Host (4:21)

Do. Well, we've just come from Austin, and it's fascinating talking to people. Austin is like the refugee city for people who left California. And what people I think don't understand is just how much of a paradise California is. It is incredible, right? The climate is incredible. The nature is incredible. You've got access to amazing food, like you talked about, businesses. It's an incredible place. And to chase so many talented, driven people out, I know, is quite an achievement. You know, this house is not ours. It's an Airbnb. Right. We looked up how much this house. I was curious how much it costs. Yeah, we looked it up. The price of this house has dropped by 40% in the last 10.

Steve Hilton (4:59)

Years.

Host (5:00)

Yes. Cause wealthy people have.

Steve Hilton (5:02)

Left. Exactly. This is the Thing like I actually say this, I'm on the road the whole time. It's a political campaign, speeches all the time. And there's a kind of basic thing I say which is why would anyone leave an amazing place like this? It's because it's so badly run and it's impossible to live here. And they chase you out. I mean the business, you know, I used to run businesses started companies here and back in England and just including restaurants. I mean just basic, you know, these businesses that are so precious to, you know, the heart of a community. Bars, restaurants, all that just. It's a nightmare, it's endless. I mean there's so many stories. I get them the whole time, every day. You collect. Cause people tell you their stories. A woman who tried restaurant owner in wine country near where I live up in the Bay Area, near San Francisco, she tried to. Well, she did eventually expand. She built an extension to her patio for more guests. To increase the number of guests from 35 to 50. You need a permit, you need to go through process. It took six years and a million dollars. What in fees? Lawyers, inspections. You have to pay for the inspection, environmental report, this, that it's typical. I mean there's something called. This is going to sound obscure, but it's a really good example of the insanity just in terms of just regular operating anything. In California you've got something called Paga, the Private Attorney General act passed in 2004. It outsources the enforcement of state labor law to just regular lawyers attorneys instead of the government. It's become a total racket for lawyers, trial attorneys as they say, who are by the way the second biggest donors to Democrat politicians. That's why it's happening. Number one, donors of the unions. That's why the unions run everything. Number two, the lawyers. Private Attorney general has turned into an extortion racket for lawyers and the government. So the tiniest infraction like this made up, you know, you spent spell someone's name wrong on the pay stop your break. If you're running a restaurant, after every five hours you're supposed to give, you know, have a certain number of minutes of break. One minute late and you're hit with a lawsuit. And these are costing businesses they have to settle because you don't want to go through the process of going to trial. 60 grand, 70 grand, 100 grand, bigger businesses, millions a year. Just a cost of doing business. Just insane. I mean there's so much over the years of this one party rule, it's just become this ridiculous Bloated nanny state bureaucracy all paid for through higher taxes. They just keep spending money. They doubled the budget of the state of California in the last 10 years. Everything's worse. I mean, nothing worked, just California isn't working. And so you're right, it's a beautiful place. And even, I mean, the famous bits are well known. But I'm just on the road the whole time. It's huge. And you go up north. Just this weekend I was up north. It's like you've got everything here. It's like to the west and there's ranches and cowboys and then you go up to the Sierras and the beautiful mountains, Yosemite that people know. But it's incredible. Everywhere you go, the coastline's magnificent. It's an amazing place being completely ruined. I mean, my last book was called Reversing the Ruin of America's Worst Run.

Guest/Commentator (8:29)

State. Look, I'm in agreement with you on that. I remember I came to California the first time in 2002, summer of 02. I looked around and I thought, this is a paradise. Yeah, this is a paradise. And then you go to the places that I went for the first time, Santa Barbara. And it's a completely different place. It looks downtrodden, it looks.

Steve Hilton (8:49)

Defeated. Disgusting. I mean, it's disgusting to me, you know, the lack of pride. You know, you've. And it's not just the big cities, but the squalor, that's the right word. You cannot believe it. The filth everywhere, trash everywhere. Of course, homelessness, that's very visible. Everything that goes with that. We literally have plagues of rats now. Like that's not an exaggeration because of the squalor. And then actually, it's actually a really good example because they've banned a certain kind of rodenticide. So you go to the Central Valley. I just, when I drove here from, from there just to be with you. Here today is the greatest agricultural area in the world. The Central Valley of California. That's being ruined because they won't give farmers water because of their climate ideology. They've banned a rodenticide and there's plagues of rats. I mean, it's just a joke, but it's a warning to everyone because this is what happens when the ideology of the left just is allowed to run without constraint. It's a real warning. It's the worst run state in America. And you've got Gavin Newsom, the governor, sort of running around lecturing everyone on social justice and compassion and cruelty, whatever. Meanwhile, we have the highest poverty rate. As I said, one in three Californians can't afford to meet their basic needs. Food, shelter, health care. I mean, it's a total failure. And it's a really good indication that once you go down that road of today's leftism, this, this is where it leads. It's a.

Guest/Commentator (10:16)

Disaster. But also as well, look, it's a tourism, but let's be honest about it, you get the politicians you deserve. When we were talking about the excesses of wokeism and people going completely off the deep end, California was a literal punchline to many comedians, jokes. And for good.

