TRIGGERnometry - How They Ruined California

00:00:00.720 You are a Republican running for governor of California,

00:00:04.360 and you are currently leading the polls.

00:00:07.060 Imagine that, exactly.

00:00:08.340 What happened to California, mate?

00:00:10.820 It's an amazing place, being completely ruined,

00:00:13.740 because we've had 15 years of one-party rule.

00:00:16.200 For the last 10 years, California is 50th out of 50 states.

00:00:20.700 We have the highest taxes in the country for the worst outcomes.

00:00:23.980 People are sick of it, and they know that we need to change.

00:00:27.420 Parents, you know, they walk their kids to school,

00:00:29.140 and they're literally stepping over dead people

00:00:30.920 who've OD'd from fentanyl.

00:00:32.920 I mean, this is just unbelievable.

00:00:35.060 Driven by the desire to push this decarceration agenda,

00:00:40.340 downgraded a whole bunch of other crimes

00:00:42.440 so that they wouldn't get automatic prison time.

00:00:45.920 The of an unconscious woman, now downgraded.

00:00:51.300 Trafficking a child for sex.

00:00:53.080 A whole bunch of child sex crimes.

00:00:57.280 I know, I know.

00:00:58.200 And this is Kamala Harris pushed this.

00:00:59.760 It just really captures the extent to which ideology has just taken over.

00:01:06.320 If you are elected, if you are successful,

00:01:08.540 how are you going to fix all that?

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00:01:40.420 Steve Hilton, welcome back to the show.

00:01:45.640 Fantastic to be back.

00:01:46.980 And this very lovely setting.

00:01:48.580 Well, we wanted to present you as a man of the people.

00:01:50.400 I know, it's wonderful.

00:01:51.440 This is positive populism, as I used to describe it on my show.

00:01:55.640 Well, very much in the vein of positive populism,

00:01:58.240 you are a Republican running for governor of California,

00:02:01.540 and you are currently leading the polls.

00:02:04.280 Imagine that, exactly.

00:02:05.540 What happened to California, mate?

00:02:07.640 Well, a lot of bad things.

00:02:08.980 I think that's the point.

00:02:11.040 This is an incredible state, as we can see.

00:02:14.060 We're just talking about it.

00:02:15.180 It's the most beautiful place in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

00:02:18.500 I'm traveling this state all the time.

00:02:20.160 It's magnificent.

00:02:21.180 It's amazing.

00:02:22.200 It's got this incredible spirit and soul and energy.

00:02:26.880 And it's all been crushed,

00:02:28.380 because we've had 15 years of one-party rule,

00:02:30.620 Democrats in charge of everything.

00:02:33.000 The state legislature, all the statewide offices,

00:02:35.740 governors, state attorney general, everything.

00:02:37.900 If you look at the state legislature,

00:02:39.140 it's actually 30 years or so.

00:02:40.920 One-party rule, total disaster.

00:02:43.400 Literally, we have the highest unemployment rate in America.

00:02:47.560 Unemployment.

00:02:48.180 California.

00:02:49.140 Enterprise innovation.

00:02:50.340 Highest unemployment rate.

00:02:51.800 Highest poverty rate.

00:02:53.660 Highest costs for everything that matters.

00:02:56.380 Housing costs, gas prices, electric, water, insurance.

00:03:00.620 Everything.

00:03:02.120 The business climate.

00:03:03.780 Chief Executive Magazine does a survey every year.

00:03:06.780 Best and worst states to do business.

00:03:08.680 For the last 10 years, California is 50th out of 50 states.

00:03:13.580 U.S. News and World Report.

00:03:14.740 I think it was them.

00:03:15.380 Someone did a survey just recently on opportunity,

00:03:17.740 putting together all the measures for that.

00:03:20.360 50th out of 50 states.

00:03:22.460 School results.

00:03:23.080 You know, everything.

00:03:24.160 Homelessness, obviously.

00:03:24.900 And that's the thing, especially for people watching outside of California or even America.

00:03:29.680 There's all the kind of highly visible things that have gone wrong.

00:03:32.920 People can see the homelessness and the crime and the videos of the retail theft.

00:03:38.020 All of that is true.

00:03:39.340 But underlying that, the basics of living here are just a nightmare for regular working people.

00:03:45.800 And so it really feels to me like all that stuff that people say,

00:03:49.900 oh, a Republican can't win.

00:03:51.580 It's such a Democrat state.

00:03:53.260 You're never going to do it.

00:03:54.540 I just think that's not true.

00:03:55.980 People are sick of it.

00:03:57.100 And they know that we need to change.

00:03:59.220 And that's what I'm running on.

00:04:01.360 And so far, so good.

00:04:03.060 I think that it's a long way to go.

00:04:04.420 The primaries next June.

00:04:06.420 General election next November.

00:04:08.140 So this is far from being in the bag.

00:04:11.080 It's the opposite of that.

00:04:12.060 I'm fighting incredibly hard, but the idea that we can't change, that's not true.

00:04:17.320 It really, really is.

00:04:18.720 It's a classic thing.

00:04:19.660 Time for change.

00:04:20.480 And people know that.

00:04:21.380 There's a majority.

00:04:22.020 Last thing I'll say, if you look at those political people, when they're looking at elections,

00:04:26.840 they often say, you know, the indicator of whether you're going to get a change of regime

00:04:31.920 and an incumbent party or candidate is going to lose, is that question,

00:04:35.980 is the state or the place or whatever it is going in the right direction, wrong direction.

00:04:39.000 So the last two years, very firmly, clear majority, wrong direction, California.

00:04:44.420 60%, 65%.

00:04:46.060 So the conditions are there.

00:04:48.400 I actually really think we can pull this off and it'll be a real revolution when we do.

00:04:52.260 Well, we've just come from Austin and it's fascinating talking to people.

00:04:55.740 Austin is like the refugee city for people who've left California.

00:04:59.100 And what people, I think, don't understand is just how much of a paradise California is.

00:05:04.040 It is incredible.

00:05:05.440 Right.

00:05:05.660 The climate is incredible.

00:05:07.340 The nature is incredible.

00:05:08.900 You've got access to amazing food, like you talked about, businesses.

00:05:12.060 It's an incredible place.

00:05:14.080 And to chase so many talented, driven people out is quite an achievement.

00:05:20.200 You know, this house is not ours.

00:05:21.420 It's an Airbnb, right?

00:05:22.380 We looked up how much this house, I was curious how much it costs.

00:05:26.060 Yeah.

00:05:26.640 We looked it up.

00:05:27.380 The price of this house has dropped by 40% in the last 10 years.

00:05:30.440 Yes.

00:05:31.180 Because wealthy people have left.

00:05:33.380 Exactly.

00:05:33.740 This is the thing, like I actually say this, I'm on the road the whole time.

00:05:38.420 It's a political campaign, speeches all the time.

00:05:40.940 And there's a kind of basic thing I say, which is why would anyone leave an amazing place like this?

00:05:47.380 It's because it's so badly run and it's impossible to live here.

00:05:50.900 And they chase you out.

00:05:51.980 I mean, I used to run businesses, started companies here and back in England, including restaurants.

00:05:58.460 I mean, just basic, you know, these businesses that are so precious to, you know, the heart of a community, bars, restaurants, all that.

00:06:07.980 Just, it's a nightmare.

00:06:09.800 It's the end.

00:06:10.840 I just, I mean, there's so many stories.

00:06:12.740 I get them the whole time.

00:06:13.780 Every day you collect because people tell you their stories.

00:06:15.640 There's a woman who tried restaurant owner in wine country near where I live up in the Bay Area near San Francisco.

00:06:21.040 She tried to, well, she did eventually expand.

00:06:25.200 She built an extension to her patio for more guests to increase the number of guests from 35 to 50.

00:06:31.340 You need a permit.

00:06:32.080 You need to go through a process.

00:06:32.900 It took six years and a million dollars.

00:06:37.080 What?

00:06:37.620 In fees, lawyers, inspections.

00:06:40.480 You have to pay for the inspection, environmental report, this, that.

00:06:43.560 It's typical.

00:06:44.780 I mean, there's something called, this is going to sound obscure, but it's a really good example of the insanity.

00:06:53.620 Just in terms of just regular, you know, operating anything in California.

00:06:57.740 You've got something called PAGA, the Private Attorney General Act.

00:07:02.900 Passed in 2004.

00:07:04.640 It outsources the enforcement of state labor law to just regular lawyers, attorneys, instead of the government.

