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

>> What's your name? >> The future looks bright.

“>> And Jerry goes better than anything I recite right here.”

[MUSIC] >> She is in a couple other people are as well. So, today we have a special guest who is trying to do the impossible. I would say you're trying to do the impossible. The reason why I say that is because California politics is so controlled by so many different people.

But it takes somebody with courage who is willing to go and drive some conservative, common sense ideas. Two people in California who have been devastated the last four to eight years. Who love their state, who don't want to leave, who want to see this place, become the state. Everybody would flock to instead of not looking at the numbers back to back to back to the last six years. Number one state in America for negative net migration that's so many different issues.

Most expensive homes average home in California right now is $960,000. Number one in homelessness, 13% in population but 28% in population of homelessness. You can go on highest prices of, so many different things. And it comes a guy like you that wants to run for governor the state of California. And it's great to have you here with us.

>> Fantastic.

“>> One in all these evils and you have to have you here.”

So, before we get into the story, I want to ask you a very open-ended question. >> Yeah. >> Who runs California? Is it the governor? Is it the unions?

Is it the money the billionaires? Is it the NGOs? Who runs?

Who's the most powerful institution or individual in California when it comes to politics?

>> What a great question. I'm going to answer it with this story, which is almost the reason that I'm doing this. Like, it's the closest thing to an actual moment when I thought I'm going to go for it. So, many people know me from Fox News. It's a show there for many years, but most of my career before then was in business.

And I worked a little bit in the government as well in the UK before moving here with my wife and my two sons in 2012. I was Senior Advisor to David Cameron and 10 Downing Street, responsible for implementing our policy reform program along with the money. >> Mm-hm. >> Even the team there. So, the reason I'm saying that is most of my career has actually been doing things like trying to make change happen in the private sector and government.

And so, over the years of being on TV, I was amazing opportunity. I loved it, but I had a itch to get back to doing some. And so, a few years ago, I got back involved in policy and politics in California.

The first issue I looked at was housing.

You just mentioned it. Housing costs actually is the number one reason people are leaving this state. It's just impossible. You know, like hardly anyone can even imagine owning a home now in California. >> A total of $1,900 and $6,000.

>> It's something like, you know, I'm who have the lowest home ownership in the country. Anyway, so I started working on the issue. >> Yeah. >> Really learning about what's been driving it and so on. And it took me to try to get an initiative qualified for the ballot.

>> Mm-hm. >> Would address two of the big drivers of this insane cost. One of them is a hidden tax on housing called impact fees. >> Yeah. >> The development involved in that. >> That's right.

>> The second is something that's talked about a lot which is, by the way, this really does answer your question.

So just please, I'm with you. >> I'm getting there. Something called sequer. The CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970. And it was all about when it started out regulating pollution from big factories and so on.

And over the years, it's basically turned into a nightmare that blocks anything and holds up everything. And one of the main problems with CEQA, this law, is that they've given this what they call a private right of action. It means that anyone can file a lawsuit to enforce this environmental law. Normally with stuff like that, it's the DA or the attorney general. You've got this private right of action.

Anyone can file a lawsuit. 70% of CEQA lawsuits are used to block housing. Most of those are filed by unions in order to negotiate with developers what they call project labor agreements, where you have union workers only or what they call prevailing wage, which is two or three times higher than market rate wages, et cetera. So the second component of this ballot initiative was ending this private right of action.

So at a stroke, you stop all these nuisance lawsuits the block housing. Didn't raise the money to get it on the ballot. Then I started engaging with Sacramento that maybe we can make it happen through the regular political process.

“And that's when I ran into the answer to your question, who runs California?”

I started having meetings with legislators. One particular person, they said you've got to talk to this person. They're really good on housing.

You're going to make some progress.

“We had a great meeting. This person really.”

The Democrat member of the state legislature said your plan is fantastic. If we make this happen, it's transformational. That was the word. I said great. Let's work together on it.

I'm a Republican. This person was a Democrat. Is this a heavyweight? That's a heavyweight person? You wouldn't have heard their name.

And I'm not going to say their name because actually it was a private meat. Privately is that a heavyweight person. Not publicly. Because there's a lot of heavyweight private people. The midway.

But a legislator. Anyway, I said let's work together. Well, I couldn't support you publicly. She's telling you this. Why not? Well, the unions would hate it.

I said, yeah, but you just told me to be transformational. We were in an office overlooking this state capital. Like this with their arm. Like this. Well, the unions run this place.

That's an elected member of the legislature. Saying the unions run this place. And you just think, what is this? It's ridiculous. And that's the most clear answer to your question.

The unions.

“And when people ask me, how did California get like this?”

How do we go from having the most amazing opportunities?

Anyway, not just in America, but in the world. If we agree that America is the greatest nation on earth, which is what I think. California is the greatest state. There's something I would say, which is California means to America,

what America means to the world. It represents everything that's amazing about our country. And vision and opportunity and energy and hustle and all those things. And yet it's been crushed. That spirit's been crushed over the years.

And people say, well, how did it get? I wrote a book last year came out last year. Just for my campaign called Caliphalia, reversing the ruin of America's worst or on state. I tried to trace it back.

And my conclusion was, it all started when the unions were given collective bargaining rights. And over the years, built up this incredible power. There's a lock on policy. It's the government unions, not just government unions as well. And so they do run--

So unions run California.

Basically, give me a specific three unions.

It's one going to be the teachers union. Teachers union, which means that now they let's look at the outcomes. We spend nearly the most of any state. Well, the new some brags about it, he just did his budget last week. $28,000 per student per year.

One of the highest in the country. For the worst results pretty much. We have now 47% meet basics of K through trial students. Meet basic standards in English. With math, it's 35%.

65% don't meet the standards. When you look at Latino and black kids, it's even worse. Most money worse results. Why? Because the teacher unions have a lock.

On anything to do with education. And they've completely distorted the system. So it's not about education. It's about indoctrination. And that's not some exaggeration.

You go to their conferences. And you see what their sessions are about and their training and all the stuff they're pumping out. It's ideological indoctrination. It's colonialism and gender, extremism, or this stuff. Meanwhile, the kids don't get taught to read.

You've got techniques for teaching kids to read. That work that we've seen work elsewhere. The debate over that was settled decades ago. Fonics. It's a technique for teaching kids to read.

Barely used in California public schools. Because the teachers don't like it. Because they think it's racist or something. You know, it really is. It's not every single thing.

But the best answer to your question is the unions. Okay. If we say unions, right? And teachers unions number one. You've got a couple other unions there as well.

There's a big driver of the budget for sure. But one of the biggest things that helped. If you look at the five monumental moments in Trump winning in 2024. One is Bobby Kennedy. Joining his camp.

Massive will never forget Arizona.

He walks out with Charlie Kirkton's act. You say that's one, right? You can see the event at Butler. That was definitely number one. Okay.

And then you have to put. And as much as this may seem like a small one. The president of Teamsters is when Sean O'Brien, the president of Teamsters. His book came out and spoke at the convention and he was going to talk something. And then they, they said, no, we need you to submit your PowerPoint to prove.

And then he calls Susie was, I'm not speaking. He says, just call the president president. I don't care what you say. He even said something. I don't give what you say.

Just say whatever you want to say. He got up, gave a speech, bash the couple. Capitalists got off the stage. But it was a first. I'm in 120 something years that a Democrat didn't.

The union didn't support the Democratic party. Show for you to win a state like California. What are you doing to win over the union? How do you do that?

“Do you go and sit in front of these guys and try to get?”

Or is it an impossible thing to do in the state of California? Well, you look at the. There's, you know, of course, two categories. The government union is non government unions. And and in terms of the lock on power.

One way of thinking about it is to using Gavin use him as a proxy for Democrat politicians.

All the statewide offices, two thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature. All the big cities and the counties state Supreme Court, six one Democrats. Representative even more than two thirds. It's like in the in the legislature isn't it forty forty three to nine. Yeah, no, it's more, but I mean, it's the two thirds of what gives you.

Men on to be able to do whatever exactly. They're super mergers. So 16 years of that in those 16 years. Gavin Newsom's been, you know, eight years as lieutenant governor, eight years as governor. You look at his donations as a kind of proxy for Democrat politicians, the categories. Number one category of donors to Gavin Newsom government unions.

Non government news number three. And so they control the politicians. And that's representative to the tip of the ones in the legislature or the other Democrat politicians. So they drive it and it's the government unions that are the biggest. And that drives the budget crisis because that you get over the years.

All these, it's not the only reason they just massively increased spending. They've doubled spending in the last 10 years. The size of the budget and California is nearly doubled. But the unions, of course, are you getting these luxury pensions and healthcare deals and all these things. Okay, here's another thing that I get on the road the whole time.

We're doing town halls up and down the state. Hundreds of people coming out bigger and bigger crowds. A question I get nearly all the time from parents. We pay all these taxes. And yet we're being asked to pay for school supplies to trip in as parents to buy books or payable pens.

But we pay the highest taxes in the country. What's going on? What's going on?

“Is that 19.1% I think of school districts budget goes straight out the door to pensions.”

Nearly a fifth before spending, before anything is spent. So the government unions are definitely the bigger problem. No question. You look at the prison offices. For example, another huge donor, the corrections union.

I mean, they've got this massive prison closure program in California, which is a whole story in itself. Big part of the story on crime is that because they've released tens of thousands of dangerous violent criminals into the community. Would any of these guys ever support you? Well, not the good one. I don't think on the government side.

But the point I was going to make up that prisons is basically they've cut the number of prisons and reduced the prison population nearly by half.

But the budget's doubled. It's classic California. But the street is doubled. But the amount of people are split. Yeah.

Basically. So it's classic. If you look at the non-government unions, for example, involved in construction, I think that's where you're right. There should be in the lines because all my career ever, I've been, you know, when I was on Fox, I, the theme of my show was I called it positive populism.

