communities and councils want to build housing, but they're prevented from doing so because of the density argument, which says the current development boundary is perfect and we can't go any further. Now, if you look at the actual numbers on that, the proportion of our land area in California that's developed at all is about 6%. In terms of where that puts us nationally, we're about the middle, we're about sort of 20th, something like that. So we are not a, we're already pretty dense in terms of the small, the relatively small

proportion of our landmass that's actually developed. There's so much space that we could use to build the housing world. I've said, I've said, I want to see new towns and cities built. I'm a strong supporter of California forever. effort, for example. And that would mean we could build on a much greater scale, much more quickly, including the kind of housing that people want, especially when they want to start and raise a family, which is single-family homes. That's what actually the research shows people want. And therefore, this attitude of saying the only acceptable form of housing construction is apartment buildings

shoved into suburban neighborhoods. I think that's very limiting. But that's not what the law. But that's why SB 79 it says. Well, the law doesn't ban building anywhere. else. It's just, first of all, other rules do, correct. But part of the reason there's so much pressure to expand the footprint of where we can build, and I'm not against that, is because we have so thoroughly failed to build the housing required in the places where people want to work and live. But like, if you, if you, if you, if you, the housing that demand would suggest is warranted. You know, but this is by market forces.

No, I understand. But I mean, if you, you know, if you buy a single family home in a suburban neighborhood, you've, you've, you've made an investment in that particular lifestyle. And to be told that that's just going to be upended, and you're going to have apartment buildings at the end of your street with no provision for extra parking that's going to make traffic a nightmare that's going to completely change the character of a neighbor. I disagree with that. So the law, right, was written to address that insofar as cities can make their own plan to avoid violating the kind of character of neighbor. No, no. Seventy-nine is very aggressive. It's like within one mile of transit, of any kind of transit thing. There's a bio. It's a

by right to build up to seven-story apartment building. If cities and states fail, if cities and municipalities fail to create plans, I mean, Los Angeles has an alternate, Los Angeles currently has an alternate plan, right? Right now, they've voted to do an alternate plan to build housing. Karen Bass is against, like, joins me in opposing this. Of course, doesn't that make you nervous? No, you think that's great. You think that's great.

I think good for her, because she understands that the infrastructure, you know, everything, but not just transportation, but, you know, utilities and so on. It's a massive, you know, expansion of the numbers of people that need to be supported by the existing infrastructure, which can't easily and quickly be adapted like you can just throw up an apartment building, but you can't change the whole, you know, traffic plan and utilities and sewage and all that. And so I think that there's a massive issue in California. which is the state, at the state level in Sacramento, imposing things on local communities that don't want them.

And I disagree with that. Look, one of the main kind of ideas that I've championed throughout my business, actually, as well as in government and in all the things, the books I've written, is the decentralization of power. I've always believed in that. And I strongly believe it in that in this case. So I completely disagree with that whole direction of policy, the arena numbers, that's the regional housing needs assessment, the way that they're, aggressively going after places that don't build enough. And the simple way I put it is, instead of forcing housing into places that don't want it,

let's allow housing to be built and the places that do want it. Who wants it as it sort of matters, right? The vast majority of people in Los Angeles have said very clearly they want lots of new houses, lots of new housing built, they want more apartment buildings, they want more housing of all kinds, single-family, multi-unit apartments. They want all that kind of housing built.

The problem, right, is that California has a bunch of onerous rules, regulations, systems that prevent that kind of building, right? Well, just prevent any kind of building. Exactly. The delays. So while this is one, I think, relatively small part of the store in housing, the bill you talked about, the much bigger point is that we need to make it easier to build affordably. And that does take us back to the ballot initiative that I tried to make happen, which

then had two components. Number one is dealing with actually Matt Mayhan, the mayor of first. San Jose, who ran for governor didn't make it into the top two, he and I totally agreed on this, which is impact fees, developer impact fees. It's like a hidden tax on housing. The Turner Center in Berkeley estimates that in many cases, up to 20% of the cost of a new home is trade-up fees. These developer impact fees used to be a couple of grand. Now it's like way more than that, and we need to cap them. That's one part of it. Sorry, the people, you know, look at this housing thing and it's all about the nimbies and the yimbies. It's so much more than that.

me give you a second example, which is in terms of the Sequecru process. Seekw is the California Environmental Quality Act passed in 1970 or so. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote about it in abundance. It's a massive obstacle to getting anything done in California. But one of the main reasons that that's the case is not just the act itself and the rules and process contained within it, but the fact that over the years it's a private right of action has been attached to it. So anyone can file a lawsuit.

using CEQA as a pretext to block anything. 70% of CEQA lawsuits are filed to block housing. Most of those are actually filed by unions to negotiate what they call project labor agreements in order to extract benefits like what they call skilled and trained workforce, which means union members only, prevailing wage, which is two or three times market rate wages.

