PBD Interview: Steve Hilton - How California Became America’s BIGGEST Political Failure

Summary

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

Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Patrick Bet-David (PBD)
Guest: Steve Hilton

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Episode Overview

In this deep-dive episode, Patrick Bet-David sits down with Steve Hilton—former Fox News host, policy advisor, entrepreneur, and Republican candidate for Governor of California—to discuss the roots and reality of California’s political and economic decline. They cover: the forces controlling state politics, runaway costs of living, mass migration exits, the grip of unions, government bloat, regulatory insanity, failed mega-projects, the gubernatorial race, and Hilton’s common-sense proposals to bring California "back from the brink.” The conversation is candid, energetic, and battle-tested, shedding light on the state’s crisis and the uphill path to reform.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Who Really Runs California?

• Unions drive the agenda: Hilton recounts a pivotal meeting with a Democratic legislator ([05:37]) who told him bluntly, “The unions run this place.” Hilton traces the turning point to when public sector unions were granted collective bargaining, giving them lasting and entrenched power.
• Teachers’ unions & education catastrophe: Despite nearly the highest spending per student in the U.S., California ranks near the bottom in outcomes—and Hilton attributes “ideological indoctrination” and resistance to proven teaching methods (like phonics) to entrenched teachers’ unions ([07:05]).
• Other unions: Prison guards and public employees drive up costs and push luxury pensions, while construction trades form complicated alliances in housing and infrastructure projects.

California’s Political Machine

• 16 years of one-party rule: Democrats control every statewide office, both chambers, the courts, and municipal governments ([10:16]).
• Gavin Newsom’s donors: Government unions rank as the top contributors to Newsom and other prominent Democrats ([10:29]).
• Budget explosion with worse outcomes: State budget nearly doubled in a decade, now over $350 billion—yet “everything’s worse—homelessness, schools, roads, poverty” ([21:11], [21:45], [42:14]).

Why Everything Costs So Much…and Fails

1. Unions: Lock-in expensive project labor agreements and prevailing wages, stalling reforms ([13:38], [27:14]).
2. Lawyers/Litigation: CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) weaponized for lawsuits—especially by unions and NIMBY activists—delaying or stopping housing, infrastructure, and economic growth ([03:24], [28:19]).
3. Climate Agenda: Aggressive climate mandates (VMT fees, cap-and-trade, environmental reviews) drive up costs of energy, housing, and transportation, often negating any measurable global impact ([29:47], [30:47]).

Fraud, Waste & Bureaucratic Bloat

• Explosive government waste: Hilton’s campaign estimates $425 billion in fraud/waste over last 5 years—about $85 billion/year ([23:22]).
• Out-of-control spending examples:
  • $1B over 10 years for solar panels on low-income buildings; only $72M delivered for panels, $928M went to “Democrat-aligned nonprofits” ([24:01]).
  • Gas tax is highest in U.S., but roads rank near-worst for quality due to massive regulatory overhead.
  • Wine entrepreneur spent 6 years, $1M to get a permit to expand patio seating from 30 to 50 guests ([27:14]).
• Four different state agencies regulate electricity—creating $1.2B in bureaucratic costs even before delivering a watt ([51:33]).

Cost of Living & Economic Exodus

• Housing: Median home price is $906,000 ([00:55]), lowest homeownership in the nation.
• Homelessness: 13% of U.S. population, 28% of U.S. homelessness ([00:55], [41:04]).
• Outmigration: Six consecutive years as #1 in net negative migration.
• Business climate: 441 major businesses left the state since 2018; 3 million more people left (2010–2024) ([74:47]).
• Tax insanity: Top rate is 13.3–14.4%, begins at moderate incomes; Hilton proposes first $100K tax-free and a 7.5% flat tax ([18:56]).

Hilton’s Reform Proposals

• First $100,000 income: No state tax ([18:56]).
• Flat income tax at 7.5% for all ([18:56]).
• Eliminate fraud and waste by rigorous audits (“Cal DOGE” initiative) ([21:24]).
• Slash regulations and merge redundant agencies ([51:22]).
• End gas tax increases, reduce energy bills, allow oil & gas production ([23:32], [36:18]).
• Roll back union and litigation controls strangling economic activity.
• Business comeback plan: Host a “California Homecoming” with major ex-business leaders (e.g., Sergey Brin, Mark Wahlberg) to attract jobs and innovation back to the state ([75:36], [76:34]).

The Gubernatorial Race

• Top donors include Trump, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale—and big cross-aisle support from tech/entertainment ([17:33], [59:33]).
• **Polls: Hilton in top two with Becerra; Steyer and Porter trailing. Fear is a “two Democrat” final due to split Republican vote ([55:46], [58:45], [69:43], [70:06]).
• Bianco challenge: Urges Chad Bianco to drop out to prevent Republican vote split ([72:06]).
• Scandals in Democrat ranks: Becerra's campaign hit by indictments and finance scandals with ties to Newsom’s former chief of staff ([64:03]).
• Hilton’s focus: Win back belief that change is possible, mobilize “everyone else”—including disaffected Democrats, independents, middle and working class.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• [05:37] Steve Hilton:
  "The unions run this place." (citing a state legislator)
• [07:05] Steve Hilton:
  "So it's not about education, it's about indoctrination...The debate over [teaching children how to read] was settled decades ago. Phonics...Barely used in California public schools because the teachers don't like it, think it’s racist or something."
• [21:45] Steve Hilton:
  "They've doubled the budget and everything’s worse. Surely we can do better...Fraud, waste, and abuse—$425 billion over five years."
• [29:47] Steve Hilton:
  "The three big drivers of all the cost and nightmare in California are unions, lawyers, and the climate agenda."
• [36:13] Steve Hilton:
  "In the name of climate change, California is now funding Putin’s war machine."
• [38:59] Steve Hilton:
  "We've got everything we need...And it's all been crushed by this bloated nanny state bureaucratic government."
• [51:06] Steve Hilton:
  "The only answer actually is to massively reduce the size of these bureaus. Because if there’s fewer people doing less, there's less capacity [for resistance to reform]."
• [60:18] Steve Hilton:
  "I’m not an ideologue...It really is just common sense. Let’s just stop doing stupid things that make everything so expensive and so difficult."
• [82:14] Jeff Bezos (clip):
  “You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens, I promise you...What’s really causing high rent is government intervention.”
• [85:03] Steve Hilton (on high speed rail):
  “The budget: from $30 billion to $231 billion...You go San Francisco to Merced, transfer to a bus, then to LA...It’s absolutely pathetic.”
• [95:01] Steve Hilton (on Newsom’s "break the glass" scenario):
  “If I’m in the top two...a big part of the campaign will be a prosecution of his record...Imagine him running for president just as California elects a Republican governor.”
• [100:31] Steve Hilton:
  “First: vote. None of this stuff will happen unless we vote for it...That idea that things can't change—it’s a very un-American attitude.”

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Important Segments (with Timestamps)

| Topic/Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | California’s decline—introduction & stats | 00:55–05:00 | | Who really runs California: the unions | 05:00–10:00 | | Unions’ impact on education; teacher union control | 10:00–13:00 | | Structure of Democrat political machine | 16:00–21:00 | | Explosive budget growth, government waste | 21:00–24:00 | | How bureaucracy and regulations doom progress | 24:00–30:00 | | Litigation & “tort tax”; insurance disaster | 28:20–29:47 | | Climate agenda—energy & housing costs spiral | 29:47–33:26 | | Outsourcing oil/gas, importing directly from Amazon/Russia | 33:26–36:13 | | Hilton’s policies: tax reform, deregulation, audits | 18:56–22:00, 21:27–25:00 | | California vs. UK/Europe: parallel decline | 39:00–42:14 | | Strategies for breaking bureaucratic gridlock | 48:58–54:19 | | Current gubernatorial polls & dynamics | 55:26–59:32 | | Cross-aisle, business, and entertainment industry support | 59:33–60:55 | | Becerra campaign scandal | 64:03–68:28 | | Polls, primary dangers, and path to victory | 69:43–74:40 | | Business exodus & comeback event idea | 75:36–78:29 | | Tax debate & Bezos' viral comments on taxes | 79:28–84:16 | | High-speed rail debacle—cost, lack of progress | 85:03–89:27 | | Newsom “break the glass” scenario & November strategy | 93:13–97:17 | | Closing calls to action: vote, organize, belief | 100:31–102:27 |

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Summary Table: Problems, Causes, Solutions

| Issue | Hilton’s Diagnosis | Key Causes | Proposed Solutions | |------------------------|-------------------------------------|---------------------------------------|-----------------------------------| | Exploding cost of living | Dysfunctional politics overrun by unions & litigation | Teacher unions, public employee pensions, trial lawyers, climate bureaucracy | Slash taxes, end bloat, deregulate, executive action | | Housing unaffordability | CEQA lawsuits, fees, VMT costs | Unions, environmental activists | End private right of action on CEQA, roll back fees | | Outmigration/business loss | Anti-business policies | High taxes, lawsuits, energy costs | Abolish tax on first $100K, flat tax, red carpet for business | | Homelessness & poverty | Wasteful “solutions” | Spending without results, no accountability | Audit, stop fraud, direct support to effective measures | | Government waste | Fragmented agencies, duplication | No check on bureaucracy, perverse incentives | Merge agencies, line-item vetoes, “Cal DOGE” audits |

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Final Call-to-Action

[100:31] Steve Hilton:
“First: vote. None of this stuff will happen unless we vote for it... We need belief that it’s possible... You gotta vote, vote, vote, and tell all your friends. Come out of this primary with energy... We don’t have Steyer money, but we have the people. Imagine how great it would be for our country if we have a California that is firing on all cylinders again.”

Learn more/Support: stevehiltonforgovernor.com

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Tone & Style

The conversation balances urgency and optimism. Hilton’s tone is practical, sometimes exasperated, often hopeful—a blend of insider political critique with a CEO’s drive for operational efficiency. PBD brings sharp, data-rich questions and challenges, but also encouragement for cross-ideological pragmatism.

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This summary provides a comprehensive guide to the episode’s key arguments, memorable moments, and essential context for anyone interested in California’s trajectory, policy dysfunction, and the stakes of the 2026 gubernatorial race.

Transcript

[Rob]

Did you ever think you were made again? Adam, what's your point? The future looks bright. My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.

[Steve Hilton]

It's right here.

[Rob]

You are one of one.

[Steve Hilton]

They send you, right?

[Rob]

I think I said this. She is, she is. And a couple other people are as well. Okay, so today we have a special guest who is trying to do the impossible. I would say you're trying to do the impossible. And the reason why I say that is because California politics is so controlled by so many different people. But take somebody with courage who is willing to go and drive some conservative common sense ideas to people in California who've been devastated the last four to eight years, who love their state, who don't want to leave, who want to see this place become the state everybody would flock to instead of now looking at the numbers back to back to back. The last six years, number one state in America for negative net migration. They had so many different issues. Most expensive homes. Average home in California right Now is what, $906,000. Number one in homelessness, 13% in population, but 28% in population of homelessness. You can go highest prices of gas, so many different things. And then comes a guy like you that wants to run for governor of the state of California. And it's great to have you here with us.

[Steve Hilton]

Thank you.

[Rob]

Fantastic. One and only Steve Hilton. Yes. Great to have you here. So before we get into the story, I want to ask you a very open ended question.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Who runs California? Is it the governor? Is it the unions? Is it the money? The billionaires? Is it the NGOs? Who runs? Who's the most powerful institution or individual in California when it comes down to politics?

