Will Cain Country - SCOTUS Approves Trump’s Deep State Dismantling, Plus Is Superman Just Like Kilmar Abrego Garcia? (with Kennedy ft. Rob Bluey & Steve Hilton)

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Story #1: President and Executive Editor at ‘The Daily Signal,’ Rob Bluey, joins Kennedy to break down the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the Trump Administration to dismantle permanent Washington bureaucracy, James and Sean Gunn make the new Superman movie political, and can a third party ever breakthrough in America? Story #2:  Republican Candidate for Governor of California, Steve Hilton, and Kennedy delve into the massive mismanagement of the state of California six months after the devastating fires with rebuilding still yet to start in L.A. As citizens grow tired over the decades of incompetency, will they look to new voices to change the direction of the state? Story #3: Can Gen Z be saved? Kennedy and The Crew discuss the differences between this and past generations following a viral Reddit post lamenting the lack of house parties in modern America. Subscribe to 'Will Cain Country' on YouTube here: Watch Will Cain Country! Follow Will on X: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, hello, and welcome to Will Kane Country. I am not Will Kane. I'm Kennedy in for Will Kane today. Will is on assignment. I am in this comfortable red chair in New York City. And we have stamped your passport so you can enter into Will Kane country. willingly, even if you're an immigrant like Superman. Superman director James Gunn said that the story of Superman isn't about a superhero who came

from a distant planet with superhuman strength and the ability to see women's undergarments. No, it's about Kilmar Abrago Garcia and a Maryland father, essentially. and Superman is us because he came from somewhere else and he is being thwarted by the man as an illegal immigrant doing great things as illegal immigrants like Kilmore, Abrago-Garcia do every single day, especially when they're having margaritas in El Salvador with a United States senator.

Joining me now, Rob Bluey, who is the president of Daily Signal. Hi, Rob, how are you? See you. Thanks for having me. got a blue background and I'm wearing a blue dress in your honor. Well, thank you. We love the color blue and the blueie household. That's for sure. Is that your real last name? Of course it is. That's an amazing name. Before the show became so popular. But yes, no, it's fantastic. The kids love the cartoon. That's for sure. Well, welcome to Will Kane Country. I want to talk about Superman first. and then we can talk about the Supreme Court decision.

So James Gunn is suffering from, you know, being asphyxiated inside his own fart bubble in Hollywood thinking that his politics translate to everybody's politics. And somehow you have to take what used to be a reliable escapism and turn it into a political battering ram. Have people like this director and I believe he's all. also the co-president of D.C. Studios. Have they not realized that the politics and the forced messages can be off-putting to audiences? You would think by now they would recognize that. I couldn't help but wonder if this was simply a publicity stunt to get the movie in the news. I went to the F-1 movie with my kids recently. I saw the trailer for Superman. I did not get the message that James Gunn was talking

about when I saw that trailer. Obviously, it was just a trailer. But I do think that the American people are tired of Hollywood dictating to them how they should think about these cultural issues. I think the American people can come to their own conclusions and they don't need Hollywood force feeding a message in the movie theater. And so we'll see how this goes over with audiences. I can't imagine that he's doing much good with maybe the MAGA crowd that would traditionally maybe go see a Superman movie, but maybe now turned off based on. on what he said. I mean, moviegoers are turned off when they're being lectured to because it's really expensive. You know, if you go to a movie alone, it's expensive. And the only way to get people

into theaters is to make them more expensive by serving booze and high-end food that you can order and consume from your seat. So it's as expensive as going to a concert, maybe not Taylor Swift, but you know, certainly the Timu Taylor Swift, also known as Katie Perry. So, you know, these are really expensive endeavors, and that's the uphill fight that movie theater owners and, you know, franchisees, they are fighting every single day. It's just trying to get people into the theater. They don't need headwinds. And does James Gunn realize that he's disinviting half of the country by making these statements? Yes, he probably does.

But again, I think that they may be so desperate to draw attention to their films. because let's face it, they've spent tens of millions, if not hundreds of million dollars to create these movies over the course of a number of years. Seeing the F1 movie and the, and we stayed for the credits, seeing how many people were involved, the locations involved. I mean, I can only imagine how much it costs. So naturally, when you go to the theater

and for a family of five like mine, it costs well over $100 by the time you bought the tickets, you bought the popcorn, you got the drinks for the kids. I mean, that was a matinee showing. I mean, if you were to go at night, it would obviously be even more expensive. And it's no wonder that we were one of maybe a half a dozen people in the theater on opening weekend. Wow. I think the American people, yes, they are suffering from the higher cost of living under four years of Joe Biden.

They're still adjusting to that. There's obviously the post-COVID phase that I think of a lot of these movie theaters are still in. And so to have a director or producer come out and make these comments that, as you indicated, turn off half the country that is not necessarily going to be as enthusiastic to see the Superman movie, It probably is not making many theater owners very happy these days. No, and then, you know, the writer-director's brother, Sean Gunn, who's also an actor, came out and said, if you don't like immigrants, you don't like America. And it's like, come on, man.

Like, is this really necessary? Everyone has such a negative axe to grind. And, you know, it's like they got it so right with Top Gun Maverick. And you would think that some of these studios go, Oh, I see. Like, we have to stop inserting these message characters into every single movie and being so stupidly inclusive that you can't escape when you are a part of this indoctrination. And, or indoctrination, sorry, I added too many syllables to that.