I wrote a book, positive populism about how we need to, you know, the idea is that drove that populist movement, Trump. And you can see it on the left as well. Lifting up workers, working people have been left behind by the policies we've seen before. That's where I'm coming from. And a lot of my, the whole themes of my campaign, three dollar gas, cut your electric bill in half.

Your first 100 grand tax free, a home you can afford to buy. Very much with workers in mind, workers and small business. That's really who I, if there's, there's one group, of course you want to help everybody. But that's really the focus. So I agree with you.

“And I think you've got a flipped, I think, I think so because here's, here's the challenge, right?”

So, but the government unions, I think, well, that part, it's their machine. They've built this political machine. They've got a huge amount of money.

A billion dollars a year, an election cycle spent by the government unions.

It's crazy. Did you see the clip, Rob? Who, who was the fellow, the African American fellow in the chamber that twice got up and got kicked out of the, uh, when when Trump was given the speech, you know, which one I'm talking about when he was holding signs. Elon Musk is a racist or he's this, what is his name?

He's got a unique name. He said something, Al Green. Yeah, you know what Al Green said yesterday about Trump? The first time he met Trump, what he told him, did you hear this, Rob? Can you type an Al Green first time meeting Trump?

Al Green first time meeting Trump? He's telling the story. The guy asked him a question, maybe it's the lady. I just saw what he said.

“So what was your reaction the first time you met Trump?”

He said something very interesting. I wish, I wish I saved this, that could have been a drop, that could have been a go a little bit lower. Zoom in a little bit. Yeah, this is it. Watch what he says.

You go for it. Turn on the audio. Have you ever met the president in person? Yes, I've met him. Watch it.

And what is that meeting like? Well, let me tell you. I'm glad you mentioned it.

The president that I met first time we met was right here in Houston, Texas.

Much this. When he landed, uh, and uh, he'd left, uh, he'd be playing from airport's one. And he and I talked to each other.

Press your hand over. Show you how to quit. He took my hand and said, you're going to like me. You're going to really like me. Yep.

Those were his words. Okay. Very personable. Very personable guy. You can pause there.

So you know, you know, why wanted to play this clip. Here's why I wanted to play this clip. There's something unique about him that I don't know why he's convinced he can flip everybody. Yeah. Whether it's him growing up early on and church used to go to Norman Vincent Peel's church.

I don't know if you're familiar with Norman Vincent Peel. You know, the guy that wrote the book, Power of Positive Thinking, which is a book.

Everybody needs to respond to first 50 books I've read in my life.

He would go so the idea was positive thinking. I can convert him. Yeah. I can convert him. I can convert him.

You have that level of optimism. There's something very unique about your energy and your personality, which is attractive. So to me, it's, you know, what, what, what, what is your strategy to go talk to these guys. That there's a 99% chance they're going to say screw you Steve. We hate your type.

You're a Republican. You're the enemy. You're conservative. For you to say, look, you may not like me on all my policies.

“But I think you're going to like me because I want to make the state better.”

But that is how I am. I get along with, I do get along with people. I mean, that's exactly why I'm very interested. That's how I think. And I think it's obvious to me.

But let's just go back to the workers point and unions, just as a focus. Like it's so obvious that these 16 years of Democrat policies, either they think, yeah, the Democrats, they're my guys, have just been a disaster for the average working person in California. More for them than anyone else, the rich people can kind of deal with it. And because they're leaving now as well, of course. There's ridiculous insane billionaires tax.

I'm sure we'll get into that. But for regular working people, I mean, look at the gas, you know, it's exactly those people who are being hurt the most. Who does gas price? Who's hurt most by these insane gas?

No middle and comfy. Regular pick driving their trucks. That's right. Two, three, four, five hours a day for work. That's who really is suffering.

And that's the point I make the whole time. And when I'm in those communities and we do events there, and I go to, and I love to invent something, and you know, restaurant owners and bars and just regular places like that. And it's blue collar workers often the, I mean, we were just chatting before the show about,

you know, who comes up to you and who says, it's often workers.

“So I think I think California needs a guy like you.”

That's optimistic. That gets out there. But I'll tell you this one part because as the audience in California's watching, I call I California all the time. The reason why I call I California's listen, you won't change.

Get behind somebody, do the work. You got to go do the door knock and find a candidate, support and financially support and with your community support. Gordon would, hey, I like this guy. I support this guy.

Go put your name out there. There's been a lot of guys that have endorsed you. I think the president endorsed you. Yes. I think Peter Teal endorsed you.

I want to say Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, whom we, we've, we've had on endorsed you. There's been a number of people that have come out that I've said. They want you to be the governor of state of California. But I want to talk about this.

And I think the audience is going to like this. Uh, you said you want to lower taxes for those, making under $100,000 to zero. Okay. So I want to read some of these numbers.

Yes. Yes. They didn't come taxes, which is a good amount to zero. So I looked up with Rob and I, what percentage of Californians make less than $100,000.

That's about 70 to 75% make under $100,000. And I said, tell me how much revenue. Yeah. The government collects from these folks, which is mainly the 17 and 70 to 75% that make a less than $100,000.

It's about 12.5 billion to 25 billion dollars low.

High in on how much income revenue they collect. So your policy will eliminate that. By the way, that's not controversial policy. Cause Katie Porter duplicated you. Exactly.

Other people want to do the idea that you impose. Let's go to the next one. Then you want to lower the 13.3 to 14.4 that they have right now to 7.5 flat tax. Which is a flat tax that you're introducing, which a lot of, you know,

people that are independent libertarians,

“Republicans would say we love the idea of a flat tax, right?”

Milton Friedman. This has been talked about. If you cut the tax, a flat tax, you end up taking the revenue that they're collecting about 1229 billion dollars a revenue. From income tax, they lose another 65 billion dollars.

So if we go and we eliminate under 100,000. And then you lower the 13.3 to 7.5. You lose another 60 to 65 billion dollars.

So now you got 75 billion dollars of revenue that's gone.

Give her take, where are you going to take the 75.5 away? So what I did you think is our number was 60. I did some basic costings. I was just like that with them. I was for a while when we moved to 2012,

I was at Stanford teaching at Stanford for a couple of years. And I was also found out the Hoover institution. So what was some of the people I knew there, some of the economists to do a basic costing.

So was that 10 years ago? It was last year. Oh, it's last year. So if you do less than a hundred dollars a week. So that's right. It's a big number.

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

But by the way, this is a great idea. But what is that money? What's going on? We had a revenue reduction of 18.5%. That was at the time when we did that costing for last year's numbers.

That was roughly what it was. And here's the way I put it. This is not some crazy thing. This is taking the budget back just a couple of years. To roughly what it was before the pandemic.

Remember they nearly doubled the budget. The budget this year that knew some submitted. 350 billion dollars.

“The one, can you go to California budget last 10 years?”

It was 180 billion, not that long ago.

It depends where you look at it. There's the, yeah, there you go. So went from 2017 to 2018, 124 to 250 billion. That's the general fund. And then there's these other.

The total budget includes these special funds bond and things like that. So you get 350 billion is the total. So I think the comparison is 180 to three and nearly doubled. 180 billion. What should he put there so we can look at that instead of saying general fund.

Total budget. Total budget. Total budget. The commercial bank. Stacked fuller.

And we don't need to look at our customers. We know how to choose their ideas, plans and ideas. And we can do our best. We're talking about their. About 150 years of experience and the experience of our customers.

The bank and their side.

That's not 50 billion is what they proposed this year.

And you go to 2017, 2018, 177 billion. Exactly doubled. In less than 10 years. Right. And everything's worse.

“I mean, really, that's not an exaggeration.”

Some political statement. Everything's worse. You mentioned homelessness. You could get run down the list. I mean, I don't even want to do it.

Now, because I want to get to this point about the budget. In other words, it's just bringing back to some level of sanity. So there's a general point that they've doubled the budget and everything's worse. Surely we can do better. Getting specific about it.

The first place you look, of course, is this phrase that's become very well known. Rightly so, fraud, waste and abuse. When you get specific. So at the beginning of this year, I set up something basically as part of our campaign. It's a volunteer thing.

It's not an official. We're not elected yet. Cal, doge. California Department ofgov and efficiency. Boring the name.

Exactly. So we set that up. There you are. And so we've done a number of fraud reports. And there's a couple of specific ones we can get into.

But I'll start with the total. We made an estimate. Our fourth fraud report was an estimate of the total fraud waste and abuse in the last five years. We looked at it over five years because these programs. Often have that kind of lengthy characteristic to them.

Our estimate based on published data.

So combination of things like the state order to report that says 24 billion dollars of homelessness spending was wasted.

Medical error rates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We looked at all this published data. Our estimate for the total is $425 billion in the last five years. That's about 80 billion here, 85 billion here. Yeah, roughly.

Exactly. About 20% of the budget. So, got it. That's where you start. But of course, here's another example.

One of the things on the debates you may have seen. Some of these exchanges. I've called for freeze for suspending the gas tax and over time reducing it. We have the highest gas tax in the country. The worst roads in the country.

Another classic 71 cents. Another, the 63 is just gone from 61 to 63 the gas tax. Gas tax and California. Yeah.

“Can you type in top 10 gas gas taxes in America by state?”

So. So maybe in what California? Have you ever Sarah? Yeah. He looks like he's going to be my opponent in the general election.

71 cents. Oh, that must be including something. Yeah. Trust me. I'm trying to help California so much.

Yeah. Follow the number super closely. Yeah. Well, I don't think 61 to 63 this. But it's better.

It's hiring us. So it's raising the last one. But certainly not. Yeah. He always says this.

Steve. If you cut the gas tax, how are you going to pay for roads? Is that swear it's supposed to go? Well, first of all, we have the highest gas tax and the worst roads on one. Some of the measures on one measure.

We're 49 out of 50 on roads. There's another way we're 50th.

