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- [00:00]
Chris Ruffo
We reached out to the governor's office and said, hey, this is what's happening. And instead of trying to back away from it, they said, absolutely. We provide gender affirming care to illegals. If you look at DEI in universities, it's alive and well everywhere. The dirty secret that Republicans would not like you to know is that most of that money originated from the federal government and was rubber stamped by Congressional Republicans.
- [00:28]
Steve Hilton
Joining me today is Chris Ruffo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the most influential investigative journalists on the right, best known for exposing critical race theory and DEI at universities and corporations. More recently, he's been breaking stories about welfare fraud starting off in Minnesota. Thank you, Chris Ruffo, for joining podforceone.
- [00:53]
Chris Ruffo
Good to be with you.
- [00:55]
Steve Hilton
So let's start with fraud that seems to have consumed your work lately and you've made a huge splash and I think changed the course of politics, at least on the left, because so much of this fraud, as I'm sure you'll explain, feeds into Democrats making money out of it. So tell us how you started, how you got involved in the Minnesota problems.
- [01:23]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, I mean, we initially got into it with a tip, a hunch, an instinct. And I know in your own work as an investigative reporter, you've cultivated that same sense where you just get this feeling that something is going on, there's some hidden story. And so we assigned a team to go out to Minnesota, this is in the fall of last year. And we were the first investigative reporting team to really break open the Somali fraud story on the national stage. We were able to show that not only were Somalis in Minnesota ripping off the state government to the tune of billions of dollars, but we were able to trace the flow of that funding and through a variety of different methods, show that a non insignificant number of dollars was actually flowing into the hands of the Al Shabaab terror organization back home in Mogadishu. And so this story, you know, whenever you publish you say, we have something here. You never know if it's going to hit. It obviously hit in a, in a huge way. And since then we've been kind of snaking around these various stories with a special focus on California, which, you know, makes Minnesota Somali fraud look like child's play. The scale of it in the state of California is just another level entirely.
- [02:42]
Steve Hilton
Is California the same? I mean, it's in Minnesota, it's Somali fraud in California. Who's the main perpetrators?
- [02:53]
Chris Ruffo
That's a really interesting question. And the answer is really twofold. So at the very minute level. Individuals from all walks of life, all nationalities, even all parts of the country, have recognized that the California government is essentially open to business for fraud schemes. So during the COVID pandemic, fraudsters stole approximately $32 billion from the state's unemployment insurance program. And one of the stories that we highlighted in a piece that we wrote was that there was a rapper in Memphis, Tennessee named Nuke Bizzle who actually got caught defrauding the state of California only because he had released a rap music video detailing precisely how he was able to defraud the state of California. But there is also this ethnic ethnopolitical element. And you see certain populations, for example, the Armenians in Southern California, that seem to be perpetrating fraud at scale. And one police detective I talked to said, Romanians, Armenians, Nigerians. There are certain kind of subpopulations or national populations that have been caught over and over and over ripping off the state government.
- [04:15]
Steve Hilton
And why is that? I mean, is it because in the countries that they've come from, trust in institutions, in the government is very low. It's sort of endemic that you rip off the government or the government rips you off. Is that the culture that has been imported or is it something else?
- [04:34]
Chris Ruffo
I think that's part of it. Certainly the culture of origin from a lot of these places. There's high skepticism towards federal authorities. There's in many cases a kind of kinship or clan based culture. And then it's the zero sum competition for resources. The second element is that California is a big fat target, not just for people within the state, but really for people who live all over the world. And so there's an opportunity there that, that scammers and fraudsters have sensed. And then, you know, the third reason is in previous decades or the previous century, you'd have kind of mafia come from southern Italy, for one example, into the United States and set up some of these crime rings. And that's what we're seeing, for example, with Romanians. And so Romanians come in all of these scams, food stamps, unemployment insurance, other kind of social service manipulation. Romanians and Romanian fraud rings are a recurring in character in these stories. And, and so, you know, these are groups that have, for whatever reason, for whatever complex historical and cultural reasons, have a culture of exploitation, fraud, ripping off the government. They come to the United States, they come to California in particular. And you know, one insider told us, the thing about California is this, you're most likely to not get caught. And if you get caught, you're most likely to not face charges. And if you do face charges and get convicted, you're most likely to not serve much if any time at all. And so it's a means, motive and opportunity. It's a classic story of criminal conduct. And that's why I think you see it happening in California at such scale.
- [06:20]
Steve Hilton
That's right. It's, I mean there's always going to be fraudsters, but wherever there's, you know, a gushing spigot of government money and, and no effective fraud controls, obviously fraudsters are just going to do what they do. And I guess the question is why has there been no effective fraud control? I mean it's not simply that, it's just incompetence. It seems to have been certainly what we've seen from Tim Waltz in Minnesota, from Gavin Newsom in, in California, it's a deliberate turning of a blind eye because ultimately you followed this money and it does benefit the Democratic party.