00:07:13.460 It's become a total racket for lawyers, trial attorneys, as they say, who are, by the way, the second biggest donors to Democrat politicians.

00:07:23.280 That's why it's happening.

00:07:24.020 Number one, donors are the unions.

00:07:26.360 That's why the unions run everything.

00:07:28.820 Number two, the lawyers.

00:07:30.560 Private Attorney General Act has turned into an extortion racket for lawyers and the government.

00:07:36.740 So the tiniest infraction, like, that's made up, you know, you spell someone's name wrong on the pay stub.

00:07:43.520 You'll break if you're running a restaurant.

00:07:45.440 And after every five hours, you're supposed to give, you know, have a certain number of minutes of break.

00:07:49.080 One minute late, and you're hit with a lawsuit.

00:07:51.740 And these are costing businesses, they have to settle because you don't want to go through the process of going to trial.

00:07:57.480 60 grand, 70 grand, 100 grand, bigger businesses, millions a year.

00:08:01.960 Just the cost of doing business.

00:08:03.980 Just insane.

00:08:04.740 I mean, there's so much over the years of this one party rule.

00:08:08.940 It's just become this ridiculous, bloated, nanny state bureaucracy, all paid for through higher taxes.

00:08:17.240 They just keep spending money.

00:08:18.480 They doubled the budget of the state of California in the last 10 years.

00:08:22.140 Everything's worse.

00:08:23.380 I mean, nothing works.

00:08:25.740 Just California isn't working.

00:08:27.300 And so you're right.

00:08:27.960 It's a beautiful place.

00:08:29.520 And even, I mean, the famous bits are well-known, but I'm just on the road the whole time.

00:08:33.640 It's huge.

00:08:34.900 And you go up north.

00:08:36.340 Just this weekend, I was up north.

00:08:37.660 It's like, you've got everything here.

00:08:39.880 It's like the sort of west, and there's ranches and cowboys.

00:08:43.200 And you go up to the Sierras and the beautiful mountains, Yosemite, the people know.

00:08:47.740 But it's incredible.

00:08:49.400 Everywhere you go, the coastline is magnificent.

00:08:51.560 It's an amazing place, being completely ruined.

00:08:54.180 I mean, my last book was called Caliphailia, Reversing the Ruin of America's Worst Run State.

00:09:00.620 Look, I'm in agreement with you on that.

00:09:02.640 I remember I came to California the first time in 2002.

00:09:05.800 Summer of 2002, I looked around and I thought, this is a paradise.

00:09:09.120 Yeah.

00:09:09.680 This is a paradise.

00:09:11.160 And then you go to the places that I went for the first time, Santa Barbara, and it's a completely different place.

00:09:18.660 It looks downtrodden.

00:09:19.800 It looks defeated.

00:09:20.760 Yeah, disgusting.

00:09:21.240 I mean, it's disgusting to me, you know, the lack of pride.

00:09:25.480 You know, and it's not just the big cities, but the squalor.

00:09:29.080 That's the right word.

00:09:30.260 You cannot believe it.

00:09:31.820 The filth everywhere, trash everywhere.

00:09:34.760 Of course, homelessness, that's very visible.

00:09:37.000 Everything that goes with that.

00:09:38.260 We literally have plagues of rats now.

00:09:41.100 Like, that's not an exaggeration because the squalor and then actually, it's actually a really good example because they've banned a certain kind of rodenticide.

00:09:51.240 So you go to the Central Valley.

00:09:52.240 I just, when I drove here from there, just to be with you here today, is the greatest agricultural area in the world.

00:09:58.820 The Central Valley of California.

00:10:00.440 That's being ruined because they won't give farmers water because of their climate ideology.

00:10:03.980 They've banned a rodenticide and there's plagues of rats.

00:10:08.940 I mean, it's just a joke.

00:10:10.660 But it's a warning to everyone because this is what happens when the ideology of the left just is allowed to run without constraint.

00:10:20.780 It's a real warning.

00:10:22.120 It's the worst run state in America.

00:10:24.060 And you've got Gavin Newsom, the governor, sort of running around lecturing everyone on social justice and compassion and cruelty or whatever.

00:10:30.540 Meanwhile, we have the highest poverty rate, as I said.

00:10:32.640 One in three Californians can't afford to meet their basic needs.

00:10:35.820 Food, shelter, health care.

00:10:36.640 I mean, it's a total failure.

00:10:39.160 And it's a really good indication that once you go down that road of today's leftism, this is where it leads.

00:10:45.980 It's a disaster.

00:10:46.960 But also as well, look, it's a truism, but let's be honest about it.

00:10:51.760 You get the politicians you deserve.

00:10:53.600 When we were talking about the excesses of wokeism and people going completely off the deep end, California was a literal punchline to many comedians' jokes.

00:11:02.780 And for good reason.

00:11:03.720 Yes.

00:11:04.260 Are you saying you mean people voted for this crap?

00:11:06.600 Yes.

00:11:07.620 Yes.

00:11:08.220 And I think that because...

00:11:10.160 Everyone's saying, well, how's it been allowed to happen?

00:11:12.600 Well, partly because it is so nice here.

00:11:14.800 So you can put up with a lot.

00:11:16.180 I mean, some people, you know, business people say, well, it's the California tax.

00:11:21.200 It's the weather.

00:11:21.760 You know, like you put up with all this crap to be here because it is so amazing.

00:11:26.020 But I think it's got to the point.

00:11:27.600 Well, you know, my plan is that it's got to the point where that is it.

00:11:31.480 No more.

00:11:32.000 We are going to change because we can't take it anymore.

00:11:35.360 And actually, I just want to come back to the economic thing because you've got this situation where, again, the governor, Gavin Newsom, runs around saying, well, everything must be great because we're the fourth biggest economy in the world.

00:11:46.180 And statistically, that's true.

00:11:49.280 It's a big economy.

00:11:51.160 Fourth biggest in the world.

00:11:52.380 Great.

00:11:52.640 But beneath that big number, which is driven by a lot of really, especially in the Bay Area, these big tech companies that are just making huge amounts of money but actually don't employ very many people.

00:12:05.540 At the same time, yeah, fourth biggest economy in the world but highest unemployment in America, highest poverty rate in America.

00:12:11.520 So that is not a well-balanced, healthy economy.

00:12:14.700 And I think that's what is really, you know, coming home to roost now for them, which is that the people that they claim to speak for, you know, regular working people, particularly Latinos, especially now the majority in California, have just been completely screwed by this stuff.

00:12:27.880 And that dream of, you know, the California dream and, you know, a good job where you make enough to raise your family in a home of your own, it's all gone.

00:12:35.840 I mean, it's just, and I think people are getting sick of it and they just need a positive alternative.

00:12:41.400 That's what I'm trying to provide.

00:12:42.440 And that's the question really is, I mean, you talk about the excesses of this kind of new version of the left and when it's taken to its logical conclusion with no challenge, no pullback, no contest of the ideas, no feedback from reality.

00:12:57.380 Yes.

00:12:58.600 And you're describing England the way that it is today.

00:13:01.520 Everything you're talking about, business can't run, you know, homeless people, crime, all of these things, right?

00:13:07.220 But the question is, I think, for many Western countries now and for California, including, is how do you get back from how far you've gone?

00:13:16.820 Yeah.

00:13:17.060 When you've got homeless people everywhere, drug addicted people everywhere, the regulations that you've talked about, like it's in a really bad way.

00:13:26.280 Yes.

00:13:26.560 How do you, how do you, if you, if you are elected, if you are successful, how are you going to fix all that?

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00:15:12.280 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:15:18.100 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:15:26.880 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

00:15:31.460 The Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:15:34.260 April 28th through June 7th, 2026.

00:15:37.280 The Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:15:39.180 Get tickets at murvish.com.

00:15:41.020 For those who are interested in, you know, how the government, you know, works here, it's just a mirror of what you get.

00:15:49.780 At the national level, you've got the executive branch run by the governor, and you've got the legislature, like Congress.

00:15:55.360 And the legislature is churning out all this crap.

00:15:59.120 I mean, all the time.

00:16:00.960 And they have a super majority, the Democrats.

00:16:03.520 We do have a two-thirds majority, which, by the way, is not legitimate.

00:16:06.620 It's the product of gerrymandered maps.

00:16:08.440 Let's not get into that.

00:16:09.620 Whatever, it exists.

00:16:10.840 That means they can pass anything they want without any kind of input from Republicans.