I blame the lack of caffeine, Rob. I really do. Well, look, I think this happened earlier this year with Snow White. I mean, there's clearly a number of examples that they have tried and failed to impose their cultural values on the American people. And I just think, frankly, after years of enduring this type of treatment, the American people have just wised up and they're just not going to show up and support the film. And it's sad because in a movie like Superman, which should feature so many great things about our culture and obviously a lot of people, myself and people who are older than me, grew up with Super. Superman movies and comics. And there's a number of great storylines that you could tell with the Superman character. And to make it about immigration is just baffling to me. And I think

that, you know, the American people are clearly divided on the issue of legal and illegal immigration. There are those who believe we should have a legal path forward to let immigrants come to this country. But I think that there's clear consensus that having, you know, over, you know, 10 million illegal immigrants come to the country during four years of Joe Biden's reign. I mean, why not? Not a good thing. But why not to advertise like, come see Superman. He's going to win the state championship on the women's track and field team.

You know, it would be the same thing. Or Superman, he loves performing abortions. You know, it's hard to think of something that would be more divisive than that. But, you know, it's like, I've always thought that people in Hollywood, just assume the rest of the country feels how they feel about their politics that, you know, is force fed to them. And then in order to stay in the system, they force feed it to other people with these obviously diminishing returns. And, you know, it's like people, even if they weren't political, many of them voted for Trump because they want their country back. They want normalcy.

Because what, and correct me if I'm wrong, but especially in big cities, what were being fed, is abnormal. Like, you know, homelessness, like rampant homelessness and, you know, illegal prostitution will be codified in New York City. And I am not against consensual acts between adults. But, you know, these type of things, open-air drug markets will be codified by Zoron Mamdani if he is elected mayor of New York City. And that was the backlash. That's why people voted for Trump because they were voting against that? Are we more out of equilibrium than we thought we were last fall? Well, you're seeing it in New York City. I mean, we've seen it in cities across this country. And I remember sitting in on a series of focus group meetings

prior to the 2024 election in major U.S. cities, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, I believe Milwaukee was one of them. And we consistently heard from voters who said that crime was top of mind for them because they had seen not only the consequences of having illegal immigration really wreak havoc on their cities, but just the lack of enforcement from some of these George Soros rogue prosecutors that, you know, frankly just turn the other way when it comes to some of these crimes. We just featured an interview with Jason Mierrez, who's up for re-election in Virginia as the Attorney General. And he's talked about how some of the policies in the Commonwealth of Virginia have led to all sorts of crimes being committed by individuals who are let out of prison early. So, yes,

there are consequences to this. I think that it's one of the reasons you've identified that Americans backed Donald Trump, probably why he was able to make some gains among Hispanic and black voters who were just tired of the same types of policies they heard from leftist politicians year after year. And they're also tired of being condescended to and being told that you know you are expected to be dependent on the government and so what happens is when you create that level of dependency it doesn't fund itself so taxes have to go up and that's a big issue for people because when you have such overwhelming tax debt to the point where it compromises other choices you can make as an individual and as a family you know that's one of the things that that makes people sit up regardless of their racial makeup and ethnic background. It makes them sit up and say, you know, I want my money back. Like, I want my choices back. And if you have a Democrat party that's like, we're only going to make the federal government bigger. And we will demonize

anyone who tries to dismantle the deep state and the size of the government and the bureaucracy. We will blow up Tesla dealerships. If you try and dismantle that, because we want more power. We want more control. How does that play into this eight to one Supreme Court emergency decision that basically stayed the injunction against a U.S. district judge in California? Yeah, well, it's Briggs clarity, first of all. I think that it's unfortunate that it took so long. I think the American people have had a lot of whiplash between what Elon Musk was doing with with Doge in the early days of the Trump administration, trying to clean out some of these bloated bureaucratic government agencies that are in desperate need of reform. We cannot continue to

spend the American people's tax dollars at the rate that we continue to do so. I mean, there are big problems, not only with the mandatory government programs, but also with some of the discretionary programs. And I think that, you know, I do give President Trump and Elon Musk a lot of credit for trying to tackle this, despite the fact that there are entrenched interests in Washington, D.C., and apparently the federal judiciary who didn't want to see them clean house. And so the Supreme Court giving clarity to the Trump administration on this is a good thing. We will now, we just need to make sure that the politicians in Washington have the courage in the backbone to see it through to completion. The U.S. Senate is expected to debate the recisions package next week.

You're already hearing rumblings from some of those Republican senators. They have a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate. If they cannot get this through the U.S. Senate, and Kennedy, remember, this is under, what, $10 billion, or not, talking it's like a rounding error in the in the deficit um this is uh this is you know a significant challenge i think that uh that republicans face when they try to explain to vote over some of the promises that they made about limiting government and reducing government spending more with rob louis in just a second we're taking a quick break this is will cane country i'm kennedy fox news audio presents unsolved with james patterson every crime tells the story but some

stories are left unfinished somebody knows real cases Real people. Listen and follow now at Foxtruecrime.com. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at the quiz. Fox. Then come back here to see how you did.

Thank you for taking the quiz. Welcome back to Will King Country. It's Kennedy filling in. Let's get back into our conversation with Rob Louie. If you ask, you know, an ordinary taxpayer, so if you've got a bunch of people who work at an agency and they all do the same thing and their jobs are redundant. Should we keep all of those people employed at the same time? And, you know, the answer would be, no, that seems like a waste of money. Well, that's the federal government. You know, that is bureaucracy in action. So what

this executive order was trying to do in February was give the president the ability to coal some of these redundant jobs from various federal agencies. And the judge in California said, no, I'm not going to let you do that. And that was part of the Supreme Court decision, you know, just a couple weeks ago, which was a big win for the president, which was saying that these federal judges cannot single-handedly stop the president's agenda because they disagree with it politically. So, you know, this was a decision back in February. The federal judge seated in California tried to stop the firings. And, you know, it was, it was curious that it was an eight to one decision. Katanji Brown Jackson, the associate justice on the Supreme Court, was the only one

