Ep. 314 - JLTY Plus: CaliFailure Dreamin' with Fox News' Steve Hilton

This is the FCB Podcast Network. A prais Masday that we won't to pay, then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that away. This gonna be okay. A prais. That we won't to say, then we won't to say, oh we got it does? No one can take that away. Don't say don't be okay. Well, hey, everybody, welcome to a very special episode of Just Listen to Yourself with Kira Davis. I'm your host, Kira Davis, and this. Is a podcast where we take hot topics, hot fun issues, and we discuss the talking points on those topics, and we draw those talking points all the way out to their logical conclusion. And today with me is a good friend of mine and someone that a lot of you admire. You guys write me about him all the time, and I'll be talking to him about what you write about in just a moment, No Worried Fox News is Steve Hilton and also the chair and CEO of Golden Together, an organization dedicated to improving life California. Welcome to Chelse Steve. Fun to be on your show. I mean, all these years you've been on my shows and I love this and I don't have to do any work. You're gonna drive the train or whatever the term is, and it's all going to be great. I'm glad. Well, well, i'll tell you what. I'll tell you what people ask me about you all the time. But before we get to that, as I sat down to do this interview with you, I just finished up doing Andrew Welkow's show on a Serious XM, and he was asking me about California, particularly about this situation with Karen Bath and the Pacific Palisades recovery and how there have only been four permits approved in the seventy five days for rebuilding. Now, your new book, cal of Failure talks about just the tyranny of the bureaucracy in this state and how it has prevented growth and prosperity. And I think there is no greater example of that than what we are witnessing in Pacific Palisades right now. Is there a reason, Steve, why Karen Basid mayor Neussom can't lift the regulations to get this stuff done. It's actually beyond political. I think it goes to the heart of you know, the starting point of Caliphailure in the book where I said, well, how do we get hit? How do we get to a situation where everything is so messed up and like we're the worst performing state on all these things? And I don't want to, you know, go on about that. Now. I've been doing that on lots of interviews and we're you know, this is it's me and new Care. So this is not going to be the usual, you know. Yeah, Well, so the thing is I do The starting point is one party rule, right, that's you know, that's the starting point. The other consequences of one party rule is it throws up these machine politicians who don't succeed because they've got a vision or they've got clear convictions about what needs to be done. It's because they're operators within the political machine, and they know how to you know, make friends with the right people and the unions and the activists and the power brokers and that then they navigate the machine. And you see them now put after all these years of one party rule, it's really corrosive and corrupted. And so it throws up these real mediocrities who are just no good at anything but except for playing the game. And you've got now we can see them. Gavin Youso, Kamala Harris and Karen Bass classic of the genre. They don't really believe in it, you know, they say stuff right, they got the blah blah blah whatever the thing is, you know with t one year and the next year it's something else, you know, and they know the right things to say, and you can, but you could, but they don't really, they don't. They haven't got the right attitude. It's not like they're burning passion to get something done. It's not about that. It's about themselves and just navigating the situation. And so I've seen it firsthand actually because I have been inside of a government back in the day in England and you know, work for David Cameron who was Prime Minister, our senior advisor. It's really hard actually because there is all this bureaucracy that gets built up and some of it is necessary and we can complain about it. You've got to have something, but to plow through you've got to be kind of really aggressive and ask really like like actually, like elon Mask we've just talked, you know, like, well, why why is that happening? What's going on? Get him on the phone. You know, that private sector attitude, the business attitude, which is when because this is what happens right when you're when you're in a position like that, You've got all these people around you, advisors and bureaucrats and lawyers and all these big there's always big meetings, and you're sitting there and you have a and I bet they had a meeting about the permits more than one, and they're saying, yes, ma'are, well, we're working as fast as we can and we're going to do this whatever. What you actually need in that moment is someone with a private sector mindset when they hear the answer to say what that doesn't make sense? Why? Or sorry, that's not good enough. It has to be tomorrow. What's the reason I said, well, that's not a good enough you know, just really pushing. Well wait a minute, Steve, Wait a minute. Karen Mayor Bath said she did bring in a private contractor to the tune of ten million dollars for consultation to rebuild the Pacific Palacades. So I don't understand what you're complaining about. It's so exhausting. It's exhausting, it's exhausting, it's so bad. And here's another thing I found. I can't find it now, but I did retweet it and it was so again a classic. Right, So she this is like within the last week, last couple of days, Karen Bass put out a tweet which said, we are streamlining. That was the word streamlining, the process for whatever