00:16:14.860 And they're just passing a ton of, I mean, apart from anything else, it's just the amount of it.

00:16:20.680 Like, I just did an event in Sacramento, the state capitol, just highlighting the sheer amount of legislation.

00:16:27.880 Like, this year, this calendar year, the session, they passed 1,117 bills.

00:16:35.140 We stacked them up.

00:16:36.000 We printed them out just to see.

00:16:37.400 I mean, I know I'm short.

00:16:38.420 It was literally double my height, okay?

00:16:41.420 And every year, more and more crap pushed by lobbyists and all the special interests, all that stuff.

00:16:48.680 So you can't really do anything about that as governor.

00:16:50.760 You can't just unwrite laws.

00:16:52.480 But what you can do is deal with the bureaucratic aspect of that.

00:16:57.580 You run the government.

00:16:59.220 And there's a number of things.

00:17:00.200 So let's just take the regulations.

00:17:02.700 I'll give you a really couple of specific examples.

00:17:04.820 So one of the things that's most insane about this current ideology, and actually,

00:17:10.540 if you look at, like, what's causing the most damage, if you have to single one thing out,

00:17:15.560 it's the climate extremism, actually.

00:17:18.080 When you look at, like, the real driver of the cost of everything being so high, including

00:17:24.460 housing, is this climate, I call it climate elitism, because the people who are paying

00:17:29.060 the price for it are working-class Californians.

00:17:31.720 And that, a ton of that, is not legislated specifically.

00:17:36.740 It's the way it's implemented by these endless agencies.

00:17:40.160 We've got 200-plus state agencies, like CARB, the California Air Resources Board, that are

00:17:45.760 just churning out these new rules and everything from trucks.

00:17:49.740 And, you know, they have this thing called VMT, vehicle miles traveled.

00:17:53.420 That gets in the way of building anything, because if you want to build anything, you have to do

00:17:57.480 a calculation of vehicle.

00:17:58.860 How many vehicle miles traveled will be the result of you building a new housing development?

00:18:04.680 Or a guy who runs a lovely, just sweet, exactly the kind of business I love, right?

00:18:08.980 It was an artisan gin distiller in the central coast of California.

00:18:13.340 Beautiful, young entrepreneur.

00:18:15.160 You know, it's a lovely business.

00:18:16.120 He was telling me that he's doing really well, and he wanted to build a second still, like

00:18:22.200 whatever, you know, I think that's the right.

00:18:24.200 And they, you had to go through all the crap, and it was denied because of VMT, vehicle miles

00:18:30.720 traveled, because it would increase vehicle miles traveled.

00:18:35.120 Yes, that's called growth.

00:18:37.260 That's called progress, like more development, more growth.

00:18:41.340 And they don't want that.

00:18:42.940 But that stuff is coming out of the bureaucracy.

00:18:45.260 So what, as governor, you can do, you appoint thousands of people to hundreds of these agencies.

00:18:51.880 Another example is, or is in the same sort of area, oil and gas.

00:18:55.760 So we have abundant oil reserves in California.

00:18:59.400 I mean, you know, not just kind of behind us in Kern County, 70 miles or so.

00:19:06.340 And I mean, not as big as some of the states, but I think we have the fifth biggest in America.

00:19:11.680 We could meet, we used to produce most of the oil and gas we use in California from within

00:19:16.620 California.

00:19:17.460 Because of their war on fossil fuels, the climate warriors are shutting it down.

00:19:22.380 So we now are in a ludicrous situation.

00:19:25.080 We're using about the same as we ever did.

00:19:27.140 But instead of producing it in Kern County near Bakersfield, and it coming in a nice clean

00:19:31.480 pipeline to the refineries here in LA and up on the coast in the Bay Area, we're now shipping

00:19:37.500 it in on giant super tankers, the most polluting form of transportation on the planet.

00:19:42.360 They run on bunker fuel, which is like the most dirty, spewing out carbon emissions.

00:19:47.580 Our number one supplier of oil now, it used to be California, used to be from here, is

00:19:51.260 Iraq, where they produce it in a terrible, dirty way, terrible human rights record.

00:19:57.900 But that's what we're now doing.

00:20:00.060 All of, and also our gas prices, we have abundant oil reserves, now higher, the highest in the

00:20:05.180 country, higher than Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

00:20:09.120 That's just insane, right?

00:20:11.320 And again, I want to come back to the, you know, the man of the people point.

00:20:15.040 But yes, because the first pledge I made in the election campaign, I mean, I've been working

00:20:20.020 all this stuff for years, but as a candidate, it was $3 gas, which to some people around

00:20:25.880 the, I mean, may not mean much if you're not watching in California, but like we have, it's

00:20:30.660 $5 and it's heading up to $6 and $7 because refineries are closing because of all of this.

00:20:35.580 And that really hurts regular working people who are driving two, three, four hours a day

00:20:43.200 to get to and from work because in their cars and trucks, that's like $100 or so a month.

00:20:50.020 That you save with $3 gas.

00:20:52.040 How will I get that done?

00:20:53.640 Actually, you put people into these agencies, the Air Resources Board, or to be very precise

00:20:58.980 in terms of oil and gas production, CalGEM, Geologic and Energy Management.

00:21:04.240 And the way they're shutting down the California oil and gas industry is not, there's no legislation

00:21:08.880 that did that.

00:21:09.500 It's the bureaucrats in that agency who are refusing to issue permits to maintain existing

00:21:16.200 wells, to expand them, to drill new wells in existing oil fields.

00:21:20.700 All of that can change almost overnight.

00:21:23.000 So I can't do everything.

00:21:24.420 But if you understand how the government works and you really have a detailed plan, a little

00:21:29.780 bit like Trump this time around compared to the first Trump administration.

00:21:34.300 This time, they were really well prepared and they kind of knew what they wanted to do,

00:21:37.680 the people they wanted to put in, the executive orders, all of that.

00:21:40.680 So not on everything, but on a lot of these things, you can make a big difference.

00:21:44.800 I'll just quickly do homelessness because you asked about that.

00:21:47.260 So the thing about homelessness is that it's totally avoided.

00:21:51.800 It should never have happened.

00:21:53.480 It's completely avoidable.

00:21:54.980 And the way I always put it is we would never allow someone we love to live like that.

00:21:59.320 So why do we tolerate this for people we don't know?

00:22:03.460 And the fact about homelessness is that it's illegal.

00:22:07.260 It's illegal to sleep on the streets.

00:22:09.980 These homeless encampments are illegal.

00:22:11.600 They've always been illegal.

00:22:13.160 And all these cities and county government, local government in California, they just sort

00:22:17.560 of put up with it because there was a court case, I don't know, years ago called the Boise

00:22:22.840 ruling.

00:22:23.580 They said, well, you can't move people off the streets unless you have adequate shelter available.

00:22:27.840 And they hid behind that and said, well, and define shelter as what they call permanent

00:22:32.160 supportive housing, which is an apartment unit that costs like $700,000 or going higher.

00:22:37.720 That's not what that meant at all.

00:22:39.040 They could have put people off the streets, taken them off the streets, put them in shelter,

00:22:42.300 got them into treatment.

00:22:43.280 But the law says you can't require sobriety or abstinence.

00:22:47.860 From, I mean, 80 plus percent of people who are homeless have drug or alcohol addiction

00:22:51.680 or mental health problems.

00:22:52.600 So it's just this mess that they haven't dealt with.

00:22:55.320 And the state, as governor, you have state law enforcement resources.

00:22:59.020 You have a police force you can use.

00:23:01.500 And so I say very clearly, if they won't enforce the law, I will.

00:23:05.580 And I'll provide shelter and treatment and get people into what there's so many great

00:23:12.040 organizations that are just ready to do that.

00:23:14.380 But they've got this attitude, this mindset of what they call compassion, which is you

00:23:20.980 can't force people to do something.

00:23:23.180 And the result is this squalor and danger.

00:23:26.360 And parents, you know, they walk their kids to school and they're literally stepping over

00:23:29.460 dead people who've OD'd from fentanyl.

00:23:32.760 I mean, this is just unbelievable.

00:23:33.840 To me, one of the major issues that California lost its mind was crime.

00:23:40.840 It effectively seemed to legalize crime.

00:23:44.700 And I remember watching this going, this is completely not, is it only bonkers?

00:23:50.140 It's completely unsustainable.

00:23:51.980 You've just, the Democrat government effectively legalized shoplifting.