who actually wrote a very politically worded dissent saying that, you know, President Trump is using a wrecking ball. And, you know, it's like, I know a lot of people like, great, I wish we had a wrecking ball because the federal government is too damn big. That's right. It is. It is definitely too big. You raised a couple of important points there. Number one, yes, Katanji Brown Jackson, couldn't even get her liberal colleagues, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, to agree with her on this one. They sided with the conservative majority on the court. So, I mean, I think that's notable, particularly when you have so many in the legacy media

who oftentimes point to the divided court. Well, here's an example where they were pretty much overwhelmingly on the same side. As it comes to the judges who have taken matters into their own hands, the left has done a great job of venue shopping, finding judges who are going to be sympathetic to their arguments, and then having those judges impose these nationwide injunctions. Now, even though the Supreme Court curtailed that, as some of the conservative justice has pointed out at the time, they will find back channels to still try to do this. And so it's not that this issue has been settled for good. I think we probably need Congress to come in there and clarify the role of the federal judiciary when it comes to these nationwide injunctions

and district court judges, the Supreme Court should really be the one that's deciding for the nation whether or not what the president is doing is constitutional. And so I hope that this, again, brings clarity for what the Trump administration wants to do to clean up the administrative state to make sure that Americans' taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely at a lot of these agencies. And for many of these agencies that have come into existence decades ago, and have just failed to embark on the types of reforms that are needed, you have now an executive.

Think about this if you were in a private company. You have an executive who was told by a judge that he could not manage the workforce. I mean, this is just, you know, crazy. When you think about it, President Trump now has the green light to move forward with some of the changes he wants to do. And he will because of the coalition that he created. And, you know, that's what is so curious to me is I think Democrats, actually put themselves in a better position, if they would acknowledge the necessity for some

of the stuff that he's doing, not everything. Like, you can still be opposed to his personality. You can still be opposed to part of his philosophy. But if there are things that he's doing that actually benefits, especially working Americans, it behooves them to say, hey, good job on this. As Democrats, we will actually build on this. But they can't bring themselves to do that. And on Gutfeld last night. Greg brought up a really important point, and that's the sunk cost fallacy that a lot of these Democrats suffer from because they have been pushing back against him for so many years now. They feel like if they don't continue to push, if they acknowledge any one thing that they've wasted all their money and their political capital, when really

they would just kind of reveal themselves to be fraudulent, but it's still better for them in the long run to acknowledge where it has been necessary for the president to make certain actions. And I will say this. As a libertarian, he went to the libertarian convention. Trump went to the libertarian convention last year and tried to convince people and said, like, I will pardon Ross Oldbricht. You know, I will do it very early on in my second administration. And, you know, he actually did some outreach and the Libertarian Party is in a shambles. Is it time for a third party? Elon Musk is so mad at Donald Trump and, you know, has let his ego get the best of him. And so he wants to start the America Party. Will that work? And is it time right now?

Well, Kennedy, I think it's interesting. You bring up the Libertarian Party, the Libertarian Party. I think it's trying to make some overtures to Elon Musk, as are some other. third parties that exist in our country because I think they recognize he has enormous wealth and he has the ability to perhaps influence certain elections. There are a couple things. Number one, it's incredibly difficult ballot access laws in this country for a third party to really gain the kind of momentum. But Elon Musk has indicated that he plans to do targeted races. So if he can find candidates in certain swing states or swing congressional districts, he may be able to tip the balance in his favor in those particular areas. But I was with you.

at my first Freedom Fest conference in Palm Springs last month. And I mean, I heard a lot of frustration on the fact that neither party is really taking the debt and deficit seriously. I know that's a big issue for libertarians and that crowd in particular. And so I'm glad that Elon Musk is focusing attention on some of these issues that go under the radar and don't necessarily get the attention in Washington, D.C. that I think they deserve with a $37 trillion national debt in this country that comes out to a, $108,000 per citizen.

I mean, it is a massive challenge that we need to tackle. I think Musk has identified that it poses a threat to our future prosperity in this country. And so maybe he can at least elevate certain issues, if not necessarily be successful in getting candidates into office. And I think that's the only way you're going to do it. I think you're absolutely right about that. And that's what Spike Cohen has focused on with You Are the Power. That's his organization is targeting smaller races.

you start with city council and state legislatures and, you know, certain mayor's races across the country because you're not, you know, at least right now, 20, 2016, 24, before Trump was almost assassinated. That was the time for a third party to come forward because so many people were fed up with the divisive political system that we've got right now. And no one could make that happen. And so on a national level, I don't think that could work. Elon Musk does have a lot of money. I don't think the Libertarian Party is in a position right now to appeal to anybody. And I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party.

I never have been. I am an ideological libertarian. I want government to be as small and sleek as possible. It is so intrusive. And yes, the national debt has the potential to swallow us whole because debt service will take up a majority of the general budget here very, very soon. And, you know, the programs that Democrats and, you know, current Republicans say will never be touched are headed toward insolvency. So something's got to give. Trump is doing some things right. But, you know, like many other Republicans,

they just love spending. Well, they love spending, but I think they're also afraid to touch some of those programs like Social Security and Medicare. I mean, they probably, look back to 2005 and see what happened to George W. Bush's second term and how it was, you know, derailed, not solely because of the social security reforms that he attempted to pass, but clearly that energized Democrats in a way that I think it scared off some Republicans from wanting to, you know, pursue some of the reforms. But yes, we are warned by the trustees of both of those programs that insolvency is coming. There are, as we were just talking about with the efforts the Doge was making on some of the discretionary programs and how difficult it is,

to get some Republicans to go along with some of those cuts. And this is where I think you're right. I think that there probably are members of the Democrat Party. There are Republicans who would find some appeal in and having a third option. But the big challenge for Elon Musk is going to be beating incumbents. Incumbents have a really good track record of winning elections. Even though Americans give Congress a poor approval rating, they tend to like their own individual member of Congress.