[Steve Hilton]

What a great question. I'm going to answer it with a story which is almost the reason that I'm doing this. Like it's the closest thing to an actual moment when I thought I'm going to go for it. So many people know me from Fox News. I hosted a show there for many years. But most of my career before then was in business and I worked a little bit in the government as well in the UK before moving here with my wife and my two sons in 2012. I was senior advisor to David Cameron in 10 Downing street, responsible for implementing our policy reform program along with many other people in the team there. So the reason I'm saying that is most of my career has actually been doing things like trying to make change happen in the private sector, in government. And so over the years of being on tv, it was an Amazing opportunity. I loved it. But I had a itch to get back to doing stuff. And so a few years ago, I got back involved in policy and politics in California, and the first issue I looked at was housing. You just mentioned it. Housing costs actually is the number one reason people are leaving the state. It's just impossible, you know, like, hardly anyone can even imagine owning a home now in California.

[Rob]

$906,000.

[Steve Hilton]

It's something like, you know, I mean, we have the lowest home ownership in the country anyway. So I started working on the issue. Yeah, really learning about what's been driving it and so on. And it took me to trying to get a. An initiative qualified for the ballot that would address two of the big drivers of this insane cost. One of them is a hidden tax on housing called impact fees, the development impact. The second is something that's talked about a lot, which is, by the way, this really does answer your question. So just please.

[Rob]

Yeah, I'm with you.

[Steve Hilton]

I'm getting there. Something called CEQA. The CEQA, the California Environmental Quality act, passed in 1970, and it was all about when it started out, regulating pollution from big factories and so on. But over the years, it's basically turned into a nightmare that blocks anything and holds up everything. And one of the main problems with ceqa, this law is that they've given this what they call a private right of action means that anyone can file a lawsuit to enforce this environmental law. Normally with stuff like that, it's the DA or the attorney general, You've got this private right of action. Anyone can file a lawsuit. 70% of CEQA lawsuits are used to block housing. Most of those are filed by unions in order to negotiate with developers. What they call project labor agreements, where you have union workers only, or what they call prevailing wage, which is two or three times higher than market rate wages, et cetera. Yep. So the second component of this ballot initiative was ending this private right of action. So at a stroke, you stop all these nuisance lawsuits that block housing. Didn't raise the money to get it on the ballot. Then I started engaging with Sacramento. I thought, maybe we can make it happen through the regular political process. And that's when I ran into the answer to your question, who runs California? I started having meetings with the legislators. One particular person, they said, you got to talk to this person. They're really good on housing. You, you work with them, you're going to make some progress. We had a great meeting. This person, really, the Democrat member of the state legislature, said, your plan is fantastic. If we make this happen, it's transformational. That was the word. I said, great, let's work together on it. I'm a Republican. This person was a Democrat.

[Rob]

Cross, is this a heavyweight? This is a heavyweight person.

[Steve Hilton]

No, you wouldn't have heard their name. And I'm not going to say their name because actually it was a private meeting.

[Rob]

Privately, is it a heavyweight person? Not publicly, because there's a lot of heavyweight.

[Steve Hilton]

The midway. I'm going to say fair, but a legislator, an elected. But anyway, I said, let's work together. Well, I couldn't support you publicly.

[Rob]

She's telling you this.

[Steve Hilton]

Why not? Well, the unions would hate it. I said, yeah, but you just told me it'd be transformational. We were in an office overlooking the state capitol like this, with their arm like this. Well, the unions run this place. That's an elected member of the legislature saying the unions run this place. And you just think, what is this? It's ridiculous. And that's the most clear answer to your question. The unions. And when people ask me, how did California get like this? How do we go from having the most amazing opportunities anywhere, not just in America, but in the world if we agree that America is the greatest nation on earth? Which is what I think California is the greatest state? There's something I always say which is California means to America what America means to the world. It represents everything that's amazing about our country. Ambition and opportunity and energy and hustle and all those things. And yet it's been crushed. That spirit's been crushed over the years. And people say, well, how did it get. I wrote a book last year. It came out last year just before my campaign called Caliphalia Reversing the Ruin of America's Worst Run State. I tried to trace it back and my conclusion was it all started when the unions were given collective bargaining rights and over the years built up this incredible power. There's a lock on policy. It's the government unions. Not just government unions. Non government unions as well. And so they do run.

[Rob]

So unions run California basically. Give me specific three unions. Is one gonna be the teachers union.

[Steve Hilton]

Teachers union. Which means that now the education. So let's look at the outcomes. We spend nearly the most of any state. Newsom brags about it. He just did his budget last week. $28,000 per student per year, one of the highest in the country for the worst results, pretty much. We have now 47% meet basics of K through 12 students, meet basic standards in English with math, it's 35% 65% don't meet the standards. When you look at Latino and black kids, it's even worse. Most money, worst results. Why? Because the teacher unions have a lock on anything to do with education and they've completely distorted the system. So it's not about education, it's about indoctrination. And that's not some exaggeration. You go to their conferences and you see what their sessions are about and their training and all the stuff they're pumping out. It's ideological indoctrination. It's colonialism and gender extremism, all this stuff. Meanwhile, the kids don't get taught to read. You've got techniques for teaching kids to read that work that we've seen work elsewhere. The debate over that was settled decades ago. Phonics, it's a technique for teaching kids to read. Barely used in California public schools because the teachers don't like it, because they think it's racist or something. You know, it really is. It's not every single thing. But the best answer to your question is the unions.

[Rob]

So, okay, if we say unions, right? And teachers unions, number one, you got a couple other unions there as well.

[Steve Hilton]

What was a big driver of the budget crisis for sure.

[Rob]

But one, one of the biggest things that helped, if you look at the five monumental moments in Trump winning in 2024, one is Bobby Kennedy joining his camp. Massive will never forget Arizona. He walks out with Charlie Kirk turning in usa. That's one. Right. You can see the event at Butler. That was definitely number one. Okay. And then you have to put, and as much as this may seem like a small one, is when Sean o', Brien, the president of Teamsters, came out and spoke at the convention and he was going to talk something and then they said, no, we need you to submit your PowerPoint to proven. And he calls Suzy Wells, says, I'm not speaking. He says, just call the president President. I don't care what you say. He even said something. I don't give what you say, just say whatever you want to say. And he got up, gave a speech, bashed a couple capitalists, got off the stage. But it was the first time in 120something years that a Democrat didn't. If the union didn't support the Democratic Party. So for you to win in a state like California, what are you doing to win over the union? How do you do that? Do you go and sit in front of these guys and try to get. Or is it an impossible thing to do in the state of California?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, you look at the there's, you know, of course two categories. The government unions, non government unions. And in terms of the lock on power, one way of thinking about it is to using Gavin Newsom as a proxy for Democrat politicians. Remember, it's 16 years now of one party control, 16 years continuous. All the statewide offices, 2/3 majority in both chambers of the legislature, all the big cities and the counties, state supreme

[Rob]

court, six, one Democrat representative, even more than two thirds.

[Steve Hilton]

It's like in the, in the legislature, isn't it?

[Rob]

40, 43 to 9.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, no, it's more. But I mean at least the 2/3

[Rob]

of what gives you the minimum to be able to do whatever they want to do.

[Steve Hilton]

So they call it supermarket. So 16 years of that. In those 16 years, Gavin Newsom's been eight years as lieutenant governor, eight years as governor. You look at his donations as a kind of proxy for Democrat politicians. The categories, number one category of donors to Gavin Newsom, government unions, non government unions, number three. And so they control the politicians and that's representative of the ones in the legislature or the other Democrat politicians. So they, they drive it. And it's the government unions that are the biggest and that drives the budget crisis. Because you get over the years all these, it's not the only reason. They've just massively increased spending. They've doubled spending in the last 10 years. The size of the budget in California's nearly doubled. But the unions, of course, are you getting these luxury pensions and healthcare deals and all these things? Okay, here's another thing that I get on the road the whole time we're doing town halls up and down the state, hundreds of people coming out, bigger and bigger crowds. A question I get nearly all the time from parents. We pay all these taxes and yet we're being asked to pay for school supplies, to chip in as parents, to buy books or paper, pens. But we pay the highest taxes in the country. What's going on? What's going on is that 19.1% I think of school districts budget goes straight out the door to pensions, nearly a fifth before spend any before anything is spent. So the government unions are definitely the bigger problem. No question. You look at the prison officers, for example, another huge donor, the corrections union. I mean they've got this massive prison closure program in California, which is a whole story in itself. A big part of the story on crime is that because they've released tens of thousands of dangerous, violent criminals into the community.

[Rob]

Any of these guys ever support you?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, not the. Well, I don't think on the government side. But the point I was going to make about prisons is basically they've cut the number of prisons and reduced the prison population nearly by half. But the budget's doubled. It's classic California. But the non government budget is doubled.

[Rob]

The amount of people is split.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, basically. So it's classic. If you look at the non government unions that, for example, involved in construction, I think that's where you're right. There should be an alliance. Because all my career I've been, you know, when I was on Fox, the theme of my show was I called it positive populism. I wrote a book, Positive Populism about how we need to, you know, the ideas that drove that populist movement, Trump. And you can see on the left as well, lifting up workers. Working people have been left behind by the policies we'd seen before, 100%. That's where I'm coming from. And a lot of my, the whole themes of my campaign, $3 gas, cut your electric bill in half, your first hundred grand tax free, a home you can afford to buy very much with workers in mind. Workers and small business. That's really who. If there's one group, of course you want to help everybody, but that's really the focus. So I agree with you. And I think you got to flip though.

[Rob]

I think, I think so. Because here's the challenge, right?

[Steve Hilton]

So, but the government unions, I think they're part, it's their machine. They've built this political machine. They've got huge amounts of money, a billion dollars a year in election cycle spent by the government unions. It's crazy.

[Rob]

Did you see the clip, Rob, of who was the fellow? The African American fellow in the chamber that twice got up and got kicked out of the. When Trump was given the speech, you know which one I'm talking about. He was holding signs. Elon Musk is a racist or he's this, what is his name? He's got a unique name. He said something. Al Green. Yeah, Al Green.

[Steve Hilton]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Rob]

You know what Al Green said yesterday about Trump the first time he met Trump? What he told him. Did you hear this, Rob? Can you type in Al Green first time meeting Trump? Al Green, first time meeting Trump. He's telling the story. The guy asked him a question. Maybe it's the lady. I just saw what he said. So what was your reaction the first time you met Trump? He said something very interesting. I wish, I wish I saved this. That could have been it, Rob. That could have been a. Go a little bit lower. Zoom in a Little bit, yeah. This is it. Watch what he says here. Go forward. Turn on the audio. Have you ever met the president in person?

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, I've met him.

[Rob]

Watch this. And what is that meeting like?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, let me tell you, I'm glad you mentioned it.

[Rob]

The president I met, first time we

[Steve Hilton]

met was right here in Houston, Texas.

[Rob]

Watch this.

[Steve Hilton]

When he landed and he left, he deplaned from Airport one, and he and I talked to each other. He took my hand. Pass your hand over. Show your hypocrite.

[Rob]

He took my hand and said, you're gonna like me.

[Steve Hilton]

You're gonna really like me.

[Rob]

Yep.

[Steve Hilton]

Those were his words.

[Rob]

Okay.

[Steve Hilton]

Very personable.