I talked to business owners the whole time. She, this lady runs a big company doing public works. Construction builds literally builds roads. She told me that they operate in multiple states. It costs four times as much to build the exact piece of road in California as in Texas.

Four times as much. So that's not what you would call.

So when you look at this, the, the 425 billion dollar number,

Fraud Waste and Abuse. That specific program to where you can literally find things that shouldn't be spent at all. For example, oh, give you, this actually this connects to the gas tax. There's a program that's been running for over 10 years. It started in 2015.

It actually gets money from the, not necessarily the gas tax. But the cap and trade system for, part of their climate policy. Some climate change mitigation fund or whatever. So, but it's basically from the, what you pay for gas. And it's, this program was supposed to install solar panels on low income apartment buildings.

$100 million every year. Since 2015. So $1 billion total been spent. We, we looked at where that money's gone. Of that $1 billion actual spending on solar panels. $72 million.

928 million going to these nonprofits. This, this one, exactly. Going to, you know, Democrat nonprofit environmental justice campaigns or this bullshit. And so that's an example of. Now, that just shouldn't happen. Just stop it. Stop spending that money.

The roads.

It's not even included in that 425 billion total.

The 425 billion estimate over five years roughly 85 billion year is things like this. The fact that the roads are four times more expensive to, but that's not even included in that. Right. Why is it four times more expensive? Because they layer on all this nonsense. For example, what we mentioned earlier is public works.

“It's a public money. So you have to do prevailing wage, union members only.”

Community workforce agreements where you have to hire endless nonsense. Environmental reviews, audits, inspections fee. This is what's going on. The amount of bloat and nonsense people have to deal with on a small scale. Late, I met ladies, she runs a small independent winery in wine countries.

So no man. I think it's either so no more an apple. She, she told me she just wanted to expand her patio. For more guests. From 30 to 50 guests.

Yeah. It took her six years. A million dollars. These permits. Environmental reports you have to pay for all this.

That story is typical. I tell that story to other business owners. Oh yeah, I've got one like that. There's just everything is layered on to make it so expensive. And so that's why that budget is so high.

Because everything costs so much because of this insane over regulation. And a lot of it is driven.

“I mean, if you ask me that where's the real cost and hassle of doing anything in California comes from?”

Come from.

Basically over the years I've been studying it now and traveling the state and meeting businesses and regular people.

There are three underlying drivers. The unions we've mentioned them. The second one is litigation lawyers. Endless lawsuit costs. Huge litigation.

Everything's a lawsuit. Like there's an estimate that insurance policies for example. That's one of the big issue. One of the most annoying things to people. You can't get insurance so it's so expensive.

The fair act where you sound like the insurance homeowners insurance. Let's break it up. They've left the state. But one of the reasons is you've got this massive insurance. Litigation risk.

It's called the taught tax on people refer to it. An estimate of 3,000 to 15,000. Just the cost of litigation. That the insurance companies have to deal with. That would mean by this.

Tortex. So insurance companies are having to pay this. Yeah. It's a zoom in. It's known as that.

It's exactly. It's a term used to describe how excessive litigation and legal. Some of you are infiltrating insurance premiums, raising costs. So insurance companies are already adding this as a cost. That they're probably going to get sued.

Yes. And so because of that they raise their rates to be able to profit.

“Or else what's the point of being the state of California?”

Yes. And look, but everyone has, I was at a small manufacturing place. He was saying they have to put aside millions of dollars a year for lawsuits. I mean, endless lawsuits. There's, oh my goodness.

I don't know. I want to do the sort of headlines and then get maybe dive into it. So the three big drivers of all the cost and nightmare of doing anything in California is unions, lawyers, trial lawyers and all of this litigation. And then the third is the climate agenda as they call it.

The climate stuff is really driving a lot of this. The obsession with meeting this net zero 245 goal.

It's not, you know what I mean?

So, by the way, the report came out this last week that Trump tweeted saying, "That was all BS. I don't know if you saw that or not." I didn't, you didn't see this? Oh, you're going to have to see this for it to be able to use it.

While you're out there. Rob, do you have the story of what you showed it a couple days ago on the podcast? I think you had to tweet. Yeah. Trump literally came out and the claims of the RCP8.5.

“If you want to go back, you just had to write there, Rob.”

Go back to all, right there. Fact right there. There was a tweet that came out about this that climate changed. They got the numbers wrong and they were claiming that it was all this. That we have to be worried about.

Oh, I did see a report of that. Yeah, I didn't see what the president said. Yeah, the president tweeted about this as we were right all along. Yeah, right there. There are 15 years of Democrats promise of climate change going to destroy the planet.

That is a top climate committee just admitted that it's on projections of RCP8.5. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, far too long. Climate activism has been used by Democrats to scare Americans push horrible energy policies and fund billions into their bogus research programs.

“And the reason it's so important to focus on this.”

Again, these are examples of the big picture. They layer this climate stuff into everything. So we just talked earlier about housing costs. Gavin Newsom pitched these two pieces of legislation last year. AB 130, AB 131 as we're now solving the housing crisis.

We're going to have abundance with housing, fantastic. We're going to build more housing and the center piece of it was exemptions from that environmental or mentioned secret for housing. Except, you only get the exemptions if you use union labor. So already you're adding back in the whole bunch of costs from that.

And the second thing is that because they've got the part of the climate story is that they don't want sprawl as they call it.

Because if you have sprawl and people drive more, that's bad for climate. So they've got this mechanism, this regulatory mechanism called VMT. Vehicle miles traveled. It's a calculation that's put into permitting for projects.

“If you want to build, this is in the new legislation that Newsom touted as the solution to the housing crisis.”

They put in a VMT charge that goes, there's an actual cost that's pays basically attacks. If you want to build a new single family home, the cost of the VMT that they will put in, the developer pays it obviously goes to the price, the purchase price. $325,000 over 20 years. Just for this, extra. So like, the climate stuff is just embedded in, obviously in obvious ways, like gas prices.

And of course, gas prices affect and diesel affects business, you know, delivery costs, all of that. So I groceries the highest in the country. Electric bills, more than double the national average. With gas prices with a highest in the country, higher than Hawaii. And the middle of the Pacific Ocean, even though we have abundant oil reserves.

And can you can you electric bills where the second highest only to Hawaii?

We have gas-fired power stations in California, natural gas-fired power stations that are deliberately being run at 10 to 15% of their capacity. Because they're only being used as backup for wind and solar. So we've basically got this infrastructure for energy. And we're using, and we have abundant natural gas in California that is just being kept in the ground. And we're now importing nearly 80% of the crude oil we use and 90% of the natural gas.

Where from? Where are we importing it? I was just at a refined, so for crude oil, it's coming mainly from Iraq and South America, the Amazon. We're in Ecuador and Brazil. So we were just when Newsom was in Brazil for the climate conference, then the latest data came out. We're now buying half the oil that's being drilled in the Amazon.

Because it's heavy and the refineries, it's particular kind of crude oil that fits the refineries that's like California's heavier. So in the name of climate change, California is driving an expansion of oil drilling in the Amazon rainforest. So that's the crude oil that refined gasoline is worse than just the crude oil because they've shut down the refineries, because there's not enough business for them and because the cost of doing anything. We're now importing notches crude oil, but refined finished gasoline.

We use about 800,000 barrels a day in California. We're now only refining about 550,000, the rest is being imported. That's coming from mainly India and South Korea. Where does India get its oil? Russia.

So in the name of climate change, California is now funding potions warm machine.

By the way, here's another thing.

This oil and gap, whether that's crude oil and finished gasoline that's being shipped halfway across the world, those ships run on bunker fuel is the most polluting form of transportation you can imagine, the dirtiest form. Spuying out carbon emissions, these ships, when we could be sending it in a nice clean pipeline, a couple hundred miles from Kern County near Bakersfield, where Bakersfield is. Where I literally was there last night, I was in Bakersfield last night.

The heart of our oil and hard rays, hotel, were you at, I didn't say the night bills and a flight to come here, but the so instead of taking it in a nice pipeline to the refineries in Long Beach or whatever, the ship's 7,500 miles across the ocean, spewing out carbon emissions, to make all that insanity work. Here's another car, there's a regular reagency for a lot of this stuff. It's called Carb, the California Air Resources Board.

They're insane about making businesses report on their carbon emissions through the supply chain, like you got our account for your carbon emissions, except for this. They only count the carbon emissions for these ships, bringing the oil,

once they're 12 miles off the coast of California.

Then, so 7,500 miles ignore it, 12 miles. That's when they start counting the carbon. It's crazy. They're actually increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate. What are you going to do the day? Say you become the governor.

What are you doing the day you get? You become the governor.

“It's going to be a very busy first day, because one of the things that I think,”

well, there's many things I'm doing differently in this, but one of them is being really well-prepared. Because I do actually understand how policy works, how government works, I've got experience of that, and I'm a business-like person. I wouldn't be practical. Specifically on this one, he's a good example.

It goes back to what you're saying about the legislature and the super maturity, and what can you get done, because there's all these Democrats controlling the legislature. There's a huge amount you can do just through your control of the executive branch and these regulatory agencies. Opening up oil production is a good example. So the way that they've shut down oil and gas production in California,

is not actually the legislature, is through an agency called Cal Gem, the California Department of Geological and Energy Management, and they have refused to issue permits. And I've seen it. I've been to the oil fields. You've got these just like that, that you're looking out there.

And you've much bigger, as far as you can see, oil wells. And they just refuse to issue permits for maintenance. You need a permit for everything.

“If you want to do routine maintenance for expanding and existing wells,”

that's maybe running out of oil, you do it. I think they call it side tracking, you can expand it and get the output up from five barrels a day to 100 or whatever. Or drilling new wells and existing fields. This is not drilling an oil well in the middle of your semity national park. This is literally, like as far as you can see, oil wells.