And that's why it comes down to what, just maybe two dozen races out of 435 in the House that are going to determine control of that body. And it's even more challenging in the Senate where you only have a third of the Senate up every year and maybe, I don't know, two to three Senate seats that are going to determine control of that body. So it'll be interesting to see what strategy Elon Musk pursues.

And this is, again, where I think that if he focuses on a core set of issues, he might be able to shift public opinion and get certain incumbent members of Congress to pay more attention to the issues that he cares about. Has he suffered a really fatal personal implosion by aligning himself with politics? Are you surprised that he's continuing to seek a political path when it has, you know, damaged his bottom line and the market cap of Tesla? So was this his own undoing, or is that just how nasty and corrosive our politics are?

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised that he, when he stepped back from the Doge effort, that I thought that he would go back to focusing on SpaceX and Tesla and his business ventures. I didn't necessarily expect him to engage in this kind of political debate that we seem to be having with President Trump and Republicans right now. now, particularly the dispute over the one big, beautiful bill. And so I'm not sure exactly how Musk is trying to balance all of these competing interests, because you're absolutely right, he's turned off a lot of Democrats who were big Tesla consumers and purchasers of his vehicles. Now, you don't necessarily have a lot of love with the MAGA crowd. And so as we started with Hollywood and some of the poor decisions that they were making, I think any time you have business leaders engage in politics like that, there are tradeoffs. And sometimes they can be incredibly

popular decisions that you make and maybe they find appeal with a certain audience. But other times, yes, there will be business consequences and perhaps not necessarily the best for the bottom line for his companies. Yeah. And when you're an environment where the opposition has to appeal to the unwell in order to make very loud demonstrations, you know, like the people, people that are trying to jostle into action to bomb Tesla dealerships. And you also have Democrats, you know, and off the record conversations with Axios saying, you know, we just need someone to get shot right now. That's what we really need. We need one of those ice agents to shoot one of our own. But, you know, that's how irrational things are. Yeah, I thought it was interesting

because you've had now two Democrats, Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffrey, set records for the longest filibuster in the Senate in the House. And when asked why they would do that, they said, well, the party wants to see us fight. I don't actually think that that's what the Democrat base is looking for, as you just indicated, and as that Axios piece reported, they are looking for actual violence, which I find frightening,

that they would resort to that type of behavior. But we see it on the streets of Washington, D.C., There were obviously protesters out in force this week with Benjamin Netanyahu's visit. And some of the rhetoric that they were using was downright scary. And I think that it's disappointing that you have some leaders of that party who are unwilling to condemn that kind of behavior, particularly since we're approaching the one-year anniversary this coming Sunday of the assassination attempt on President Trump. Hopefully that's a reminder that things get, they can get carried away. And I don't know where it ultimately ends, but what we've seen, the attacks on Elon Musk personally and the Tesla dealerships, certainly not a good thing.

And just because he's speaking out with his political views doesn't mean you need to carry it to that extreme. No, absolutely not. And the fact that someone would go on record and say, yeah, this is this is what we need because I think they're so clumsy and incompetent that they see that, you know, it was President Trump's reaction in the moment that turn the tide of. the election. And, you know, obviously the horrible debate performance by Joe Biden didn't do him any favors. But it wasn't, you know, by virtue of being shot. It was how he responded in the moment and put his needs aside to let the country know that no matter what come hell or high water, he was fighting for them, fighting for them, not fighting against them. And, you know, Democrats are really embracing this fight against any opposition. and nothing embodies that more than progressivism.

And you've seen mainstream Democrats for years now try and marginalize progressivism and say this isn't really the Democrat Party. You know, this is just a phase. But then you have Zoran Mamdani. He might, he's got a better shot than anyone and being the next mayor of New York City. So what does that say about the state of progressivism

and progressivism within the Democrat Party? Yeah, you know, you would know better the situation in New York City than me. The observations that I take away is, number one, it was pretty low turnout. I think, what, 18 to 20 percent of voters turned out for that primary election. So I don't know how representative it was of all Democrats in the city. And then even among those who supported Mamdami, it was the highly educated. I think J.D. Vance said this. The highly educated, you know, he did not do particularly well among black voters.

in particular in New York City and certain precincts. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of coalition he's able to put together in the general election, particularly as he goes up against the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams. But definitely there is enthusiasm on the left for those individuals who are pursuing more progressive or socialist policies. And it's scary. Think how close Bernie Sanders became, you know, got to becoming the Democrat nominee in 2020. If it weren't for James Clyburn and some lastage efforts in South Carolina. Right. Bernie Sanders may well have been the one that was going up against Donald Trump. And who knows what we see.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another example who I think is, you know, solidified her place as a leader in the party and maybe even a candidate for president in three and a half years. And so it's really interesting to see the left pivot in this direction when you have so many individuals when they just look at the attitudes of the American people to say, no, this is not what the American people want. This is certainly not what independent voters want. They want to see common sense solutions, not a hard pivot to the left. All right. Well, Rob Louie, thank you so much for your time. President of the Daily Signal, you are a phenomenal thinker, a wonderful writer, and I really appreciate you taking the time on Will Cain Country.