- [07:07]
Chris Ruffo
Extremely important point. And I think your phrase no effective fraud controls, you know, hits it the nail on the head. Just to use the example of unemployment insurance, when California was spending billions of dollars per week at the height of COVID losing tens of billions of dollars to fraudsters. In our reporting we showed that in the entire state there were only two individual bureaucrats assigned to actually give oversight to the system to ensure that there wasn't fraudulent activity. And so when they're being flooded with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pieces of paperwork per day, two people is obviously insufficient to oversee that amount of funding. And so the question is why? And your suspicion is exactly right. And if you look at the history of a lot of these programs from 2019 to the present, when you know, Gavin Newsom's term in office, Newsom and California Democrats not only turned a blind eye to fraud, but they've systematically dismantled fraud controls, oversight, regulatory apparatus and then really opened the floodgates to this huge increase in spending money. Doubling medical spending from 100 billion to $200 billion per year while simultaneously dismantling any possibility of ma kind of large at scale oversight. And why is that? Who benefits from this? I think two main groups benefit from this. First, it's, it's, it's the governor himself in the sense that he benefits from the perception of an increase in employment. So if there are people working for in home Supportive Services, which is probably the most fraud ridden program in California, it looks like California is adding jobs, even if many of those jobs are fraudulent. And second, and relatedly, the public sector, and rather the Private sector or semi public sector unions benefit. So if money is flooding through the health care system, those healthcare worker unions take their cut. They get now hundreds of millions of dollars per year by skimming wages off the top. And then a lot of that money goes back into the coffers of California state Democrats. So when you look at the system as a whole, it resembles a circle. And the money flows from taxpayers to kind of fraud schemes to unions to politicians, and then it's kind of crisscrossing between those various entities. And the system will not change so long as the people who have the levers of power benefit from the system. That's the lesson that we've seen over and over.
- [09:48]
Steve Hilton
And I guess also you saw in Minnesota, the Somali fraudsters are content to get their people to continue voting for Democrats because they can continue their fraud unmolested.
- [10:01]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, that's exactly right. The Somalis are relatively small population in Minnesota, give or take 100,000 people. But that's more than enough to make the kind of margin for victory in a statewide race. And Democrats have, whether wittingly or unwittingly, made a deal with the Somali community. If you rally votes for us, we're going to keep the cash flowing and we're not going to ask too many questions. You see the same thing in California with all of these various constituencies that benefit. In some cases they're ethnic groups or ethnic mafias, but in other cases, it's much simpler. It's employment categories. So in home supportive services, nursing and healthcare workers, government employees, all of these groups are dependent on the Democratic machine in California, the Democratic machine rewards them and they'll say, we won't ask any questions. We'll keep always voting to increase the cash that flows into your organizations and into your occupational categories.
- [11:04]
Steve Hilton
And how does illegal migration figure into this? Because we saw under Joe Biden this seemingly inexplicable throwing open the border, allowing as many as 20 million illegal migrants to come in without being vetted at a time when panic about COVID and diseases was rampant. They weren't vaccinated, all the rules were broken, there were many terrorists came in. I don't think Donald Trump's wrong when he says that these third world countries were opening up their prisons and lunatic asylums to send their worst into this country. We're seeing that with the various people that ISIS trying to deport. But what is the motive for it? Because again, you know, it's the COVID story. It's compassionate, but it's not really about compassion, is it? This is something the Democrats must have wanted to do on an industrial scale to maintain their power. So what are the mechanisms?
- [12:10]
Chris Ruffo
Yes, you're right. They sell it as compassion. They sell opposition to illegal immigration as a form of racism. And so those are the basic words that they use. But one of the stories that we did recently in California really drilled down on this question and said, how does this actually work? What does this actually mean? What institutions are involved? What kind of money is involved? And, you know, we went through painstakingly through California's state contracting database, and we found that during the period of Gavin Newsom's tenure, which included this kind of divide in years, Gavin Newsom approved more than $1 billion in contracts to migrant related NGOs. And these NGOs did everything. It was the kind of soup to nuts service for illegals, bringing them over the border. One of these NGOs actually helped migrants cross the border. They set up shop in Tijuana. They provided services along the migration route. They had food, water supplies, legal representation, and they actually physically brought people across the border. Once they got across the border, they were provided with a lawyer that was funded by taxpayers and, and other services. One of these groups that was trying to facilitate the flow of migrants specialized in bringing in migrants with hiv. Not Covid, which of course, you know, a serious disease, but actually bringing in migrants with hiv. That's a taxpayer funded, nonprofit. Kind of insane when you think about it.
- [13:40]
Steve Hilton
Why?
- [13:41]
Chris Ruffo
Because this is a oppressed population that, you know, this nonprofit group that received money from Gavin Newsom said, you know, we're looking out for LGBTQ migrants. They're oppressed in Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico. 20% of their clients had, you know, diagnosed with HIV. And we need to bring them into the United States so we can take care of them. And I think that was really the moment where I realized the ideology is extremely strong. And when they say compassion, they, they believe it, but, but also the money is extremely important. And so you're funding all of these groups that, that conduct the, the kind of migrant invasion, and then everybody benefits, except for the taxpayers, but everybody in the system benefits. Newsom benefits from having more congressional representation. When you bring in a million illegal migrants into the state. Democrats benefit, the NGOs, all benefit. They're getting a billion dollars in cold, hard cash from the government. And then, of course, the migrants themselves benefit. They want to come into the United States. They know they won't face any scrutiny or punishment.
- [14:49]
Steve Hilton
And so is that in part while you, I mean, in 2020, in the Democratic primaries. You know, Joe Biden, everybody else was putting their hand up in the debates and saying, yes, we want to give illegal migrants free health care. And, you know, fast forward, even though the country's turned against the open border situation you have in the California gubernatorial primary, all of them, apart from Steve Hilton, are putting their hand up and saying, yes, free healthcare for migrants just last week. So why is that still an article of faith for Democrats?
- [15:31]
Chris Ruffo
I mean, it's an article of faith, but actually it's an article of public policy. So California's current policy, which costs billions of dollars per year, is to provide free, comprehensive health care services to the vast majority of illegal migrants. It's a massive part of the state budget. And, you know, it's gotten to the point, kind of going beyond parody, where we sent a team of reporters down to San Francisco, we went to the homeless shelters in San Francisco, and we met, you know, dozens of transgender migrants from Latin America who told us that they came into the United States not only for free housing and food and health care services, but because Gavin Newsom and the California Health Department was giving them free sex change surgeries. And so these migrants from Latin America would say, look at these, you know, beautiful breast implants that I got from Medi Cal from the state health care program. And, you know, we reach out to the governor's office and said, hey, this is what's happening. And instead of trying to back away from it, they said, absolutely, we provide gender affirming care to illegals. You know, this is the kind of most compassionate thing we can do.