There's a concrete pad ready for some new wells to be drilled. In the middle of the oil field and they're saying no. So actually that's something where you could turn that around. I don't want to say overnight, but you put in new people. I'll be ready to go with a new people.

You're going to a point to this agency. Any names? Any names? I'm going to put that. We're just gathering the names now.

I have named someone who I would appoint to be the natural resources secretary that sits above all of this. Guy called John Dwarty, who was a member of Congress and very thoughtful on water. These resource issues are real drivers of the problem in California. The fact that we're killing our ag industry by refusing to give farmers the water that they need. This issue of oil and gas.

So that comes under natural resources. So we can have someone who believes in actually, you know, producing in abundance. What we have, this is the point about California. We've got everything we need.

We have incredible natural resources, human resources in terms of the energy and hustle of our people.

And it's all being crushed by this bloated nanny state bureaucratic government. Now, what, you know, some people may say, "Well, look, you're, you're a Brit." You're from UK. Are you running? I'm American now.

How are you? UK is the equivalent of California. And London is the equivalent of LA. Do they have a lot of things in common?

“What patterns do you see is the California on track to be what happens to UK?”

Yes, you see. Okay, sure that. With us. What perspective do you have? There's very interesting.

A very serious venture capital guy sent me a report. Must have been about six months ago on the UK. And he literally just put on the email. I remind you of anywhere. And this report was going through just how impossible it is to do anything in the UK,

to build housing, to increase energy infrastructure, to build any kind of infrastructure.

taking so long for anything. It's exactly where we've got to in California.

“And that's why we have this situation where right now,”

you've got these two things going on. So Gavin used to response to anything when he's challenged on everything going wrong in California. He's go to responses. Well, we're the fourth biggest economy in the world, so things must be great. That's true statistically.

We are the fourth biggest. But remember, well, that's just a total GDP. That's driven mainly by two things. We got a small number of giant tech companies that are great. And I want, of course, I want every business to thrive

in California. So I'm a huge supporter of our tech industry, like all our other industries. That's great that we got these companies. Generate huge amount of revenue, but not many jobs.

And then the second component that's driven up the GDP number is that includes the government.

So all this increase in government spending, that increases your GDP. But it's not a healthy way to increase your economy. So at the same time as having the fourth biggest economy, we have the highest poverty rate of any state tied with Louisiana. 28% of U.S. homelessness is in California.

You've done the way. The poverty rate is the highest in the countries tied with Louisiana. Unemployment with the highest in the country of all 50 states.

“I think the district of Colombia is slightly high, but in terms of states,”

we have the highest unemployment rate. So that's not a healthy economy. I mean, most of the jobs that have been created since the pandemic, I believe the net job creation, the private sector is almost zero in California. It's government and stuff like that, healthcare.

So you've got a really unhealthy economy because it's just so impossible to do anything. And that's exactly what you're seeing in Europe and in the UK. I mean, one of the things I say, I mean, I became, we moved to a 2012. I became a citizen of 2021. And this is what you look at what's going on in the UK.

And by now, we're announced my UK citizenship. As you want to be clear that I'm all in for this country and California. But I actually truly feel this on an emotional level. I don't want to see California the way I put it. I'm fighting to make sure this state that I love does not turn into the country.

I left. That is a really bad. And that is the path we're on. No question. What do you see happening right now with UK?

Go specifically to UK. Well, I have to spend much time in it. Well, I really don't understand. You were having a lot of-- Yeah, I'm right.

So you remember, while the invasion when it was coming in, it went from 1.6 million to 2.7 million.

“Because I think Cameron went and went 2010.”

2010. 2010. And then at Skyrocketed. So what patterns did you see? What mistakes did you see?

They were making, is it just-- So this is why we really fell out. Because because he-- He-- we-- I was very much part of the senior advisor.

I was strategic. He got it. Yes. Stroud it. And everything is smaller and more of a shoe string in.

British politics. So there's not much money there. And I basically did a number of jobs. The strategy policy communication is the whole thing. And we had a commitment.

I think I'm getting this right in going into that 2010 election. This was his-- he particularly was his idea, actually, to say this, make this commitment. Net migration into the UK to bring it under 100,000 a year. That was the-- that was the pledge that we made. And it was David Cameron's idea.

I think that's right. Under-- net migration under 100,000 a year. And one of the main reasons that we--

Yeah, we are never achieved the pledge.

Yeah. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of-- So one of the reasons that that was never met. And it was very clearly explained to me.

We had a policy-- this was a policy commitment. So of course, you're there once-- once he became prime minister, you're in Tandowning Street. You're really focused on delivering your promises. One of the things we kept looking at why we said this is happening,

making checking on progress. On this particular one, I remember meeting where the officials, the bureaucrats came in and said, look, basically said, you're never going to achieve this target as long as you're in the EU. Impossible.

Because of the free migration rules within the EU. Never going to be delivered. As one of the reasons that I was in favor of Brexit, that's when we really fell out. I'd left the UK by then.

We moved to in 2012. Brexit was a 2016. That was one of the main reasons. Because he'd made this commitment. And his own government official said, you can't meet this commitment

as long as Britain remains in the end. Now, the really crazy thing, which I just don't understand, I wasn't there. 2016, Brexit was voted on for years later.

They left under Boris Johnson eventually. But it seems to me that immigration just went up. The central argument of the Brexit campaign. He wasn't clear. It was a failure.

He was massive. Well, the first stage of failure was when the UK was part of the EU. It was a failure. And the government officials really looking at the issue of immigration.

He said, you're never going to meet the target when once as long as you're in the EU.

Then the UK left the EU. Brexit. And the main argument, I mean, there's lots of arguments for Brexit. But if you really ask people who involved there and whatever, the biggest one was immigration controlling our borders.

That was really, if there's one thing that Brexit was about, it was that.

“And yet, since Brexit, I think it's accelerated.”

Here's an argument. Yesterday tweeted saying, our net migration is the lowest it's been in years. I don't know if you saw that. I didn't see that. The tweeted yesterday saying our net migration has been the lowest in years.

And we're still got some work to do. Go right there. Go four hours ago, Rob? Go go. Yeah.

Net migration has fallen 82% of the last five years. I promise you to restore the control of our borders. My government is delivering. I know there's more to do. Introducing scale-based migration systems that rewards contribution and ends our resilience

on sheep overseas workers. That's exactly what the conservatives used to say. I mean, that exact message. But they didn't deliver it. Johnson.

They have those prime ministers that lasted about five minutes.

“You've been in a space of knowing you want to get things done.”

And it's hard to go through the gridlock. Yes. And this is one of the things you do that then in California. Because I've seen how it works. I mean, I'll give you a specific story.

I've really opened my eyes. I mean, it's a silly story, but it kind of showed me. So one of the projects that I led initiated and led was we called it the red tape challenge or something like that. To reduce bureaucracy in the UK.

This is going back. It must have been, when was it 2010?

You know, around the first, I was only there for two years.

There we are. So I'm said, look at that. It's an ancient history. But they were Steve Hilton was the primary architect of the red tape challenge. Right. So the idea was to, it's actually a technical term for it. Now you would say is reverse sun setting.

Where we all know about sun setting regulations. You pass something, say, there's only last for five years. Unless we renew it, it expires. I want it to have a concept of reverse sun setting where we just take the whole stock of regulations that on the books and change the defaults.

Instead of saying we're going to get rid of this one and get rid of the, you basically say, we're going to get rid of all of it. Let's choose the regulations that we want to keep. That was the concept.

“I remember we had input from the public.”

We crowdsourced some stuff. Then we started having the meetings with the official, the bureaucrats and the civil servants. And we divided up the whole regulatory code into different sections. Either about 29 different categories. The first set that we looked at, consumer protection.

I remember we had a big meeting. They all come in the room. Thousands of different government officials leading the different bits of the relevant departments. And there's a lot of paperwork on the go through the packet. I remember I just went, I just didn't want to just go in order.

I went into the middle, picked something at random. And it was color coded. And I can't remember which way around red green. And most was one color. And I said, oh, that's great.

So that's what we're getting rid of. No, no, that's what we have to keep. Okay. That's not the point of this exercise, but still. Let's look at one of these.

It was men's pajamas. Just randomly. I just, why do we have to keep that? Whatever. I mean, there's the guy around the table who wrote was head of the, whatever, a parallel division.

We have a 40 minute discussion about the regulations on men's pajamas. And then at the end, this is, I'm not making up. It says, wow, I don't want to mock the voice. Is that if anything, the public interest demands that we level up regulations from a gender equality perspective. Because the regulations for women's pajamas are actually lower than for,

you just think I can't believe it. We just let 40 minutes talk about one thing out of thousands. And it's at that point. I realize you can't do it this way.

You'll never beat them at that kind of game of process and paperwork.

Because they are better at how do you beat them? There's more of them. They wait you out. And I'll tell you another story that fits with this. Before the 2010 election, when we came into,

David Cameron came, Prime Minister, you know, London's a small, everyone's very centralized on nose each other. We had a lot of friends overlapping with the former Labour government of Tony Blair.

And we ended up having a meeting a couple of months before the election. Myself and Tony Blair. And he said this incredibly interesting thing. And he'd been out of power for seven years by then. I think or something like that.

Maybe at least.

“And he said, look, there's just one thing you need to understand.”

All these senior officials around you numbered it. They're very smart, very good people. But you've got to understand that they believe that it is their patriotic duty. It does stop you from doing whatever you want to do. Because they see themselves as the guardians of the national dress.

Yeah. And their job is to stop these idiot here today, go on to more politicians and doing their thing. So you've got to understand this. I didn't understand that till too late.

And putting those two things together. And looking at California today. The only answer actually is to massively reduce the size of these Bureau. And just because if there's fewer people doing less, there's less capacities. You're said then done.

I mean, the doge idea was the idea that everybody supported until they try to implement and then they stopped at four or five months later. You can California. You've got a couple of things.