Thanks, Kennedy. Great to see you today. Have a beautiful day. When we return the state of another dumpster fire, the state of California, with a man who hopes to take the reins to lead it back to its golden past and hopefully a brighter future. Steve Hilton joins me on Will King Country in moments. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax.

Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. This is Jimmy Phala. to join me for Fox Across America where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show.

Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com. This is Will Kane country. I am Kennedy in for Will Kane and I'm also in a constant amazement how California has been run into the ground by every single metric. So we have a governor's race coming up in the Golden State, and you've got a lot of frustrated voters there,

including, you know, a huge swath, tens of thousands of residents in Southern California, still displaced by the wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. And you have the six months. month mark that we just passed on Monday. It has been six months since that fire. And we are at a total impasse. Something has to change in that state. And it has to start at the top. Gavin Newsom is termed out. He's not going to be governor. He wants to be your president. He's heading to South Carolina. Well, Southern California is still essentially smoldering. Steve Hilton joins me now. He is running for governor of California to make that state golden again.

Steve, welcome to Wilcane country. Hey, Kennedy. So great to be with you. Well, you know, Steve, you and I have talked a lot about what it would take to get California back on track. And it's going to take someone who is very invested in the state as you are, someone who is very serious about it, someone who understands policy as you do in ways that I haven't talked to anyone who understands truly. the nuts and bolts of what is failing what needs to happen in the state. So what is the state of the race and the state of the state from where you stand? Well, I want to pick it up actually where you just left it, which is Monday and the Palisades, because it's such a perfect

example of everything that's gone wrong and why it's going wrong. And the more I've reflected on it, the more that becomes clear to me. So I was in the Palisades on Monday. I did a press conference with victims of the fires and local community leaders and so many people who are frustrated by the total lack of any kind of coherent, effective, efficient action. And I was speaking just after Gavin Newsom. He had his own event, not in the Palisades, not in Altadena, somewhere else in a cocoon with people who are sucking up to him, telling what an amazing, telling him what an amazing job he'd done. And unbelievably, Gavin Newsom said that it's like so shameless, I can barely believe it. He said, and I quoted it at my event about an hour or so

later, that the clear-up effort, the debris removal, he specifically talked about debris removal was the fastest in modern history. That's what he said. My event was, I was standing. People could see, go and check it out on my social media at Steve Hilton X. Our event was outside, right in front of a pile of rubble, totally devastated set of buildings in the heart of the palisades, not some obscure corner that we had to drive around trying to find something to make them look bad. This is right there. And in January, he promised a Marshall plan to rebuild the Palisades Marshall Plan six months on, as I pointed out, he can't even clear the sidewalk. The sidewalk was blocked. And then I was thinking, well, why is this? And it gets to the central point about California.

This is the broad point. We've had 15 years now of one party rule. And what that means is that they get complacent, so arrogant. And it breeds the kind of extremism, the ideological extremism that you see because there's no challenge to them politically. So they just pander to their base and the activists and the far left. And also total incompetence because you get these people thrown up who are just machine politicians like Gavin Newsom, like Karen Bass, like Kamala Harris. Their only skill is kind of navigating the political machine. They don't actually know how to get anything done. And I think and it's really revealed in this. So they think that just saying something like Marshall Plan or I signed an executive order is the same thing as doing something.

But they have no sense of action in the real world. They think process is outcome. And so you see Karen Bass saying three months ago, I've signed an executive order streamlining permitting. When you actually look at what she said, that was the post on her X thing, it was I just signed an executive order tasking. agency heads with developing paths forward to it. And this is how they think. People can't, but people can't get permits. And, you know, it's like one guy, you know, took a camera through the permitting process and was like, I will show you the red tape. They didn't cut it. They went to Costco and bought more of it. You know, Costco, as we learn from the Ditty trial, doesn't sell baby oil. They do

sell red tape. And they sell it all to California. They sell it all to the mayor of, like, Los Angeles. And, you know, all of my friends whose homes burned down and most of my friend's homes did burn down, they're leaving because they can't, they can't rebuild. You can't get permits. The insurance companies have some sort of a racket with the politicians because the insurance companies are, you know, they're living up to that old adage, delay, deny, defend. And that's what they're doing with everyone. And, you know, I just speak from my own personal frustration and the odyssey that we are going through with the insurance company and my house survived, but it is so damaged from the fire and unlivable. And, you know, we can't

get them to agree on anything. So imagine how people feel who've lost everything. This is the point. And they say, well, I can't get the permit. And then the permit, people say, well, we can't give you this until you have the insurance. And the insurance people say, well, we need the authorization and then you need the utilities and you need the inspection and the endless nightmare six months on and they haven't done anything about it and they show up for an event and they make some stupid announcement about streamlining and executive orders and then that's it they think job done instead of actually doing any kind of follow through and and it really is i think a big explanation of why everything as you said at the beginning everything in california is

like this i mean the same day monday i was in palisades in the morning to my event on the fires and then on the same day there was um the announcement made that a but the oldest bar restaurant in los angeles the inventor of the french dip sandwich which is considered this official state sandwich of california shutting down after nearly 120 years so i went there and it's the same old story they can't cook it's a i used to run restaurants back in the day in london it's a nightmare business at the best of times it's just tough to make money but in california with the taxes, the regulations, the inspections, the permits, the lawsuits, there's this thing in California that if you're not here, you don't understand how bad it is. It's called PAGA,

private attorney general act. In 2004, the Democrats passed this act basically outsourcing to trial lawyers, the enforcement of state labor law. So now you have, it's a goldmine for them, totally rip off extortionate lawsuits for any business operating in California. And of course, they all have to settle because you don't want to go through the process. So that's just another cost of doing business. And, and Steve, let me ask you this. I know the answer, but I want you to explain this because you're so good at explaining things. What party is beholden to trial lawyers?