- [16:43]
Steve Hilton
It didn't work, though, for them in the 2024 election. I remember one of the most effective ads that Donald Trump ran was, you know, she's for they them. I'm for you over Kamala Harris's promise to give transgender surgeries to prisoners taxpayer funded. So, you know, it just seems like these Democrat ideas are not popular widely in the country still. They're, in fact, very unpopular, as you can see from Donald Trump's reelection. And Democrat cities are failing everywhere. Crime, homelessness, every metric. You know, economics, high taxes, terrible schools. And yet they, the Democrats still keep on winning elections. So why is that?
- [17:40]
Chris Ruffo
They're winning elections in the localities, so municipalities, statewide races where Democrats represent a kind of absolute super majority of voters. So, yes. Are transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants popular nationally? No. I imagine if you did the polling, it would be deeply underwater. We're talking 8020 or a 9010 issue. But California voters will reliably, you know, pull the Lever for Democrats. And the Democrats that are in charge of the state of all of the key institutions are committed to this ideology. They're willing to take the hit nationally if that happens. And look, the bet that they're making, and I'm not sure that it's wrong, is that over time conservatives will give up and voters will get used to these policies and rationalize them one way or another. And the calculation that they're making is if they just keep doing this long enough, they get through enough kind of negative news cycles, they get through a sufficient number of national elections that this will just become habitual. And in fact, it will eventually become an advantage for them because they can say, oh, Republicans want to take away, you know, gender affirming care for undocumented immigrants. And it will be, it will turn into like the dreamers or another kind of symbol for them to use electorally. And look, I mean, I'm opposed to it, but I don't think it's totally irrational. And I think conservatives that will kind of laugh and just assume that this is all, all are, this all will go away, are not necessarily engaging with sufficient seriousness.
- [19:28]
Steve Hilton
That's really interesting. And I think that sort of gets to the knob of why you've been successful and I guess why conservatives? It's always one step forward when they get power and then three steps back when the Democrats get power. It's sort of an inability to really grasp the sort of rational explanations for why Democrats are doing what seems to the average normal person to be utterly insane. And yet you've gone back and you've looked at the origins of that ideology going right back to the 1960s. So tell us a little bit about that and what your strategy has been, how it differs from the sort of run in the mill conservative activist strategy up until probably Trumpism.
- [20:27]
Chris Ruffo
A couple things. I mean, you have to understand the ideology and you have to understand it on its own terms. So conservatives, I think have developed a bad habit of seeing these kind of stories cycle through the news, assuming that everybody disagrees and then forgetting about them when the news cycle disappears. What I've tried to do with some success, some failure, is actually use these stories as a means of changing policy. I think Governor DeSantis during the Biden years demonstrated this in some of the work that we did together on education, universities, government agencies, DEI discrimination. But I'm afraid and, and will offer some in House criticism to our friends in D.C. you know, Republicans run on these issues for Congress, for example, but they actually don't do anything when they get into office. And in fact the the recent budgets just shove more money into these systems. And so while I would like to blame Gavin Newsom for spending a billion dollars facilitating the migrant invasion, the dirty secret that Republicans would not like you to know is that most of that money originated from the federal government and was rubber stamped by Congressional Republicans. And you see this over and over and over. You know we're talking about tens of billions and collectively hundreds of billions of dollars comes from federal taxpayers that goes to these left wing NGOs, left wing academic programs, left wing government departments in all 50 states. And Republicans in Congress have been kind of have been so blind to this and they fear punishment or ostracism or uncomfortable media coverage that they may kind of chip away at the very edges. Like oh no. Trans surgeries for prisoners. They call it a win. But the underlying structure is untouched. And so what I'm always trying to do is teach people what is the underlying structure, what actually has to happen for us to get rid of this stuff once and for all.
- [22:46]
Steve Hilton
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- [25:05]
Chris Ruffo
No, it's, it's not, it's not close to enough. And look, we'll offer some friendly in house criticism I presented to the White House Domestic Policy Council. Great people, hardworking, very intelligent. But, you know, when I talked to them about dei, which is a good example of what, what, what you're raising, I offered some blunt criticism, which was they said, oh, we made a great, you know, a great progress with Columbia University. We withheld funds and then negotiated with them for some small concessions and then, and then unlocked funds. But my, my feedback, and this is not a secret, I made it publicly before, was you guys are withholding, let's say, $100 million. But then after these negotiations, where these are basically a kind of facial or skin deep concessions, you're then unlocking a billion dollars a year. And so even if you were to take away that money, you're not really negotiating. And my sense of it, after a burst of very aggressive action with Elon Musk running Doge in the first 90 days of the administration, most of these initiatives have come grinding more or less to a halt. I know some people in the administration will not be happy with me saying that, but it's simply true. And if you look at it, the Section 8A program at the SBA, which is a racially segregated funding mechanism, still hasn't been dismantled. If you look at DEI and universities, it's alive and well everywhere, including the universities like Harvard and Columbia and Brown and Northwestern, that generated a lot of the initial controversy. And if you look elsewhere at the federal flow of federal funds, a lot of those recipients that were supposed to get slashed by Doge, the taps, have been quietly turned back on, and for the most part, not across the board. It seems to be that we're moving towards business as usual. And in retrospect, we're now almost two years in. You know, Doge was bringing the heat on these issues. Doge was making enormous and fast progress on these issues. And the momentum was kind of catastrophically lost the moment that Elon hit the eject button and went back to the private sector.