First of all, it's in a sense more manageable.

Because it's, you can get your arms around it to a certain extent. Some would even say it's harder because you've got 43 to 9 on represent. Like how are you going to pass them on the control under majority of the budget? Okay. Right. That's the first.

That's the main policy making vehicle. Who do you need to prove the budget? The legislature, you work with the legislature. You have a line item veto. Yes, they can overturn a view through the first majority.

Yeah, I know. But you write the budget. You submit the budget. First move, a lot of that will be right at the beginning in January next year. Yes, you negotiate.

Of course. But let me just get to the point that you run the executive branch. You run these agencies, you appoint people to them. And you can direct their work through executive orders. It's true that a lot of it is set up through legislation.

You can't just delete legislation you don't like. But actually, when you look at some of these bureaucracies.

“That's why you got to do the preparation work.”

Many of them have way exceeded what they were set up to do by the law in California. So you look at the car. The area we mentioned them. They're driving a lot of this climate stuff.

The EV staff and man dates for everything. The vehicle miles traveled. A lot of that is there's a way of looking at it. That the most destructive agency has been this one. Carb, the air resources board.

That it's been around for long before climate. It was the big driving ideological thing for the left. And so we just made an announcement. So I'll go back to Caldoge. I spoke about the fraud reports that we've done.

We've done five different fraud reports. We also didn't. We've only done one now, but we're going to be doing more of them. What I called bloat reports where we're looking at the structure of the government. The first one we did was nearly two weeks ago now.

Looking at the regulation of electricity in California. We have four separate agencies regulating electricity. Public Utilities Commission. The Energy Commission. Something called Kyso, the Independent Service Operate.

And Carb, the air resources board. If you look at it on a paper caper to basis. California has 35 times the number of bureaucrats. Reculating electricity. There's other say 35 times the number.

Just the numbers of people.

The cost of that is $1.2 billion before we even generate an electricity.

So we obviously, there's massive scope to merge them.

“That's what we've proposed to massively scale back these agencies.”

You can zero out their budgets or reduce them to very little. Yes, they can override that with a veto and the legislature. There hasn't been an override of a governor's veto since the 1980s in California. That's actually kind of a tough thing to do. Because as the governor, you've got the platform.

They then have to defend it. And so if you're really aggressive and you're well prepared. And I'm both of those things. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. But I think the real learning point for me from what happened in the UK was,

you've got to be ferocious about this. Yeah, I think when I went to Brazil. And I was with heavier, yeah, you're Bolsonaro and his family. And we did a three hour interview at the end of the interview. They came in, tapped on us back.

They said they were getting arrested. Yeah, to finish the interview because he was getting arrested. Yeah, right, you remember this when we were in? Where were we at in Brazil? What's Brazil?

Brazil, yeah, right in the headquarters. You know, the where all the politicians are. They build a city like a communist city. So nobody wanted to go their miles away from everybody. Yeah.

But the thing that we looked at there is how much the other side.

With the sky name, Alashandra de Moraz, who was like the most powerful guy in Brazil.

You've seen his face. You know who he is, they control Senate, they control House. And he couldn't do nothing. And they fought very hard. So you're going into a market where you will be facing a lot of challenges.

And you're going to need some people that are going to want to have massive change in the state. Right now, the polls, if we look at the polls as of right now. I think you're at 21 points. Is where we have when you look at the polls. I think you're at 21.

“Yeah, I think 22 is where you're at as of right now.”

Then you got Bacera 21 and Styre 15. Then Bianco 5 and you got, you know, the rest of the camp, Katie Porter. But the reality of it is, if one of these guys drops out, you're all of a sudden second by, you know, if you go to Calshy's report, Calshy gives a complete different number. If you go to Calshy.

Yeah, for the way. Yeah, now she have years at 65 Styre's at 237 and you're at 9.4%. You know, Vegas doesn't lose money.

And that's $35 million of money that's been wagered.

Yeah. So you need some major major, like Spencer Pratt. Work out out that Genie boss is supporting him. This person is supporting him. Oh, my God.

All these different people that are supporting him. Have you gotten some weird calls? Has Arnold called you? Have you spoken to some of these guys? I know Arnold.

Well, I've known him for years. Have you had a conversation with him recently? Not recently. But we will. We know each other.

Well, and I know his team very well. Do you have a relationship with Newsom as well? I do know Kevin. Yeah. No, I don't think it's a very cordial one anymore because I've been, you know, holding

him responsible for one point cordial. Well, he's the thing is that we. Yeah, because we had some friends in common.

And that there's first two years that we were here.

I taught at Stanford. We had some very good friends there who friends of that. Friends of the Newsom's from a family point of view. So that's how. I know them.

And that's long before I had anything to do with California. California politics when he wasn't governor then.

“So I think that what you're describing is exactly right.”

Here's how I see it. Right now we've got this governor's race, which is because of this top two system, which means that the top two candidates go forward regardless of party. It makes the whole thing kind of unclear and messy. And the entire conversation, not the entire.

But a lot of the conversation is actually about math and who's in the top two. And is it going to be two Democrats? Is it going to be two? Rather than the merits and the ideas and all of that. Once we're in the general election scenario, which we will be in a couple of weeks.

Yep. And it does look like, I don't take anything for granted. I'm working even harder these last two weeks than the last year. But you know, we're feeling confident. But you know, still got to win it.

People have to vote. But let's just assume I'm in the top two and there's one other Democrat. Looks like it's going to be have you ever Sarah. Then it's a very different contest. Then it's a real, you've got a clarity there.

What are we going to do? Are we going to keep going with this? Another four years of the same direction. But by the way, there's no one who have you ever Sarah who's there leading candidate right now. He's he's going to the living embodiment of more of the same Democrat.

He's 36 years a career politician. I mean, he's done nothing else. He's a creature of the machine. In the L.A. Merrill race, you're already at that stage. This kind of gladiatorial contest because Spencer,

it's just Spencer against Karen Bass basically. Nick, your ramen is really imploding. And so there's a clarity there in L.A. Which we don't yet have in the governor's race. But soon we will.

And I'm very confident that we'll get, you know, you're already seeing it.

People who've never supported repot.

I mean, so OK, Britain is a good example. He's supporting me. He's also supported him. There's a lot of people who in California have bought this narrative that a Republican can't win.

So the best shot is a less crazy Democrat.

“And that's why there was a lot of support in the business community for this guy.”

Matt Mayhand, who's the mayor of San Jose. But he's gone nowhere. And so I'm feeling confident that once it's me against Percerra, or even more so me against Tom Styre, you're going to see a lot of support.

Because so many people who are not, not Republicans, they say we can't go on like this. I'm definitely seeing that in L.A. How many be? For myself, you know, Hollywood people.

How many people are calling you and seeing look? A lot. A lot. And other names? Yes.

That would be seen as a liberal. Yes. And they're saying they would like to support. And some have, I mean, some have co-hosted events for me. And...

Well, I don't want to... They said co-host that he meant as a public name. So it's not, it's a public name.

Okay.

“You know, Larry David is not by anyone's landlord or conservator.”

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

But they've called you and spoke. Yes. Yes. And we've had meetings and I feel, and in the sports world as well, actually. And I feel very confident that once we're past the primary,

and it really is that clear choice. It's going to be a whole different situation. And the whole thing that I'm saying is... I'm not an ideologue. I'm not a tribal kind of person going back to where we started.

I really am open, happy to sit down with anyone, work with anyone. It's just... I mean, I, it's an overused phrase. It really is just common sense. Let's just stop doing stupid things. That make everything so expensive and so difficult.

Did you have a, like, once I'll ask him, he had a conversation with Newsom. We had a very brief conversation.

I remember it, actually, he's the second presidential debate in 2024.

It was held at the Reagan Library. And they sat in the Biden people, sent him in as a surrogate. I was there, it was a, and he was gone talking to everybody. Exactly. That's all right.

Well, he's literally going on just off to the side. We were both with Hannity, that night. And did you whisper to him that you may run? Did anybody know? We did, I actually, I think we actually ended up,

I was still then working on the housing policy that we spoke about earlier. And if I can, if I'm right, I think we had a brief conversation about that. And then he connected me to one of his team members to maybe follow up on that and so on. How, how does more you think his track record's been since he's been governor?

“Well, did you have to look at the facts? I mean, we are the worse performing state on every measure that matters.”

Like, truly, we've under him. Yeah, I mean, you look at the, how else can you describe it? I mean, poverty, unemployment, cost of living. And then, you know, more qualitative measures. So US News and World Report ranks California 50th out of 50 states for opportunity.

Think about that opportunity. I mean, that's supposed to be the definition last place. Wall it up, 50th out of 50 for affordability. Chief executive magazine, they do an annual survey. California 50th out of 50.

I think it's now 10 or 11 years in a row. It's just insane roads, I mentioned, 50th. It's not just that we're doing badly with our worst performer of all 50 states on almost everything that matters. At the same time as they've doubled the budget. It's insane how badly.

It's covered up because, of course, we're still an amazing state.

I love California, we've got the most incredible advantages. Natural beauty, amazing people, diverse cities, great. It's a wonderful place to be. But it's a very tough place to be. If you're a regular working class California.

If you're running a small business.

“That's why so much of what I'm talking about.”

It's very practical stuff to help me. The first 100 grand tax free. There's just, it just seems like a small thing, but it's a big deal to small business owners. Remember I used to, you know, I started a couple of restaurants in London. Restaurant owners particularly hate some of this stuff.

$800 a year they charge you just for existing. Every business in California has to pay a registration fee. $800 a year. Now that may not sound like a lot. If you're, of course, and it isn't a lot.

If you're a tropical Google or whatever. But if you're a small business and you're not making any money, you're just getting going. You're actually really tough. It's simple things like that. That we just need to do to make life less of a struggle for everybody.