00:23:56.680 I mean, if I'm talking out of my proverbial, please correct me.

00:24:00.060 Okay, do you want me to, I'll get into it, but it's a, it's a, it's a terrible, sorry story.

00:24:05.920 It's what we do at Trigonometry.

00:24:07.180 I know, I'll get into it.

00:24:08.160 So, okay, it actually goes back to something that I really can do something about as governor.

00:24:16.280 So it's worth really understanding the sort of detail here.

00:24:19.080 So it goes back to prison overcrowding.

00:24:21.860 And there was a Supreme Court ruling, hold on, this is like in the early 2010s, I can't remember

00:24:29.160 exactly when, that said, California jails, prisons, state prisons are overcrowded.

00:24:34.020 It's inhumane.

00:24:34.700 You've got to do something about it.

00:24:35.920 So instead of doing what I think most sensible people say, right, well, let's build some more.

00:24:40.940 So we have room for the criminals that we need to put it.

00:24:43.360 Say, oh no, well, let's let everyone out.

00:24:45.080 And that's the way that you deal with it.

00:24:48.540 So there was this whole process for a few years where the goal, and it's a big part of

00:24:55.100 what they call criminal justice reform, was decarceration, decarceration, taking people

00:25:02.140 out of jail.

00:25:03.100 And as a part of that, there was a whole combination of things.

00:25:08.120 And the, and the, and the big one that related to, um, uh, the point you make about shoplifting

00:25:14.060 was a ballot initiative in 2014 called Proposition 47.

00:25:19.300 And that was the one that famously is associated with Kamala Harris because she was state attorney

00:25:24.220 general.

00:25:24.820 But to be accurate and fair, it wasn't her thing.

00:25:28.500 It was a ballot initiative that was put together by, you know, leftist activists supported by

00:25:33.800 the then governor, Jerry Brown, very strongly supported.

00:25:36.480 And she said she was neutral, but actually as attorney general, she wasn't at all.

00:25:41.760 The way the language was written on the ballot initiative was basically selling.

00:25:45.680 It was literally called something insane, like not the name of it, but the description.

00:25:49.060 And then all the marketing was the safe neighborhoods and schools act.

00:25:52.880 And that's where you got this thing, which is up to $950 a day.

00:25:57.980 You could steal per day and it would just be a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket, basically,

00:26:06.200 not a felony.

00:26:07.740 So no jail time.

00:26:08.660 The goal was to stop people going to prison.

00:26:11.220 That was the purpose of all of that.

00:26:13.440 And then behind that was not just the original impetus, which was the Supreme Court ruling

00:26:17.700 on overcrowding, but also the philosophy, the ideology, which is prison is bad because

00:26:22.060 it's racist.

00:26:22.720 So it goes back to the race woke thing because, and you hear people talk like that today still,

00:26:29.340 right?

00:26:29.580 That we should shut all the prisons because it's racist.

00:26:32.640 Why?

00:26:32.780 Because there are disproportionate numbers of black people in prison, in jail, and especially

00:26:41.340 young black men.

00:26:43.220 And as the woke ideology states, any racial disparity is always the product of racism.

00:26:51.120 Hence, the prisons are racist, so we have to shut the prisons.

00:26:55.940 So you've had this, but that's the first thing that happened, which was Prop 47.

00:27:00.280 And that had the legalized shoplifting effectively.

00:27:02.760 And a bunch of other stuff as well.

00:27:03.980 But that was the main one.

00:27:04.840 And of course, what does that do?

00:27:06.020 All the people that need to steal to feel their drug habit, and then you get this massive

00:27:10.640 explosion of retail theft and car break-ins and car theft, all of that stuff just exploded.

00:27:16.000 And there's nothing you could do because they said all you get is a, you know, just a sort

00:27:21.480 of nothing of a sentence.

00:27:22.880 It's basically legalized.

00:27:24.780 And there were a whole bunch of other things.

00:27:26.260 There's another one, in a way, even more absurdly egregious, which was less discussed,

00:27:33.700 which is Prop 57, which is two years later.

00:27:37.320 And this one, Kamala Harris, I would argue, is more directly responsible for.

00:27:42.980 And that one, again, driven by the desire to push this decarceration agenda, downgraded

00:27:50.960 a whole bunch of other crimes so that they wouldn't get automatic prison time.

00:27:55.720 And they claimed it was only, it was non-violent offenses.

00:28:01.380 They weren't touching violent offenses.

00:28:03.000 But if you look at the list of crimes that they downgraded that could no longer qualify

00:28:08.180 for automatic prison time, literally one of them is domestic violence.

00:28:12.800 Like, it's in the name of the thing.

00:28:14.800 But they said it was non-violent.

00:28:15.820 So domestic violence, the rape of an unconscious woman, now downgraded.

00:28:22.660 Trafficking a child for sex.

00:28:24.460 A whole bunch of child sex crimes.

00:28:27.520 So that's what happened.

00:28:29.140 And it's just gone on and on, and it was driven by this ideology of, we can't have

00:28:36.060 anyone in jail because jail's a racist.

00:28:37.700 So when they said the rape of an unconscious woman, do they mean that?

00:28:41.360 So effectively, somebody who puts a drug in a woman's drink, she becomes unconscious,

00:28:46.920 she then goes on and rapes her.

00:28:48.100 That's not a jail sentence.

00:28:49.620 Correct.

00:28:50.000 Not automatic.

00:28:51.440 Correct.

00:28:52.980 I know, I know.

00:28:54.060 And this is Kamala Harris pushed this as state attorney general.

00:28:57.140 That she's more responsible for that than, I mean, in the whole sort of national conversation,

00:29:04.920 and actually that first one I mentioned, the $950 a day, that was mostly reversed last year

00:29:11.800 in an initiative that was passed called Proposite, I'm sorry about all these numbers, Prop 36.

00:29:16.640 That kind of reversed most of that.

00:29:18.040 But the other stuff in Prop 57, the downgrading all these unspeakable crimes that they wouldn't,

00:29:25.920 you could still get a jail sentence, but not automatic, was the Republicans in the state

00:29:31.900 legislature have been battling for years, literally for years, to pick them off one by

00:29:37.500 one, to try and reinstate them.

00:29:39.700 And the definition is serious and violent offence.

00:29:44.180 It's a definition in the legal thing that means that if it's in that category, if it's

00:29:48.520 called a serious and violent crime, it automatically gets jail time.

00:29:52.460 And you've literally, if you follow what goes on in the state legislature, the last two or

00:29:56.060 three years, friends of mine in the state legislature, a woman called Shannon Grove, particularly

00:30:00.080 who's been strong on this, has been, you know, year by year, trying to get child sex trafficking

00:30:07.220 upgraded to a serious and violent crime.

00:30:11.460 And it was blocked by the Democrats, time after time.

00:30:16.360 One year, it completely failed, she had to come back the next year.

00:30:20.200 It's insane.

00:30:21.380 It is.

00:30:22.220 And only in the end, and again it happened, and there's about two or three of these examples,

00:30:27.580 and he, and I can't remember the exact details, but variants of unspeakable, disgust, the worst

00:30:35.060 crimes involving children and sex, sex with a minor, you know, selling a child for sex.

00:30:42.440 And they battled to actually turn, you know, give them the appropriate sentence.

00:30:49.100 And it was only finally that Gavin Newsom, as the governor, was so embarrassed, he's running

00:30:53.200 for president.

00:30:53.780 I mean, just this year, had to step in.

00:30:55.540 They voted it down.

00:30:57.540 She was telling, Shannon was telling me stories about she would have victims, victims in the,

00:31:03.020 to the committees in the state legislature to give evidence, victims of child sex trafficking.

00:31:09.800 And they wouldn't let them speak because they didn't want to hear it because they're so,

00:31:14.440 and I think it really, actually, I'm really glad we got into this because to me, probably

00:31:18.480 more than anything else, it just really captures the extent to which ideology has just taken

00:31:25.420 over, ideology over all else.

00:31:29.080 And it's this ideology of decarceration, criminal justice reform, prison is bad, can't send anyone

00:31:35.120 to jail at all for anything.

00:31:37.220 It's crazy.

00:31:37.980 And one of the other things I wanted to ask you about is, you mentioned President Trump.

00:31:43.540 Obviously, in his second term, he is having a real go at dealing with illegal immigration.

00:31:48.780 Yeah.

00:31:49.340 And the bulk of that seems perfectly normal and reasonable and good and right.