- [27:33]
Steve Hilton
And he did that because he was meeting so much Resistance from the bureaucracy, I think. And I mean, also the left was out there destroying his Tesla dealerships and trying to destroy, you know, trying to destroy his business. And he seemed to just lose his mind for a moment under all that pressure. But it's disappointing that they were so successful that, I mean, if Donald Trump and his administration, his second administration, of sort of avengers, very competent people and warriors who've been tempered by their own sort of baptisms of fire at the hands of the left, if they can't do it, what hope is there of ever getting on top of the left? As you document march through the institutions and capture of most of them?
- [28:28]
Chris Ruffo
Look, I mean, I'm still hopeful, I'm still optimistic. And ultimately, the reason for all this is pretty simple. Leadership really matters what leaders focus on, what leaders spend their political capital on, what leaders demand follow through on determines what kind of policies get done and which kind of priorities take the lead. And President Trump has done amazing things on a number of these issues, but I don't think it's top of mind for him. I don't think he really cares what's happening in academic departments at Harvard. I don't think that DEI is top of mind for him on a day to day basis. And I don't think counteracting the left's long march to the institutions is kind of a political object that gets a lot of attention from him. And look, he is who he is. He has his own priorities. Voters elected him. But I think it will take another leader who really cares about this, who really is directing his staff to spend political capital and take political risks on this basket of issues. There are people within the administration that are great, that care about it. But ultimately, what I've learned in my years in politics is that you have to have that buy in from the principal, from the governor, from the president, from the leader of some campaign. And the only way things get done, especially against these huge obstacles, is if you have every day somebody at the top who says, get it done, get it done, get it done. And look, you may love Trump. Many people do. I admire him for many reasons. I'm grateful for many of the points of progress he's made, but it's just unlikely to happen. And it will be even less likely to happen if Republicans lose, as expected in the midterms.
- [30:28]
Steve Hilton
And who's been good in the conservative leadership sphere on this? I mean, I'm thinking Ron DeSantis has had a lot of wins in Florida. Who else?
- [30:41]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, I think there have been some. I think there's some really credible people in the US Senate that really get it. I think Jim Banks gets it. I think Eric Schmidt from Missouri gets it. I think some of the Cabinet secretaries have been, you know, very good on their basket of issues. Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is one of them. And then, but, you know, based on my experience, observation, having, having worked on these issues, certainly, you know, Ron DeSantis in Florida, I can say, you know, having, having spent some time with the governor working on these issues. The reason he was successful in the war on woke in that period between, say, 2021 and 2024, is that he really did care about it. He was involved in the technical details. He was making it into a political issue. He was riding the wave of public support. He understood a lot of the deeper history. He understood academic politics. He understood kind of the legal as civil rights, law compliance, constitutionality. And so like In Ron DeSantis's personality, there is an actual, a nerd, somebody who really loves this stuff. And I think that made a big difference. Why he was able to do more than virtually everybody else. And that said, even someone like Kim Reynolds in Iowa is quite good. She's done some great work on this issue. In addition to kind of restoring kind of fiscal health of her state. There have been others. But right now I think we're in a wait and see period. And maybe you disagree, but my sense is that the administration, except for a couple of key issues where they're still working, is losing momentum. And I wish it weren't so, but this appears to be the way that it is.
- [32:36]
Steve Hilton
Yeah. And look, I just think with Ron DeSantis, for instance, politically it didn't really pay off for him. I know there was a lot of criticism of him when he was trying to run for president against Donald Trump, but it wasn't just because he was running against Donald Trump. It was just this feeling. He's obsessed with this boutique issue of wokeness that the voter doesn't care about.
- [33:02]
Chris Ruffo
I don't know. I don't think that that's necessarily right because, you know, he, he really rode to national prominence on this basket of issues. As you mentioned before, that kind of gender politics was one of the best ads for Trump's successful presidential run. And, and on the polling, issue by issue, this is a, this is a basket of issues where there's overwhelming 2 to 1, 4 to 1, 10 to 1 public support. And so I think the presidential campaign was the confluence of a number of issues. If you look at the polling as a Time series, kind of over time, when Trump was indicted, arrested, when the mug shot came out, the polling radically changed. Republican voters rallied behind the former president. And from that point onward, I don't think any other candidate had a shot. And certainly DeSantis own campaign was not run in a sophisticated manner that generated excitement. And so, I don't know, do people care about it now? Certainly less than they did during the Biden years, for obvious reasons. But my argument long term is that ultimately conservatives are going to have to engage and grapple with these issues if they want to challenge the existing structure of power, which radically favors the left in a permanent way. And even for more fiscally conservative, I consider myself a fiscal conservative. For those kind of traditional fiscally conservative Republicans, this should also be a slam dunk winner. Why are we funding left wing social programs? Why are we funding left wing NGOs? Why are we funding left wing academic programs? We have to just wipe these things out. And whatever argument you want to make, whether it's on the culture side or on the fiscal side, you know, I'm happy with all of them, but it seems like for the time being, we're in something of a stalemate.