Steve Hilton (10:32)

Reason. Yes. Are you saying you mean people voted for this crap? Yes, yes. And I think that because everyone said, well, how's it been allowed to happen? Well, partly. Cause it is so nice here. So you can put up with a lot. I mean, some people, you know, business people say, well, it's the California tax, it's the weather, you know, like you put up with all this crap to be here. Cause it is so amazing. But I think it's got to the point. Well, you know, my plan is that it's got to the point where that is it no more. We are gonna change because we can't take it anymore. And actually there's. I just wanna come back to the economic thing because you've got this situation where again, the governor, Gavin Newsom runs around saying, well, everything must be great because we're the fourth biggest economy in the world. And statistically that's true. It's a big economy, fourth biggest in the world. Great. But beneath that big number, which is driven by a lot of really, especially in the Bay Area, these big tech companies that are just making huge amounts of money, but actually don't employ very many people at the same time. Yeah, fourth biggest economy in the world, but highest unemployment in America, highest poverty rate in America. So that is not a well balanced, healthy economy. And I think that's what is really coming home to roost now for them, which is that the people that they claim to speak for, regular working people, particularly Latinos, especially now the majority in California just being completely screwed by this stuff. And that dream of the California dream and a good job where you make enough to raise your family and a home of your own, it's all gone. I mean, it's just. And I think people are getting sick of it and they just need a positive alternative. That's what I'm trying to.

Host (12:11)

Provide. And that's the question really is. I mean, you talk about the excesses of this Kind of new version of the left. And when it's taken to its logical conclusion with no challenge, no pullback, no contest of the ideas, no feedback from.

Steve Hilton (12:26)

Reality.

Host (12:27)

Yes. And you're describing England the way that it is today. Everything you're talking about, business, can't run, homeless people, crime, all of these things. Right. But the question is, I think for many Western countries now, and for California including, is how do you get back from how far you've.

Steve Hilton (12:45)

Gone?

Host (12:46)

Yeah. When you've got homeless people everywhere, drug addicted people everywhere, the regulations that you've talked about, like it's in a really bad.

Steve Hilton (12:55)

Way.

Host (12:55)

Yes. How do you, how do you, if you, if you are elected, if you are successful, how are you going to fix all.

Guest/Commentator (13:01)

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Steve Hilton (14:39)

Episode. For those who are interested in, you know, how, how the government, you know, works here is just, it's a mirror of what you get at the National Level, you've got the executive branch run by the governor and you've got the legislature, like Congress. And the legislature is churning out all this crap, I mean all the time. And they have a super majority, the Democrats, two thirds majority. Which by the way is not legitimate. It's the product of gerrymandered maps. Let's not get into that. Whatever it exists that means they can pass anything they want without any kind of input from Republicans. And they're just passing a ton of. I mean apart from anything else, it's just the amount of it. Like I just did an event in Sacramento, the state capitol, just highlighting the sheer amount of legislation. Like this year, this calendar year, the session, they passed 1,117 bills. We stacked them up, we printed them out just to see. I mean, I know I'm short, it was literally double my height. Okay. And every year more and more crap pushed by lobbyists and, and all the special interest, all that stuff. So you can't really do anything about that as governor. You can't just unwrite laws. But what you can do is deal with the bureaucratic aspect of that. You run the government and there's a number of things. So let's just take the regulations. I'll give you a really couple of specific examples. So one of the things that's most insane about this current ideology and actually if you look at like what's causing the most damage, if you had to single one thing out, it's the climate extremism. Actually when you look at like the real driver of the cost of everything being so high, including housing, is this climate, I call it climate elitism because the people who are paying the price for it are working class Californians. And that a ton of that is not legislated specifically. It's the way it's implemented by these endless agencies. We've got 200 plus state agencies like Cobb, the California Air Resources Board that are just churning out these new rules and everything from trucks and you know, they have this thing called vmt Vehicle miles traveled that gets in the way of building anything because if you want to build anything, you have to do a calculation of vehicle. How many vehicle miles traveled will be the result of you building a new housing development or a guy who runs a lovely just sweep. Exactly the kind of business I love. Right? It was an artisan gin distiller in the central coast of California. Beautiful young entrepreneur, you know, it's lovely business. He was telling me that he doing really well and he wanted to build a second still like whatever you know, I think that's the right. And they had to go through all the crap and it was denied because of vmt. Vehicle miles travel because it would increase vehicle miles. Trapped. Yes, that's called growth. That's called progress. Like more development, more. And they don't want that. But that stuff is coming out of the bureaucracy. So what as governor, you can do, you appoint thousands of people to hundreds of these agencies. Another example is in the same sort of area, oil and gas. So we have abundant oil reserves in California. I mean, you know, not just kind of behind us in Kern County, 70 miles or so. And I mean, not as big as some of the states, but I think we have the fifth biggest in America. We used to produce most of the oil and gas we use in California from within California. Because of their war on fossil fuels, the climate warriors are shutting it down. So we now are in a ludicrous situation. We're using about the same as we ever did. But instead of producing it in Kern county near Bakersfield, and it coming in a nice clean pipeline to the refineries here in LA and up on the coast in the Bay Area, we're now shipping it in on giant supertankers, the most polluting form of transportation on the planet. They run on bunker fuel, which is like the most dirty, spewing out carbon emissions. Our number one supplier of oil now, it used to be California, used to be from here is Iraq, where they produce it in a terrible dirty way, terrible human rights record, but that's what we're now doing. And also our gas prices, we have abundant oil reserves now, higher, the highest in the country. Higher than Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That's just insane. Right? And again, I want to come back to the, you know, the man of the people point. Well, yes, because the first pledge I made in the election campaign, I mean, I've been working all this stuff for years, but as a candidate, was $3 gas, which to some people around the. I mean, may not mean much if you're not watching in California. But like we have, it's $5 and it's heading up to 6 and 7 because refineries are closing because of all of this. And that really hurts regular working people who are driving two, three, four hours a day to get to and from work because in their cars and trucks, that's like $100 or so a month that you save with $3 gas. How will I get that done? Actually, you put people into these agencies, the Air Resources Board, to be very precise. Terms of oil and gas production, CalGEM, geologic and energy management. And the way they're shutting down the California oil and gas industry is not. There's no legislation that did that. It's that it's the bureaucrats in that agency who are refusing to issue permits to maintain existing wells, to expand them, to drill new wells in existing oil fields. All of that can change almost overnight. So I can't do everything. But if you understand how the government works and you really have a detailed plan, a little bit like Trump this time around, compared to the first Trump administration this time, they were really well prepared and they kind of knew what they wanted to do. The people, people they wanted to put in the executive orders and all of that. So that's so not on everything, but on a lot of these things, you can make a big difference. I'll just quickly do homelessness, because you asked about that. So the thing about homelessness is that it's totally avoidable. It should never have happened. It's completely avoidable. And the way I always put it is we would never allow someone we love to live like that. So why do we tolerate this for people we don't know? And the fact about homelessness is that it's illegal. It's illegal to sleep on the streets. These homeless encampments are illegal. They've always been illegal. And all these cities and county government, you know, local government in California, they've just sort of put up with it because there was a supreme. There's a court case, I don't know, years ago called the Boise ruling. They said, well, you can't move people off the streets unless you have adequate shelter available. And they hid behind that and said, well, and defined shelter as what they call permanent supportive housing, which is an apartment unit that costs like $700,000 or going higher. That's not what that meant at all. They could have put people off the streets, taken them off the streets, put them in shelter, got them into treatment. But the law says you can't require sobriety or abstinence from. I mean, 80 plus percent of people who are homeless have drug or alcohol addiction or mental health problems. So it's just this mess that they haven't dealt with the state as governor, you have state law enforcement resources. You have a police force you can use. And so I say very clearly, if they won't enforce the law, I will, and I'll provide shelter and treatment and get people into what. There's so many great organizations that are just ready to do that, but they've got this attitude, this mindset of what they call compassion, which is you can't force people to do something, and the result is this squalor and danger. And parents, I mean, you know, they walk their kids to school and they're literally stepping over dead people who've OD'd from fentanyl. I mean, this is just unbelievable to.