Now, what, what happened recently? This is like a few days ago with, have you ever seen a strategic Dana Williamson who used to be the previous chief of staff, I believe, for Newsom. Just got me fell on these. This is just a few days ago.

Yeah. What happened? This is a really big scandal. It is a big scandal.

I mean, it's little, here's, here's what happened.

Bacera was a point. He was the California Attorney General. He was appointed by Biden to be health secretary, HHS. At the beginning of the Biden term. Bacera wanted to take his chief of staff.

I was sure in the clasky with him to DC. He was going to be too ex, but he was going to, the salary wasn't high enough. And this guy wanted to come back and forth to his family. And so they wanted more money for this guy to be able to go with Bacera. The salary was the salary, whatever the federal salary is.

So, they cook up this scheme to take 10 grand a month from Bacera's California campaign account, transfer it to a consulting firm, run by this person Dana Williamson.

to Sean McCluskey's wife. So, it took a back-handed way of topping up his pay. That's against California campaign finance law, because you can't use campaign money for anything other than campaign expenses. And it's against federal law, because you can't get income from another source.

Now, the argument from Bacera is he didn't know about any of this.

“Can we see what she looks like, can you go a little bit lower?”

Now, do you think he knew about this? I, what are the chances he could? I can't believe that he didn't know. I mean, look, his argument is I'm not in the indictment. I'm not in the federal indictment.

And the federal indictment says he didn't know. Katie Porter, who's been very aggressive on this and some of the other Democrat candidates, is saying, it's ridiculous. And just because you haven't been indicted yet, doesn't mean you won't be. And just on a human level feels to me impossible to believe that he didn't know.

The whole point of the scheme was to enable him to take his chief of stuff with him to Washington. That's the whole, oh, reason for doing it. So he knew. Well, I, I, who knows. I mean, he's saying he didn't.

Is, is that it, Rob? That clip right there between the two of them? Yes, that's the one.

I wouldn't mind seeing it, but I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of ads that's going to come on first within three, two, one.

There's an ad. Yeah. So, so if something like this is tied to him, how big of a scandal would this be for him? Well, this is what a lot of the Democrat rivals have been saying. What you, you're going to nominate this guy who then could be indicted in the middle of his campaign.

For governor, can you go to the par with Katie Porter's call on him out? A fast forward a little bit to work, Katie Porter. My line is more of a political. I said, look, you shouldn't be in this race.

“You should be preparing your criminal defense.”

Is that it? Go for it personally. Mr. Bissara, you, you're, quote, at the end, drifted off a little bit from the words. What the quote was was that you had not been mentioned in the charging documents. That is in the indictment of Dana Williamson.

You're a long-term chief of staff, Sean McCluskey or Greg Campbell. But as you know, that does not preclude because you are also a trained attorney. You know that does not preclude an indictment from being issued against you. We do not know what Dana Williamson said about your involvement and the government. If I don't respond, they'll have to go against you.

You'll be able to make it the last one. Ryan the same way I did it when I was attorney general. We established a bureau that dealt with Medicare fraud working with the federal government. Unfortunately, Trump is a problem because Trump took a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system out of the Medicare, or the, excuse me, the Medicaid and the Medicare system.

Trump is now trying to deprive California of another billion dollars in healthcare for Medicare.

He doesn't have the right to do that. You want to do it to a different place. Yeah, he's, so that's their argument. And it's not just Katie.

“It's also Antonio Vera goes to the former mayor of LA, making that argument very strongly.”

Like this guy could be indicted. It's a massive risk to have him as your candidate. That's their argument. Yeah, it was overnight when he all of a sudden spiked up. Yeah, I went swallow swallow swallow.

Yeah, I went swallow swallow. Everyone was surprised. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, so the worry today, Democrats have in California is holy shit. Yes, if something happens here, is it Katie?

Because they're worried about Katie. She's a wild car. Well, she seems to be very stiger. It looks like styre is the, I mean, look, look at the data. I mean, it's me and Bessera.

Most of the polls me and Bessera at the top. Then there's a gap, then it's Tom Stier. Then there's another gaps everyone else. There was one poll last week, which I take very seriously.

It's that one, there's the second one there.

which had basically a three-way tie at the top. My self-pacera and sti all roughly the same. And so yeah you see it there, 2019-18. So, who not most of the poles are not that, most of them show this gap between myself and bacera and sti but sti is definitely number two and Katie Porter's well below. So I don't know, I mean, look, things have changed very quickly. It feels like we're less than two weeks to the

election. Voting's already started. It feels very unlikely to me that Katie Porter's gonna pop back home. There would be catastrophic for Democrats if she does. It would be phenomenal for you if she pops up. You would love a Katie Porter opposition. It would be great for TV because to me she's gifted. She's a natural villain for the core. She's so phenomenal. I mean, she, she will get a job that day she doesn't

make it to the view and she'll bring the top of views to the view they haven't

about Chad Bianco? Because have a lot of friends from Kern County, a guy named Ricky Agilar and who's spoken to Chad Bianco and they've had different conversations and yeah, a lot of Californians love Chad Bianco because he has got more, he's an OG California. So people will say Steve's not a California. He's not, he's not an OG.

“He was, he was an immigrant as well. What did he come from? I think it's, I think it's from”

Utah, isn't it? How long has he been in California? Oh, longer than me. No, no, I was fair enough. Yeah, so hey, you know, he is in the system. He has done this. He has done that, but it's out of phase right now where he's kind of calling you out a little bit. You're not really saying much about him. But what do you say about Chad Bianco? Because I think he's got a lot of a respect from a certain audience in California. Yeah, I mean, it's an

election. We're winning. At this point, it's not about, I've nothing against Chad personally. We have perfectly good personal relationship and it's just a simple point now with less than two weeks of the election. The time for, I kind of have debate over who'd be better and who's got, on most policies we completely agree to be honest and you see that in the debates and you'd expect that in a way. But it's beyond that now. It's like we've got to be real about

this situation. If that other poll is correct, the Emerson poll, or let's say it's closer to that reality, which is a three-way tie, then there is a very real possibility of the outcome of this primary being two Democrats for Sarah and Stein. That is not an impossibility. I don't think it's

“likely. It's not the most likely outcome, but it's certainly not impossible. And so that's why I'm”

going all out. You know, we've got to get a group, if you have two Democrats in the top two. Imagine that in California. No chance for change. There'll be out bidding each other on the left to pound it to the unions and the activists, or I'll be going further and further left. Are you suggesting Bianco drop out? I've very much so. Have you spoken to him? Have you tried? Yeah, well, I've reached out to him and we were going to meet and then it didn't come together.

I wrote a piece for the California Post about this just two days ago. It seems to me he's not in that place. That's of course his right, but we just got to be real here. There isn't just like we said, it doesn't look as if Katie Porter's going to get there up into the top two, same with Chad. So whatever, what reason for that doesn't matter. We are where we are and could just leave what drop out at the in Rob or no, in New York. Do you remember when it was

“him, Cuomo and Mamdani that slew whatever drop out? Do you remember that? I don't think so.”

I don't think he dropped out. I think he went to the very end. He didn't. He didn't. He did and he was

offered 10 million to withdraw. That's the story that he told. I remember that. Yeah. So he didn't drop

out and obviously we know who ended up winning, which is Mamdani. Yes. So in this case, it would be interesting because the president has already endorsed you. He has. How recent was the endorsement was the president? I remember very, very, very memorable day for me. Yeah. And I'm sure in the next you know two weeks, he's probably going to make some more noise and put you out there as well because we saw the president's endorsement two nights ago with 37 and all. So he's got a pretty

good track record today. No matter how much people say about him when he endorses somebody, carries a lot of weight. So that'd be interesting to see. So he said two weeks today's what today's May 22nd or 23rd. What is today's date Rob? Today is May 21st. 21st. So if it's the 21st today, the day is what? June 2nd. June 2nd. There you guys are voting. Yeah. And then you're going, but voting is now. Right. It is. And then you got a 166 days to the whole

shabank if you're in it. Yeah. Well, look, I'm feeling confident. And it's, you know, it's a weird

thing for me that I hate talking like this because I just feel, I've never run for office before.

I have this, this, I don't quite understand how, and it's funny, people coming up to his eye voted for you. It's an amazing, it's a real, it's a very humbling truth. And that's a cliche a little bit of a pompous thing to say, but that's truly how I feel about it. And a strong sense of responsibility, people put a lot of faith in you. But that question of, okay, yeah, these are polls are coming out and I'm leading in the polls. Great. How that turns into actual votes

is something that, you know, I, I just don't take for granted at all. So we're going to be fighting very hard, keep raising money, keep getting our message out, right, until the end. But it's, it's close now. There's a question for you. There's a question for you. So 441 businesses have left, relocated since 2018. It's got to be many more than that. Well, that's the number big, big one, five

business 2026 reported on this net. Domestic loss, 3 million people net since 2010 to 24. And

then we know they lost another trillion dollars that left with the new wealth tax that they haven't placed. Here's an idea for you. Sergei Bryn endorsed you, right? He's a, he's a guy that

million out of property. He's building something for himself. King Griffin left Illinois. He came

down here at Mamdan. He tried to dock some with his property that lives in. There's a lot of weird things that's going on. We saw now Mamdan is trying to beg people to come back. We're seeing the mayor of Seattle, Rob. If I'm not mistaken, she is now worried about Seattle. Leave it at Starbucks. Leave it. Hey, can you please come back? What do you think about hosting an event in the state of California? And here's the event. Yeah. The event is calling some of these businesses

that have a laugh. Yes. And bringing them back, foreign event in California, because I lived in California 24 years. Five years that right. Five years here. I lived in Glendale, California. I

went to Glendale High School, class of 1986. So I lived there since 1990. I'm an OGLA guy.