[Rob]

Very personable guy. Okay, you can pause it right there. So. So you know. You know why I wanted to play this clip? Here's why I wanted to play this clip. There's something unique about him that I don't know why he's convinced he can flip everybody.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Whether it's him growing up early on in church. Used to go to Norman Vincent Peale's church. I don't know if you're familiar with Norman Vincent Peale. You know, the guy that wrote the book Power of Positive Thinking, which is a book everybody needs to. It's one of the first 50 books I've read in my life. He would go, so the idea was positive thinking. I can convert him. I can convert him. I can convert him. You have that level of optimism. There's something very unique about your energy and your personality, which is attractive. So to me, it's, you know, what. What do you. What is your strategy to go talk to these guys? That there's a 99% chance they're going to say, screw you, Steve, we hate your type. You're a Republican. You're the enemy. You're a conservative. For you to say, look, you may not like me on all my policies, but I think you're going to like me because I want to make the state better.

[Steve Hilton]

That is how I am. I get along with. I do get along with people. I mean, that's exactly why I'm very interested. That's how I think, and I think it's obvious to me. Let's just go back to the workers point and unions as a focus. Like, it's so obvious that these 16 years of Democrat policies, even if they think, yeah, the Democrats, they're my guys, have just been a disaster for the average working person in California, more for them than anyone else. The rich people can kind of deal with it. And because they're leaving now as well, of course, because of this ridiculous insane billionaires tax. I'm sure we'll get into that. But for regular working people, I mean, look at the gas. You know, it's exactly those people who are being hurt the most. Who does gas price? Who's hurt most by these insane gas? Low middle income families, regular driving their trucks. That's right, two, three, four, five hours a day for work. That's who really is suffering. And that's the point I make the whole time. And I find, and when I'm in those communities and we do events there and I go to, and I love doing events and meeting, you know, restaurant owners and bars and just regular places like that. And it's blue collar workers. Often the, I mean we were just chatting before the show about, you know, who comes up to you and who says hi. It's often workers.

[Rob]

So I think, I think California needs a guy like you that's optimistic, that gets out there. But I, I'll tell you this one part because as the audience in California is watching, I call like California all the time. And the reason why I call like California is listen, you want change? Get behind somebody. Do the work. You got to go do the door knocking. Find a candidate, support him financially. Support him with your community, support him with, hey, I like this guy. I support this guy. Go put your name out there. There's been a lot of guys that have endorsed you. I think the president endorsed you. Yes, I think Peter Thiel endorsed you. I want to say Joe Lonsdale from Palantir whom he we've had on endorse you. There's been a number of people that have come out that have said they want you to be the governor state of California. But I want to talk about this and I think the audience is going to like this. You said you want to lower taxes for those making under $100,000 to zero. Okay, so I want to read some of these numbers off tax, state income taxes, which is a good amount to zero. So I looked up with Rob and I what percentage of Californians make less than $100,000? That's about 70 to 75% make under $100,000. And I said, tell me how much revenue the government collects from these folks, which is mainly the 17 and 70 to 75% that make a less than 100,000 is about 12 and a half billion to $25 billion low high end on how much income revenue they collect. So your policy will eliminate that. By the way, that's not controversial policy because Katie Porter duplicated you.

[Steve Hilton]

Exactly.

[Rob]

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

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, that's, that's our number.

[Rob]

So if we go and we eliminate under 100,000 and then you lower the 13 three to seven and a half, you lose another 60 to $65 billion. So now you got $75 billion of revenue that's gone, give or take. Where are you going to take the $75 billion away?

[Steve Hilton]

So what's interesting, because our number was 60, I did some basic costings on this, just like that with, I was there for a while when we moved here, 2012. I was at Stanford, teaching at Stanford for a couple of years. And I was also a fellow at the Hoover Institution. So I worked with some of the people I knew there, some of the economists, to do a basic costing. And our number was, I think 65 billion for the whole package.

[Rob]

So was that 10 years ago?

[Steve Hilton]

It was last year.

[Rob]

Oh, it's last year. So if you do less than 100.

[Steve Hilton]

So that's, that's right. It's a big, it's a big number. And the other, the other way of looking at it was, I remember when we did the math, this is last year. We have, we haven't actually updated it for this year's budget. But when I, because I didn't want to say something crazy and unrealistic, we'll see a unit.

[Rob]

But by the way, this is a great idea, but where does that money. So let me.

[Steve Hilton]

We had, we had a revenue reduction of 18.5%. That was at the time when we did that costing, last year's numbers. That was roughly what it was. And here's the way I put it. This is not some crazy thing. This is taking the budget back just a couple of years to roughly what it was before the pandemic. Remember, they've nearly doubled the budget. The budget this year that Newsom submitted $350 billion. The 1.

[Rob]

Can you go to California budget lasts 10 years.

[Steve Hilton]

It was 180 billion not that long ago. Depends where you look at it. There's the.

[Rob]

Yeah, there you go. So it went from 2017, 2018, 124 to 250 billion.

[Steve Hilton]

General Fund. And then there's these other. The total budget includes these special funds, bond and things like that. So you get 350 billion is the total. So I think the. The comparison is 180 to 3 and nearly doubled. 180 billion to 3.

[Rob]

What should he put there so we can look at that? Instead of saying general fund.

[Steve Hilton]

Total budget.

[Rob]

Put total budget, Rob. Total budget. There you go. So 350 billion is what they proposed this year. And you go to 2017, 2018, 177 billion. Exactly. Doubled in less than 10 years.

[Steve Hilton]

Right. And everything's worse. I mean, really, that's not an exaggeration, some political statement? Everything's worse. You mentioned homelessness. You could get run down the list. I mean, I don't even want to do it now because I want to get to this point about the budget. In other words, it's just bringing it back to some level of sanity. So there's a general point that they've doubled the budget and everything's worse. Surely we can do better getting specific about it. The first place you look, of course, is this phrase that's become very well known, rightly so. Fraud, waste and abuse. When you get specific. So at the beginning of this year, I set up something basically as part of our campaign. It's a volunteer thing. It's not an official. We're not. I'm not elected yet. CAL Doge, California Department of Government Efficiency Borrowing the. Borrowing the name Trump. Exactly. So. So we. We set that up that. There you are. And so we've done a number of fraud reports, and there's a couple of specific ones we can get into. But I'll start with the total. We made an estimate. Our fourth fraud report was an estimate of the total fraud, waste and abuse in the last five years. We looked at it over five years because these programs often have that kind of lengthy characteristic to them. Our estimate based on published data, so combination of things like the state auditor report that says $24 billion of homelessness, spending was wasted, medical error rates, et cetera, et cetera. We looked at all this published data. Our estimate for the total is $425 billion in the last five years.

[Rob]

That's about 80 billion a year. 85 billion a year.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. Roughly exactly about 20% of the budget. And so.

[Rob]

Got it.

[Steve Hilton]

That's where you start but of course, here's another example. One of the things on the debates, you may have seen some of these exchanges I've called for freeze for suspending the gas tax and over time reducing it. We have the highest gas tax in the country, the worst roads in the country.

[Rob]

Another classic 71 cents.

[Steve Hilton]

Another the 63. It's just gone from 61 to 63. The gas tax.

[Rob]

Gas tax in California.

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah.

[Rob]

So can you type in top 10 highest gas taxes in America by state?

[Steve Hilton]

So it's amazing. What California have you had Becerra?

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

Who looks like he's going to be my opponent in the general election.

[Rob]

71 cents.

[Steve Hilton]

Oh, that must be including something.

[Rob]

Yeah, trust me, I'm trying to help Californians so much. They follow the numbers super closely.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. Why would I think 61 to 63,

[Rob]

but better it's higher now, so it could raise in the last 24 hours.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, he always says this. Steve, if you cut the gas tax, how are you going to pay for roads? Because that's where it's supposed to go. Well, first of all, we have the highest gas tax and the worst roads. On one, some of the measures. On one measure, we're 49th out of 50 on roads. There's another way. We're 50th. I was talking to a contractor, I talked to business owners the whole time. She, this lady runs a big company doing public works construction. Builds, literally builds roads. She told me they operate in multiple states. It costs four times as much to build the exact piece of road in California as in Texas. Four times as much as. So that's not what you would call. So when you look at the $425 billion number fraud, waste and abuse, that specific programs where you can literally find things that shouldn't be spent at all. For example, actually this connects to the gas tax. There's a program that's been running for over 10 years, started in 2015. It actually gets money from the, not necessarily the gas tax, but the, the cap and trade system for part of their climate policy, some climate change mitigation fund or whatever. So. But it's basically from what you pay for gas and it's. This program was supposed to install solar panels on low income apartment buildings. $100 million every year since 2015. So $1 billion total been spent. We looked at where that money's gone. Of that $1 billion actual spending on solar panels, 72 million 928 million going to these nonprofits. This, this one exactly. Going to Democrat nonprofit environmental justice campaigns. All this Bullshit. And so that's an example of out and out. That just shouldn't happen. Just stop it. Stop spending that money. The roads is not even included in that. 425 billion total. The 425 billion estimate over five years, roughly 85 billion. Here is things like this. The fact that the roads are four times more expensive to build, that's not even included in that.

[Rob]

Right.

[Steve Hilton]

Why is it four times more expensive? Because they layer on all this nonsense. For example, what we mentioned earlier is public works. It's public money. So you have to do prevailing wage, union members only, community workforce agreements where you have to hire endless nonsense. Environmental reviews, audits, inspections, fee. This is what's going on. The amount of bloat and nonsense people have to deal with on a small scale. I met a lady, she runs a small independent winery, Wine country, Sonoma. I think it was either Sonoma or Napa. She told me she just wanted to expand her patio for more guests. From 30 to 50 guests.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

It took her six years. A million dollars. Fees, permits, environmental reports. She had to pay for all this. That story is typical. I tell that story to other business owners. Oh yeah, I've got one like that. Just everything is layered on to make it so expensive. And so that's why that budget is so high. Because everything costs so much because of this insane over regulation. And a lot of it is driven. I mean, if you ask me that where's the real cost and hassle of doing anything in California come from? Basically over the years, I've been studying it now and traveling the state and meeting businesses and regular people. It's really. There are three underlying drivers, the unions, we've mentioned them. The second one is litigation. Lawyers, endless lawsuit costs, huge litigation. Everything's a lawsuit. Like there's an estimate that insurance policies, for example, that's one of the big issue, one of the most, you know, annoying things for people. You can't get insurance. So it's so expensive.

[Rob]

The FAIR act or. You sound like the insurance homeowners insurance

[Steve Hilton]

leave in regular home. They've left the state. But one of the reasons is you've got this massive insurance litigation risk. It's called the tort tax. Some people refer to it an estimate of 3,000 to 15,000. Just the cost of litigation that the insurance companies have to deal with.

[Rob]

What do you mean by this? Tortex. So insurance companies are having to pay this?

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, they. It's.

[Rob]

It's a zoom in.

[Steve Hilton]

It's a. It's known as that. It's a Exactly as it is.

[Rob]

Tortex, a term used to describe how excessive litigation and legal system abuse infiltrate insurance premiums, raising costs. So insurance companies are already adding this as a cost that they're probably going to get sued. Yeah. And so because of that, they raised their rates to be able to profit, or else what's the point of being the state of California?

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, but everyone has. I was at a small manufacturing place. He was saying they have to put aside millions of dollars a year for lawsuits. I mean, endless lawsuits. There's. Oh, my goodness, I don't know. I want to do the sort of headlines and then get. Maybe dive into it. So the three big drivers of all the cost and nightmare of doing anything in California is unions, lawyers, trial lawyers, and all of this litigation. And then the third is the climate agenda, as they call it. The climate stuff is really driving a lot of this. The obsession with meeting this net 0, 20, 45 goal, totally arbitrary, actually makes no difference to the actual climate. It's not. You know what I mean? So.

[Rob]

Well, I mean, the report came out this last week that Trump tweeted saying that was all bs. I don't know if you saw that or not.