Guest/Commentator (22:34)

Me. One of the major issues that California lost its mind was crime. It effectively seemed to legalize crime. And I remember watching this going, this is completely. Not Is it Only bonkers. Is completely unsustainable. You've just. Yes, the Democrat government effectively legalized shoplifting. I mean, if I'm talking out of my proverbial. Please correct.

Steve Hilton (22:59)

Me. Okay, do you want me to. I'll get into it. But it's a terrible. Sorry story.

Guest/Commentator (23:04)

Of. It's what we do at Trigger.

Steve Hilton (23:06)

Nomencho. I know. I'll get into it. So. Okay. It actually goes back to something that I really can do something about as governor. So it's worth really understanding the sort of detail here. So it goes back to prison overcrowding. And there was a Supreme Court ruling. Hold on. This is like in the early 2010s. I can't remember exactly when it said California's jails, prisons, state prisons are overcrowded. It's inhumane. You've got to do something about it. So instead of doing what I think most sensible people say, right, well, let's build some more so we have room for the criminals that we need to produce. Oh, no, let's let everyone out. And that's the way that you deal with it. So there was this whole process for a few years where the goal and it's a big part of what they call criminal justice reform, was decarceration. Decarceration, taking people out of jail. And as a part of that, there was a whole combination of things. And the big one that related to the point you make about shoplifting was a ballot initiative in 2014 called Proposition 47. And that was the one that famously is associated with Kamala Harris because she was state attorney general. But to be accurate and fair, it wasn't her thing. It was a ballot initiative that was put together by, you know, leftist activists, supported by the then governor, Jerry Brown, very strongly supported. And she said she was neutral, but actually, as attorney general, she wasn't at all. The way the language was written on the ballot initiative was basically selling. It was literally called something insane, like not the name of it, but the description. And then all the marketing was the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. And that's where you got this thing, which is up to $950 a day. You could steal per day and it would just be a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket, basically, not a felony. So no jail time. The goal was to stop people going to prison. That was the purpose of all of that. And then behind that was not just the original impetus, which was the Supreme Court ruling or overcrowding, but also the ideology, which is prison is bad because it's racist. So it goes back to the race woke thing because. And you hear people talk like that today still, right, that we should shut all the prisons because it's racist. Why? Because there are disproportionate numbers of black people in prison, in jail, and especially young black men. And as the WOKE ideology states, any racial disparity is always the product of racism. Hence the prisons are racist. So we have to shut the prisons. So you've had this. But that's the first thing that happened, which was Prop 47, and that had the legalized shoplifting effectively and a bunch of other stuff as well, but that was the main one. And of course, what does that do? All the people that need to steal to fuel their drug habit and then you get this massive explosion of retail theft and car break ins and car, all of that stuff just exploded. And there's nothing you could do because they said all you get is just a sort of nothing of a sentence. It's basically legalized. And there are a whole bunch of other things. There's another one in a way even more absurdly egregious, which was less discussed, which is proposition Prop 57, which is two years later. And this one, Kamala Harris, I would argue is more directly responsible for. And that one, again driven by the desire to push this decarceration agenda, downgraded a whole bunch of other crimes so that they wouldn't get automatic prison time. And they claimed it was only it was non violent offenses, they weren't touching violent offenses. But if you look at the list of crimes that they downgraded that could no longer qualify for automatic prison time, Literally one of them is domestic violence. Like it's in the name of the thing, but they said it was non violence. So domestic violence, the rape of an unconscious woman, now downgraded. Trafficking a child for sex, a whole bunch of child sex crimes. Okay? So that's what happened. And it's just gone on and on. And it was driven by this ideology of we can't have anyone in jail Cause jails are.