- [35:05]
Steve Hilton
I wanted to talk just a little bit about Trump's promise to deport the illegals that Biden brought in. Obviously that's a big task. And I had a disappointing conversation with her, you know, high powered legal eagle from one of the academic institutions recently who was very pessimistic about the likelihood that Trump will be able to fulfill even some of that promise. They have removed a couple of million, but two thirds of those or more were self deportations. And there's just seems the political will, the momentum seems to have declined. But what this lawyer or this legal professor was telling me was that the problem is that there are layer upon layer of legal obstacles that are really insurmountable. There's, you know, regulations, but then there's statutes. And there are things that Congress could do to change, for instance, the protections around asylum, which is so nebulous. And every, every single illegal migrant pretty much that's stepped across the border, claimed asylum for one reason or the other, and that gives them these protections that makes it very difficult to deport them. And he thinks that this will just never happen. What's your take on that?
- [36:34]
Chris Ruffo
I mean, similar, but for different reasons maybe. I mean, the simple truth is that you can't physically deport 20 million people. You don't have enough hands to do it, and, and you don't have enough kind of political capital to do it anyways in anything resembling a timely manner. And you know, the kind of ugly reality here is that actually self deportation is the way to do it. So you just have to change the incentive so that people go back home. And the Trump administration has a number of tools at its disposal that it is not using. And, and you know, I've talked with immigration experts and kind of policy wonks and it seems like the consensus is to do kind of two or three things. The first is put incredibly high taxes on remittances so that it's not an economic benefit for migrants to come here to make money, send money back home. You're reducing that incentive to bring in kind of illegal labor. The second is to put strict financial regulations on banking institutions and other financial institutions to essentially say if you're not an American citizen or you're not a legal immigrant or you don't have sufficient paperwork, you can't participate in the American banking system and then some other kind of technical, technical methods. But if you were to do those few things, you would see enormous amounts of self deportation. But you'd also see huge disruption in some of those critical industries where Trump is favorable. Construction, agriculture, kind of hotels, housekeeping, etc, it's kind of lower level service work. And so it seems like, you know, it seems like the thing that you would actually need to do, which is cut off the kind of financial sector for, for illegal immigrants, is something the Trump administration is not willing to do. And instead they're doing these kind of, kind of good, I mean, fine, but high risk and, and highly symbolic, you know, ICE raids in blue cities and again, look, get the criminals out of the country happy for that. But the idea that you can deploy ICE agents to, to, to, to deport undocumented migrants at scale is a fantasy. And in fact it actually makes it harder because you get these situations like happened in Minneapolis with the two shootings that suck huge political energy and create political costs. So again, you'd actually have to do the thing that works. And unfortunately that's not happening.
- [39:21]
Steve Hilton
It's a theater, isn't it? The theater of it. It's very depressing. But there have been some victories and I'll just go through two, and you probably have others. But USAID being dismantled thanks to DOGE and the Southern Poverty Law center, more recently being indicted and I think many more charges to come dismantling that sort of Democrat activist arm. How significant have those two victories been?
- [39:55]
Chris Ruffo
Look, I think USAID was extremely significant. And you know, I followed the DOGE initiative at the Department of Education, which underwent a similar process at that beginning point. And I mean, USAID was a huge accomplishment in itself. But even more than that, it really showed a method that future administration could use at scale. And although DOGE was not able to expand outward, I think Elon taught us an aggressive manager, an aggressive president, someone who understands the institutions and essentially wants to not play by those permanent bureaucratic rules can actually do it. And so conservatives have fantasized about defunding NPR and pbs, which to their credit Congress did, about dismantling USAID and this foreign policy blob, which Elon did. And so these are real successes. Don't want to downplay that. But I think again, these successes were time limited to the very beginning of the administration and for a variety of reasons, the motivation since then has been sapped. And so again, incredible. But ultimately in the long term, insufficient.
- [41:19]
Steve Hilton
And what will the Southern Poverty Law center dismantling if it happens? They seem to have certainly taken a reputation hit. What will that mean?
- [41:29]
Chris Ruffo
I mean, I think a reputation hit is about it. So it's great. I'm glad they did it. It's, you know, it's beyond time. They should do the same kind of investigations into all these other kind of left wing activist groups that seem to operate beyond the law or in the case of like antifa adjacent groups that are involved in many cases at least at arm's length in violence and terrorism and civil unrest. So you have to go after these left wing NGOs. But I think the SPLC case, if you actually read the indictment, it's not a criminal indictment. And so, you know, people aren't going to end up going to prison. And they're really looking for as the remedy the kind of recapture of a limited number of funds. And so even if they get kind of fully recapture some of these funds, even if there's some civil penalty, it's unlikely that this will unwind the organization permanently. That organization has a huge war chest. And so I think it will be a black eye, which is great. Punch them, you know, give him a black eye. Fantastic. But I think the conservative celebration, you know, once it subsides, conservatives realize, okay, this is, you know, we won this round, but this is a long term fight and the Southern Poverty Law center is going to be fighting, you know, far into the future.
- [42:57]
Steve Hilton
So what did they do? What, what was their importance to the left and what needs to be done to dismantle them?
- [43:05]
Chris Ruffo
The SPLC was and continues to be essentially an opposition research firm that digs into radical groups on the right or even moderate groups and individuals on the right. I have many pieces written about me at the SPLC website. And their basic tactic was to write these kind of smear articles to try to try to take mainstream conservatives and link them through whatever kind of pseudo linkage exists to some, you know, very bad people. And then to use the power of public perception to take people off of payments, to take people off of social media sites, to take people out of kind of respectable conversation, and to destroy reputations for conservatives that maintain the broader kind of democratic or left wing power. And look, they were very good at this for many years. If you were put on the SPLC hate watch list, you know, that was like sayonara to your reputation.
- [44:12]
Steve Hilton
Well, Charlie could that just before he was assassinated puts you on the radar.