it was that and that was what was written in the tweet, and then she posted a clip of herself making the announcement. I thought, okay, I'll watch what she even in her own tweet. It contradicts what she wrote if you actually watch the video. And this is the mindset I'm talking about. The mind So the tweet says, we are streamlining the thing, and then she says, blah blah blah, and so we've I've asked the whatever agency to develop a strategy for implementing a streamline block, you know, like on and on. Okay, she's not streamlining anything. He's just asked someone to think about a plan for maybe streamlining something next year. But the tweet says we are streamlining, and they live in this crazy world where they she probably thinks she has done the streamlining. Maybe she thinks that there's. No one in charge, there's no one in charge. I feel like we I feel like we learned that during the fires. I want to I want to ask you about to comment on this thought that I that I have about you and I. All we do is think about California's problem. So I've been thinking about this, but I've been watching Gavin's podcast. But it's very hard to do, by the way I do. Okay, good, right, It's very difficult. But I will tell you this. I know a lot of people have been concerned about the platform and how him using conservatives might go well for him, But I pay attention to what his fans are saying, and they don't like it any more than we do. So I think it's a general failure all the way around. Besides that first Charlie Kirk sort of bomb drop, so I don't know everybody might be happy to hear that. But nonetheless, one of the things we always ask ourselves, and you talk about in your book cal of Failure, which is how did we get here? What is the problem? And Newsom is always out there bragging about our economy. We're the fifth largest economy. In fact, I just saw him talk to Ezracline, which was so ridiculous. But it was it was just. Him talking about how great things are going in California and how we have the biggest tech sector and we have the biggest says. In the meantime, he is in DC begging for forty billion dollars in funding for the state to make up for whatever our shortfalls are, and Karen Bath is in Sacramento begging for two billion dollars for wildfire recovery. It seems to me the part of our problem here, Steve, and we see this during the elections, when it takes us a month account and everybody else can get in in a day or two. We're too important to the rest of the country, That's what I think. Because all of our money is flowing out and then back in. They hold our votes to the very end so that we can be the people who decide the popular vote. As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Governor Newsom Kamala Harris. We send all of the biggest politicians to DC, so I feel like maybe our political class feels like they can do anything because they're so important to the rest of the country. We're too important, well, they think, yeah, but they no, I agree with that. I mean, and they and they have this kind of sanctimoniousness about their whole you know, it's narcissism as well. That's one of the themes in the book. I mean, I've got these nine pathologies that they have because they're pathological. To these people, this is not normal the way they behave And and they love this concept. Just what you just said that you hear all the time from them. We're leading, right, We're leading on this, we're leading on that, we're leading on climate, our world leading climate goals, and we're leading on equity or this or that or the whatever the thing is. Lead. They they're in love with their own image as leading right. Meanwhile, were literally last on every actual net in the real world. We have the highest poverty rate, the highest announced the second high you know for a lot of last year, the highest unemployment, the highest housing costs, the highest cost for gas electricity, you know, the worst business climate with the last not leading, we're last. But that doesn't matter because they have this as long as it's sound, you know, they pat themselves on the back. So I think that is exactly right, and that's why they have this national perspective on things. But the other thing that's infuriating about what you just said is that they constantly are asking for more money. I was just talking to someone about NPR who was I was on some show earlier. It came up, is it Bennie Johnson? Yes, Benny Johnson, that's right. Oh, that's right, because we were talking about the the NPR lady. She was in front of the committee. It's hilarious, absolutely brilliant, you know, the woman talking about how she read the reparations book, took a day off. And then remember anyone. Let me did interrupt me there for a second and just say it like, I have never seen a more perfect sort of stereotype of a liberal white woman as I did with that woman. Incredible, the way. That Congressman took her apart, it was just perfect. So we're talking about that anyway. I was making the point that I listened to I actually do genuinely listen to MPR every morning, yeah for a bit, you know, and I like to hear what everyone's saying, and it's it's incredible pretty much every single thing. I'm just going to repeat what I said earlier, thinking but it's to relegate to this point, every single thing on MPR National Local basically comes into one of two categories. First of all, they're still doing the kind of identity politics won't bullshit. Even so it just feels so dated now. It just feels so kind of of a different age. You know, we've got rid of all that, but they're still you know, like as I said to it, you know, if there's a restaurant review, it's like the you know, the lesbian chefs doing the whatever, you know, like you know what I mean, it's