Guest/Commentator (27:36)

Racist. So when they said the rape of an unconscious woman, do they mean that? So effectively, somebody who puts a drug in a woman's.

Steve Hilton (27:44)

Drink.

Guest/Commentator (27:44)

Yes. She becomes unconscious. He then goes on and rapes her. That's not a jail.

Steve Hilton (27:48)

Sentence. Correct. Not automatic. Correct. I know. And this. Kamala Harris pushed this as state attorney general. She's more responsible for that than, I mean, in the whole sort of national conversation. And actually, that first one I mentioned, the $950 a day that was mostly reversed last year in an initiative that was passed called Prop. I'm sorry about all these numbers. Prop 36, that kind of reversed most of that. But the other stuff in Prop 57, the downgrading all these unspeakable crimes that they wouldn't. You could still get at jail centers, but not automatic. Was. The Republicans in the state legislature have been battling for years, literally for years, to pick them off one by one to try and reinstate them as. And the definition is serious and violent offense. It's a definition in the legal thing that means that if it's in that category, if it's called a serious and violent crime, it automatically gets jail time. And you've literally, if you follow what goes on the state legislature the last two or three years, friends of mine in the state legislature, woman called Shannon Grove particularly, has been strong on this, has been, you know, year by year trying to get child sex trafficking upgraded to a serious and violent crime. And it was blocked by the Democrats time after time. One year it completely failed. She had to come back the next year. It's.

Host (29:20)

Insane. It.

Steve Hilton (29:20)

Is. And only in the end, and again, it happened. And there's about two or three of these examples, and I can't remember the exact details, but variants of unspeakable disgust. The worst crimes involving children and sex, sex with a minor, you know, selling a child for minor sex. And they battled to actually turn, you know, give them the appropriate sentence. And it was only finally that Gavin Newsom, as the governor, was so embarrassed. He's running for president. I mean, just this year had to step in. They voted it down. She was telling. Sharon was telling me stories about she would have victims, victims in the. To the committees in the state legislature to give evidence. Victims of child sex trafficking. And they wouldn't let them speak because they didn't want to hear it because they're so. And I think it actually, I'm really glad we got into this because to me, probably more than anything else, it just really captures the extent to which ideology has Just taken over, ideology over all else. And it's this ideology of decarceration, criminal justice reform, Prison is bad. Can't send anyone to jail at all for.

Host (30:36)

Anything. It's crazy. And one of the other things I wanted to ask you about is he mentioned President Trump, obviously in his second term. He is having a real go at dealing with illegal.

Steve Hilton (30:47)

Immigration.

Host (30:48)

Yeah. And the bulk of that seems perfectly normal and reasonable and good and. Right. But there are some excesses and people are pointing out. And there were, of course, protests here in L. A. Yeah. Where do you come down on. On the way that the border and deportations and illegal immigrations are being.

Steve Hilton (31:06)

Handled? Well, let's just talk about the issue for. For a start, I mean, you've got. I mean, I hear this. The story. This story the whole time. And I want to put a few things together going back to what I was saying earlier. Highest unemployment rate, highest poverty rate, all of this. So you've got. There's a story that is told which is, we need illegal immigration because we have a labor shortage and who's gonna do these jobs? And that's particularly strong in California. Some of the industries that, you know, like agriculture and construction and all of this. Well, I mean, all the time I come across stories, I was at the California State Fair, Sacramento, went up to a couple, as I do, just saying, hi, I'm Steve, and I've got into a conversation, and it was a family. It was the mother and a couple with their three children, and they just. We just started chatting. And I said, what do you do? He said, well, I work construction. Oh, I used to work construction. Why? Why do you say, well, I can't get a job anymore. Why not? Well, they don't want to employ people like me. And he didn't want to say it. And I said, what do you mean? He said, local people. And what he meant by that, and we got into it was. And the mother chimed in as well, and how he can't get a job. He's now living with his mother. Humiliated. Right. He's a man trying to provide for his family. He's now ended up living with his mother. And the point they made was because they want to hire illegal immigrants because it's cheaper, they don't have to pay the right level. And then a really big one, which isn't talked about enough, they and the mother chimed in with this. There's a video, by the way. You can watch the video. People can Google it on X. Steve Hilton, State Fair. You'll see the conversation. And the mother said, health and healthcare, they won't pay. They're in to pay health care for illegal immigrants, which is a big cost for an employer. And then at that moment you just see it all come together because you've got employers who are. It's basically a subsidy to employers. This whole thing, it's a scam. Because while all that is going on and Gavin Newsom has been first introduced it and has increased it, guess who does pay the health care for illegal immigrants? The taxpayer. Cause like he's giving free health care to illegal immigrants. Other states don't do that. And it's a big amount of money. It's like this budget year, he just increased it From I think 9.4 billion to 12.1 $12 billion. Just for illegal immigrant healthcare. Just for that. And so the whole system is broken because. And then another thing, and you look at the welfare payments as well, and this idea that we don't have enough workers and we have to import the workers. And that's why it's ridiculous, because part of the argument about the immigration enforcement, okay, you get the high profile incidents, but there's this thing people say, well, you're gonna kick. Who's gonna do the jobs if you do this? Well, I was at a dairy in Hilmar in up the top part of the Central Valley. It was the biggest cheese factory in the world. So one of the things I love about California, everywhere you go is like the biggest this in the world or the most, well, biggest cheese factory in the world. And I was talking to some of the guys who work on the dairy and they don't make a ton of money. They make like 45, 50 grand. And they were saying work full time in the dairy. And they were saying their girlfriends make more money from welfare. So you've got this crazy system going on where people don't work. And then you have people who do wanna work who can't cause the legal immigration. So it's a mess. And the people who are losing out from all this are regular working class.