00:31:54.200 But there are some excesses and people are pointing out, and there were, of course,

00:31:58.660 protests here in LA.

00:32:00.460 Yeah.

00:32:00.640 Where do you come down on the way that the border and deportations and illegal immigrations

00:32:06.600 are being handled?

00:32:07.900 Well, let's just talk about the issue for a start.

00:32:10.860 I mean, you've got, I mean, I hear this story the whole time, and I want to put a few things

00:32:15.740 together.

00:32:17.260 Going back to what I was saying earlier, hi, it's unemployment rate, poverty rate, all of

00:32:20.600 this.

00:32:21.240 So you've got, there's a story that is told, which is, we need illegal immigration because

00:32:28.100 we have a labor shortage, and who's going to do these jobs?

00:32:31.580 And that's particularly strong in California, some of the industries that, you know, like

00:32:35.160 agriculture and construction and all of this.

00:32:39.140 Well, I mean, all the time I come across, I was at the California State Fair in Sacramento,

00:32:45.720 went up to a couple, as I do, just saying, hi, I'm Steve.

00:32:48.300 I've got into a conversation, and it was a family, it was the mother and a couple with

00:32:53.520 their three children.

00:32:54.220 And we just started chatting, and I said, what do you do?

00:32:58.280 He said, well, I work construction.

00:32:59.600 Oh, I used to work construction.

00:33:01.900 Why do you say that?

00:33:02.780 Well, I can't get a job anymore.

00:33:04.560 Why not?

00:33:05.260 Well, they don't want to employ people like me.

00:33:07.700 And he didn't want to say it, and I said, what do you mean?

00:33:09.900 He said, local people.

00:33:11.880 And what he meant by that, and we got into it, was, and the mother chimed in as well,

00:33:16.200 and how you can't get a job, he's now living with his mother, humiliated, right?

00:33:20.540 He's a man, trying to provide for his family, he's now ended up living with his mother.

00:33:24.840 And the point they made was, because they want to hire illegal immigrants, because it's

00:33:31.100 cheaper, they don't have to pay the right level.

00:33:34.680 And then a really big one, which isn't talked about enough, and the mother chimed in with

00:33:39.040 this.

00:33:39.180 There's a video, by the way.

00:33:39.920 You can watch the video.

00:33:41.220 People can Google it on X, Steve Hilton, State Fair, you'll see the conversation.

00:33:45.680 Um, and the mother said, health and health care, they won't pay, they're in to pay health

00:33:52.120 care for illegal immigrants, which is a big cost for an employer.

00:33:56.060 And then at that moment, you just see it all come together, because you've got employers

00:34:01.040 who are, it's basically a subsidy to employers, this whole thing.

00:34:04.900 This is a scam, because while all that is going on, and Gavin Newsom has been first introduced

00:34:11.540 it and has increased it, guess who does pay the health care for illegal immigrants?

00:34:15.680 The taxpayer, because like, he's giving free health care to illegal immigrants.

00:34:19.660 Other states don't do that.

00:34:21.940 And it's a big amount of money.

00:34:23.900 It's like this budget year, he just increased it from, I think, $9.4 billion to $12.1 billion,

00:34:29.620 just for illegal immigrant health care.

00:34:32.500 Just for that.

00:34:34.320 And so the whole system is broken.

00:34:37.380 Because, and then another thing, and you look at the welfare payments as well, and this

00:34:41.600 idea that we don't have enough workers, and we have to import the workers, and that's

00:34:46.900 why it's ridiculous.

00:34:48.220 Because part of the argument about the immigration enforcement, okay, you get the high-profile

00:34:52.820 incidents, but there's this thing, people say, well, who's going to do the jobs if you

00:34:58.340 do this?

00:34:59.420 Well, I was at a dairy in Hilmar, in the top part of the Central Valley.

00:35:07.480 It was the biggest cheese factory in the world.

00:35:09.600 So one of the things I love about California, everywhere you go, it's like the biggest this

00:35:13.360 in the world, or the most, well, biggest cheese factory in the world.

00:35:16.180 I was talking to some of the guys who work on the dairy, and they don't make a ton of

00:35:19.360 money.

00:35:19.600 They make like 45, 50 grand.

00:35:21.760 And they were saying, work full-time in the dairy.

00:35:24.600 And they were saying their girlfriends make more money from welfare.

00:35:28.460 So you've got this crazy system going on, where people don't work, and you have people

00:35:32.400 who do want to work who can't, because of the legal immigration.

00:35:34.400 So it's a mess.

00:35:36.020 And the people who are losing out from all this are regular working-class people.

00:35:40.620 And by the way, this argument isn't true.

00:35:42.460 Like, in the market economy, this is something Eric Weinstein mentioned in a private conversation

00:35:47.940 we had.

00:35:48.600 It's an obvious fact.

00:35:50.120 In a market economy, other than some very niche areas, you can't have labor shortages

00:35:56.420 that you have to fill with illegal immigration, because all you have to do is raise the price

00:35:59.920 to a normal wage.

00:36:01.340 And then local people, quote-unquote, are going to work.

00:36:04.900 And also reduce the ability to live on...

00:36:07.300 I mean, here's another one.

00:36:08.680 I mean, I can't keep track of it all.

00:36:11.680 It was someone who runs a hotel, owns a hotel, I think maybe two, near Sacramento.

00:36:16.660 He'd hired someone from Afghanistan who was actually brought in by the U.S. government.

00:36:23.140 And the whole story was amazing.

00:36:26.580 I mean, he was...

00:36:27.760 This Afghan guy was...

00:36:30.960 He hired him to drive the shuttle bus to take guests to him.

00:36:34.540 It was an airport hotel.

00:36:35.700 And he said the guy from Afghanistan was telling him about his experience.

00:36:43.420 He'd been flown from Afghanistan by the U.S. government, first to Virginia, then moved to

00:36:46.800 Sacramento, given a house.

00:36:48.020 They stocked his fridge.

00:36:52.320 He didn't know which bit of the government.

00:36:55.460 And the guy was told, we're going to send you groceries by delivery, because you shouldn't

00:37:02.060 go to the grocery store, because Americans are racist, and you shouldn't go shopping.

00:37:05.560 Like, imagine that, the government saying.

00:37:07.640 Anyway, he's there, he's working as the shuttle driver.

00:37:10.520 He says to the guy, after two days, can I go, can you pay me cash?

00:37:16.740 And he said, why do you want to do that?

00:37:18.080 He said, well, if I'm on payroll, then I lose my benefits, my welfare benefits.

00:37:23.640 How much is that?

00:37:25.660 $7,000 a month.

00:37:27.680 What?

00:37:28.700 $84,000 a year?

00:37:29.760 Yes.

00:37:30.880 That's what he said.

00:37:31.720 So, like, when you ask, so it's just bullsh**, this whole thing.

00:37:36.480 The whole thing is bullsh**.

00:37:38.020 So, it needs fiction, but my question to you was about the way it is being fixed.

00:37:42.660 Okay.

00:37:43.120 So, first of all, you can't have this conversation without just pointing out the extraordinary

00:37:47.380 success of the border thing, like closing the border.

00:37:51.380 It's just an incredible example of when people say government doesn't work, like incredible

00:37:56.440 government action that just basically stopped, you know, this flow of illegal immigration

00:38:01.240 basically stopped to zero, just with firm action that everyone said couldn't be done

00:38:06.520 for decades, and it's just done, just because there's someone who's really committed to doing

00:38:11.120 it and has a team that was well prepared and did it.

00:38:13.680 So, that's good news.

00:38:15.120 Then you've got the problem of millions of people here, and no one has an idea how many

00:38:19.620 people who are here illegally, and the whole argument is from the administration, which

00:38:27.960 is the worst go first, right?

00:38:30.660 We target criminals who are, of course, every illegal immigrant is a criminal in one sense

00:38:35.820 because they've broken the law by being here illegally, but on top of that, another

00:38:38.980 crime.

00:38:40.000 And Tom Homan, who runs the border side, he's a friend of mine, I've known him for years,

00:38:44.540 and he points, he makes this argument, which is that the reason that we have these

00:38:49.560 kind of tough confrontations and the kind of pictures and the video that cause people

00:38:55.580 to be upset and sometimes have provoked protests and violent clashes, whatever, is entirely

00:39:02.380 because we don't get cooperation from the local and state government where we're trying

00:39:08.840 to find people.

00:39:10.460 And that is, and here in California, it's called, it's a sanctuary state.