[Steve Hilton]

I didn't.

[Rob]

You didn't see this? Oh, you. You're going to have to see this for. To be able to use it while you're out there. Rob, do you have the story of what you showed it a couple days ago on the podcast. I think you had the tweet. Yeah. Trump literally came out and the claims of the RCP 8.5. If you want to go back, you just had it right there, Rob, go back to. All right, there. Fact check. There was a tweet that came out about this, that climate change. They got the numbers wrong and they were claiming that it was all this that we have to be worried about.

[Steve Hilton]

Oh, I did see a report of that. Yeah. I didn't see what the President said.

[Rob]

Yeah, the president tweeted about it, says we were right all along.

[Steve Hilton]

Well, even the thing right there, after

[Rob]

15 years of Democrats promising climate change going to destroy the planet, that it says top climate committee just admitted that its own projections of RCP 8.5 were wrong. Wrong run far too time, too long. Climate activism has been used by Democrats to scare Americans, push horrible energy policies and fund billions into their bogus research programs.

[Steve Hilton]

So look, and the reason it's so important to focus on this, again, these are examples of the bigger picture. They layer this climate stuff into everything. So we just talked earlier about housing costs. Gavin Newsom pitched these two pieces of legislation last year. AB130AB131. As we now solving the housing crisis, we're going to have abundance with housing. Fantastic. We're going to build more housing. And the centerpiece of it was exemptions from that environmental or I mentioned CEQA for housing. Except you only get the exemptions if you use union labor. So already you're adding back in a whole bunch of cost from that. And the second thing is that because they've got part of the climate story is that they don't want sprawl as they call it because if you have sprawl and people drive more that's bad for climate. So they've got this mechanism, this regulatory mechanism called VMT vehicle miles traveled. It's a calculation that's put into permitting for projects if you want to build. This is in the new legislation that Newsom touted as the solution to the housing crisis. They put in a VMT charge that goes. It's an actual cost that's paid. It's basically a tax if you want to build a new single family home. The cost of the VMT that they will put in, the developer pays it obviously then goes to the price, the purchase price, $325,000 over 20 years just for this extra. So the climate stuff is just embedded in every obviously in obvious ways like gas prices. And of course gas prices affect. And diesel affects business, you know, delivery costs, all of that. That's why groceries are the highest in the country. Electric bills more than double the national average with gas prices with the highest in the country, higher than Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean even though we have abundant oil reserves.

[Rob]

And can you, can you.

[Steve Hilton]

Electric bills where the second highest only to Hawaii. We have gas fired power stations in California, natural gas fired power stations that are deliberately being run by at 10 to 15% of their capacity because they're only being used as backup for wind and solar. So we've basically got these, this infrastructure for energy that we're not using. And we. And we have abundant natural gas in California that is just being kept in the ground. And we're now importing nearly 80% of the crude oil we use and 90% of the natural gas.

[Rob]

Where from where are we importing?

[Steve Hilton]

Tell you I was just at a refinery. So for crude oil it's coming mainly from Iraq and South America, the Amazon rainforest, we're in Ecuador and Brazil. So we just. When Newsom was in Brazil for the climate conference, the latest data came out. We're now Buying half the oil that's being drilled in the Amazon because it's heavy. And the refineries. It's particular kind of crude oil that fits the refinery. That's like California oil. It's heavier. So in the name of climate change, California is driving an expansion of oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest. So that's the crude oil. The refined gasoline is worse than just the crude oil because they've shut down the refineries because there's not enough business for them. And because of the cost of doing anything. We're now importing not just crude oil, but refined finished gasoline. We use about 800,000 barrels a day in California. We're now only refining about 550,000. The rest is being imported. That's coming from mainly India and South Korea. Where does India get its oil? Russia. So in the name of climate change, California is now funding Putin's war machine. It's just insane. By the way, here's another thing. This oil and Gap, whether that's crude oil and finished gasoline that's being shipped halfway across the world, those ships run on bunker fuel, is the most polluting form of transportation you can imagine. The dirtiest form spewing out carbon emissions. These ships, when we could be sending it in a nice clean pipeline a couple of hundred miles from Kern county, near Bakersfield, where Bakersfield is. Where I literally was there last night. I was in Bakersfield last night. The heart of our island, Hard Race Hotel.

[Rob]

Were you at.

[Steve Hilton]

I didn't pay the night on a flight to come here. But. But the. So instead of taking it in a nice pipeline to the refineries in Long beach or wherever, in a ship 7,500 miles across the ocean, spewing out carbon emissions. To make all that insanity work, here's another car. There's a. The regulatory agency for a lot of this stuff is called carb, the California Air Resources Board. They're insane about making businesses report on their carbon emissions through the supply chain. Like, you've got to account for your carbon emissions. Except for this. They only count the carbon emissions for these ships bringing the oil. Once they're 12 miles off the coast of California, then. So 7,500 miles. Ignore it. 12 miles. That's when they start counting the carbon. It's crazy. They're actually increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate.

[Rob]

What are you gonna do the day say you become the governor? What are you doing the day you get. You become the governor with.

[Steve Hilton]

So it's gonna be a very busy. One of the things that I Think, well, there's many things I'm doing differently in this, but one of them is being really well prepared because I do actually understand how policy works, how government works. I've got experience of that, and I'm a businesslike person. I wouldn't be practical specifically on this one. He's a good example. And it goes back to what you're saying, what we were discussing about the legislature and the supermajority and what can you get done? Because there's all these Democrats controlling the legislature. The. There's a huge amount you can do just through your control of the executive branch and these regulatory agencies. Opening up oil production is a good example. So the way that they've shut down oil and gas production in California is not actually the legislature is through an agency called CalGEM, the California Department of Geologic and Energy Management. And they have refused to issue permits. And I've seen that. I've been to the oil fields, got these just like that that you're looking at there, and they're much bigger, as far as you can see oil wells. And they just refuse to issue permits for maintenance. You need a permit for everything. If you want to do routine maintenance for expanding an existing well that's maybe running out of oil, you do you. I think they call it side tracking. You can expand it and get the output up from five barrels a day to 100 or whatever, or drilling new wells in existing fields. This is not drilling an oil well in the middle of Yosemite National Park. This is literally like, as far as you can see, oil wells, there's a concrete pad ready for some new wells to be drilled in the middle of the oil field. And they're saying no. So actually, that's something where you could turn that around. I don't want to say overnight, but you put in new people, I'll be ready to go with the new people you're going to appoint to this agency.

[Rob]

Any names, Any names of people that we're just.

[Steve Hilton]

We're gathering the names now. I have named someone who I would appoint to be the Natural Resources Secretary that sits above all of this guy called John Duarte, who was a member of Congress and very thoughtful on water, because these resource issues are real drivers of the problem in California. The fact that we're killing our ag industry by refusing to give farmers the water that they need. This issue of oil and gas, so that comes under natural resources. So we can have someone who believes in actually, you know, producing in abundance what we have. This is the point about California We've got everything we need. We have incredible natural resources, human resources in terms of the energy and hustle of our people. And it's all been crushed by this bloated nanny state bureaucratic government.

[Rob]

Now what, what? You know, some people may say, well look, you're, you're a Brit, you're from uk. Are you running?

[Steve Hilton]

Because I'm American now, I hope you

[Rob]

know, UK is the equivalent of California and London is the equivalent of la. Do they have a lot of things in common? What patterns do you see? Is the California on track to be? What happens to uk?

[Steve Hilton]

Yes. Do you.

[Rob]

Okay, share that with us. What, what perspective do you have?

[Steve Hilton]

It's very interesting. So a very serious venture capital guy sent me a report, must have been about six months ago on the UK and he literally just put on the email, remind you of anywhere. And this report was going through just how impossible it is to do anything in the uk to build housing, to increase energy infrastructure, to build any kind of infrastructure. And it just went through the incredible bloat, the regulatory, the process taking so long for anything. It's exactly where we've got to in California and that's why we have this situation where right now you've got these two things going on. So Gavin Newsom's response to anything when he's challenged on everything going wrong in California, his go to response is, well, we're the fourth biggest economy in the world, so things must be great. That's true. Statistically we are the fourth biggest. But remember, well, that's just the total GDP that's driven mainly by two things. We got a small number of giant tech companies that are great and I want, of course I want every business to thrive in California. So I'm a huge supporter of our tech industry like all our other industries. That's great that we got. These companies generate huge amount of revenue but not many jobs. And then the second component that driven up the GDP number is the, that includes the government. So all this increasing government spending, that increases your gdp, but it's not a healthy way to increase your economy. So at the same time as having the fourth biggest economy, we are, we have the highest poverty rate of any state, tied with Louisiana.

[Rob]

28% of US homelessness is in California. Poverty rate is massive.

[Steve Hilton]

Poverty rate is the highest in the country, tied with Louisiana.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

Unemployment 50 with the highest in the country of all 50 states. I think the District of Columbia is slightly higher. But in terms of states we have the highest unemployment rate. So that's not a healthy economy. I mean, most of the jobs that have been created since the pandemic, I believe the net job creation in the private sector is almost zero. In California, it's government and stuff like that, healthcare. And so you've got a really unhealthy economy because it's just so impossible to do anything. And that's exactly what you're seeing in Europe and in the uk. I mean, one of the things I say, I mean, I became. We moved here 2012, I became a citizen 2021. And. And if you look at what's going on in the uk, I've now renounced my UK citizenship. I just want to be clear that I'm all in for this country and California, but. But I actually truly feel this on an emotional level. I don't want to see California the way I put it, as I'm fighting to make sure this state that I love does not turn into the country I left. That is a really bad. And that is the path we're on, no question.

[Rob]

What. What do you see happening right now with uk Go specifically to uk?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, I haven't spent much time at. What I really don't understand.

[Rob]

You were heavily involved, you were there. So you remember a while, the invasion, when it was coming in, it went from 1.6 million to 2.7 million. Because I think Cameron went and went 2010. 2010, 2010, and then it skyrocketed. So what patterns did you see? What mistakes did you see they were making? Is it just.

[Steve Hilton]

So this is how we really fell out. Because. Because he met. He. We. I was very much part of the senior advisor. I was strategic guy.

[Rob]

Yes.

[Steve Hilton]

Everything is smaller, more of a shoestring in. In British politics. So there's not much money there. And I basically did a number of jobs, the strategy, policy, communications, the whole thing. And we had a commitment. I think I'm getting this right. In going into that 2010 election, he particularly. It was his idea, actually, to say this, make this commitment, net migration into the UK to bring it under 100,000 a year. That was the pledge that we made and it was David Cameron's idea, I think. That's right. Net migration, under 100,000 a year. And one of the main reasons that we. There we are. Never achieved the pledge. Yeah, yeah. Hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. So one of the reasons that that was never met and it was very clearly explained to me, we had a policy, you know, this was a policy commitment. So of course you're there. Once he became Prime Minister, you're in 10 Downing Street. You, you're really focused on delivering your promises. One of the things we kept, look at why, you know, we said this is it happening? Making, you know, checking on progress. On this particular one, I remember a meeting where the officials, the bureaucrats came in and said, look, basically said, you're never going to achieve this target as long as you're in the eu. Impossible. Because of the free migration rules within the eu. Never going to be delivered. As one of the reasons that I was in favor of Brexit, that's when we really fell out. I'd left the UK by then. We moved here in 2012. Brexit was a 2016. That was one of the main reasons because he'd made this commitment and his own government official said, you can't meet this commitment as long as Britain remains in the now. The really crazy thing, which I just don't understand, I wasn't there. 2016, Brexit was voted on. Few years later, three years later, finally they did the deal. They left under Boris Johnson eventually. But it seems to me that immigration just went up. The central argument of the Brexit campaign,

[Rob]

it was a failure. He failed.