Host (34:39)

People. And by the way, this argument isn't true. Like in the market economy. This is something Eric Weinstein mentioned in a private conversation we had is obvious fact. In a market economy other than some very niche areas, you can't have labor shortages that you have to fill with illegal immigration because all you have to do is raise the price to a normal wage and then local. Local people, quote.

Steve Hilton (35:02)

Unquote. Yeah. And also reduce the ability to live on. I mean, here's another one I mean, I can't keep track of it all. It was someone who runs a hotel, owns a hotel, just, I think maybe two, near Sacramento. He'd hired someone from Afghanistan who was actually brought in by the U.S. government. And the whole story was amazing. I mean, he was. This Afghan guy, was. He hired him to drive the shuttle bus to take guests to and from. He was an airport hotel. And he said the guy from Afghanistan was telling him about his experience. He'd been flown from Afghanistan by the US government, first of Virginia, then moved to Sacramento, given a house. They stocked his fridge. He didn't know which bit of the government. And it was. And the guy was told, we're gonna send you groceries by delivery because you shouldn't go to the grocery store. Cause Americans are racist and you shouldn't go shopping. Like, imagine that, the government saying that. Anyway, he's. Then he's there. He's working as the shuttle driver. He says to the guy, after two days, can I go? Can you pay me cash? And he said, why do you want to do that? Well, if I. If I'm on payroll, then I lose my benefits, my welfare benefits. How. What do you. How much is that? $7,000 a.

Guest/Commentator (36:26)

Month? What, 84 grand a.

Steve Hilton (36:28)

Year? Yes, that's what he said. So, like, when you are. So it's just bull. This whole thing. The whole thing is.

Host (36:36)

Bull. So it needs fixing. But my question to you was about the way it is being.

Steve Hilton (36:41)

Done. Okay? So first of all, you can't have this conversation without just pointing out the extraordinary success of the border thing, like closing the border. It's just an incredible example of when people say government doesn't work. And government, like, incredible government action that just basically stopped, you know, this flow of illegal immigration basically stopped to zero, just with firm action that everyone said couldn't be done for decades. And it's just done just because there's someone who's really committed to doing it and has a team that was well prepared and did it. So that's good news. Then you've got the problem of millions of people here, and no one has an idea how many who are here illegally. And the whole argument is from the administration. Which is the worst go first, we target criminals who are. Of course, every illegal immigrant is a criminal in one sense. Cause they've broken the law by being here legally. But on top of that, another crime. And Tom Homan, who runs. Who's the border czar, who's a friend of mine. I've known him for years. And he points he makes this argument, which is that the reason that we have these kind of tough confrontations and the kind of pictures and the video that cause people to be upset and sometimes have provoked protests and violent clashes, whatever, is entirely because we don't get cooperation from the local and state government where we're trying to find people. And here in California, it's a sanctuary state. It was a law that was passed in 2017, SB54, that said you can't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. So literally you have someone in jail for, in custody, in some sense in the system in California who's an illegal immigrant and has committed a violent crime or any kind of crime, and they actively refuse to tell that person to tell ice, Immigration and Customs Enforcement that that person's there. So they could just hand them over and say, here's this person. So that means that they have to go into the community to find them where they're hiding out after they've been released or whatever. And that is what causes both the confrontation, but also non criminal illegal immigrants to be swept up in the whole process. So their argument is, if we had proper cooperation, we wouldn't need any of this. That's the argument. I mean, look, I don't know. I mean, I actually, it's a federal issue, federal immigration. So it's not something that I spend too much time on other than to say as governor I would. I think it's important to cooperate. It's federal, it's the Fed, it's the law. Congress passed the law, they're just enforcing the law. I think there's, you know, this, this idea that we can just pick and choose just on a mass scale. Well, we're just not gonna, we're just gonna ignore.

Host (39:39)

That. I guess the counterargument might be. I mean, we had Sam Harris on the show recently and he talked about this in very different terms to you in, in terms of ice Age and not identifying themselves, grabbing some guy off the street, you know, getting physical, all of this stuff. And then he also talked about the fact that there are people whose kids are American citizens, for example. These people are.