00:39:14.040 It was a law that was passed in 2017, SB 54, that said you can't cooperate with federal

00:39:19.820 law, federal immigration enforcement.

00:39:22.280 So literally, you have someone in jail for some, in custody in some sense in the system

00:39:28.300 in California who's an illegal immigrant and has committed a violent crime or any kind of

00:39:32.500 crime.

00:39:32.720 And they actively refuse to tell ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that that person's

00:39:42.540 there.

00:39:42.740 So they could just hand them over and say, here's this person.

00:39:46.700 So that means that they have to go into the community to find them where they're hiding

00:39:51.040 out after they've been released or whatever.

00:39:53.060 And that is what causes both the confrontation, but also non-criminal illegal immigrants to

00:40:03.120 be swept up in the whole process.

00:40:05.320 So their argument is, if we had proper cooperation, we wouldn't need any of this.

00:40:11.320 That's the argument.

00:40:12.200 I mean, look, I don't know.

00:40:13.340 I mean, I actually, it's a federal issue, federal immigration.

00:40:18.320 So it's not something that I spend too much time on, other than to say, as governor, I

00:40:24.320 would, I think it's important to cooperate.

00:40:26.500 It's federal, it's the, it's the law.

00:40:28.640 Congress passed the law.

00:40:30.020 They're just enforcing the law.

00:40:31.560 I think there's, you know, this, this idea that we can just pick and choose just on a

00:40:36.780 mass scale.

00:40:37.340 Well, we're just not going to, we're just going to ignore that.

00:40:40.340 I guess the counter argument might be, I mean, we had Sam Harris on the show recently,

00:40:43.640 and he talked about this in very different terms to you, in terms of, I say,

00:40:48.200 you're not identifying themselves, grabbing some guy off the street, you know, getting

00:40:53.260 physical, all of this stuff.

00:40:56.200 And then he also talked about the fact that there are people whose kids are American citizens,

00:41:00.580 for example.

00:41:01.260 These people are being, and look, voters will have different views on that.

00:41:05.640 I'm just curious to know what your views are.

00:41:07.160 But how many?

00:41:08.620 A small number, I imagine.

00:41:09.740 Like, I don't know, five, six, national, it's a tiny number.

00:41:12.620 Yeah.

00:41:12.860 I mean, nationally, I think the total number of American citizens or permanent residents

00:41:19.820 that have been, according to the data, is about 170.

00:41:24.660 It's a country of like 300 million or whatever, you know, like this is, and so, again, that

00:41:30.220 could, even that tiny number could be avoided if you had proper cooperation.

00:41:33.660 And the people you're talking about are criminal, you know, I mean, just look at the crimes that

00:41:38.820 they've committed.

00:41:39.360 These are sex offenders.

00:41:41.100 This is what's amazing to me.

00:41:42.500 You have people on the left who are now literally taking the side of rapists and wife, like that

00:41:47.100 famous guy.

00:41:48.340 What's his name?

00:41:48.920 Garcia, Diego, whatever guy.

00:41:50.480 He became a sort of, you know, national case.

00:41:52.620 I can't remember the name.

00:41:53.460 It's a wife beater.

00:41:54.660 Domestic violence.

00:41:55.580 And he's the hero.

00:41:56.380 You have Democrat, U.S. senators flying down to wherever it was to sort of hang out with him.

00:42:02.060 Because they're on the side of the domestic violence perpetrators.

00:42:08.540 It's just incredible.

00:42:09.740 Why?

00:42:10.200 Because they want to stick it to Trump.

00:42:12.040 How does that make, I mean, that's what's ridiculous about this.

00:42:14.740 And it could all be avoided if we just had a bit of common sense and cooperation.

00:42:20.960 And they just don't want to do that.

00:42:23.300 And even within the sanctuary state law in California, they keep saying you have these,

00:42:27.020 you know, local leadership and sheriffs and whatever saying we can't cooperate because

00:42:33.260 it's the law.

00:42:35.080 I've read the law.

00:42:36.160 Even within the law that was passed in California, there's a long list of crimes where if the

00:42:41.300 illegal immigrant is involved in one of these crimes, over 200, ranging from, you know,

00:42:46.660 what you'd expect, an incredibly serious murder and whatever, to actually, you know,

00:42:50.800 drug possession, illegal firearm possession.

00:42:53.100 The word is in the bill, discretion.

00:42:57.140 There's discretion to cooperate.

00:42:58.640 If only they did that, so much of this could be avoided.

00:43:01.540 You wouldn't need to do it that way.

00:43:03.080 And you talk about the masks.

00:43:04.640 Why do they wear masks?

00:43:05.960 Because of the doxing.

00:43:07.860 These are people with families.

00:43:09.560 Now, they're literally, they've been aggressive.

00:43:11.140 You have very well financed, you know, illegal immigration groups that are actively targeting

00:43:19.700 law enforcement, who are doing the job that, they're enforcing the law that Congress passed.

00:43:26.160 And they're being doxed so that they're, and you have many stories of their families being

00:43:34.780 threatened.

00:43:35.520 And so that's why they wear masks.

00:43:38.460 Steve.

00:43:38.940 By the way, these people who are now passing laws, as they did in California, it is a little

00:43:42.660 bit of an irony that, you know, after forcing us pointlessly to wear masks for these years,

00:43:47.900 they literally now passed the law saying you're banning mask wearing.

00:43:51.580 Well, I mean, nobody expects that side of the political spectrum to be entirely logical.

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00:45:09.600 But more importantly, it seems that you're going to have to spend a lot of money, aren't you,

00:45:13.900 in order to correct some of the problems that this state is facing.

00:45:17.240 If you think about, I look at the number of mentally ill people on the streets of this city.

00:45:22.820 There is no way, in any shape or form, they should be on the streets.

00:45:27.220 And you can say they've got drug addictions, and I'm sure many of them do.

00:45:30.260 But they're also profoundly mentally ill.

00:45:32.100 We're talking schizophrenia or other types.

00:45:34.760 So they're going to need to be housed somewhere.

00:45:37.820 And many of them, they can't afford to pay.

00:45:40.180 So it's the state that's going to have to pay.

00:45:42.200 You're looking at, you've already spoken about the fact that penitentiaries will fall to overflowing.

00:45:47.580 We're going to need to build more prisons here.

00:45:49.180 That's part of my plan.

00:45:50.380 Yeah.

00:45:50.560 So let's talk about that, because that's also going to cost money, if we're going to be honest.

00:45:53.960 Yeah, but look at what they're spending money on.

00:45:55.420 I mean, OK, they've doubled the budget of California in the last 10 years.

00:45:59.400 It's gone from $160 billion to just over $320 billion.

00:46:02.620 OK, where's that money going?

00:46:03.660 Let's just narrowly look at the homeless issue.

00:46:07.660 So this is, and the mental health costs associated with that.

00:46:11.280 So their solution, I touched on it earlier, there's this thing they call permanent supportive housing.

00:46:18.440 So they build apartment units for homeless people.

00:46:21.000 Because it's the government, they layer on everything that you'd expect.

00:46:26.440 So it's just unbelievable when you actually dig into it, how it's like Britain in the 1970s.

00:46:34.520 The unions run this state.

00:46:37.960 So you have massive, you know, crony deals with the unions.

00:46:42.160 So these apartment units, I mentioned $700,000 earlier, in the San Francisco Bay Area,

00:46:49.080 now they're costing a million dollars each.

00:46:52.160 Now, you know, to build, that money is from the same pot, right?

00:46:58.040 I've got a friend who builds apartments using this new technology, mass timber, where you put timber.

00:47:04.580 It's a really amazing new building material, and it's very innovative, and it's whatever.

00:47:08.380 Building apartments, without all the bullshit regulations, it's a quarter of the price.

00:47:14.100 It costs four or five times as much to build anything in California as in neighboring states.

00:47:19.060 So that's where the budget's going.

00:47:22.680 So you look at the money.

00:47:24.040 There was an audit done not that long ago, $24 billion on homelessness, with no discernible impact.

00:47:29.280 The problem just got worse.

00:47:30.720 So the money is, it's not like we need to spend more money.

00:47:33.540 We need to cut the budget of California, not spend more money.

00:47:37.200 So there's two things I want to do.

00:47:38.680 It's like reduce the budget, because we've got to cut taxes.

00:47:41.880 That's the other thing.

00:47:42.580 We have the highest taxes in the country for the worst outcomes.

00:47:45.880 We've got to cut taxes for a start, and then we've got to spend the money where it needs

00:47:51.960 to be, specifically on mental health.