What party receives the lion's share of donations from trial lawyers? It is the Democrat Party. And if you look at the donations, you are totally right. And actually, again, this is the deep explanation. nation. But what's going wrong? The more I'm out on the road, the more I see what's going on, there are three, four, this is why the Democrats can never deliver the change that California needs. And you hear the other people running for governor, the Democrats, they're all actually now, because they get how bad it is. They are using our language and they're making the argument.

Oh, it's everything's too expensive, too much red tape, worst business climate in America. These are all things that Democrat candidates have said. But they can never be the change that California your needs because of three forces that have them in an iron grip. Number one is the trial lawyers, exactly as you said, it's the, it's the second highest source of donations to the Democrat Party and the politicians. But number one is the unions. That's the second of the three forces. So it's the trial lawyers, the unions, especially the government unions, like the teachers'

unions, which is why we had the longest and most destructive school closures in the country during the pandemic. Not for Gavin Newsom's kids. Not for Gavin Newsom's kids. Even though, by the way, almost the most offensive thing that he's done in the whole among many is while his own kids were attending school, private school, he was out doing some, you know, interview saying, oh, we're all really tired of Zoom school and it's a nightmare for parents. Like, not for you, but for every other parent in California. And he did nothing to stand up to the teacher unions. But then the third force that's really important to understand because it's.

explains why everything costs so much, is the climate activists. They are completely captured by the extreme climate agenda. That's why you can't build anything. That's why housing is so expensive. That's why we have, I mean, he's in South Carolina, right? The gas prices, I've made a little video of it. I went to a gas station in Santa Monica. Gas prices in Santa Monica twice as high in South Carolina entirely because of their climate policies. So those are the three things that basically explain everything that's going wrong in California. The trial lawyers, the unions, the climate extremists, and the Democrats are totally beholden to all of them. That's why they can never put California back on track. So what are voters saying when you go out and talk to them

and ask them questions and hear their stories? How are you being received? So it's really interesting. I've got there's something very powerful about this experience. And I've really learnt a lot from it. Not so much the detail of the issues, because as you mentioned, you know, I've been studying this for a while. I had a policy organization I started three years ago called Golden Together. We've been publishing papers on the big issues. I just wrote a book, Calafalia, explaining all of this and how we put it right. So I knew the issues, but when you see people, and we have thousands of people now coming to events and yes, many of them are Republican, but independents and Democrats. To me, it's the intensity of the struggle, right? The sheer

pain of existing in Gavin Newsome's California. That's really taking me aback. Of course I knew we needed change. That's why I'm running. But it's just the emotion behind it. I just can't do this anymore. We're going to have to leave. I'm going to have to shut down my business. Farmers in the Central Valley, five generations, just the other day, they have fig farmers. And like, putting tears in their eyes, right? We just can't do it anymore. It's our family. business, five generations, but it's too much. And, you know, the water, the labor regulations, the environmental regulations, the taxes, everywhere I go. It's really, the two words I always come away from is like, it's heartbreaking, but it's also infuriating because it's all deliberate

policy from the Democrats. Yeah. And if you can buy into the system, you're fine, you're protected. Exactly. You know, if you remember the minimum wage hike for restaurant workers, it was, you know, fast food, big fast food chains were, you know, beholden to this minimum wage hike unless you made bread in your restaurant. Exactly. And, you know, I believe it was LePan Quotidian. And the CEO happens to be, Panera, Panera, sorry. The Panera CEO happens to be best friends with Gavin Newsom.

I know. So miraculously, his business didn't have to raise the minimum wage for workers because he has, had a bro in the industry. And those are people who scratch each other's backs and service each other to the detriment of everybody else, especially the small businesses. And that's what's so heartbreaking because it's almost like, and you know, you and I have talked to chef Andrew Gruel a lot about what it's like to run a restaurant in California. And you have been a restaurant owner. You know that between farming and owning a restaurant, the margins are so. So low. Exactly right. Exactly. It's so difficult to keep a business like that afloat in the best of

circumstances where you have actual economic freedom. I know. Exactly. That's perfectly put. I mean, I was with Andrew last, what is it? Last Friday, just no, Thursday just before I did a little bit of positive. And you ask how you receive. I'll tell you one of the most overwhelming things. On Friday, on July the 4th, I was in the Huntington Beach, July the 4th parade, which is huge. It's the biggest one anywhere in the West and like 200,000 plus people and I was in this vintage car and it was really overwhelming like people like I mean I've never experienced anything like it like Steve we love you save us you know really amazing so there's a lot of real good energy there anyway I was with Andrew the day before we did his cooking show American gravy and he just knows this stuff so well

and it's just infuriating but also I want to you know just on fast food just another example for those who aren't here, who don't see how far things have gone and how far the unions are controlling things. And I want to connect it back to New York. And you have Mamdami and everyone's freaking out quite correctly. Oh my goodness, socialist, you know, state government run grocery stores. Well, we pretty much have government run fast food in California because they passed a law called the Fast Act. This was a couple of years ago, not just a minimum wage increase for fast food workers, but there's something called the Fast Food Council, which basically runs the industry. And guess who's on the council? The unions and Gavin Newsom's administration. And there's like

one seat for the industry. This is literally what it was like in communist Hungary, where my parents are from. And so they are literally making operational decisions for a private industry. And the unions see this as a model for other industries. So, I mean, it's so extreme now. And the unions will do whatever they can to just get more and more money. And, you know, it's like their membership be damned. They don't care about teachers. No, absolutely not. They'll do whatever they can.