So there's a whole kind of system here that has, you know, over the years has built up that makes housing impossible to build affordably. Yes. agreed. I don't, and it's an emergency. It's an emergency in the same. Yes, I agree. Yeah. And yet this bill that would not stop anyone from building single family units or new towns, which should hopefully begin to address the massive shortage that exists inside of places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, right? And where we have not built enough housing to keep up with the population. You're opposing it. I don't want to force housing into places that don't want to.

But you keep saying that, but we do want it, right? It's a small subset. Wait, it's a small subset. Wait, it's a small subset. of people that take advantage of these processes, which you're criticizing, to prevent action, right? You will have, right now, there's a housing development that's meant to be built in Woodland Hills, California, on a golf course that's going to be housing, right? That's infill housing, technically. And they are suing to stop it with the help of a city council member because they're claiming it might be a habitat for Mountain Lions. Now, that's bullshit, right?

Now, the state might have to come in, and the state may have to come in to force them to do this. I think that's right, because I think they are not serving the city or the state of California. Now, that's top down for sure, and regrettably so. But to address an emergency, don't we need to have the state come in and say, hey, taking local concerns, but we need to build to prevent California from losing more people to Texas. Yeah, I agree. It's an emergency, but there's so many, But I also don't think that we should completely ignore the people who live here already and violate their property rights and also the kind of lifestyle that they've invested in. And I think that we don't need to.

But see, but this is where, I think that's wrong. I think it's an antagonistic attitude, which is that the only way we get housing is by sticking it to the YIMBs. I'm not trying to stick it to anybody. And I just don't agree with it. I don't think it's necessary because there's so much space we could be built. building in California. But you look what happens in a neighborhood, right, where they preserve the character of the neighborhood. And then the housing prices go up year after year after year. And slowly, but surely, the middle class and working class families that used to live there are priced out

and wealthier people come in. And the buildings don't change, but the character does. Yeah, but that also happens when you do the apartment approach where you've got gentrification through these luxury apartments that get built in working class neighborhoods. And that whole hipster gentrification process. You see it all over the world, by the way, not just California. That's another version of it. And that's a version of it that the people who are going to pro-forcing housing into neighborhoods agree with.

And I just think the whole conversation has just become very ideological. And I think that rather than practical. And I just think there's a much simpler solution, which is to free up more of our land for building, including in the form, which is what we used to do. in California when we were like the build, build, build and the suburbs of Southern California, the UC campuses, the state water project, the amazing things we used to build. We can do that again. And that's why I've said a lot that we, I'm excited about the potential if we can just get

people to buy into it of new towns, new cities, new university campuses. You know, we've got to be much more expansive in our attitude. Right now, it feels very narrow and pinched and kind of antagonistic, and I don't think it's necessary to do it like that. And I, and by the way, fine. But you understand that building those new developments also puts strain on highways and resources. Build new ones. It's crazy to say we can't.

I really am abundance is what we should be going for. But in the same way that we have to improve our infrastructure inside of the cities. Yes, but it's much easier in a greenfield site. It's easier, quicker. Look, we can. Just like you're doing in tech. I mean, that's what they're doing in Texas. Building, which is why everyone's moving to Texas.

There is a lot, well, yes, there's a lot of reasons people are moving to Texas, which I would agree with you on. But a lot of times when you build a community and highways and roads, the tax base ultimately cannot support the long-term maintenance of these kind of less dense areas. That's just a fact of what happens in some of these sort of sprawling communities. I spent a lot of time in, you know, parts of San Diego County, Orange County, you know, inland empire where that's kind of developed. has worked fine. There are tradeoffs that go along with this. That's all. All right.

You said voters shouldn't decide the election based on who they hate in Washington. Okay. One role of the governor is filling Senate vacancies. Oh, my goodness. So Adam Schiff is Frog March to Guantanamo. Yes. There's an unexpected vacancy in the Senate. Would you pledge to nominate a Democrat given that the two seats currently held were voted for?