But imagine if you run an event and you say Sergei Bren, all these businesses are in Texas, they're in Florida, they're in Tennessee, they're in Nevada. All of the Mark Wahlberg who's down here right now, who is an L.A guy. He moved to Vegas. And you ask these guys and these are conversations you have before and say, what can we do to bring you back? So if an event like that took place, yeah, where you are now bringing customers back, yeah, all the people in California that are

worried about the big business owners leaving, now they're going to say, maybe this is the guy

“that can do something with that. I love that. And that's how I feel. Like, when you, when I think”

about the campaign and the story of what we need to do to bring California back, there's different levels of it, different ways you look at it. For example, there's the campaign, there's the simple promises and commitments you make that are going to help people in a practical when they're daily life. That's the campaign. I call it california. Three dollar gas, quite your electric bill on half, etc. Right? Then you look at, as we talked about earlier, what are the underlying policy drivers that you

ought to deal with in terms of the chaos and cost? Climate extremism, litigation unions, we talked about that. But actually, when you think, well, what am I, what's the mission? What's the really, what's the central mission that's got to happen that's got to be achieved if we're going to turn things around. It actually is this point about the business claim, because without that, we don't have anything. That's the underlying, if you keep doing customers back, exactly. And if we,

if we, if we make it really clear that we are now not, we are, we are not just not hostile to businesses, we are now, but we are positively going to roll out the red carpet. We want you back, we want to

“make your life easier, what can I do to help? That's how I see my role as governor is being there”

to help business, create jobs and wealth and opportunity. In California, that's actually the central mission. Everything else will flow from that, because if you do the things that will make California, once again, the best place to start and grow a business, then all those other things will happen. So I love that. Yeah, I had an actually, and that, I've got some very serious confusion. I just think about that. Yeah, that's beautiful. I love the great location. Pick a great

spot. They're all sitting there. And they're talking, these are all, you put them X-pats. I don't know what you want to, what you got to find a unique thing to put like X Californians, we left, and they're in different spaces that who are wrong and mask, you know, you got Sergei, you got all these guys. Yeah, if it gets to that point, because if you can, if you can convince people who left those are the biggest stories, because let's talk about the wealth tax, right? Hey, let's tax these

billionaires. We're in Aspen, and all of a sudden, I get a story comes out saying, they need this 880,000 signatures to be able to pass on a 5% wealth tax. I'm like, of course, they're going to get this signatures. What do you mean? Because they've only 200 billionaires. Of course, they're

going to come up with this. So guess what ends up happening? They get one and a half million plus

signatures on a 5% tax. So that's going to be on it for people to vote and then one by one by one, people like Bren and others are leaving and saying, you're not going to tax me on this. I'm adding here, right? Yeah. And in yesterday Jeff Bezos is doing an interview with Sorkin, which by the way, I thought this was a phenomenal, phenomenal interview. If you haven't watched his whole thing, you ought to put it on the list of things to watch the next couple of days.

“Here's what do you have to say about taxes? Go ahead, Rob.”

A lower tax rate. Well then, maybe I am. Sometimes say that I don't pay taxes. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have

I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you, this is, so you can't connect those two things, not logically. You know, they're they're they're Mark Samus. Why is Rint expensive? Why is Rint so expensive? I recently saw somebody blaming it on Airbnb. Okay, Airbnb is not the

cause of experience of Rint. In fact, it's been almost, it's been finished here one second.

It's already been outlawed in New York City and Rint's are still very high. So we know Airbnb is in cause and high rents. What's really cause of high rent is government intervention?

“Yeah, exactly. Thoughts on what do you have to say? Well, 100% correct.”

And we are the proof of that in California, because we have taxed the rich in California. That's one of the reasons that our fiscal situation is such a messing California with massive volatility in state revenue and year to year because so much of it is dependent on the stock market because so much of it is dependent on the wealthy. I mean, the number is something like the

top 1% of California earners pay about 50% of the income tax. And so that's already happening in

California. And as we said earlier, they've doubled the budget. Look what happened to schools. I mean, he's bragging news sum about 28,000 dollars per student per year for the for the public schools and the results are terrible. So that's exactly right. It's not and we've been through all the reasons. And baseless is right that the drivers of these costs in California, certainly on housing is all these endless regulations and concessions to the groups that control the Democrat politicians.

“The unions, the climate activists. That's the lawyers. That's how we've got to this point.”

Yeah, I mean, look, when you're seeing, he continues to say the top 1% pays 40% of taxes.

The bottom 50% pays 3% then he should. I think that should be even zero rub. If you go to that one

on a percent taxes, yeah, if there's another clip, it's not going to be a quarrel. There's one that you have to find, Rob, where he says the, go to the one with Mombani, see if it's that one, go back and see if it's the Mombani one. $1,000 in taxes. And it's a pertinent. Again, if people want me to pay more billions, there's a part that he specifically says, go to his account, go to Bezos ex account,

just type in Jeff Bezos, go to his account.

“Because I think this has become in more and more logical second one, there you go.”

Go a little bit lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. He writes it in the account in the video. That's it. So he puts yesterday not, you can press this one, see if it's the same one or if it's a different one. Start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes. Why is someone at all? Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year? Pay more than $1,000 a month in taxes.

That's the $1,000 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It's only 3%. We can find 3%. So we don't have, it's a small amount of money for the government, you know that. And really it's, and the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this. You know, we shouldn't be asking this

nurse in Queens to send money to watch it. And they shouldn't be sending her to people talk about, yeah, this aligns with what you're saying. No taxes, 100,000. Right, right, because look at California's tax schedule, right, where you look at the rates. It's insane. You start pay, I think that is numbers are right. You start at 72 grand of income. Yep. You're starting to pay in California, 9.3% state income tax. That is higher than the top rate in most states of America.

At 72 grand, I think it kicks in. It's just, you're right. In the same. 937, so I'm paying $7,000 on 72k. I could have kept that money. Car payment, food, gas, whatever it is that stays with me. It's really bad. It's a common sense idea that you have. So by the way, what do you stand with the, you know, the rail, the high speed rail that he was supposed to build? I was just there. Last track of the days, two days ago. We just stood in front of

literally a bridge to know. If you drive up and down the central valley all the time,

And we haven't put it out yet, so you won't find this. But the, the infrastructure they've built is just, or you can see up and down. It's here are the numbers. So they said that it would be

opened by 2020. Two and a half hours, San Francisco to Ellen and total cost of 30 billion.

Here's the latest, they laughably call it a business plan. This was just published like two weeks ago by the high speed rail authority budget from 30 billion to 231 billion, the budget. The plan is now from San Francisco to Merced, which is at the top of the center, you go inland, top of the central valley. That's on the existing trains, not high speed. Then you get on the high speed train at Merced and you go down to Baker's field, high speed train.

Then Baker's field to LA bus stop bus. Who, who, who? That's the high that can you verify.

“There's no way that's what there's the plan for the 231 billion. Yes. So by the end of the”

two and a half hours to me haven't had multiple stops before I go to San Francisco. And I like

I put now the two to half hours. Sometimes you'll do that just from Baker, if you're driving, Baker's field to LA can take that. There's no way that's what they're saying. That is. Right. Zoom in. Let me see the revised draft plan outlines a commitment of full non-stop, high speed connection between LA and Bay Area by 2039. Construction span, 190 miles or something. No, go a little bit. I'm trying to see what was there a stop, future long-term extensions,

connect North Sacramento, East Sacramento. There is no way they're telling you to do this. Come back with a bus and then go to. That's the thing. If you look up bus, there's a Karl Transconson, 140 mile an hour bus. That's a different story, right? If that is true,

“that is pathetic. That is absolutely pathetic. If that's what they're saying. It was old. This”

is the business plan. This is a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago. Wow. Wow. So, what would you do? And also another thing, the bulls, sorry. I mean, the things he says. So he did a press conference. I don't know, when it was a couple of months ago. He's trying to sort of, because obviously the only thing he cares about, Newsom, he's running for president. That's very obvious. And so he's trying to clean it all up. So they did a event there where he stood in front of trains,

just some engines that make it look as if he was doing something with actual trains. And he was trying to announce that they were doing laying of tracks. Because one of the points that we make is that this is, you know, like more than a decade into it, two decades, nearly. And there's no track been laid. They've built a bunch of stuff, but no tracks. And he was trying to announce that he was doing tracks. But even then, he actually, if you look at

his words, he didn't say we're laying tracks. And we are entering the track laying phase.

This gas lighting over this is just, there we are. Look, a critical step in the track laying stage.

They're not actually laying tracks. This is how they do. And it's just, and by the way, they're still pretending. This is realistic and going to happen. And we are still paying for it. So earlier I mentioned the cap and trade thing, cap and trade scheme, which is one big component of the, the high gas prices on top of the gas tax. There's this thing called cap and invest, which is the carbon trading ridiculous bureaucratic schemes, basically a tax on energy, production,

and use. One quarter of that goes to high speed rail. So we're still paying for it. I mean, the federal bid has been ended. Good idea about idea. The high speed rail. Yeah. High speed rail is, in other places, works well in Europe. It works really well. I've used it a lot. It doesn't work. It doesn't make sense in California, because of the way that we've developed in California, because you could take a train from, let's say, let's say it all worked fine.

“You have San Francisco to LA. Well, where, when you get to LA, what do you do?”