[Steve Hilton]

Massive. Well, the first stage of failure was when the UK was part of the eu. It was a failure. And the government officials really looking at the issue of immigration said, you're never going to meet the target as long as you're in the eu. Then the UK left the eu Brexit and the main argument, I mean, there's lots of arguments for Brexit, but if you really ask people who are involved there, and whatever, the biggest one was immigration controlling our borders, that was really, if there's one thing that Brexit was about, it was that. And yet since Brexit, the problem, I think it's accelerated.

[Rob]

Kirsten yesterday tweeted saying our net migration is the lowest it's been in years. I don't know if you saw that.

[Steve Hilton]

I didn't see that.

[Rob]

He tweeted yesterday saying our net migration has been the lowest in years and we're still got some work to do. Go. Right there. Go. 4 hours ago Rob, go, go. Yeah. Net migration has fallen 82% the last five years. I promise you to restore the control of our borders. My government is delivering. I know there's more to do. We're introducing scale based migration systems that rewards contribution and ends our resilience on cheap overseas workers.

[Steve Hilton]

That's exactly what the Conservatives used to say. I mean, that exact message. But they didn't deliver it. Johnson. They had Those prime ministers that lasted about five minutes.

[Rob]

You've been in a space of knowing you want to get things done and it's hard to go through the gridlock of.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, yes. And this is one of the things.

[Rob]

How do you do that then in California?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, because I've seen how it works. I mean, I'll give you specific story that really opened my eyes. I mean, it's a silly story, but it kind of showed me. So one of the projects that I led, initiated and led was. We called it the red tape challenge or something like that to reduce bureaucracy in the uk. This is going back. Must have been. When was it? 2010, you know, around that. The first. I was only there for two years. There we are. So I'm. Look at that. This feels like ancient history, but they were. Steve Hilton was the primary architect of the red tape challenge. Right. So the idea was to. It's actually the technical term for it now you would, you would say is reverse sunsetting, where we all know about sunsetting regulations. You pass something, say this only lasts for five years unless we renew it, it expires. I wanted to have a concept of reverse sunsetting where we just take the whole stock of regulations that on the books and change the default. So instead of saying we're going to get rid of this one and get rid of that, you basically said, we're going to get rid of all of it. Let's choose the regulations that we want to keep. That was the concept. I remember we had input from the public, we crowdsourced some stuff. And then we started having the meetings with the official, the bureaucrats and the civil servants. And we divided up the whole regulatory code into different sections, like about 29 different categories. The first set that we looked at, consumer protection. I remember we had this big meeting. They all come in the room, dozens of different government officials leading the different bits of the relevant departments. And there's a lot of paperwork on. You go through the packet and I remember I just went. I just didn't want to just go in order. I went into the middle, pick something at random. And it was color coded and I can't remember which way around. Red, green, and most was one color. And I said, oh, that's great. So that's what we're getting rid of? No, no, that's what we have to keep. Okay. That's not the point of this exercise. But still, let's look at one of these. It was men's pajamas. Just randomly. I just. What? Why do we have to keep that? Whatever there's the guy around the table who was head of the whatever apparel division. We have a 40 minute discussion about the regulations on men's pajamas.

[Rob]

Stop it.

[Steve Hilton]

And then at the end, this is. I'm not making up. He says, well, I don't want to mock the voice. He said, if anything, the public interest demands that we level up regulations from a gender equality perspective because the regulations for women's pajamas are actually lower than you just think, I can't believe it. We've spent 40 minutes talking about one thing out of thousands. And it's at that point I realized you can't do it this way. You'll never beat them at that kind of game of process and paperwork because they are better at.

[Rob]

So how do you beat them?

[Steve Hilton]

There's more of them. They wait you out. And I'll tell you another story that fits with this. Before the 2010 election, when we came into, before David Campbell became Prime minister, you know, London's a small town. Everyone's very centralized. Everyone knows each other. And we had a lot of friends overlapping with the former Labour government of Tony Blair, Tony Blair, who really was a reformer. And we ended up having a meeting a couple of months before the election, myself and Tony Blair. And he said this incredibly interesting thing. And he'd been out of power for seven years by then, I think, or something like that, maybe a bit less. And he said, look, there's just one thing you need to understand. All these senior officials around you, number two, they're very smart, very good people. But you've got to understand that they believe that it is their patriotic duty to stop you from doing whatever you want to do. Because they see themselves as the guardians of the national interest.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

Easier said than done. I mean, the Doge idea was an idea that everybody supported until they try to implement and then they stopped it. Four or five months.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, but look, in California you've got a couple of things. First of all, it's in a sense more manageable because it's. You can get your arms around it to a certain extent.

[Rob]

Some would even say it's harder because you got 43 to 9 on represent. Like, how are you going to Pass it when they got control on the majority.

[Steve Hilton]

The governor sets the budget.

[Rob]

Okay, Right.

[Steve Hilton]

That's the first. That's the main policymaking vehicle.

[Rob]

Who do you need to approve the budget?

[Steve Hilton]

The legislature. You work with the legislature. You have a line item veto. Yes. They can overTurn a veto 2/3 majority. Yeah, I know, but you write the budget, you submit the budget. That's the first move. A lot of that will be right at the beginning in January next year. Yes, you negotiate, of course. But let me just get to the point that you run the executive branch, you run these agencies, you appoint people to them, and you can direct their work through executive orders. It's true that a lot of it is set up through legislation. You can't just delete legislation you don't like. But actually, when you look at some of these bureaucracies, that's why you've got to do the preparation work. Many of them have way exceeded what they were set up to do by the law in California. So you look at the carb, the area we mentioned them, they're driving a lot of this climate stuff, the EV stuff and mandates for everything. The vehicle miles traveled. A lot of that is. There's a way of looking at it that the most destructive agency has been this one Cobb, the Air Resources Board. That it's been around for long before climate was the big driving ideological thing for the left. And so we just made an announcement. So I go back to caldoge. I spoke about the fraud reports that we've done. We've done five different fraud reports. We also didn't. We've only done one now, but we're going to be doing more of them. What I call bloat reports, where we're looking at the structure of the government. The first one we did was nearly two weeks ago. Now, looking at the regulation of electricity in California. We have four separate agencies regulating electricity. The Public Utilities Commission, the Energy Commission, something called caiso, the Independent Service Operator, and carb, the Air Resources Board. If you look at it on a per capita basis, California has 35 times the number of bureaucrats regulating electricity as other states. 35 times the number. Just the numbers of people. The cost of that is $1.2 billion before you even generate any electricity. So we obviously there's massive scope to merge them. That's what we've proposed to massively scale back these agencies. You can zero out their budgets or reduce them to very little. Yes, they can override that with a veto in the legislature. There hasn't been an override of a governor's Veto since the 1980s in California. It's actually kind of a tough thing to do because as the governor, you've got the platform, they then have to defend it. And so if you're really aggressive and you're well prepared, and I'm both of those things saying it's going to be easy. But I think the real learning point for me from what happened in the UK was you've got to be ferocious about this.

[Rob]

Yeah, I, I think when I went to Brazil and I was with Javier Yair Bolsonaro and his family, and we did a three hour interview. the end of the interview, they came in, tapped on his back. He says they're getting arrested. He had to finish the interview because he was getting arrested.

[Steve Hilton]

Wow.

[Rob]

Rob, you remember this when we were in. Where were we at in Brazil? What city?

[Steve Hilton]

Brazil?

[Rob]

Yeah, Brazil. Yeah. Right in the headquarters, you know, the, the where all the politicians are. They build the city like a communist city. So nobody wanted to go there, miles away from everybody else. But the thing that we looked at there is how much the other side with this guy named Alexandra de Moraes, who was like the most powerful guy in Brazil, he's like the Supreme Court. God that everybody fears. You've seen his face. You know who he is. They control Senate, they control House. And he couldn't do nothing. Okay. And they fought very hard. So you're, you're going into a market where you will be facing a lot of challenges and you're going to need some people that are going to want to have massive change in the state. Right now, the polls, if we look at the polls as of right now, I think you're at 21 points is where we have. When you look at the polls, I think you're at 21.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. I think 22.

[Rob]

20, something like 22 is where you're at as of right now. Then you got Becerra 21, then Styer 15, then Bianco 5, and you got, you know, the rest of the camp, Katie Porter. But the reality of it is if one of these guys drops out, you're all of a sudden second by, you know, if you go to Kalshee's report, Kalshee gives a complete different number. If you go to Kalsheet.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. For the winner. Yeah.

[Rob]

Javier's at 65 stiers at 23. 7, and you're at 9.4%. And you know, Vegas doesn't lose money. And that's $35 million of money that's been Wagered.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

So you need some major. Major like Spencer Pratt. Ward got out that Jeanie Buss is supporting him. This person is supporting. Oh, my God. All these different people that are supporting him. Have you gotten some weird calls? Has Arnold called you? Have you spoken to some of these guys?

[Steve Hilton]

I know Arnold well. I've known him for years. Yeah.

[Rob]

Have you had a conversation with him recently?

[Steve Hilton]

Not recently, but we will. We know each other well and. And I know his team very well.

[Rob]

Do you have a relationship with Newsom as well?

[Steve Hilton]

I do know Kevin. Yeah. No, I don't think it's a very cordial one anymore because I've been, you know, holding him responsible wasn't at one point cordial. Well, here's the thing, is that we. Yeah, because we. We had some friends in common those first two years that we were here. I taught at Stanford and we had some very good friends there who. Friends of their. Friends of the Newsoms from a family point of view. So that's how I know them. And that's long before I had anything to do with California politics, when he wasn't governor then. So I think that what you're describing is exactly right. Here's how I see it. Right now we've got this governor's race, which is because of this top two system, which means that the top two candidates go forward regardless of party. It makes the whole thing kind of unclear and messy and the entire conversation, not the entire, but a lot of the conversation is actually about math and who's in the top two. And is it going to be two Democrats? Is it going to be too Republican, rather than the merits and the ideas and all of that? Once we're in the general election scenario, which we will be in a couple of weeks. And it does look like. I mean, I don't take anything for granted. I'm working even harder these last two weeks than the last year. But we're feeling confident, but still got to win it. People have to vote. But let's just assume I'm in the top two and there's one other Democrat, looks like it's going to be Javier Becerra, then it's a very different contest. Then it's a real. You've got a clarity there. What are we going to do? Are we going to keep going with this another four years of the same direction? And by the way, there's no one who. Javier Becerra, who's their leading candidate right now, he's kind of the living embodiment of more of the same Democrat machine. He's 36 years, a career politician. I mean, he's done nothing else. He's a creature of the machine. In the LA mayoral race, you're already at that stage, this kind of gladiatorial contest, because Spencer is just Spencer against Karen Bass, basically. Nitya Raman is really imploding. And so there's a clarity there in LA which we don't yet have in the governor's race, but soon we will. And I'm very confident that we'll get, you know, you're already seeing it. People who've never supported Republican. I mean, Sergey Brin is a good example. He's supporting me. He's also supported. And there's a lot of people who in California have bought this narrative that a Republican can't win. So the best shot is a less crazy Democrat. And that's why there was a lot of support in the business community for this guy, Matt Mahan, who's the mayor of San Jose. But he's gone nowhere. And so I'm feeling confident that once it's me against Becerra or even more so me against Tom Steyer, you're going to see a lot of support. Who so many people are not, not Republicans. They say we can't go on like this. I'm definitely seeing that in la.