always got to have some identity politics angle whatever the story and then and it's like a parody of itself. It's just a joke. But that's one category. The other category is more money. It's always more money, right, there's a problem with the schools. More money, housing, more money, Bay Era transportation, more resources needed, always more money. We pay the highest taxes in the country already, Like no one in the country pays more in tax than California. So where why is it? Why is it always more money? Where does the money go? It's just well curiate. I think it's very interesting because a lot of people don't know, like where does the money go? When we're talking about mp we're talking about public broadcasting. I talked about this. I've been filling in for Stacy Washington this week on Serious XM, and last night I was talking about the funding structure for public broadcasting and it's not what people think it is. It's a Ponzi scheme. It's a pyramid scheme. The CPB Corporations for Public Broadcasting, gets whatever, five hundred million a year from the government and then they distribute that in the form of grants to PBS and NPR stations across the country. Then they have to use that money to purchase their broadcast time and their advertising from the federal organization, the CPB. It goes back to them. CPB gives them money, they give the money back. It's a it's a Ponzi scheme. And then today we find out I don't know if this is apropos of nothing or what, but the president of NPR, Catherine whatever her face is, she. Sits on the board of Signal. Did you know this? Amazing? No, somebody else is on Twitter. It's running around x right now. You've probably been doing interviews all day and you haven't seen it yet, but you'll see it. She sits on the board, So I don't know if that means anything all that to say, Steve, and I'll bring this full circle back to our topic that there's so the layers of corruption are so deep. Will cow was asking me, how do you fix California? When are people going to be sick of things and vote a different way? And that's a really complicated question because there's so much Sometimes we're not voting for these things, as I discovered on my podcast, but people look at us and they wonder, You've got so much corruption it seems almost undefeatable. How do you begin to fix the place that California and a corruption is so deep I feel. I don't feel like that. I feel very you know, I don't want to be I feel both optimistic but realistic. So I don't want anyone to hear this and think, oh, yeah, it's going to be great. It's obviously so terrible in cal California. They've failed so catastrophically. It's obvious that we need a change, or at least some balance in the mix, not just one party rule that you know, we're going to elect a Republican. I don't think it's easy, but I don't think it's impossible either. I think that we can pull this off. And I think this is the best shot we've got at least for two decades, because you've got all these factors. You know, even before, like in November, Trump did better than any Republican presidential candidate. Here's a way of thinking about it, right, not people look at percentage of the vote and they see a big gap. Here's a way of thinking about it. The twenty twenty six is a midterm election, and you typically get a lower quite a bit lower turnout, and then it goes up and down, but it's lower than in a presidential election. However, if you look at the number of votes that Trump got Trump in California, yeah, it's easily enough to win in a mid term election. Now, of course, there's a massive question behind it. Can you get people who vote you know, like they voted for Trump, right, not even Republican? It was true. So that's like doesn't automatically translate. But the reason I make the point is that when people say, oh, it's just so democratic, No, there are enough Republican voters in California already. They are there. There are enough. We've just got to get them to turn out. Now that I'm not saying that's easy, but I'm just saying the numbers are there. It's not as I hear people say, well, how are you going to get these Democrats to vote Republican and switch? I mean, it would be great, and I think we can. I'm already hearing in LA because the fires people who say to me can personally they've said, yeah, I mean this anecdotal, but you know I'm a Democrat and never again, this is crazy, you know, or independent, which should be an easier move, you know, you're not one thing, or so it would be of course, would we should try to persuade as many people to vote for US as possible Democrats and independence. But I'm just saying, here's another way of thinking. If every single person who voted for Trump votes for the next Republican governor candidate, the Republican will win. That's a really important thing to bear. I love the way I love that, the simplicity of that. Yeah, well, people don't realize that we have a lot of registered They're not just all here in Orange County where I'm We have a lot of registered Republicans in California. But don't you think part of the problem, Steve, is that, I mean, I've only been a Californian since two thousand and nine, that's when we moved here from the Midwest. But one thing when I. Got here that I would hear a lot of Republicans say, is, well, Californians don't want to vote for a strong Republican or someone who's very conservative or too far right. And I always suspected it was the opposite. I always suspected Californians aren't looking for quote Democrat light, They're looking. For So I agree with you, yes, yeah. And the best example of that, apart from Trump we've just discussed, is actually in Orange Counties, Huntington Beach, where you've got and we know it well, right. So Tony Strickland good