Steve Hilton (40:01)

Being. And look, I think.

Host (40:02)

It'S. Voters will have different views on that. I'm just curious to know what your views.

Steve Hilton (40:06)

Are. Well, how.

Host (40:06)

Many? A small number, I imagine, like.

Steve Hilton (40:09)

I don't know, five, six. National. It's a tiny number. Yeah. I mean, nationally, I think the total number of American citizens or permanent residents that have been, according to the data, is about 170. It's a country of like 300 million or whatever, you know, like this is. And so again, that could. Even that tiny number could be avoided if you had proper cooperation. And the people you're talking about are criminal. You know, I mean, just look at the crimes that they've committed. These are sex offenders. This is what's amazing to me. You have people on the left who are now literally taking the side of rapists and wife beaters. Like that famous guy, what's his name? Garcia Diego, whatever. He became a sort of, you know, national case. I can't remember the name. He's a wife beater. Domestic violence, and he's the hero. You have Democrat US Senators flying down to wherever it was to sort of hang out with him because they're on the side of the domestic violence perpetrators. It's just incredible. Why? Because they wanna stick it to Trump. How does that make. I mean, that's what's ridiculous about this. And it could all be avoided if they were. If we just had a bit of common sense and cooperation. And they just don't wanna do that. And even within the sanctuary state law in California, they keep saying, you have these local leadership and sheriffs and whatever saying we can't cooperate because it's the law. Even with. I've read the law. Even within the law that was passed in California, there's a long list of crimes where if the illegal immigrant is involved in one of these, over 200, ranging from what you'd expect, an incredibly serious murder and whatever, to actually drug possession, illegal firearm possession. The word is in the bill. Discretion. There's discretion to cooperate. If only they did that, so much of this could be avoided. You wouldn't need to do it in that way. And you talk about the masks. Why do they wear masks? Because of the doxing. These are people with families. They're literally. They've been aggressive. You have very well financed illegal immigration groups that are actively targeting law enforcement who are doing the job that they're enforcing the law that Congress passed. And they're being doxed so that they're. And you have many stories of their families being threatened. And so that's why they wear masks. Steve, by the way, these people who are now passing laws as they did in California, it is a little bit of an irony that, you know, after forcing us pointlessly to wear masks for these years, they literally now passed a law saying you banning mask.

Guest/Commentator (42:50)

Wearing. Well, I mean, nobody expects that side of the political spectrum to be.

Host (42:53)

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Guest/Commentator (44:06)

Subscription. But more importantly, it seems that you're gonna have to spend a lot of money, aren't you in order to correct some of the problems that this state is facing. If you think about, I look at the number of mentally ill people on the streets of this city, there is no way in any shape or form they should be on the streets. And you can say they've got drug addictions and I'm sure many of them do. But they also profoundly mentally ill, we're talking schizophrenia here or other types of. So they're going to need to be housed somewhere and many of them, they can't afford to pay. So it's the state that's going to have to pay. You're looking at. You've already spoken about the fact that penitentiaries were full to overflowing. We're going to need to build more.

Steve Hilton (44:47)

Prisons. That's part of my plan.

Guest/Commentator (44:49)

Exactly. So let's talk about that because that's also going to cost money if we're going to be.

Steve Hilton (44:53)