[Rob]

How many big.

[Steve Hilton]

Myself, you know, Hollywood people.

[Rob]

How many Hollywood people are calling you and saying, look, we.

[Steve Hilton]

A lot, A lot.

[Rob]

And big names.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, yes.

[Rob]

That would be seen as a liberal.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, yes.

[Rob]

And they're saying they would like to support.

[Steve Hilton]

And some have, I mean, some have co hosted events for me and such as. Well, well, I don't want to co

[Rob]

hosted even as a public name. So it's not, it's not, it's a, you know, I've been on private.

[Steve Hilton]

Okay. Larry David's wife. Okay. You know, Larry David is not by anyone's standard or conservative. Exactly.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

And there was another, you know, so she. That's absolutely. There you are, Ashley. And so. And there are others who I don't want to say because they haven't got to that point of saying it publicly.

[Rob]

But they've called you and spoke.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, yes. And we've had meetings. And I feel. And in the sports world as well, actually. And I feel very confident that once we're past the primary and it really is that clear choice, that it's going to be a whole different situation. And the whole thing that I'm saying is I'm not an ideologue, I'm not a tribal kind of person going back to where we started. I really am open, happy to sit down with anyone, work with anyone. It's just. I mean, it's an overused phrase. It really is just common sense. Let's just stop doing stupid things that make everything so expensive and so difficult.

[Rob]

Did you. Did you have a. Like, when's the last time you had a conversation with Newsom?

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

I was there. It was a. And he was going. Talking to everybody. He was.

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

Did you whisper to him that you may run? Did anybody know?

[Steve Hilton]

We did. I actually. I think we. We actually ended up. I was still then working on the housing policy that we spoke about earlier, and if I can, if I'm right, I think we had a brief conversation about that. And then he connected me to one of his team members to maybe follow up on that and so on.

[Rob]

How dismal you think his track record's been since he's been governor?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, you just have to look at the facts. I mean, it's that we are the. We are the worst performing state on every measure that matters.

[Rob]

Like, truly under him.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. I mean, you look at the. How else can you describe it? I mean, poverty, unemployment, cost of living, and then, you know, more qualitative measures. So US News and World Report ranks California 50th out of 50 states for opportunity. Think about that. Opportunity. I mean, that's supposed to be the definition. Last place for last place. Wallet Hub, 50th out of 50 for affordability. Chief Executive magazine, they do an annual survey. California, 50th out of 50. I think it's now 10 or 11 years in a row. It's just insane. Rhodes, I mentioned 50th. It's not just that we're doing badly with our worst performer of all 50 states on almost everything that matters. At the same time as they've doubled the budget. It's insane how badly that it's covered up because, of course, we're still an amazing state. I love California. We've got the most incredible advantages. Natural beauty, amazing people, diverse cities. Great. It's a wonderful place to be, but it's a very tough place to be if you're a regular Working class Californian if you're running a small business. That's why so much of what I'm talking about is very practical stuff to help. First hundred grand tax free. There's a. It just seems like a small thing, but it's a big deal to small business owners. Remember I used to, you know, I started a couple of restaurants in London. Restaurant owners particularly hate some of this stuff. $800 a year. They charge you just for existing. Every business in California has to pay a registration fee of $800 a year. Now, that may not sound like a lot if you're. Of course, and it isn't a lot if you're anthropic or Google or whatever, but if you're a small business and you're better, you're not making any money, you're just getting going. It's actually really tough. It's simple things like that that we just need to do to make life less of a struggle for everybody.

[Rob]

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

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

What happened?

[Steve Hilton]

This is a really big scandal. It is a big scandal. I mean, it's little. Here's what happened. Becerra was appointed. He was the California Attorney General. He was appointed by Biden to be Health Secretary, hhs. At the beginning of the Biden term, Becerra wanted to take his chief of staff guy called Sean McCluskey with him to D.C. he was going to be too expensive. The salary wasn't high enough. And this guy wanted to come back and forth to his family. And so they wanted more money for this guy to be able to go with Becerra. The salary was. The salary, whatever the federal salary is. So they cook up this scheme to take ten grand a month from Becerra's California campaign account, transfer it to a consulting firm run by this person, Dana Williamson, and then that money, that 10 grand, goes straight out the door to the guy's wife, to Sean McCluskey's wife. So it's like a backhanded way of topping up his pay. That's against California campaign finance law because the. You can't use campaign money for anything other than campaign expenses. And it's against federal law because you can't get income from another source. Now, the argument from Becerra is he didn't know about any of this.

[Rob]

Can we see what she looks like? Can you go a little bit lower now. Do you think he knew about this? What are the chances he knew about this?

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

So he knew.

[Steve Hilton]

Well, who knows? I mean, he's saying he didn't.

[Rob]

Is that it? Rob, that clip right there between the two of them.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes, that's the one.

[Rob]

I wouldn't mind seeing it. But I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of ads that's going to come on first. Within three, two, one. There's an ad. Yeah. So if something like this is tied to him, how big of a scandal would this be for him?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, this is what a lot of the Democrat rivals have been saying. What, you're going to nominate this guy who then could be indicted in the middle of his campaign for governor?

[Rob]

Can you go to the part where Katie Porter's calling him out? Fast forward a little bit to where Katie Porter.

[Steve Hilton]

My line is more of a political. I said, look, you shouldn't be in this race. You should be preparing your criminal defense.

[Rob]

Is this it? Go for it. Press play.

[Steve Hilton]

Respectfully, Mr. Becerra, you, your quote at

[Rob]

the end drifted off a little bit from the words.

[Steve Hilton]

What the quote was was that you had not been mentioned in the charging documents. That is in the indictment of Dana Williamson, your long term chief of staff,

[Rob]

Sean McCluskey or Greg Campbell.

[Steve Hilton]

But as you know, that does not preclude because you are also a trained attorney, you know, that does not preclude an indictment from being issued against you. We do not know what Dana Williamson said about your involvement and the government

[Rob]

will have the ability to reveal that later.

[Steve Hilton]

Ryan the same way I did it when I was Attorney general, we established a bureau that dealt with medical fraud working with the federal government. Unfortunately, Trump is a problem because Trump took a trillion dollars out of the health care system, out of the Medicare or the, excuse me, the Medicaid and the Medi cal system. Trump is now trying to deprive California of another billion dollars in health care for Medi Cal. He doesn't have the right to do

[Rob]

that to a different place.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, yeah, he's. So that's their. That's their argument. And it's not just Katie, it's also Antonio Viragosa, the former mayor of la, making that argument very strongly. Like, this guy could be indicted. It's a massive risk to have him as your candidate. That's their argument. Yeah.

[Rob]

It was overnight when he all of a sudden spiked up.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. When Swalwell dropped out.

[Rob]

Yeah, when Swalwell.

[Steve Hilton]

Everyone was surprised. No one expected it.

[Rob]

Yeah. So the worry today Democrats have in California is, holy shit.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes.

[Rob]

If something happens here, is it Katie? Because they're worried about Katie. She's a wild card.

[Steve Hilton]

Well, she seems to be.

[Rob]

Is it going to be Steyer?

[Steve Hilton]

It looks like Steyer is the. I mean, look at the data. I mean, it's me and Becerra on most of the polls, me and Becerra at the top, then there's a gap, then it's Tom Steyer, then there's another gap. Everyone else. There was one poll last week which I take very seriously. It's that one. There's the second one there, Emerson College, which had basically a three way tie at the top. Myself, Becerra and Stai, all roughly the same. And so, yeah, you see it there. 20, 19, 18. So most of the polls are not that. Most of them show this gap between myself and Becerra and Stier, but Styer is definitely number two and Katie Porter's well below. So I don't know. I mean, look, things have changed very quickly. It feels like we're less than two weeks to the election, voting's already started. It feels very unlikely to me that Katie Porter's gonna pop back up.

[Rob]

It would be catastrophic for Democrats if she does. It would be phenomenal for you if she pops up. You would love a Katie Porter opposition. It would be great for tv because to me, she's gifted. She's a natural villain to the core. She's so phenomenal. I mean, she. She will get a job the day she doesn't make it to the View. And she'll bring the type of views to the View they haven't seen for a long time. I think she is that talented. Natural. By the way, what do you say about Chad Bianco? Because I have a lot of friends from Kern County, a guy named Ricky Aguilar and who's spoken to Chad Bianco. And they've had different conversations. And yeah, a lot of Californians love Chad Bianco because he has got more. He's an OG Californian. So people will say Steve is not a California.

[Steve Hilton]

Well, no, he's not an og. He was. He's an immigrant as well.

[Rob]

Where did he come from?

[Steve Hilton]

I think it's. I think he's from Utah. Is it.

[Rob]

How long has he been in California?

[Steve Hilton]

Longer than me. A lot longer. No, no, it's fair enough.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

So.

[Rob]

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

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, I mean, it's an election. We're winning at this point. It's not about. I have nothing against Chad personally. We have perfectly good personal relationship. And it's just a simple point. Now we're less than two weeks to the election, the time for a kind of debate over who'd be better and who's got on most policies. We completely agree, to be honest. And you see that in the debates and you'd expect that in a way, but it's beyond that now. It's like we've got to be real about this situation. If that other poll is correct, the Emerson poll, or let's say it's closer to that reality, which is a three way tie, then there is a very real possibility of the outcome of this primary being two Democrats, Becerra and Steyer. That is not an impossibility. I don't think it's likely. It's not the most likely outcome, but it's certainly not impossible. And so that's why I'm going all out. We've got to get a repo. If you have two Democrats in the top two, imagine that in California, no chance for change. They'll be outbidding each other on the left to pander to the unions and the activists. Right. Be going further and further left.

[Rob]

Are you suggesting Bianco drop out?

[Steve Hilton]

I've very much so.

[Rob]

Have you spoken to him?

[Steve Hilton]

Have you tried yet? No, I've reached out to him and we were going to meet and then it didn't come together. I wrote a piece for the California Post about this just two days ago. It seems to me he's not in that place. That's of Course, his. Right. But we just got to be real here. There isn't. Just like we said, it doesn't look as if Katie Porter's going to get there, up into the top two. Same with Chad, so. And whatever reason for that, and doesn't matter, we are where we are.

[Rob]

Did Sliwa drop out at the end, Rob, or no, in New York, do you remember when it was him, Cuomo and Mamdani, Did Sliwa ever drop out? Do you remember that?

[Steve Hilton]

I don't think so.

[Rob]

I don't think he dropped out. I think he went to the very end. He didn't. He didn't. He was offered 10 million to withdraw. Well, that's the story that he told. I remember that. Yeah. So he didn't drop out. And obviously we know who ended up winning, which is Mamdani.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes.

[Rob]

So in this case, it'll be interesting because the President has already endorsed you.

[Steve Hilton]

He has, right? Yeah, he has.

[Rob]

How recent was the endorsement?

[Steve Hilton]

From Easter Monday.

[Rob]

I remember it very Monday.

[Steve Hilton]

Very memorable day for me. Yeah.

[Rob]

And I'm sure in the next, you know, two weeks, he's probably going to make some more noise and put you out there as well, because we saw the president's endorsement two nights ago was 37. 0. So he's got a pretty good track record still today. No matter how much people say about him, when he endorses somebody carries a lot of weight. So that'd be interesting to see. So he said two weeks. Today's what? Today's May 22nd or 23rd. What is today's date, Rob?

[Steve Hilton]

Today is May 21st. 21st.

[Rob]

So if it's the 21st today, the day is what, June 2nd. June 2nd. That you guys are voting. Yeah. And then you're going.