- [44:17]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, they put him on the radar. That power has diminished over time and I think this will diminish it significantly. And so look, they're still going to have money, they're still going to operate. But I think the vic. The real victory is not actually taking them off the table, which would be great, but is not in the cards. The real victory here was actually to expose the scam that they're operating and then in the future, you know, to reduce the social cost to be being put on their list or being highlighted in their articles. And I think that's been happening already for years. Like, I remember, you know, 2019, 2020, if you were to be put on like the ADL list or the SPLC list or Media Matters, you would feel a little like, oh, they're coming after me. Is this going to do damage? And at this point, all three of those groups, it's like, I'm sure you've been highlighted in at least Media Matters. Yeah, it's like, who cares? Like, it doesn't make any difference at all. So. So in that sense, that's really good. And the FBI deserves huge credit. Credit where it's due. They've helped accelerate that process, which is very important.
- [45:28]
Steve Hilton
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- [47:32]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, I mean, it seems like, I guess it feels simultaneously like a long time ago and like a short time ago, but all of the madness that I had seen brewing in the city of Seattle, in San Francisco, in these kind of big blue west coast cities, I watched it from what seemed like these localized municipal issues with these kind of radical groups that have, that had kind of insinuated themselves within the local politics. And then 2020, George Floyd Minneapolis it seems like these ideas just went national overnight. And so I thought, and maybe others would agree, I actually have some unique insight. I've been watching this, I've been studying this, I've been learning about this. I've been seeing this up close and personal for a number of years. And, and for many people, it all came as a kind of surprise, right? The BLM movement, George Floyd dei, the whole, the whole kind of mania that we saw in 2020. But for those of us, I think, especially on the west coast, all of that stuff was intimately familiar. And so the reporting that I was doing kind of naturally just went to a larger scale to try to attempt to show people what was happening, to explain to people what was happening. And then just out of Necessity to offer to the best I could a way to stop it, a way to reverse it, a way to fight back against it. And that's really what I've been doing since then.
- [49:10]
Steve Hilton
Chris, you have got a fabulous Twitter feed or X feed and you've recently just been calling out the conspiracy theories, which I completely agree with you. Whether it's UFOs or Epstein or Israel or ridiculous Erica Kirk's theories, there just seems to be a lot of rabbit holes that are dragging conservatives, draining their energy, getting them fighting among themselves to a point where I feel like it's not just organic. There's some sort of coordinated manipulation of. I don't know whether it's social media feeds or just seeding these ideas and splintering the right.
- [49:57]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, I mean, I wish that were. I wish that were true and we could figure it out and put an end to it. Because, you know, like you, I'm so frustrated with this and you know, it's pseudo politics, meaning it kind of seems like politics, it has characters from politics, but it's actually totally divorced from the political reality and constructive political action. So yeah, I see it. It's widespread and it's destructive enough to the right's political capacities that we have to talk about it, we have to address it, we have to correct it. And I've been thinking psychologically, what is really happening and why do people engage in this? And I think part of it is social media. These narratives can proliferate in a way that they couldn't before. And part of it is psychological that there is a temptation for people to flee. The difficult work of political reality. Like constructive political action is actually very difficult. It requires sophistication and tenacity and follow through and compromise and, and a real kind of eye on the prize. Right. So you have to stay focused on achieving something in the real world. And I think, you know, large parts of the right just that doesn't drive clicks, that doesn't drive controversy, that doesn't drive media cycles. They were kind of looking for something to kind of juice their numbers and media. And for better or for worse, there was a huge audience for UFOs. Israel killed Charlie Kirk. I mean, whatever, like idiotic conspiracy theory you kind of dredge up. The reality is that there's an audience for it, people do it and it's left and right. I mean, certainly I saw some polling that recently came out that says, you know, about half of Democrats believe that Trump or conservatives staged the Butler assassination attempt to that it's like, so this is A both sides issue, you know,
- [52:13]
Steve Hilton
but that's more useful. You know, I feel like the conspiracy theories on the left all drive in the same direction. You know, there's a. Because by pretending that Trump staged his assassination, you know, attempts, you're actually neutralizing the impact of his courage and bravery and you stopping Democrats from admiring grudgingly, a man who stands up and says, fight, fight, fight, with blood pouring down his face. If you pretend it's just ketchup. So, but on the right, it's, it's, there's, there's no rhyme or reason to it other than if you were wanting to sow discord on the right. And I'm just thinking, you know, like Nick Fuentes, the, you know, the young sort of notorious Nazi or whatever he is, he's, he. If someone found that his followers are largely foreign originated bots. You know, I know from my own experience with the Hunter Biden laptop that there was this story that took hold that Hunter Biden was a pedophile. There was zero evidence of that, in fact, the opposite of that on the laptop, which had very intimate sexual material on there. Absolutely zero interest in children. But there was a Chinese website that manufactured fake images right about in, in the days after we first started reporting in October 2020 of Hunter Biden with children in sexual poses. And those images just took off. And it didn't matter how much I or others who had, you know, looked at the laptop, just said, no, there is no evidence. And if there was, obviously I would report it because it would dwarf all the other crimes on the laptop. But there wasn't. And I feel like that was deliberately seeded as a sort of a discrediting of our, our reporting.
- [54:26]
Chris Ruffo
That's, that's amazing. I mean, that's a, a very, very smart point to notice the utility of the conspiracy theory on the left. It serves their interests. On the right, it cuts against our interests. And, and I think your, your suspicion and is, hey, if you were to design an information strategy to splinter the rights coalition and to render the Trump administration significantly less effective, this is what it would look like. It looked like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens and the, you know, the crazy anti Israel people, Dan Bilzerian or whatever, I'm like embarrassed that I even know these people's names because it's like in a real politics, you, you know, you could, you would, you would be able to ignore them. But yeah, this is bad. I think certainly I'm open to the idea that foreign governments or intelligence services or even just domestic Democrats, you know, could be behind it. But I've always kind of been careful and I've always asked for. I say, all right, yeah, I'm open to that as a possibility or hypothesis, but I really do need extra evidence and at least in as far as I've looked into, starts to get murky quickly. And I haven't so far seen a smoking gun that would indicate to me that that is what's happening as much as I, you know, in some ways would like it to be true.