Honest. Yeah, but look at what they're spending money on. I mean, okay, they've doubled the budget of California in the last 10 years. It's gone from 160 billion to just over 320 billion. Okay, where's that money going? Let's just narrowly look at the homeless issue. So this is and the mental health costs associated with that. So their solution, I touched on it earlier. There's this thing they call permanent supportive housing. So they build apartment units for homeless people because it's the government they layer on everything that you'd expect. So it's just unbelievable when you actually dig into it. How it's like Britain in the 1970s. The unions run this state. So you have massive crony deals with the unions. So these apartment units, I mentioned $700,000 early in the San Francisco Bay area. Now they're costing a million dollars each to build. That money is from the same pot. Right. I've got a friend who builds apartments using this new technology, mass timber, where you can put timber. It's a really amazing new building material and it's very innovative and it's whatever building apartments without all the bull regulations, it's a quarter of the price. It costs four or five times as much to build anything in California as in neighboring states. So that's all. That's where the budget's going. So you look at the money. There was an audit done not that long ago. $24 billion on homelessness with no discernible impact. The problem just got worse. So the money is. It's not like we need to spend more money. We need to cut the budget of California, not spend more money. So there's two things I want to do. It's like reduce the budget because we got to cut taxes. That's the other thing. We have the highest taxes in the country for the worst outcomes. We've got to cut taxes for a start. And then we've got to spend the money where it needs to be, specifically on mental health. Let's look at that. So exactly as you say, a lot of the people are low income. So when you talk about mental health care, it's part of the healthcare system. And for low income people, that means it's Medicaid, which is medi cal in California. And that is federally reimbursed. Very connected to the federal health care system. Most of the money spent on that in California is actually federal money. And there's a massive scam that I don't even want to get into. Where it's classic California, they've got this medical provider tax that they've brought in which increases the cost of everything in order that they can attract matching funds from the federal government. It's just unbelievable. And of course, they're donors of the medical, the health care industry who benefit from taxes go up, nothing gets better. But one thing that's amazing about Medicaid and mental health is that when the system was set up in the 60s, they put in place this thing called the IMD rule, institutions of mental disease. And it's all based on that attitude of we can't have these big mental asylums, it's inhumane. One flow of the cuckoo's nest, all of that stuff. So there's a limit that was put in to get Medicaid reimbursement from the federal government. You can't get it if your mental health institution has more than 16 beds. It's a very specific limit. 16 bed limit, which is insane. Imagine if hospitals had a 16 bed limit. How inefficient that would be. That's what we have for mental health, for reimbursement, for Medicaid. So the first Trump administration put in place a waiver so states could apply for a waiver so they could ignore that limit. Other states have taken it up, California hasn't. So just there's all these things you can do to make things work. It's just, there's no. The people in charge of are clueless idiots who are just machine politicians who don't understand how anything works. They've no clue how to make anything happen. So within that massive budget. So I don't accept for a second that you need to spend more money, we need to spend less money and then what's left after the reduction in spending so that we can cut taxes. You've got to spend it better in sensible ways where you actually put outcomes based on, on what you're spending so you get results for it. You're just putting into this corrupt pot. There's so much corruption around this. I mean, I've mentioned the unions. There's this whole scam which is the unions filing lawsuits. That's the other massive problem in California. Not just over regulation, over litigation. There's something called CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. It's in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan, when he was governor, signed it was supposed to, you know, stop polluting factories, whatever. Nice environmental protection, we love it. Over the years it's been expanded to cover everything. The courts expanded it, not the legislature, including housing, 70%. And then, and then they granted this thing called the private right of action. Anyone can file a lawsuit. It's a bit like that private attorney general thing where you can just. You get all these nuisance lawsuits. 70% of lawsuits under secret are filed to block housing. Most of those lawsuits are filed by the unions. The unions use them as leverage to get what they call project labor agreements, where they get deals and they negotiate. The two components of a project labor agreement are what they call skilled and trained workers and prevailing wage, both of which sound very innocuous. Skilled and trained is a euphemism for union members only. Is the closed shop, which we banned in England with Mr. Thatcher back in the 80s, that still exists in California. It's amazing. And prevailing wage. And of course, it's much more expensive. I was talking to someone trying to. In the Central Valley. The other one, they're doing a housing development. Carpet fitters. You put the carpets in, you need to have union labor mandatory. There weren't any union carpet fitters in anywhere nearby. They had to bused them in from San Francisco, put them up in hotel. I mean, just mad, right? Prevailing wage sounds very nice. This guy was telling me that he had a team of plumbers doing a job that was market rate, $25 to $40 an hour. The same people on a prevailing wage job the other side of town, $95 to $120 an hour. And for the same work, which actually, by the way, they spend three times as long doing the prevailing wage things, they get more money. So there's just incredible amounts of cost inflation built into the system because for years no one's taken a look at it and it just goes on. They pass these laws, the unions run everything. So to your point about when you say you have to increase spending. No, you have to get into all this like it should. It's, you know, these. We're spending money on apartment buildings that are four times what they should cost public money. So there's plenty of money.

Guest/Commentator (51:46)

There. And also. But it's going to cost a lot more to build penitentiaries, Steve, to build and staff penitentiaries. That's going to cost a lot.

Steve Hilton (51:54)

More. Well, they've shut four and there's a fifth that's about to close. Haven't you. So I've pledged to reverse that. You need to increase prison capacity. But again, don't tell me you can't find money in the budget for that for savings. I mean, the amount of bloat is just astronomical. And also, by the way, you can do. I mean, this is one of the things I tried to work on back in the day when I was in the UK Government is payment by results, where you actually put contracts in place where you don't just hand out money, you get paid in exchange for results and so forth. The prisons, what you want, the actual goal of it, of course, there's an accountability aspect. You've got to punish people, hold them accountable for their crimes, but you've also got to rehabilitate them because, like, what, nearly half of the crime is reoffending. So you want to reduce that, and that's how you reduce crime and that reduces costs. So you can put. There's all sorts of things you could. You just had common sense, practical people. I just want to tell a story, if I might, about the kind of bull that's been going on in California, and it's to do with the fires here in la. And it's a little story, but I think it tells so much about the kind of people you've had in charge. It's Karen Bass, the mayor of la, and a few months into the recovery from the wildfires this year, and there's all this focus on permits and rebuilding and why isn't anything happening? And it's all so slow. And I saw a post on social media and from Mayor Karen Bass, it said, I have just signed an executive order streamlining permitting for rebuilding in L. A. Great, four months too late, but whatever, I'll take it. And then it was above a clip from the press conference, a video clip. So I thought, okay, I'll watch what she actually said. So what she actually said was, I remember it very precisely. I have just signed an executive order tasking agency heads with developing paths forward to streamlining permitting. And to me, that captures it all. These are bull people. They're process people. They don't know how to make anything work. They just spend money, spend money, Nothing happens. And that's why you have this total mess on every.

Host (54:03)

Front. Steve, last time we had you on, one of the things we explored is you mentioned your time in the UK government and you talked about the challenges any leader of Britain has getting any of their policies implemented because of what we in Britain call the civil service. I imagine the institutional resistance to a guy like you in this state is going to make that.

Steve Hilton (54:26)

Pale. Yes.

Host (54:28)

Yes. So you're going to have the entire institutionalized bureaucracy 100% sticking sticks in the wheels of.

Steve Hilton (54:34)

Your. Yeah. And lawsuits. I mean, that's what I'm.