[Steve Hilton]

But voting's now, right?

[Rob]

It is. And then you got 166 days to the whole shebang, if you're in it.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah. Well, look, I'm feeling confident and it's, you know, it's a weird thing for me to. I hate talking like this because I just feel I've never run for office before. I have this. This. I don't quite understand how. And it's funny, people coming up to you. So I voted for you. It's an amazing. Yeah, it's a real. It's very humbling, truly. I know it's a cliche, a little bit of a pompous thing to say, but that's truly how I feel about it and a strong sense of responsibility. People put a lot of faith in you, but that Question of, okay, yeah, if these polls are coming out and I'm leading in the polls, great. How that turns into actual votes is something that, you know, I just don't take for granted at all. So we're going to be fighting very hard, keep raising money, keep getting our message out right until the end. But it's close.

[Rob]

Now here's a question for you. Here's a question for you. So 441 businesses have left, relocated since 2018.

[Steve Hilton]

There's gotta be many more than that.

[Rob]

Well, that's the number. Big business. Fox Business 2026 reported on this net domestic loss, 3 million people net since 2010-24. And then we know they lost another trillion dollars. That left with the new wealth tax that they have in place. Here's an idea for you. Sergey Brin endorsed you. Right. He's a guy that came out and he's worth a couple hundred billion dollars. I think he moved in Miami, bought a $200 million property. He's building something for himself. Ken Griffin left Illinois. He came down here. Momdani tried to dox him with his property that he lives in. There's a lot of weird things that's going on. We saw. Now Mamdani is trying to beg people to come back. We're seeing the mayor of Seattle, Rob, if I'm not mistaken. She is not worried about Seattle leaving, Starbucks leaving. Hey, can you please come back?

[Steve Hilton]

Right.

[Rob]

What do you think about hosting an event in the state of California? And here's the event.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

The event is calling some of these businesses that have left.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes.

[Rob]

And bringing them back for an event in California. Because mo. I lived in California 24 years. Five years down, five years here. I lived in Glendale, California. I went to Glendale High school, class of 96. So I lived there since 1990. I'm an OGLA guy. But imagine if you run an event and you say Sergey Brin, all these business are in Texas, they're in Florida, they're in Tennessee, they're in Nevada. All of the. Mark Wahlberg who's down here right now, who is an LA guy, he moved to Vegas. And you ask these guys and these are conversations you have before and say, what can we do to bring you back? So if, if a, if an event like that took place.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Where you are now bringing customers back.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

All the people in California that are worried about the big business owners leaving now, they're going to say, maybe this is the guy that can do something with that.

[Steve Hilton]

I love that. And that's how I feel. Like I, when you, when I think about the campaign and the story of, of. Of what we need to do to, to bring California back, there's different levels of it, different ways you look at it. For example, there's the campaign, there's the simple promises and commitments you make that are going to help people in a practical way in their daily life. That's the campaign. I call it Califordable $3 gas, cut your electric bill in half, etc. Right. Then you look at, as we talked about earlier, what are the underlying policy drivers that you ought to deal with in terms of the chaos and cost, climate, extremism, litigation, unions. We talked about that. But actually, when you think, well, what's the mission? What's the central mission that's got to happen, that's got to be achieved if we're going to turn things around. It actually is this point about the business climate because without that, we don't have anything. That's the underlying.

[Rob]

If you can bring customers back.

[Steve Hilton]

Exactly. And if we, if we, if we, if we make it really clear that we are now not. We are. We are not just not hostile to businesses. We are now, but we are positively going to roll out the red carpet. We want you back. We want to make your life easier. What can I do to help? That's how I see my role as governor is being there to help business create jobs and wealth and opportunity in California. That is that. That's actually the central mission.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

Everything else will flow from that because if you do the things that will make California once again the best place to start and grow a business, then all those other things will happen. So I love that.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

I hadn't actually. And I've got some very serious conversations.

[Rob]

Just think about that event visually.

[Steve Hilton]

No, that's beautiful.

[Rob]

I pick a great location, pick a great spot. They're all sitting there and they're talk. These are all. You put them expats. I don't know what you want to. What you got to find a unique thing to put like ex Californians who left and they're in different spaces that. Who love Rogan Musk. You know, you got Sergey, you got all these guys.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

If it gets to that point. Because if you can, if you can convince people who left, those are the biggest stories. Because let's talk about the wealth tax. Right. Hey, let's tax these billionaires. We're in Aspen and all of a sudden I get a story comes out saying they need this 882,000 signatures to be able to pass on a 5% wealth tax. I'm like, of course they're going to get the signatures. What do you mean? Because it's only 200 billionaires, of course they're going to come up with this. So guess what ends up happening? They get one, one and a half million plus signatures on a 5% tax. So that's going to be on it for people to vote. And then one by one by one, people like Bryn and others are leaving saying, you're not going to tax me on this. I'm out of here. Right.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

And then yesterday, Jeff Bezos is doing an interview with Sorkin, which, by the way, I thought this was a phenomenal, phenomenal interview. If you haven't watched this whole thing, you ought to put it on the list of things to watch the next couple days. Here's what he had to say about taxes. Go ahead, Rob. Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made in reference to you and others are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes. A lower tax rate than maybe I am.

[Jeff Bezos]

These people sometimes say that, that, you know, I don't pay taxes. So true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's a perfect. Again, if people want me to pay more billions. Right, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know that this, that that's going to solve the problem. You could. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens, I promise you. This is. So you can't connect those two things. Not logically. You know, there, there are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently, I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb. Okay. Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost finished here. One sec. It's already been outlawed in New York City, and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, exactly.

[Rob]

Thoughts on what he had to say?

[Steve Hilton]

Well, 100%. Correct. And we are the proof of that in California, because we have taxed the rich in California. That's one of the reasons that our fiscal situation is such a mess in California with massive volatility in state revenue and year to year. Because so much of it is dependent on the stock market. Because so much of it is dependent on the wealthy. I mean, the number is something like the top 1% of California earners pay about 50% of the income of the income tax. And so that's already happening in California. And as we said earlier, they've doubled the budget. Look what happened to school. I mean, he's bragging Newsom about $28,000 per student per year for the public schools. And the results are terrible. So. That's exactly right. It's not. And we've been through all the reasons and Bezos is right that the drivers of these costs in California, certainly on housing, is all these endless regulations and concessions to the groups that control the Democrat politicians, the unions, the climate activists. That's the lawyers. That's how we've got to this point.

[Rob]

Yeah, I mean, look, when you're seeing he continues to say the top 1% pays 40% of taxes, the bottom 50% pays 3%. And he should. I think that should be even zero. Rob, if you go to that one on percent taxes. Yeah. There's another clip. It's not going to be a quarrel. There's one that you have to find, Rob, where he says the Go to the one with Mamdani, see if it's that one. Go back and see if it's the Mom Dani one

[Jeff Bezos]

Billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect again, if people want me to pay more billions.

[Rob]

There's a part that he specifically says go to his account. Go to Bezos X account. Just type in Jeff Bezos. Go to his account. Because I think this is becoming more and more logical. Second one. There you go. Go a little bit lower. Go lower. Lower, lower. He writes it in the account in the video. That's it. So he puts. Yes. Do you not press this one? See if it's the same one or if it's a different one.

[Jeff Bezos]

Start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes. Why are somebody at all. Why is some. Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That's $1,000 a month. That could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The, the bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%. So we don't have. It's a small amount of money for the government. You know that. And really it's the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her to talk about this.

[Rob]

Aligns with what you're saying. No taxes under 100,000.

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

Yeah, you're right.

[Steve Hilton]

Insane.

[Rob]

Like 93 on 70. So I'm paying $7,000 on 72k. I could have kept that money. Car payment, food, gas, whatever it is that stays with me.

[Steve Hilton]

It's really bad.

[Rob]

It's a common sense idea that you have. So by the way, where do you stand with the, you know, the, the, the, the rail, the high speed rail that he was supposed to build up?

[Steve Hilton]

I was just there. God lost, lost track of the days. Two days ago we just stood in front of literally a bridge to nowhere. Like they. If you. I drive up and down the Central Valley all the time. It's the 99 highway or the 5 freeway. It's mostly in the middle, the 99. And we haven't put it out yet, so you won't find this. But the infrastructure they've built is just. You can see up and down. Here are the numbers. So they said that it would be open by 20, 22 and a half hours. San Francisco to LA and total cost of 30 billion. Here's the latest. They laughably call it a business plan. This was just published like two weeks ago by the High Speed Rail authority budget from 30 billion to 231 billion. The budget, the plan is now from San Francisco to Merced, which is at the top of the cent. You go inland, top of the Central Valley. That's on the existing trains, not high speed. Then you get on the high speed train at Merced and you go down to Bakersfield, high speed train. Then Bakersfield to la. Bus stop, bus. Who.

[Rob]

Who.

[Steve Hilton]

That's the height. That's.

[Rob]

Can you verify this? There's no way that's what they're saying. That's the plan for the 231 billion?

[Steve Hilton]

Yes.

[Rob]

So from the two and a half hours to me having to have multiple stops before I go to San Francisco.

[Steve Hilton]

And like I point out, the two and a half hours, sometimes you'll do that just from Baker. If you're driving Bakersfield to LA can take that long.

[Rob]

There's no way. That's what they're saying.

[Steve Hilton]

That is.

[Rob]

Rob, zoom in, let me see. The revised draft plan outlines a commitment of full non stop high speed connection between LA and Bay Area by 2039. Construction span 119 miles. No, go a little bit lower. So I'm trying to see is there a stop. Future long term extensions connect north Sacramento, east Sacramento. There is no way they're telling you to go, come back with a bus and then go to.

[Steve Hilton]

That's the thing. If you look at bus, there's a whole

[Rob]

Caltrans consider 140 miles an hour bus. That would. That's a different story, Rob.

[Steve Hilton]

That's a different story.

[Rob]

If that is true. That is pathetic.

[Steve Hilton]

That is true.

[Rob]

That is absolutely pathetic. If that's what they're saying.

[Steve Hilton]

It was older. This is the business plan. This is a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago. Wow. So it's insane. And also another thing to bullshit. Sorry. I mean the things he says. So he did a press conference. I don't know when it was a couple of months ago. He's trying to sort of. Because obviously the only thing he cares about, Newsom is running for president. That's very obvious. And so he's trying to clean it all up. So they did a event there where he stood in front of trains, just some engines to make it look as if he was doing something with actual trains and he was trying to announce that they were doing laying of tracks. Because one of the points that we make is that this is more than a decade into it, two decades nearly, And there's no track being laid. They've built a bunch of stuff but no tracks. And he was trying to announce that he was doing tracks. But even then he actually, if you look at his words, he didn't say we're laying tracks. We are entering the track laying phase. There's gaslighting over. This is just. There we are look a critical step in the track laying stage. They're not actually laying any track. This is how they do. It's just ins. And by the way, they're still pretending this is realistic and going to happen and we are still paying for it. So earlier I mentioned the cap and trade thing. Cap and trade scheme, which is one big component of the high gas prices. On top of the gas tax, there's this thing called cap and invest, which is the carbon trading ridiculous bureaucratic scheme. It's basically a tax on energy production and use. One quarter of that goes to high speed rail. So we're still paying for it. I mean the federal bid has been ended.

[Rob]

Good idea, bad idea.