You know, it's like the teachers' unions, they aren't about protecting kids. They're about getting as much money as they possibly can from the system. And, you know, it really is an uphill life. And also their ideology, you know, they really are ideologues. I mean, that's the thing we have to understand. These are kind of, you know, all the stuff we say, these words and phrases we use, you know, the Marxist and the, you know, critical theory that's come up through the universities and all the woke eye, all that stuff, that is totally embedded in the union leadership because it's controlled by activists who are total ideologues. I mean, a good example, again, LA Unified, the largest, the second largest school district in the country, something like that. So their conditions for reopening after the pandemic were just, laugh, it was just literally like a sort of, you know, boilerplate, far left thing.

It was a, this is to reopen the schools, wealth tax, Medicare for all, reparations. Reparations. I remember that. What's that going to do with the kids in the schools? Nothing. No. It, you know, it's this radicalized political agenda. And those are the people in charge of, you know, you know, it's just radicalized political agenda. and those are the people in charge of your kid's curriculum. And it's frustrating beyond measure. And, you know, I really hope that your candidacy, your campaign, makes purchase in that state. And I know, like, you're working harder than any Republican I have ever seen run for office in California.

And I have been there most of my life. I moved to California to California in 1990. and have essentially been there ever since. And, you know, even though I work in New York, my heart and my permanent home are in California, and I want, I pray that that place gets better. And I pray that the best parts of it aren't, you know, just something that will evaporate in the fog of memory because it's no longer able to achieve that. But it is going to take something that overwhelms the current system.

Are you enough to overwhelm that system? Look, I want to say two, I want to address that in two separate and vital ways, right? Because there's two basic questions, Kennedy, which is, yeah, we get it. You need change in California, but, you know, a Republican can't win. Number one, can you win? And number two, well, you've got this supermajority in the legislature. Even if you win, what can you get done? I want to give specific examples.

Yes, we can win here. This is a much more Republican state than people think. The average Republican share of the vote in the last kind of 20 years, years or so, just over 40%, which is not 50%, but neither is it 20%. It's like it's a high hill to climb, but it's not Everest. You know, we can do this. If you look at what's been happening in California, the tide is turning. If you look at President Trump's vote here in November, he actually got more votes to,

without even really campaigning here than I would need to win in a midterm election where you have a lower turnout. The votes are there. So if we have a great campaign with a good ground game and get people excited about voting if here's a simple way of putting it if everybody who voted for president trump in california votes for me next year i will be the governor with hundreds of thousands of votes to spare actually the votes are there we just got to go and get them the second point very quickly on what i can get done i want to go back to your point about education and the

indoctrination and the curriculum and all the last year a very specific point is a good example so right now in california something's being they've put this thing into the curriculum that's mandatory for every high school, ethnic studies, which, as you can imagine, is just a classic kind of goulash of complete kind of woke ideological nonsense. At the same time, as we have the worst school results in the country, and you have barely, you know, a third of the students meet state math standards. So the ethnic studies curriculum, who's pushing that through? The State Board of Education. Well, guess what? The Governor appoints every single member of the State Board of Education, and that's a small example of the difference that you can make.

because you run the executive branch. And most of the nonsense, you know, whether that's the climate stuff, hurting restaurants and pushing up gas prices, whether it's the Coastal Commission, all this stuff, is these agencies, these bureaucracies, where you have thousands of appointments. So you can clear out the ID logs, put in place common sense people

that want to help families and businesses in California. So actually, you can't do everything if you don't have the legislature on your side, but there's a lot you can do. And that's why this is worth the fight. Well, I really hope that you make as much headway as possible. And keep talking about those issues. Keep talking about those individual stories, those families and those businesses who want to stay, but they're being forced out. And I hope that your candidacy and your optimism, give them a lifeline long enough to hold on because something has got to change in California. And I have a good feeling. You are that thing that will change it. Steve Hilton, thank you so much for taking the time. Of course. See you soon. Absolutely. That's Steve Hilton. This is

Will Cain Country. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts.

I'm Janisteen. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. Let's check in with the boys in the booth because we got some youngans that don't know

what the hell they're doing. They're, you know, it's like, it's very easy to mock Gen Z, especially as a Gen Xer. Because Gen Xers are awesome. We were essentially a feral generation where our parents threw us to the wolves and told us to be home by dark. And, you know, we were ganging up with our BMX friends and lighting things on fire at the same time completely fending for ourselves. Our children, Jen Sears, they don't have that luxury because out of these free rangers grew helicopter parents. And we are so involved in our kids' lives to the point that they're too dependent on us.

as the oldest Gen Ziers now sort of wander into adulthood. There was a very funny Reddit thread about Jen Ziers not knowing what a house party is. Dan Connor, who else is in there? We got me, Patrick, Dan Patrick here. Oh, hey Patrick. Yeah. Hey. Oh, there's Patrick.

I know Patrick. Yeah. So are you guys millennials? Millenials. Okay. You guys are millennials. We're late 30s, both of us. Elder millennials. Elder millennials. So how do you feel about Gen Zeres? Like, I have birthed two of them. And they are hysterical. I feel like all hope is not lost for that generation. But for most of them, yeah, we're on a slippery slope. Yeah, my Jen Ziers are pretty cool, too. So Patrick has seven kids. Nicely done. so I have some alphas and now you know some Gen Z years so you know I think it all depends on like who

who raises them you know so like the fact that you and I raise our kids they're probably going to end up cool and there are some people out there maybe they're not as cool my children um believe that they are cool in spite of me and I have tried to tell them many times like I was cool ones and they're like yeah yeah absolutely not yeah imagine like imagine like even having a rock star parent too which you were a rock star just like they still won't think they're cool no no no matter what yeah you can't you can't win with them no it's like we are predisposed to think our parents are uncool yes but you know you have a gender and and it's really funny because this generation takes things that have already existed

and they kind of rename them and claim them as their own. And so the new one is I'm going on micro-retirement. And I'm going to take two weeks off and micro-retairement. It's called a vacation. And so, you know,

millennials and Gen Xers are like, what is wrong with you? Just because you stumble into something for the first time, doesn't mean you discovered it. Own that. You don't own fire. Yeah.