You would? Yeah. I pledged to nominate. a Democrat, if there's a vacancy. I mean, I just think you've got to honor the vote that people took. You said you're friends with half of Trump's cabinet, which half? Okay, there's a form of speech. I don't know.

Maybe half. I don't know. So I can tell you the names, right? So Brooke Rollins, the Ag Secretary, Pete Exeter. I know obviously from, you know, we're colleagues at Fox, Bobby Kennedy, Doug Bergam. Tulsi's no longer. Was she in the cabinet? I don't know if that counted.

Is D&I technically cabinet level? No, no. She's not there anymore. Who else? I don't know. I'm hearing from a producer. There's 16 members of the Catholic. Okay, so maybe half is just slightly.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that, oh, Sean Duffy, transportation, big role for us. I guess it's a Fox News thing. You have a lot of friends there. A couple of them were actually at Fox News. And then I'm just trying to think probably the people I, I mean, Bobby Kennedy, I've gotten to know since I left Fox. But some of them I probably would have met,

there and interviewing them and that kind of thing. You are. Tulsi, Gabba. Actually, I tell you when I met Tulsi was when I ran my startup crowd pack, which was a platform for trying to get big money out of politics. Great job, by the way. I'm kidding. I know, exactly.

Well, you know, you've got to try these things. And we met, it was at a conference in New Orleans, a kind of, I can't remember what it was called. It was great. Jennifer Lawrence was the keynote speaker. It was a very, and I met Tulsi and who else is. Oh, Mike Gallagher. They had a Democrat and a Republican talking about the problem of money and politics.

Yeah, so we go back quite a long way. Have you talked to RFK about vaccines? Not about vaccines, no. You would support, encourage Californians to get vaccinated. Yeah, I think, I mean, Jay Battachari is a very good friend of mine, an IH director. And I trust what he says about this. And that's basically my position. I have a lot of confidence in his approach.

I mean, I really, you know, work, for example, on the COVID vaccine. You know, I was very struck by what he said about that, which seems to be a very common sense position. And so, yeah. Favorite sandwiches in California? Oh. Well, the thing that comes to mind, because I just had some really good ones lately at the Bahamese, the Vietnamese.

I was in Little Saigon in San Jose, and it was just unbelievably good. I did an amazing event there. It was fun, very crazy event. It was great. And then we had lunch afterwards. And I do love them. I love Bar Mie. I've always loved them.

But that was particularly good, and that's the one that comes to mind. So you talked about how. you want to sort of change people's caricature of you. Well, I don't know, but I want to change. I'm just saying, I think they'll find that I'm not that. I have to say, it was interesting watching the way you've been campaigning

versus the way you were as a host. And I'm wondering if your caricature of Democrats has changed based on what it's been like in California campaigning sort of outside of a cable news environment. And so the thing I was, I mean, it's not the whole answer, but what I think of when you say that is that, and I say this all the time, because I got a lot of people say, like, what's this Fox News thing? You know, we remember you as something completely different when you're in the UK. You were the one that tried to, you know, make the, you make the Conservative Party, you know, I'd ever use this term actually, but kind of modernize it and so on. And, you know, I wrote a book in 2015 called More Human. designing a world where people come first. Actually, the big theme of that is decentralizing power and so on. And I would always say, look, I've never said anything on my Fox News show that I didn't believe,

or don't believe, but I didn't say everything I believe. Right. And so that's how I saw that. It's a particular job. And I think that, you know, to be fair, I would be pretty, I don't, I want to say, it's not true to that even have. handed, but I would attack Republicans on that show. I had a segment on that show called Swamp Watch, which was really going after corruption

and so on. I got a huge amount of blowback when I would go after Republicans, which I did regularly. You know, and prominent one, you know, Ted Cruz or Kevin McCarthy or whatever. And so I think that, I don't want to talk about anyone else, but I definitely made an effort to not be tribal. What do you mean about Democrats, though? Well, I think there is something about Fox News, which I think exists in many ways to assuage uncomfortable thoughts out of people's minds.

That's, I think, part of its function. And that is especially important when it comes to sincere objections to Donald Trump, which is where we started. We can end here. You know, when you were talking about Trump's first impeachment, you said of Democrats, they hate the president, they hate his supporters, they hate how they think think they hate their faith, they even hate their food, they hate the fact that this president is delivering concrete results and they're terrified that they can't beat him. Now, I'm a Democrat.