00:47:53.800 Let's look at that.

00:47:54.800 So exactly as you say, a lot of the people are low income.

00:47:58.440 So when you talk about mental health care, it's part of the health care system, and for

00:48:02.840 low income people, that means it's Medicaid, which is Medi-Cal in California, and that

00:48:07.780 is federally reimbursed.

00:48:09.940 It's very connected to the federal health care system.

00:48:13.080 Most of the money spent on that in California is actually federal money.

00:48:16.920 And there's a massive scam that I don't even want to get into where, it's classic California.

00:48:22.100 They've got this medical provider tax that they've brought in, which increases the cost

00:48:26.060 of everything in order that they can attract matching funds from the federal government.

00:48:29.660 It's just unbelievable.

00:48:30.960 And of course, their donors are the medical, the health care industry who benefit from

00:48:34.460 taxes go up, nothing gets better.

00:48:37.780 But one thing that's amazing about Medicaid and mental health is that when the system was

00:48:42.100 set up in the 60s, they put in place this thing called the IMD rule, Institutions of Mental

00:48:47.900 Disease.

00:48:48.560 And it's all based on that attitude of, we can't have these big mental asylums, it's inhumane,

00:48:53.500 one flew over the cuckoo's nest, all of that stuff.

00:48:55.200 So there's a limit that was put in.

00:48:57.440 To get Medicaid reimbursement from the federal government, you can't get it if your mental

00:49:02.120 health institution has more than 16 beds.

00:49:05.360 It's a very specific limit, 16-bed limit, which is insane.

00:49:09.220 Imagine if hospitals had a 16-bed limit, how inefficient that would be.

00:49:16.040 That's what we have for mental health, for reimbursement from Medicaid.

00:49:19.440 So the first Trump administration put in place a waiver.

00:49:22.360 So states could apply for a waiver so that they could ignore that limit.

00:49:26.480 Other states have taken it up.

00:49:28.460 California hasn't.

00:49:29.540 So just, there's all these things you can do to make things work.

00:49:34.260 It's just, there's no, the people in charge are clueless idiots who are just machine politicians

00:49:41.240 who don't understand how anything works.

00:49:43.280 They have no clue how to make anything happen.

00:49:45.640 So within that massive budget, so I don't accept for a second that you need to spend

00:49:49.280 more money.

00:49:49.740 We need to spend less money.

00:49:50.880 And then what's left after the reduction in spending so that we can cut taxes, you've

00:49:55.740 got to spend it better in sensible ways where you actually put outcomes based on what you're

00:50:02.980 spending.

00:50:03.300 So you get results for it.

00:50:04.240 You're not just putting it into this corrupt pot.

00:50:05.720 Well, there's so much corruption around this.

00:50:08.360 I mean, I've mentioned the unions.

00:50:11.400 There's this whole scam, which is the unions filing lawsuits.

00:50:15.740 That's the other massive problem in California.

00:50:17.740 Not just over-regulation, over-litigation.

00:50:20.260 There's something called CECR, the California Environmental Quality Act.

00:50:23.520 It's, in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan, when he was governor, signed it.

00:50:28.480 It was supposed to, you know, stop polluting factories or whatever.

00:50:31.740 Nice.

00:50:32.200 Environmental Protection, we love it.

00:50:33.400 Over the years, it's been expanded to cover everything.

00:50:36.780 The courts expanded it, not the legislature, including housing.

00:50:40.860 70% and then they granted this thing called the private right of action.

00:50:45.020 Anyone can file a lawsuit.

00:50:46.800 It's a bit like that private attorney general thing, where you can just, you get all these

00:50:50.300 nuisance lawsuits.

00:50:52.020 70% of lawsuits under CECR are filed to block housing.

00:50:56.940 Most of those lawsuits are filed by the unions.

00:50:59.080 The unions use them as leverage to get what they call project labor agreements, where they

00:51:04.460 get deals from, and they negotiate.

00:51:07.620 The two components of a project labor agreement are what they call skilled and trained workers

00:51:13.040 and prevailing wage, both of which sound very innocuous.

00:51:18.040 Skilled and trained is a euphemism for union members only.

00:51:21.260 It's the closed shop, which we banned in England with Mrs. Thatcher back in the 80s.

00:51:25.920 That still exists in California.

00:51:27.980 It's amazing.

00:51:29.040 And prevailing wage, and of course, it's much more expensive.

00:51:31.800 I was talking to someone in the Central Valley.

00:51:34.720 They're doing a housing development, carpet fitters.

00:51:38.180 You put the carpets in, you need to have union labor, mandatory.

00:51:42.720 There weren't any union carpet fitters anywhere nearby.

00:51:46.300 They had to bust them in from San Francisco, put them up in hotel.

00:51:50.920 I mean, just mad, right?

00:51:52.660 Prevailing wage sounds very nice.

00:51:56.200 This guy was telling me that he had a team of plumbers doing a job that was market rate,

00:52:02.940 $25 to $40 an hour.

00:52:05.580 The same people on a prevailing wage job, the other side of town, $95 to $120 an hour.

00:52:11.900 And for the same work, which actually, by the way, they spend three times as long doing

00:52:17.380 the prevailing wage things, they get more money.

00:52:20.340 So there's just incredible amounts of cost inflation built into the system, because for

00:52:27.060 years, no one's taken a look at it.

00:52:29.480 And it just goes on.

00:52:30.560 They pass these laws.

00:52:31.620 The unions run everything.

00:52:32.880 So to your point about when you say you have to increase spending, no, you have to get into

00:52:37.280 all this, like it should, it's, you know, these, we're spending money on apartment buildings

00:52:41.980 that are four times what they should cost, public money.

00:52:45.440 So there's plenty of money there.

00:52:47.760 And also, but it's going to cost a lot more to build penitentiaries, Steve, to build and

00:52:53.240 staff penitentiaries.

00:52:54.240 That's going to cost a lot more.

00:52:55.460 Well, they've shut four and there's a fifth that's about to close, Gavin, so I've pledged

00:53:02.020 to reverse that.

00:53:02.720 You need to increase prison capacity.

00:53:04.200 But again, you don't tell me you can't find money in the budget for that, for savings.

00:53:09.420 I mean, the amount of bloat is just astronomical.

00:53:15.520 And also, by the way, you can do, I mean, this is one of the things I tried to work on

00:53:18.620 back in the day when I was in the UK government is payment by results, where you actually put

00:53:24.220 contracts in place, where you don't just go hand out money, you get paid in exchange

00:53:28.820 for results.

00:53:29.680 And so for the prisons, what you want, the actual goal of it, of course, there's an accountability.

00:53:34.420 You've got to punish people, hold them accountable for their crimes.

00:53:38.080 You've also got to rehabilitate them, because nearly half of the crime is re-offending.

00:53:42.600 So you want to reduce that, and that's how you reduce crime, and that reduces cost.

00:53:45.660 So you can put, there's all sorts of things you could, you just had common sense, practical

00:53:49.860 people.

00:53:50.980 I just want to tell a story, if I might, about the kind of bullshit that's been going

00:53:56.180 on in California, and it's to do with the fires here in LA.

00:53:59.260 And it's a little story, but I think it tells so much about the kind of people you've had

00:54:04.060 in charge.

00:54:05.020 It's Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, and a few months into the, you know, recovery from the

00:54:10.260 wildfires this year.

00:54:11.780 And there's all this, you know, focus on permits and rebuilding, and why isn't anything happening,

00:54:16.460 and it's all so slow.

00:54:17.680 And she, and she, I saw a post on social media, and it, from Karen Bass, Mayor Karen Bass,

00:54:22.680 it said, I have just signed an executive order, streamlining permitting for rebuilding in

00:54:28.240 LA.

00:54:28.940 Great, well, yeah, it's four months too late, but whatever, I'll take it.

00:54:34.140 And then it was above a clip from the press conference, a video clip, so I thought, okay,

00:54:37.600 I'll watch what she actually said.

00:54:39.420 So what she actually said was, I remember it very precisely, I have just signed an executive

00:54:44.260 order, tasking agency heads with developing paths forward to streamlining permitting.

00:54:52.180 And to me, that captures it all.

00:54:53.880 These are bullshit people.

00:54:55.080 They're process people.

00:54:56.040 They don't know how to make anything work.

00:54:58.120 They just spend money, spend money, nothing happens.

00:55:01.160 And that's why you have this total mess on every front.