Host (54:38)

Really. So how are you going to deal with.

Steve Hilton (54:39)

That? You've got to be prepared. I mean, I'm doing the work right now. I'm going through it. You know, I've got a strong. You know, it's like running a campaign like this. It's a startup, you know, we're trying to raise money. There's no it's not. You don't inherit any kind of party resources or infrastructure, anything like that. So it's not like we have unlimited, far from it. Hardly any resources. It's very much a shoestring operation. But I've got really good volunteers. I've got someone, you know, like great legal people work. Because I think the lawsuits are going to be a big part of it. You've got to be really clear about how you make things happen. And you just gotta be really well prepared. You've gotta have on day one, think through how they're gonna oppose it. But there's no substitute for just cutting their number. I mean, that's the conclusion I came to in the uk. There's just too many of them. And so that's where all the bloat is coming from. And you just gotta reduce it massively. I mean, here's an example. You just saw Gavin Newsom in the budget this year where we had a deficit in California. So all this spending, and there's still a deficit, a deficit of $12 billion in the budget. States can't have a deficit. It has to be. You have to balance the books. And so 5 billion they did, with accounting tricks, shuffling money to future years or whatever. And then the 7 billion he took from the rainy day fund, which is supposed to be like a savings thing for something going badly wrong or when you're in recession, $7 billion in the same budget that he was stealing from the savings that are supposed to be for something completely different. He increased spending on the bureaucracy in California by the same. By 7 is exactly the same number. $7 billion. Increasing the number of bureaucrats and increasing their pay and pensions and all this. Why? Corruption. Because he's running. Save up for him and the union, the government unions. He wants their endorsement and their money when he runs for.

Host (56:33)

President.

Steve Hilton (56:33)

Right. And so you just gotta. I mean, you just gotta be direct about it and take it.

Host (56:40)

On. Well, speaking of Gavin Newsom, you mentioned him a number of times. He looks.

Guest/Commentator (56:45)

Great. Great.

Host (56:46)

Hair. Great.

Steve Hilton (56:47)

Hair. Well, I. As I say. No, I say it's time for a government with less hair. That is what we need in California. We've had enough of the.

Host (56:56)

Hair. But Gavin Newsom, I mean, he strikes me. I don't agree with a lot of the things he says. He strikes me as a very capable politician. What does America get if it has a President.

Steve Hilton (57:07)

Newsom? I mean, the worst governor in America, like a total failure on every front. I mean, everything is a disaster. And so his record, I think, is going to be totally disqualifying. He's got nothing to point to. Nothing. I just think that the more that that comes out and the more details of that that come out, I don't think he's got a chance because people will just look at that and say, you know, that. I mean, remember that years ago, that classic ad on Michael Dukakis about Don't let Michael Du. He ran in 1988, he was governor of Massachusetts. And there's a very effective ad with just some filth and pollution in Boston harbor or something, I can't remember. And it was just don't let Michael Dukakis do to America what he's done. It was a killer. And I think there's just a lot of material from California. I agree with you. He's good at the politics, but that only takes you so far. You've got an actual record, and it's a total disaster. And I just think that he's been able to skate because he hasn't had real challenge to that. He hasn't really been taken on in a debate or. Or, you know, I mean, he's had a couple of debates, but not really with anyone who can really get into the record and expose the complete calamitous failure. So I think that, you know, Hill is obviously running. He's been running for 20 years. People say it's all he's really been focused on. But I think it's just the scale of the failure. It's not just middling. We literally are. The line I use all the time is we're top of every list you want to be the bottom of and bottom of every list you want to be the top of. It's a total failure. And so, I don't know. I can't see it. I just can't see the country voting for. Looking at what's happened in California. Yes, please. We'll have more of.

Host (58:58)

That. Well, Steve, if you are successful in the election next year, it will be a political earthquake. I mean, it's not stating that a Republican getting elected as governor of California would be quite incredible. So one of the reasons we were interested in having you on this early just to watch the journey and see how that unfolds. That would be fascinating. We're gonna ask you some questions from our supporters. A lot of them are residents here in California. In a second. Before we do, though, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should.

Steve Hilton (59:27)

Be? I wanna say something about how amazing it is, how amazing this country.

Guest/Commentator (59:32)

Is Actually, you've been here too long.

Steve Hilton (59:34)

Mate. No, no, no, I understand. I can sort of, you know, show up here and, you know, be in this.

Host (59:40)

Position. Yeah, I was thinking about.

Steve Hilton (59:42)

That. It's actually amazing and it's.

Host (59:45)

Beautiful. You're a first generation.

Steve Hilton (59:47)

American.

Host (59:47)

Yeah. Running for.

Steve Hilton (59:48)

Governor. We moved here in 2012. My wife, my two sons and I taught at Stanford University and I started a business and hosted a show on tv. And now running for government, leading in the polls. It's amazing, you know, and I love this country. And I became an American 2021. And actually I've taken a step further. I've renounced my UK citizenship, which I didn't realize. This is a bureaucratic process you go through. You also have to pay. I didn't realize that I've just paid the exit fee, which is £482. So I'm all in for California and.

Host (60:22)

America. Steve Hilton, thank you very much for being here. Head on over to Substack, where Steve is going to answer your questions. What are California's greatest resources and how can executive policy immediately impact the employment of them without waiting on the.

Steve Hilton (60:36)

Legislature?