friend of mine. People, though he's just been elected to the state Senate four and a bit years ago. You know, he originally he was based in Ventura County, moved down to Huntington Beach for family reasons. That he's there, he wants to get involved. He puts together four candidates to run for the council in Huntington Beach. People who don't know this story, it's an amazing story. And they call themselves the Fab four, and they run on a platform which is very very you know, straight down the line, common sense conservative, not at all watered down, right, and they they take control of the council. It was six to one Democrat, they went four to three Republican. They control and then they get to work and they do really again sensible, practical conservative things on crime, cleaning up the homeless encampments, what's going on in the schools and the libraries, the voter id they do a ballot initiative which passes. Of course, then the Democrats trying to they got you know, they went for it. They weren't. They were very very clear this time in November just now they had a team of seven candidates. They literally called themselves the Magnificent seven. That was that they used that term, and they and there was all these pieces and then Michael Gates was the city attorney, was constantly suing Newsome and Rob Bontra you know, you know, real fight. And they were won seven zero. So you've gone from six to one Democrat to seven zero Republican in four years. To me, that is okay, it's you can say that's orange County, but it was six to one Democrat. So if you fight and you're clear, I think that the point is that you know, I mean, you can get into the nuances of it, but I think on this basic everyday issues, right, what's going on in the schools, My tax is what I get for them, the if I run a business, the sort of nightmare bullshit bureaucracy, I have to deal with, the crime, homelessness, you know, practical everyday things. I think people are absolutely ready for a really clear, strong conservative message that is not a toll water down yeah or Democrat like. I think that I agree with you that. I mean, I've been here a little bit less than you. We moved in twenty twelve. That's you know. I haven't been engaged in directly in California politics in this in the same way as I am now, But that has been my observation that there's been a sense that the only way you win in California is being different than the National Republican brand, and it has to be right. When I was running for school board, I got a lot of I mean, my my, I hate say it, sorry OCDOP, but they were not helpful. I got a lot of pushback towards the year two because I was running on a lot of the crazy stuff, you know, the trans issues and the COVID closures and you know, the boys and the girls' bathrooms, with a lot of controversial stuff going on in my district, and still do. We're being sued by the DOE right now, so we still do. But I was told, yeah, you're too outspoken, you're too hard right, and that is unattractive to voters. So now I lost. So maybe they were right, but I think there were other reasons for that as well. But I agree. I think people are hungry for leadership. If we saw anything yes with the Trump And I love how you bring up the hunting and beach idea because people want to. People love the idea of strategy and teams, you know. Exactly right, exactly, which I feel very strong about it. But I just think that you've got and I think that's the way we do it across statewide. I do too, I really feel strongly about that. I think that well. One thing that I think the President Trump has really helpfully done is in trench this idea, which is true to him of common sense, right, and it's not ideological and he's not. I said this from the you know, I basically came in at Fox right when he did, and so, and in fact, the premise of my show, The Next Revolution was to, you know, the populist revel That's why the name, you know, the Populist and all that. What's this new movement Brexit Trump, et cetera. Because I've been writing about that and talking about that. And the thing I always said about Trump is he's not an ideologue. He's not. He's just a pragmatic problem solving business guy. That's and he said, Okay, how do we deal with this? Well, the answer to that is obviously this it's just common sense. That's how he thinks about things. He's literally not sitting there thinking, what's the ideology of the republic, what's the Republican thing? No, it's just like, Okay, how do we solve this problem? How do we make this thing better? I think that and that's incredibly helpful to the Republican Party, I think, and that is how we do it in California. It's the same now. It just so happens to be the case that the usually the answers to the problems tend to be like, I'm going to now quote missus Thatcher. I can't not do her accent, but she is a lady, the eye lady, and she said, well, the thing is, my dear. I think she put it like that. It turns out that the facts of life in the end are conservative or something like that. She has some very famous quote death. Yes, And it was just a way of saying, that's her way of saying. It's like, yeah, it's just common sense. This is what works. And I think no, I was just gonna say, and that's what I think. We've had way too much of the opposite in California, which is total ideologically driven nonsense that is just pure ideology that makes no sense at all, I mean the ultimately, I mean, there's so many examples, but one of my favorites is the absolute nonsense of what they're doing to the oil and gas industry in California, shutting it down so they look like they're waging war on fossil fuels, but in the meantime, in porting the oil giant super tanking, they're literally increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate. It's