00:55:05.080 Steve, last time we had you on, one of the things we explored is, you mentioned your time

00:55:09.640 in the UK government, and you talked about the challenges any leader of Britain has getting

00:55:17.240 any of their policies implemented because of what we in Britain call the civil service.

00:55:21.440 I imagine the institutional resistance to a guy like you in this state is going to make

00:55:27.000 that pale in comparison.

00:55:27.900 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:55:29.160 So you're going to have the entire institutionalized bureaucracy.

00:55:32.540 A hundred percent.

00:55:33.420 Sticking sticks in the wheels of your metaphor is.

00:55:37.040 And lawsuits.

00:55:37.660 I mean, that's what I'm really...

00:55:39.120 So how are you going to deal with that?

00:55:40.260 You've got to be prepared.

00:55:41.280 I mean, I'm doing the work right now.

00:55:42.500 I'm going through it.

00:55:43.320 You know, I've got a strong, you know, it's like running a campaign like this.

00:55:46.880 It's a startup.

00:55:47.620 You know, we're trying to raise money.

00:55:48.980 There's no, it's not, you don't inherit any kind of party resources or infrastructure,

00:55:53.200 anything like that.

00:55:53.800 So it's not like we have unlimited, far from it, hardly any resources.

00:55:57.800 It's very much a shoestring operation.

00:56:00.100 But I've got really good volunteers.

00:56:01.460 I've got someone, you know, like great legal people work because I think the lawsuits are going

00:56:05.820 to be a big part of it.

00:56:06.720 And you've got to be really clear about how you make things happen.

00:56:11.220 And you've just got to be really well prepared.

00:56:14.780 You've got to have, on day one, think through how they're going to oppose it.

00:56:19.320 But there's no substitute for just cutting their number.

00:56:22.780 I mean, that, you know, that's where, that's the conclusion I came to in the UK.

00:56:26.060 There's just too many of them.

00:56:28.020 And so that's where all the, you know, bloat is coming from.

00:56:33.260 And you've just got to, you know, reduce it massively.

00:56:36.320 I mean, here's an example.

00:56:37.460 You just saw Gavin Newsom in the budget this year, where we had a deficit in California.

00:56:42.080 So all this spending, and there's still a deficit, a deficit of $12 billion in the budget.

00:56:48.100 You can't, estates can't have a deficit.

00:56:49.720 It has to be, you have to balance the books.

00:56:52.600 And so $5 billion they did with accounting trades, shuffling money to future years or whatever.

00:56:58.440 And then the $7 billion he took from the Rainy Day Fund, which is supposed to be like a savings

00:57:02.360 thing for something going badly wrong or when you're in recession, $7 billion.

00:57:06.400 In the same budget that he was stealing from the savings that are supposed to be for something

00:57:10.720 completely different, he increased spending on the bureaucracy in California by the same,

00:57:17.740 by seven, it's exactly the same number, $7 billion, increasing the number of bureaucrats

00:57:22.640 and increasing their pay and pensions and all this.

00:57:26.560 Why?

00:57:27.460 Corruption.

00:57:28.360 Because he's running-

00:57:28.740 Because they vote for him.

00:57:30.060 And the union, the government unions, he wants their endorsement and their money when he runs

00:57:33.740 for president.

00:57:34.300 Right.

00:57:34.800 And so you've just got to, I mean, you've just got to be direct about it and take it on.

00:57:41.420 Well, speaking of Gavin Newsom, you mentioned him a number of times.

00:57:45.520 He looks great.

00:57:46.920 Great hair.

00:57:47.440 Great hair.

00:57:48.340 Well, I, as I say-

00:57:49.660 No offense, mate.

00:57:50.980 No, I say it's time for a governor with less hair.

00:57:54.400 That is what we need in California.

00:57:55.800 We've had enough of the hair.

00:57:57.340 But Gavin Newsom, I mean, he strikes me, I don't agree with a lot of the things he says,

00:58:01.760 he strikes me as a very capable politician.

00:58:04.240 What does America get if it has a president, Newsom?

00:58:08.760 I mean, the worst governor in America.

00:58:11.600 Like a total failure on every front.

00:58:13.560 I mean, everything is a disaster.

00:58:14.800 And so his record, I think, is going to be totally disqualifying.

00:58:18.640 He's got nothing to point to.

00:58:20.100 Nothing.

00:58:20.760 I just think that the more that that comes out, and the more details of that that come

00:58:26.340 out, I don't think he's got a chance.

00:58:27.800 Because people will just look at that and say, you know, that, I mean, I remember that years

00:58:32.160 ago, that classic ad on Michael Dukakis about don't let Michael do, he ran in 1988.

00:58:38.220 He was the governor of Massachusetts.

00:58:39.700 And there's a very effective ad with just some, you know, filth and pollution in Boston

00:58:43.400 Harbor or something.

00:58:44.180 I can't remember.

00:58:44.640 And it was just, don't let Michael Dukakis do to America what he's done to Massachusetts.

00:58:50.980 It was a killer.

00:58:51.920 And I think there's just a lot of material from California.

00:58:55.200 I agree with you.

00:58:56.280 He's good at the politics.

00:58:58.080 And, but that only takes you so far.

00:59:01.380 You've got an actual record, and it's a total disaster.

00:59:04.560 And I just think that he's been able to escape because he hasn't had real challenge to that.

00:59:12.680 You know, he hasn't really been taken on in a debate or, you know, I mean, he's had a

00:59:17.520 couple of debates, but not really with anyone who can really get into the record and expose

00:59:22.820 the complete calamitous failure.

00:59:25.620 So I think that, you know, he'll, he's obviously running, he's been running for 20 years, people

00:59:32.060 say.

00:59:32.900 It's all he's really been focused on.

00:59:34.280 But I think it's just, the scale of the failure, it's not just middling.

00:59:38.340 We literally, the line I use all the time is, we're top of every list you want to be the

00:59:44.240 bottom of, and bottom of every list you want to be the top of.

00:59:47.420 It's a total failure.

00:59:49.500 And he's, and so, I don't know, I can't see it.

00:59:53.240 I just can't see the country voting for, you know, looking at what's happening in California.

00:59:57.820 Yes, please, we'll have more of that.

00:59:59.980 Well, Steve, if you are successful in the election next year, you will, it will be a

01:00:04.580 political earthquake.

01:00:05.460 I mean, there's no understating that.

01:00:07.960 A Republican getting elected as governor of California would be quite incredible.

01:00:11.420 So, one of the reasons we were interested in having you on this early, just to watch the

01:00:15.840 journey and see how that unfolds, that would be fascinating.

01:00:19.960 We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters, a lot of them are residents

01:00:23.040 here in California in a second.

01:00:24.440 Before we do, though, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should

01:00:27.960 be?

01:00:28.500 I want to say something about how amazing it is, how amazing this country is, actually.

01:00:34.320 You've been here too long, mate.

01:00:35.360 No, no, no, I understand.

01:00:37.340 I can sort of, you know, show up here and, you know, be in this position.

01:00:42.020 Yeah, I was thinking about that.

01:00:43.540 It's actually amazing.

01:00:44.900 And it's beautiful.

01:00:46.640 You're a first generation American running for governor of California.

01:00:49.420 We moved in 2012, my wife and my two sons.

01:00:52.500 And I taught at Stanford University and I started a business and hosted a show on TV and I'm running

01:00:59.040 for governor, leading in the polls.

01:01:00.220 It's amazing.

01:01:01.100 You know, and I love this country and I became an American 2021.

01:01:05.220 And actually, I've taken a step further.

01:01:07.300 I've renounced my UK citizenship, which I didn't realize this is a bureaucratic process

01:01:13.060 you go through.

01:01:13.780 You also have to pay.

01:01:15.200 I didn't realize that.

01:01:15.920 I've just paid the exit fee, which is £482.

01:01:20.060 So I'm all in for California and America.

01:01:24.300 Steve Hilton, thank you very much for being here.

01:01:26.200 Head on over to Substack where Steve is going to answer your questions.

01:01:28.980 What are California's greatest resources and how can executive policy immediately impact

01:01:35.380 the employment of them without waiting on the legislature?

01:01:37.740 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to you.

01:02:07.720 Toronto, the true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all

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01:02:17.740 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

01:02:21.800 The Neil Diamond musical, A Beautiful Noise.

01:02:24.460 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:02:28.760 Get tickets at Murbish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - January 07, 2026

How They Ruined California - Steve Hilton

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