[Steve Hilton]

The high speed rail. Yeah, high speed rail is in other places, works well in Europe. It works really well. I've used it a lot. It doesn't work, it doesn't make sense in California because of the way that we've developed in California because you could take a train from, let's say all worked fine, you have San Francisco to la. Well, where, when you get to la, what do you do? Let's say it's Union Station, which is, you know, over downtown L. A. It's like another 45 minutes to get to any the west side or whatever. So what, what do you do then? We're just not. Not how California. This is what I really. It's a really good example of what's gone wrong in California, which is they've been trying to impose ideological blueprints on practical life as it's lived. They have this ideology which is they want everyone in trains, public transportation, cycling, walking. Let's be more like Europe. That's what. Because of climate. That's why I say the climate stuff is a real driver. Let's be more like Europe, let's have density. That's not how California was built. And whether you like it or not, the way that California was developed was outwards. And that's a part of the beauty of California life. A single family home. You have a yard, the kids can play outside, enjoy the weather. That's just how we grew. And so this doesn't work. This model of public transit doesn't work in California. You just have to, you'd have to sort of completely re. Redo certain cities. San Francisco, very dense, you get it works there. But even then, how do people get around in San Francisco? I mean, yeah, there's the Mooney in the bot, whatever, but people now you've got Waymo and you've got so many. You know, it just doesn't make sense in terms of. Of how people are going to. Even on their original estimate. I looked into it for my book when they actually sold high speed rail, they did sell it as a getting cars off the road idea. But who's doing this drive? I mean, people fly.

[Rob]

That's crazy to even think about. I mean, I know Palmdale, I know Bakersfield, I know Fresno, I know all these streets, all these cities stock. I've driven all over this place because I was selling insurance for 20 years, right? And you know, so also here's another

[Steve Hilton]

thing, just really annoying. So you look at that map there, the bit that goes down to Anaheim, which is a fantasy. This is just insane. They can't even build the. Okay, if you look at that map, the easiest bit from, from Merced to Bakersfield through the Central, totally flat. Nothing, you know, that's taken forever and nothing's happened, let alone in the city. Right. Or through. That's why they're doing the bus. Because from Bakersfield to, you know, the other side, you've got big mountains there. That's hard engineering wise, which they haven't figured out. And then the Anaheim bit, which is just a fantasy. The other week they published an environmental impact report. Here's a really good example of the bloat and nonsense in California. They published an environmental impact report for this leg of the thing from LA to Anaheim that no one thinks is going to happen. The summary of the environmental impact report just for that was 100 pages. Someone's paying for that like some consult while we're paying for it. That's what I mean this. There's no check or control on this bloat in the government they keep. Because they don't have people who think like that. They don't have business minded people who look at all this and say, what are you doing? Why are we commissioning an environmental impact report for something that everyone knows is never going to happen?

[Rob]

I want to show you something and I want to wrap up on this. Here's a clip from Newsom.

[Steve Hilton]

Okay.

[Rob]

And he says some things that a lot of people have been taken in a weird way. I want to see how you interpret this. He says he has a secret plan.

[Steve Hilton]

Oh yeah.

[Rob]

Break the glass. Rob, if you want to play this clip for the audience to see. And I don't know if he's talking about you. I don't know if he's talking about, you know, whatever, because look, a candidate running Republican, that smile that he has, he looks like he's up to something.

[Steve Hilton]

Go ahead, Rob, Spoken about accountability.

[Rob]

Do you think Democrats will hold you accountable?

[Steve Hilton]

Accountable for standing by this principled neutrality by withholding your endorsement in this non possible scenario where two Rupkins take the ticket?

[Jeff Bezos]

Yeah, look, I, my, my focus has been making sure that doesn't happen. And I've exercised not just a focus, but I've exercised through some action efforts to, to encourage that doesn't happen by making my case. And, and we'll continue to make my case. I do not see that scenario taking place. I've said this before, so I'll repeat it. I don't anticipate this need to be the case. But there is a break the glass scenario and there's many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out. And we're going to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen.

[Rob]

What do you think he means by that? What do you think he means by that?

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

So he doesn't want that.

[Steve Hilton]

All this stuff that we're talking about will be even louder volume because I will be there saying, we can't go on like this. This is insane. We are done with this. We cannot have another four years of this. Whereas if it's two Democrats, none of that, his record won't be an issue. It'll be left, you know, are we going to have single payer health care, are we going to tax, how much are we going to tax the rich, etc. The other point is this. If I'm in the top two, if there's a Republican in the top two, then there's a chance, of course, that I'll win. I believe I can. When we haven't really talked about my path to victory, but I can see it, because. And it starts with the fact that you've now got a majority, a clear majority of Californians who think it's time for change, who think the state's on the wrong track. That's the starting point. And then if you look at the numbers of votes that you need, even President Trump in California, without campaigning there in 2024, got more votes in California than I would need to win in a midterm year. And there's other things. The fact that we've got voter ID on the ballot in November in California, that's gonna bring out a lot of Republican voters and so on. So I can see a path to victory. And that's Newsom's worst nightmare. Imagine if this is the scenario in early 2027, just as he's launching his presidential campaign, you've got a Republican taking over as governor. He's just lost California to Republicans. That is it. And as I'm cleaning up the mess that he's left Behind I will be exposing what he's done in the process of cleaning it up, which will be a disaster for his presidential campaign. So he wants to avoid that at all costs. What he wants is Steyr Becerra. So I think what's going on here is that he is raising the specter of two Republicans in order to continue to give Republicans hope that that can happen. In other words, encouraging Republicans to try and get two Republican voters to try and get two Republicans in the top two by voting. By continuing to vote for Chad Bianco. I think that's what's going on here.

[Rob]

Okay, got it. So the more Bianco goes up, you go down, then the top two will become Democrats. Exactly. That's their strategy.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes. Because he's desperate to see two Democrats.

[Rob]

What do you know about Steyer? Because he also came out of nowhere.

[Steve Hilton]

What I know.

[Rob]

Billionaire stier, you know, the billionaire climate for.

[Steve Hilton]

Here's a couple of things. First of all, we talk about costs, and he keeps going on about affordability.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Steve Hilton]

Most of the climate stuff that I'm talking about that's given us these insane gas prices, electric bills and so on. Housing costs. It goes back to a piece of legislation passed in 2006, AB32, the global warming Solutions Act. A lot of this framework was set up then, the cap and trade system. All of this in 2010, four years after it was passed, there was a ballot initiative to overturn it. And the main funder of that ballot initiative, the opposition to it, was Tom Steyer. So we could have avoided all this pain and cost, but it was Tom Steyer who defeated that initiative. So he's. Honestly, there's a way you could put it, which is he is personally responsible for this insane level of cost of everything in California. The other thing we know about him is how obsessed he is with trying to get elected to something in this campaign for governor. The numbers are published all the time in. Here's the latest. Here's how much he spent. $193 million in this. Yes. Since, like, when he entered the race. I don't know, November.

[Rob]

In this.

[Steve Hilton]

Yes. 193 million. That's his latest filing. Okay. 192.4.

[Rob]

Oh, my God. Wow.

[Steve Hilton]

So far, not even. We haven't even got to the primary.

[Rob]

And I mean, listen, fire your marketing team. $192 million. Spencer Pratt could have done it for you for $300,000.

[Steve Hilton]

Incredible.

[Rob]

Oh, my God. $192 million. And where is he at on the polls?

[Steve Hilton]

Is he.

[Rob]

You're Two. He's three.

[Steve Hilton]

That's. Look at the. Look at that one. This is. They're mostly like this one that you're just seeing there.

[Rob]

Got it, got it. So he's 3 and Bianco's at 10 for this one.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Man, Villagarossa, what a disappointment. 1%. Like, literally nobody wants him. Nobody. At one point, he was so famous, popular, you know, walk.

[Steve Hilton]

By the way, I like.

[Rob]

What do you like about him?

[Steve Hilton]

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

[Rob]

Why is he doing so bad?

[Steve Hilton]

I don't know. It's interesting because, you know, you think he's run, you know. Yeah, yeah, it's a heavyweight. I don't know. I truly don't know. I like him.

[Rob]

All right, sounds good. I think there was some strategy endorsement there for Villagarosa you're liking, and we'll see what happened there. But final thoughts here for Californians, if they want to support, what can they do? How can they support you if they wanna help?

[Steve Hilton]

So first vote. You gotta vote. I mean, none of this stuff will happen unless we vote for it. And I think one of the big things that we have to have to make this change in California is belief that it's possible. Because I think people have got conditioned to this idea that, well, a Republican can't win. And so you're stuck with this choice of putting up with the insanity or leaving the state. And that's a terrible choice. It's a ridiculous choice. And that idea that things can't change. I mean, I say this sometimes as a new American citizen. It's a very un American attitude that you just can't. It can't be done. Of course it can be done. It's obvious that it needs to be done. It's obvious that we need change, that we need balance, but you got to vote for it. And one of the reasons I've been so. They have been campaigning so hard and up and down the state for a year now, working really hard is just to give that sense of energy and belief. And so, number one is, vote, vote, vote, and tell all your friends, we got to do this and come out of this primary with energy. And we always need money. Look, we don't Have Steyer money. We don't have any of that. We're very frugal. It's a lean startup kind of deal. But we're spending a little bit on advertising and we got to get that message out because, you know, if the truth is somewhere between those polls, then it's still too close for comfort. And you could end up with this two Democrat scenario, which is a disaster for California and for the country because we can't have our biggest state, our most beautiful, amazing state that's generated so much incredible innovation and leadership for America, from Hollywood to tech to our great farming industry, life sciences, biotech. You know, just so much that comes out of California. And imagine how great it would be for our country if we have a California that is firing on all cylinders again. Yeah.

[Rob]

You know, it's interesting what most people don't know since the last hundred years. I just pulled it up with the team. What percentage of the last hundred years in the state of California the governor was a Republican versus a Democrat.

[Steve Hilton]

Interesting.

[Rob]

Republican only 39 Democrat.

[Steve Hilton]

That's amazing.

[Rob]

And if you look at all time Republican, 20 to 17. I think it's time for California to go back to what it is to your original Republican governor days. We had an Armenian governor. I don't know if you knew that or not.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rob]

He was a. He was a governor. Glendale, very big, vast, massive Armenian. And by the way, there's some crazy Armenians that aren't leftist. Join the trans LGBTQ camp. But there's a lot of Armenians to the core that raise their kids in a conservative way. I hope they get behind you.

[Steve Hilton]

Exactly.

[Rob]

And folks, if you want to support, I saw the number 30, 000 plus donors already, right?

[Steve Hilton]

No, no, no, no. 65, 000.

[Rob]

65, 000. Okay. The report here says 30, 65, 000 plus donors and probably more.

[Steve Hilton]

I mean it's. That's one of the most beautiful things. I've never run for anything before. And we've gone from nothing to 65,000.

[Rob]

From nothing to it.

[Steve Hilton]

That was the last number that we put out.

[Rob]

Great.

[Steve Hilton]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Go Visit the site stevehiltonforgovernor.com and if you enjoyed what was talked about today and you want to see more support, share this message with others, share the link with others, give financially, knock on doors, talk about it at dinners, talk to your friends, talk to your peers, get the message out there. Steve, excited to see what happens with you the next two weeks.

[Steve Hilton]

Thank you, man.

[Rob]

You're obviously doing the work and I wish you nothing but the best.

[Steve Hilton]

Really wonderful to be with you. Thank you.

[Rob]

And I look forward to that event. You do?

[Steve Hilton]

Yes. That's great. Well, you'll be there, right?

[Rob]

I look forward to you doing that event. I think it's a massive publicity stunt for everybody to say, are these people really talking about bringing their money back? I think that would be massive. And a lot of Californians would support it.

[Steve Hilton]

Thank you.

[Rob]

Great having you on, sir. Take care, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye, bye.