That's, it's Union Station, which is, you know, over down to LA. It's like another 45 minutes to get to any the West side or whatever. So yeah, what do you do then? We're just not, not how California, this is what I really, it's a really good example of what's gone wrong in California, which is they've been trying to impose ideological blueprints on practical life as it's lived.

cycling, walking, let's be more like Europe. That's what, because of climate, that's why I say

the climate stuff is a real driver. Let's be more like Europe. Let's have density. That's not how California was built. And whether you like it or not, the way that California was developed was outwards. And that's a part of the beauty of California life. A single family home, you have a yard, the kids can play outside, enjoy the weather. That's just how we grew. And so this doesn't, what, this model of public transit doesn't work in California. You just have to, you'd have to

sort of completely redo, no, it's certain cities San Francisco, very dense. You can, it works there. But even then, how do people get around in San Francisco? I mean, yeah, there's the mooney in the

part, whatever, but people now you got way mo. And you've got so many, you know, it just doesn't

make sense in terms of of how people are going to even on their original estimate. I looked into it for my book when they actually sold high speed rail. They did sell it as a getting cars off the road idea. Who's doing this drive? People fly. There's crazy to even think about. I mean, I know Palmdale, I know Bakersville, I know Fresno, I know all these streets, all these cities. I've driven all over these places because I was selling insurance for 20 years. Right. And, you know. So also,

here's another thing, just really annoying. So you look at that map there. The bit that goes down to Anaheim, which is a fantasy. This is just insane. They can't even build the, okay, if you look at that map, the easiest bit from, from Mercedes to Bakersfield through the central, totally flat, nothing, you know, that's taken forever and nothing's happened. Let alone in the city. Right.

“Or through, that's why they're doing the bus because from Bakersfield to, to, to, you know,”

the other side, you've got big mountains there. That's hard engineering wise, which they haven't figured out. And so, and then the Anaheim bit, which is just a fantasy, the other week, they published an environmental impact report. Here's a really good example. Of the bloat and nonsense in California. They published an environmental impact report for this leg of the thing from LA to Anaheim that, that no one thinks is going to happen.

The summary of the environmental impact report just for that was 100 pages. Someone's paying for that, like some consult, well, we're paying for it. That's what I mean. There's no check or control on this bloat in the government. They keep, because they don't have people who think like that. They don't have business-minded people who look at all this and say, "What are you doing? Why are we commissioning an environmental impact report for something that everyone knows is

never going to happen?" I want to show you something, and I want to wrap up on this. Here's a

clip from Newsom. Okay, and he says some things that a lot of people have been taken in a weird way. I want to see how you interpret this. He says he has a secret plan, oh yeah, break the glass.

“Rob, if you want to play this clip for the audience to see, and I don't know if he's talking about”

you, I don't know if he's talking about, you know, whatever, because look, the candidate running Republican, that's small that he has. He looks like he's up to something. Go ahead, Rob. But he's talking about accountability. Do you think Democrats will hold you accountable for standing by this principle of neutrality by withholding your endorsement in this non-possible scenario to erupt in the state to take it? Yeah, my focus has been making sure that doesn't happen,

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

and we're going to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen. What do you think means by that? I think what he means is that because we'll remember it's all about him. It's only about him.

“It's only about his presidential ambitions. It's the only thing he cares about. I think what he wants”

is to Democrats in the top two, because if I'm in the top two, he knows that the rest of this campaign, a big part of it will be a prosecution of his record. That's the whole argument going into a election. The all this stuff that we're talking about will be even louder volume, because I will be there saying we can't go on like this. This is insane. We are done with this. We cannot have another four years of this. Whereas if it's two Democrats, none of that,

his record won't be an issue. We're going to have a single payer health care,

If I'm in the top two, if there's a Republican in the top two, then there's a chance, of course,

“that I'll win. I believe I can when we haven't really talked about my path to victory,”

but I can see it, because and it starts with the fact that you've now got a majority, a clear majority of Californians, you think it's time for change, who think the states on the wrong track, that's the starting point. And then if you look at the numbers of votes that you need, they even President Trump in California without campaigning there in 2024 got more votes in California than I would need to win in a mid-term year. And there's other things that fact that we've

got votes for ID on the ballot in November in California. That's going to bring out a lot of Republican voters and so on. So I can see a path to victory, and that's Newsom's worst nightmare. Imagine if this is the scenario in early 2027, just as he's launching his presidential campaign, you've got a Republican taking over as governor. He's just lost California to Republicans. That is it. And and as I'm cleaning up the mess that he's left behind, I will be exposing what he's

done in the process of cleaning it up, which will be a disaster for his presidential campaign. So he wants to avoid that at all, of course. What he wants is dire besere. So I think what's going on here is that he is raising the specter of two Republicans in order to continue to give Republicans hope that that can happen. In other words, encouraging Republicans to try and get to Republican voters to try and get two Republicans in the top two by voting by continuing to vote for

“Chad Bianca. I think that's what's going on here. So you're okay, got it. So the more Bianca goes up,”

you go down, then the top two will become Democrats. Exactly. That's their strategy. Yes. Because he's desperate to see two Democrats. What do you know about Styer? Because he also came

out of nowhere. What I know, you're never Styer, you know. The billionaire climate for he's a couple

of things. First of all, we talk about costs and he keeps going on about affordability. Yeah. Most of the climate stuff that I'm talking about that's given us this insane gas prices electric bills and so on. Housing costs. It goes back to a piece of legislation passed in 2006, AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. A lot of this framework was set up then. The cap and trade system all of this. In 2010, four years after it was passed, there was a ballot initiative to overturn it.

And the main funder of that ballot initiative, the opposition to it, was Tom Stein. So we could have avoided all this pain and cost, but it was Tom Styer who defeated that initiative.

“So he's honestly, there's a way you could put it, which is, he is personally responsible for this”

insane level of cost of everything in California. The other thing we know about him is how obsessed he is with trying to get elected to something. In this campaign for governor, the numbers are published all the time. He's the latest. He's how much he spent $193 million. In this, yes, since like when he entered the race, I don't understand that. In this, yes, $193 million. That's his latest filing.

Okay, $192. Quite cool. Oh my god. Wow. So far, don't even mind. We haven't even got to the primary. And, I mean, listen, fire your marketing team. $192 million, Spencer Pride could have done it for you

for $300,000. Oh, incredible. Oh, my god. $192 million. And where is he out on the polls? He's he's

two. You're two, he's three. That's, look, look at that one. This is, they're mostly like this from that you're just seeing that. Got it. Got it. So he's three. And Bianca was at 10 for this one. Yeah. Maybe you're grosser. What did this appointment? 1%. Like literally nobody wants them. Nobody. I want pointy with so famous popular. Yeah, I like walk. I like what do you like about them? I just like it. I look, I get on with the most people. But there's something I like Antonio. He's,

I think his hearts in the right place. He's definitely challenged the Democrat or for Docs in a lot of issues. He challenged the teacher unions on education. He's actually the only one who's really cool about the climate stuff. He's talked about opening up oil production. Why is he doing so bad? I don't know. It's interesting because, you know, you think he's run, you know, to America. Yeah. Yeah. It's out of me way. I don't know. I truly don't know.

I like him. All right. Sounds good. I think there was some strategy endorsement there for Vigaroza. You're like in and we'll see what happened there. But final thoughts here for California.

So first vote. You've got a vote. I mean, none of this stuff will happen unless we vote for it.

“And I think one of the big things that we have to have to make this change in California is belief”

that it's possible because I think people have got conditioned to this idea that, well, a Republican can't win. And so you're stuck with this choice of putting up with the insanity or leaving the state. And that's a terrible choice. It's a ridiculous choice. And that idea that things can't change. I mean, I say this sometimes as a new American citizen. It's a very un-American attitude that you just can't, they can't be done. Of course it can

be done. It's obvious that it needs to be done. It's obvious that we need change, that we need balance. But you've got to vote for it. And one of the reasons I've been so I've been campaigning so hard and I've been down the state for a year now, working really hard is just to give that sense of energy and belief. And so number one is vote, vote, vote, and tell

all your friends, we got to do this and come out of this primary with energy. And we always need money.

Look, we don't have the style of money. We don't have any of that. We're very frugal. It's a lean start-up kind of deal. But we're spending a little bit on advertising and we

“got to get that message out because, you know, if the truth is somewhere between those polls,”

that it's still too close for comfort. And you could end up with this two Democrats scenario, which is a disaster for California and for the country, because we can't have our biggest state, almost beautiful, amazing state that's generated so much incredible innovation and leadership from America, from Hollywood to tech to our great farming industry, life sciences, biotech, you know, just so much that comes out of California. And imagine how great it would be

for our country, if we have a California that is firing on all cylinders again. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Most people don't know since the last hundred years, I just pulled it up with the team. What percentage of the last hundred years in the state of California, the governor was a Republican versus a Democrat? You know, that's a one percent interesting,

like Republican, only 39 percent Democrat. That's amazing. And if you look at all time,

Republican 20 to 17, I think it's time for California to go back to what it is to your original Republican governor days. We had an Armenian governor, Doug Mention. I don't know if you knew that or not. Yeah, yeah, you mentioned it. Yeah, he was a, he was a governor. Well, Glenn Dale, very big, massive, our meaning. And by the way, there's some crazy Armenians that aren't left as joined the trans LGBTQ camp, but there's a lot of our minions to the core,

their raise their kids in a conservative way. I hope they get behind you. Exactly. And folks,

“if you want to support, I saw the number 30,000 plus donors already, right? No, no, no, no, no, no,”

no, 65,000, 65,000. Okay, the report here says 30, 65,000 plus donors. And probably more, I mean,

it's, that's one of the most beautiful things I've never run for anything before. And we go from

nothing to a really, 55,000. That was the last number that we put out. Right. Yeah, go visit the site, Steve Hilton for governor.com. And if you enjoyed what was talked about today, and you want to see more support, share this message with others, share the link with others, give financially knock on doors, talk about it at dinners, talk to your friends, talk to your peers, get the message out there. Steve, excited to see what happens with you the next two weeks. Thank you.

You're obviously doing the work. And I wish you nothing but the best. Really wonderful to be with you. Thank you. And I'll look forward to that event you do. Yes, that's great. Well, you'll be that. Right. I look forward to you doing that event. I think it's a massive publicity stunt for everybody to say, are these people really talk about bringing their money back? I think that would be massive. And a lot of California's would support it. Thank you. Great. Have a new answer. Take care, everybody. Bye. Bye.