- [55:56]
Steve Hilton
So it's just more grifting, like Candace Owens going after Erica Kirk.
- [56:00]
Chris Ruffo
That is 100% what's happening in that situation. Yeah, look, I mean, tabloid conflict, kind of soap opera drama, interpersonal beef, all these things do drive attention. And, and look, Candice Owens, if you look at her stats on YouTube as a kind of reliable metric, let's say she's doing huge numbers. It is what it is. And more substantive hosts and competitors are doing less. And look, in one sense, like, who cares? You should, you should, you should create the kind of work that you believe in. That's good, that's helpful to the country. But on the other hand, yeah, I mean, this stuff does sell. I remember at one point, you know, Alex Jones, Infowars, I think I remember this correctly, they were making like hundreds of millions of dollars in their various, like, supplements and sales and website. And I remember I heard the statistic, and that's when I really realized, oh, wow, there actually is a massive audience for this stuff. And it is what it is. It sells.
- [57:16]
Steve Hilton
You're right.
- [57:16]
Chris Ruffo
It's a soap opera. And until we, until we, until we're able to. And look, I remember, like, you remember the national, like in. I would go to the grocery store as a kid.
- [57:25]
Steve Hilton
Yeah.
- [57:26]
Chris Ruffo
And you would, you would pass by the National Enquirer, the Star, and it would be like, you know, Susan Sarandon has a baby with an alien, you know, like, oh, wow. Like, whatever. It's like goofy stuff. But like, yeah, that was at every grocery store. So maybe, maybe this is just a perennial part of society and it is
- [57:44]
Steve Hilton
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- [59:56]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, yeah, true. I was a lefty in my youth and I think two things changed for me fundamentally. One is that I had, you know, in my 20s, I developed a wider experience of the world. I was able to travel a lot. I worked as a documentary producer for many years. I was able to see, you know, different countries, different civilizations, different governing systems. And the reality that I observed in the world did not match my kind of abstract political principles. And so, you know, you can do two things at that point. You can deny reality that you see, or you could kind of kind of question and, and interrogate your political principles. And so that's what I did. I did, you know, years of kind of kind of reading, thinking, studying, trying to make sense of the observations that I was making in the real world. And you know, lo and behold, after a number of years, the kind of great authors of the 20th century conservative canon, conservative social scientists and philosophers and thinkers. And then, you know, going backwards from there, these ideas started to for me have a better explanation of the things that I was seeing around the world. And therefore I thought the Only conclusion came to my surprise, like, oh, wow, maybe therefore I too am a conservative, because these ideas to me seem to be true in a way that my left wing ideas from the previous part of my life no longer did.
- [61:38]
Steve Hilton
And what's your family like? Are they conservative?
- [61:41]
Chris Ruffo
Like, middle of the road? So, so I have my, my immediate family, you know, my parents are kind of middle of the road. Sometimes vote Democrats, sometimes vote Republican, I think trending more conservative in recent decades.
- [61:54]
Steve Hilton
And your dad was an Italian migrant?
- [61:58]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, Italian immigrant. Yeah. Camera.
- [62:00]
Steve Hilton
Sorry.
- [62:00]
Chris Ruffo
Immigrated. Paperwork. Yeah, yeah. But yes, so, so. And then, you know, the politics in Italy is typically more left wing and so had that in my background. But yeah, you know, I think, you know, it's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting journey. My politics has shifted rightward and, and yeah, I think that's the way to do it. Like, I'm, I'm grateful for education, grateful for, you know, what I used to believe, grateful for all of that. But to me, it's, you know, the ultimate test is, is reality, you know, what actually works in the real world, what actually explains how things happen, why things happen. And so that's like my guiding star. And I think, you know, much as you are as an investigative reporter, you know, you recognize, all right, well, what are the facts? And actually, the facts may not be what I want them to be or what I thought they would be, but, but your, your commitment is to the facts. And I've tried to bring the same thing, and I think my training as a documentary filmmaker was really relevant because ultimately you can't fake what you see. And if you spend a lot, if you spend enough time looking at something, you have to be open that your experience, you know, may not line up with your ideology. And ultimately, you know, you have to kind of reconcile that. And so that for me has been, you know, very rewarding process.
- [63:27]
Steve Hilton
And your wife is from Thailand originally and you have three sons together. How has being married to someone from such a different background changed you? And also, I would imagine having three sons has made you pretty alert to the sort of toxic masculinity soup that they're growing up in.
- [63:49]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, yeah, it's a good.
- [63:50]
Steve Hilton
Or the anti male, I should point out.
- [63:52]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, Anti mail, for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, it's interesting. And, you know, since then we, I should say, we've added a daughter, so we have our youngest babies.
- [64:03]
Steve Hilton
Sorry.
- [64:03]
Chris Ruffo
Which is awesome. Well done.
- [64:05]
Steve Hilton
You're doing your bit.