just totally mind bogglingly it's stupid. I mean, it's just like insane. They didn't shut down. They didn't shut down the pipelines that we we also deliver gas and oil to other We deliver gas and oil to Vegas and Nevada, and they didn't shut down those. We're still those are still producing. So we send out the oil and gas that we can make, we send. It up conversation. We do not have time for all of this. Someday we'll have to do just a complete bitch session where all we do it's just unlow. I'm dying to know what what the what are the people say? I want to get to this because I got to let you go really soon. But so one of the things that I get asked all the time that a lot of people know we're friends. I first was a guest on your show, and we've gotten know each other ever since. So people know that we're associated, and people love you. By the way, wherever I go, people like, I just love Steve Hilton. I missed this show on box Like, okay, whatever. But no. But but one thing people ask about me Steve is does Steve Hilton have plans to run for governor? I get asked that every day. Okay, so you can say that Steve Hilton is very seriously considering it. That's why, in a way he's been I'm now going to just be normal and say yes, I've been. I'm very seriously considering it. And the thing is, I really only want to do it if going back to what we said earlier in a serious way, that is that we can win. And so you've got to have a lot of elements in place. You've got to have policy platform. I've been working on that. You can see that reflected. The second part of the book, cal of Failure is cal a future, like, here's what we can do to turn things around. So there's that. There's also the support, and actually financial support is very important because you've got this big Democrat machine the unions have got. You know, the union spent one billion dollars a year on elections in California. Billion. It's insane, and so you've got this big machine. We need to be able to beat that. And so I'm just you know, talking to people working on that. Here's the way I are. But we haven't got a lot of time to lose, and it's going to be hard, like I said, So the way I'll leave it is to say, Kamala Harris is also thinking about running, we're told, and she's Her latest version of that was to say that she will make a decision by the end of the summer. And I'm telling you today, I'm going to make a decision much much sooner than that. All right, fair enough, Well we will leave it at that. Then I will say though that I get a lot of positive comments from people who would be very excited to see a Steve Hilton gubernatorial campaign. So thank you. We will definitely you'll comebat and you'll talk to us about it when you make a decision, one one or the other. Whatever happens, I'm going to be fighting for a Republican to win whoever whoever that is, whether you or anyone. Else, always, always, because we've got a state to win. Before I let you go, I want you to tell people where they can find more out more about the book, but also, Steve end us on a high note, what is California worth saving? Well, because you know, there's a line in the book that I feel captures how I feel about it when I say this when I'm on the road and talking to people, which is actually, when we save California and turn things around, just bring back common sense. And it's actually not just for us who live here and our friends and our neighbors and our family and whatever. It's actually more important than that, because California means more than that. It's actually and the line is California means to America, what America means to the world, and what I mean by that is that we represent or the should represent the best of America. It was an inspiration to me, like is back in England before we even came here. I was in love with what my vision was American dream and the best version of that. And also there's a there's there's a kind of edge to it, which I love, which I think of California as like the ultimate kind of rebel spirit as well as the nice warmth. There's a sort of warmth to it, the sunshine, the beaches. Yeah, it's really nice, slightly hippyish. I love that too, but there's also kind of rebel aspect, like no, we do our own thing. That's why what we've got going on right now is so un California. This ridiculous nanny state bossiness telling everyone what to do everything. You know, drive this car, use this cook your food the way we tell you, it's just like, what are you talking about? That's not California. It's ridiculous. So I just think we need to get you know, there's a very specific idea of California that I've I'm in love with, I feel strongly about, and I want to fight for and so you know, one way or other, we're going to make it happen. That's my view. I feel the same way. We'll. Steve's book is cal of Failure. There is also a special m Fox Nation if you are a subscriber, you can see yours truly in it as well. We we went there. We had the pleasure of going down to Venice Beach to film, but I got out of the skid row filming so. That was okay. Yeah, it's rough, but it's really worth the watch. If you have a subscription, definitely do that. Follow Steve at Steve Hilton x on Twitter Twitter X Steve, I will of course, I wish you the best of luck and I can't wait for you to come back and tell us what is going on for the future, because we. Definitely have to thank you. All right, got Steve, We'll see you on the flip side. Thank you so much. Thanks by that we won't to say, and then we won't to stay. Oh we gotta does take that? Oh and okay that we won't and we want to pay. Oh we gott it does no lot get take that? O it okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where real Talk lives. Visit us online at fcbpodcasts dot com.