I like what's coming back. So I grew up in the 90s, like as a kid, and all the clothes I see of kids wearing now are 90s clothes. I'm looking around them. I'm like, I have all those things still. Do you, like I should probably just start like a page where I sell them to these kids. Absolutely right. You'd make, you'd make a mint. Yes.

Fantastic. It's all back. I saw a kid wearing burk and stocked with long baggy jeans shorts and a spitfire t-shirt. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like everything that was amazing then, they're like, oh, I just discover them.

I just discovered the band. What's juicy couture? I know. It's like they're going to have velour pants with juicy butts here very, very soon. Oh, I've seen it. That's crazy. Oh, God, that's amazing. But house parties, though.

Are they coming back? No, because you can't have a house party because a house party had to be something that was coordinated in secret. And, you know, it's like everyone's on their phones and someone. So this is what happened. Yes, Snapchat. When my daughter went on a class trip in eighth grade, I'm not going to say which daughter and I'm not going to say when or what school or even what city.

They had very strict rules that there was a boys' floor and a girls' floor. So some of the girls snuck out and went to the boys' floor and posted it. So they were posting it on Snapchat, and someone's mom saw it and texted one of the chaperones, and it was like, why is my daughter in Blair's room right now? And they're like, what? They sent half the kids home. We can't have nice things if we're posting about it. Someone's going to ruin it. Exactly.

That's the best thing about house parties back then. You only knew to leave when the cop showed up. That was it. And you always had to, you had to go in with your Red Solo Cup. Yeah. You always had to have a non-traditional exit. Exactly. You know, and it was usually a basement window.

Yep, I knew which window to go out of. Usually the bathroom window and the basement was the one to do. And I was never cool enough in high school to be invited to a lot of house parties. I know that might be a shocking admission. That is shocking. So I was at a friend's house having a sleepover the one time my brother threw a house party. and my full older brother threw a house party and I wasn't even there

and I was either an eighth grade or my freshman year in high school and I would have loved to have been around a bunch of seniors and my mom came home from her work trip a day early and didn't tell anyone that's like a movie and came inside and was like what the hell is going on here and my brother's best friend

went to the keg in the middle of the floor and filled up a red solo coat for my mom was like here Mrs. Ma' I think you need this right now and my mom just shook her head. Oh my God. That's a bold move.

Yeah. But I miss the days of like, we used to have bands play. Like they don't have garage bands anymore. They don't have that kind of thing. No. Where you're crowd surfing in a basement that's like the height of you.

It's insane. Or someone's dad has like, you know, an industrial cleaning shop and there's an empty warehouse next door and you know how to pick the lock and get everyone inside. People, they don't have bands anymore. Everyone programs, everything.

And even worse, did you see the story about the awful AI band that's got 900,000 followers on Spotify? It's horrible. It's ruining small music. It's soulless. I mean, it used to be like, you and three friends started writing songs

and screwing around with chords, and then you would get in a van. And you're still terrible. It's fine, though. And try and get show. and, you know, you'd drive and you'd all sleep in the van and you smelled and you'd

take a whores bath at Denny's. Not anymore. That's so true. I used to try to do that. I mean, I listened to Third Eye Blind once and I thought I was going to be, you know, the next them. But, you know, it's another story. Did you start a band?

Were you in a band? Oh, I did. I was in many bands. He went on American Idol. I did. Did you really? Yeah. Did you get on the TV?

I did. Only because, My buddy won it the year before, so they dared to do. Was your buddy Dautry? No, Nick Fradiani. He was the last, we were the last season before he left Fox. Oh. But yeah, I did the garage band thing forever.

But I was in the emo era, like the early 2000s emo, so I had the hair flip. Screamo. Oh, my God, yeah. I tried to scream, but it was more like, I was just whispering. But it was a weird time for music. Dashboard Confessional. By the way, best MTV Unplugged ever. Oh, that's amazing.

I agree to disagree. One of us went to the Nirvana unplugged, and that might actually be... Second best, second best, second best, yep, yep, yep, yep. Are you waiting around here? But going back to the house party thing, and the parents, and the Gen X parents now, I think what happened is they just have too much anxiety because of our boomer parents. So we can't have house parties. We can't have all these things because we have too much, we're too anxious to let our kids do stuff.

Yes, they are so much more worried about... about what parents... What we think of them. Yes, exactly. Then we were about our parents. It's like, I don't care. Yeah, go ahead and ground me. Yeah, I don't know.

Smoke weed in my room. I would never say that, and I would not encourage that. I'm just saying there might have been some Gen X-B-D. CBD. Who had the... Yeah, yeah. There were no dispensaries back in the day. Oh, my goodness.

Remember that whole... We don't have to get into that, but that was a whole other thing to figure out. Yes, it was. And it was very, it was a dangerous time. So stick to carbonated water. and, you know, go be high on life or at least get a dopamine hit from your Instagram likes. It's much better than the reefer, young people.

So, oh, heck, we got to go. I didn't even realize what time it is. That's how much fun we have on Wilcane Country. This is an incredible podcast. You can also watch Wilcane every weekday on the Fox News channel, The Wilcane Show, 4 p.m. Eastern. You can always find him here. My name is Kennedy. I am signing off.

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