- [64:06]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, yeah. And it's amazing having a girl. It's so, so Different. But yeah, you know, I don't know. I think, you know, certainly her life experience is different than mine, certainly her background. But you know, my wife, my, you know, my wife is just like very grateful for the United States. She loves the United States. She's patriotic, she's capitalistic. She's, you know, she's, she, she's seen how, how miserable and, and repressive and limiting life can be in many parts of the world, including for people who grow up in, in Thailand. And so I think, you know, I've learned a lot from her in that regard and we share a lot of those same principles and commitments and kind of political beliefs and you know, having three sons, like my oldest is in high school now, just started high school. So you're really starting to see this stuff seep through. And what I would say and to bring a kind of point of optimism, I think young men in America are, who kind of came of age in this George Floyd DEI era. They see through it, they're not willing to put up with it and they're quiet, sometimes quietly, sometimes less quietly pushing back against it. And so I see it in my son, his friends, even my kind of younger, younger kids and their peer group. You know, they're not going to abide by, you know, kind of self flagellation, self hatred. And I certainly teach them to speak their mind, to push against things they see as unjust and not to limit themselves even if society would, would like them to. And, and I think you, you see this kind of spirit where they don't, they don't abide by the gender ideology, by the racialist ideology. They don't, they don't kind of let the institutions put them in a box. And so I like that. I think this rebellious spirit among young men is very good. It's very healthy. And, and I certainly something that, that I would encourage with my own kids.
- [66:21]
Steve Hilton
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that the world is in much better hands with this new generation Z, Gen Z or Gen Alpha.
- [66:31]
Chris Ruffo
I even like their haircuts. Like they have like the broccoli chop haircut I like. This is cool. I like their haircuts. I like their sunglasses that they wear. I like their style. So I'm, I'm pro Gen Z. I
- [66:42]
Steve Hilton
like Gen Z. Yeah, so do I. Being the mother of Gen Z, I absolutely adore them. So just last couple of questions. You've met a lot of famous people, you've been successful in your own right. What do you see as the secrets of success?
- [66:58]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, I don't know, I think secret of, well, a couple things. You have to figure out what you are good at. And this took me. It took me time. It took me more than 10 years. Like, what am I actually good at? What do I love to do? And what do other people, you know, what benefits other people, like, what's useful to people. And so that's like that Venn diagram, right? Something that you love, something that you're good at, something the world wants or needs. And if you find that little space that will be very unique to you, I think that you can't help but be successful. And it'll look different for everybody, of course. But I think looking back, yeah, that's like what I wish I could have done. Like, figure that out faster and then not held on tightly to things that weren't working or weren't serving me or weren't useful. And then the other thing that you realize is that successful people are, you know, they're also just people. Some of them are great, some of them are awful. And once, you know, at the very beginning, you kind of are like amazed and missed and kind of idealized, maybe people in that kind of successful tier. And then as you get more comfortable with it, you realize, you know, these are just human beings and they have their, their benefits, their flaws. And. And then you have to just like, you know, figure out, all right, well, what do I believe, what's important to me? And once the kind of the aura has worn off, you realize, like, yeah, these are people that are sometimes selfish, sometimes selfless. And ultimately what matters is character. And I think that lesson I've learned over and over, having misjudged people in some cases, at the end of the day, when everything kind of burns off, people's trajectory is determined to, to not totally, but to a great part by character. And becoming a better judge of character is the skill, is a great skill. As you get into your kind of middle age, like, that's really what matters. And so that's what I've tried to do.
- [69:10]
Steve Hilton
One of my favorite sayings is character is destiny. So last question. Chris Ruffo, is your, your next campaign? I know that you plan these out. They're not just random news stories that pop into your head. So what's next after fraud?
- [69:27]
Chris Ruffo
Yeah, well, I'm working on California, so that's really the best, best frame. You know, I'm going to be working on these California stories At Manhattan Institute. We have a great new California team. We've opened up California bureau like the California Post and writing with the California Post, which is a great new publication, sister, of course, to the New York Post. And so this is the fun challenge for me. And I'll tell you why is California important? California is important for a couple reasons. I mean, personally, I was born and raised in California. I love California. I would love to one day return to California as a conquering hero, but also because California is the model for Democratic politics that they want to impose on the country as a whole. And so you have to understand California and you have to figure out how to change California if you want to be successful nationally, if the right wants to be successful nationally over the long term. And so it's a fascinating study. It's intellectually gratifying to try to understand California better. And it has immense practical benefits, not just for people in California, but for people across the country, because California is what's coming next for America. And our thesis, our ambition is can we disrupt California's political culture? Can we disrupt the California's political architecture? And if so, what lessons will be learned, not just within the state, but nationwide.
- [71:00]
Steve Hilton
Will Steve Hilton win the governor's race?
- [71:04]
Chris Ruffo
I'm going to put on, like, not the will he, but should he? I'll put the should he hat on. And Steve Hilton should win the California governor's race. If California voters were thoughtful, rational, and cared about the substance of the matters.
- [71:23]
Steve Hilton
Oh, clearly he wants them.
- [71:25]
Chris Ruffo
I think it's an uphill climb. And. And I'd say I won't say he won't because I always leave open the possibility. But I will say that, look, facing down the unions, the NGOs, the media and the political establishment is a massive task. And I would say in Steve's, to Steve's credit, I mean, he's enormously charismatic. He's running the best possible campaign that anyone could run. If I were living in California, I would vote for Steve Hilton in a heartbeat. And we'll see. I mean, I hope he does, but I fear that the establishment will just be too much.
- [72:09]
Steve Hilton
He's been brilliant, though. I've been amazed at the inroads he's made so far. And, you know, he's made room for a lot of different arguments and different thinking in California. So let's hope he does win. It would make a huge difference. Thank you. Chris Ruffo, really nice to talk to you.
- [72:26]
Chris Ruffo
Thank you so much. Great to talk with you.
- [72:28]
Steve Hilton
Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Force One. Let us know what you thought of this week's show in the comments below. And don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
- [72:43]
Chris Ruffo
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- [73:00]
Steve Hilton
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