I think my view on his first impeachment is sincerely held in that it was deserved, that even right now he should be impeached and removed for a set of, for high crimes and misdemeanors, corruption, abuse of office. That is a sincerely held view. I certainly don't hate people's food and religion. In fact, I was just at the Minnesota State Fair, and I eat like a Republican. So, but I do think it matters because I think what that is is trying to tell people that supporting Donald Trump doesn't say anything bad about you. But these people don't really believe these moral critiques. And then you embrace someone immoral. And you're asking us to say, oh, don't let that bother you.

But it's something fundamentally broken about a politics that can embrace someone as unfit as Donald Trump. And so do you appreciate that a lot of Democrats in this state genuinely believe he's a threat to this country and you would be representing them? Yeah, I know because we talk about it. I hear it very clearly. And I disagree with that. Like I said, there's many examples starting with 2020. But, you know, like all the time I'm seeing things that – and I think about it very narrowly now in terms of California where I don't agree with that. I really hate that.

I wouldn't, you know, I'd argue strongly against that if I were there now. Everything from UC funding to, I don't know, the business with Yosemite. I mean, I haven't looked into it, but seems pretty bad to me. So I think that on a case-by-case basis, I'm very happy to say that I wouldn't be at all, you know, reluctant to disagree and challenge them. I hear what you're saying on that. I think what I was channeling there is a very strong sense that there really was, and it was captured by Hillary's deplorable's comment. I mean, that was a real clarifying moment, I think, for a lot of people.

And I don't want to suggest that it was representative of every Democrat. Of course I don't. But, you know, there was something to that that was visceral. And I feel like that is what. a lot of Republicans feel. They feel looked down on. And they really do. And they feel looked down on partly because of who they are

and all those things I listed, the faith and the food and whatever. And you see it in some of the commentary that people make. And I don't know, you'll say which examples. I mean, just, I'm just 10 years now. No, no, I. But I would say, you know, sure, she said deplorables. Dumb thing to say. Apologized for it.

We now had a decade of Donald Trump saying some of the most heinous, vicious things, not just about politicians, but about California, about our people, about a place we love, that you're trying to run. And I appreciate you trying to strike this balance, okay? But I don't, but it's not, doesn't seem to be as much what you did on, I get why you'd be doing it while running to lead California. But for a lot of us, it's not a balancing, question. It's a moral question. I understand that. But I guess I've been, like I said, I've done a lot of different things in my career. I left Oxford in 1990, 36 years. I actually, you know, added it up because when you run for, I never run for office before, you get three words to describe yourself on the ballot. So I think, okay, what I've done different things. I've taught at Stanford, done a startup, run restaurants, written books, been on TV, worked in the government, a bunch of different things. So I actually added it up. Most of my career. has been in business in the private sector,

most of those years, starting and running my own businesses. However, interspersed in that 36-year period, I've been in and around politics and the media a lot. And I guess what, including my first job, my first real job was project manager for a construction company, but my first job out of college was, I took a gap year and did that,

but was working at the Conservative Party. I've been around a long time in and around politics. And I guess I've seen a lot of, of things that you could say are reprehensible. I don't think that anything I've seen is uniquely bad. And I think, you know, things just, you know, things seem from in the moment to have particular kind of, you know, significance attached to them. And I think increasingly with everything's amped up in a way it wasn't before because of social media, but then things move on and you're on to the next thing. I remember, like, for example, back in the

day in Europe, George W. Bush was unbelievably unpopular in Europe. Everyone now thinks, oh, Trump, and it's so embarrassing because everyone in Europe thinks we're so, you know, you go there and everyone's talking about Trump and how could you elect Trump. That was exactly the same with George W. Bush. And so I just think that I tend to not get, I don't know, I just try and focus on the stuff that you can control and things that are practical. Honestly, that's truly how I see it. So I don't know. I mean, I try not to get amped up about stuff.

Well, that's all I do. Steve Hilton, good talking to you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good luck on the campaign trail. Thank you. That's our show for today.

Thanks to Steve Hilton for coming on. Field correspondent Tommy Vitor will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Abdul El-Sayed. He was in Michigan today. Tommy, obviously Abdul as well, but Tommy was in Michigan. And he'll also give us an update

on how things are feeling on the ground there with just two months until Election Day. Have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Podse of America is a cricket media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari, with Reed Jarlane, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill.

Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Senkel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.