Taking on California's Political Machine With a Plan to Cut Costs and Revive the State

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Let’s go to California. With us today is Steve Hilton and possibly next governor of the state of California. Well, Steve Hilton, can we straighten out California and bring down their gas prices from $ 8 or $ 7 down to $ 3 or $ 4 a gallon?

0:21 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s my plan. I announced it last year, $ 3 gas. Before the Iran war, remember, There were 40 states in America that had gas at $ 3 or below. Most of them don’t have any oil reserves. We have in California, according to some estimates, the second largest oil reserves in the world. And yet we have higher gas prices than

0:44 Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s insane. The Democrat idiot, I use that word because it was the quote from Susan Rice, who worked with him in the Biden cabinet, the idiot running against me, Javier Becerra, claimed that the high gas prices in California are all to do with President Trump. Well, how is that possible

1:06 when our gas prices are $ 2 higher than the rest of the country, even today? That’s nothing to do with President Trump. It’s to do with Democrat policies in California, which I would change so we will get gas prices down.

1:19 Speaker 1 Are the people of California finally realizing what the heck is going on over there?

1:24 Speaker 2 I think so, because, look, I always knew, John, this would be an uphill battle. It’s obvious that’s the case. It’s 20 years since the Republican won in California. And, you know, the machine that they’ve built, the Democrats have built corruptly with all the money that they get from the government unions and so on. It’s very, you know,

1:45 they’ve got a lot of money, a lot of power, and it’s tough to beat them. But set against that, we’ve got Everything is a disaster, right? We’ve got the highest cost of living, the highest taxes for the worst results, highest housing costs, the school results for a disaster, the absolute scandal of homelessness that just gets worse and worse.

2:06 Every year, even with the billions they spend on it, everything’s going in the wrong direction. I think people are waking up. And that is actually one of the messages that I had in the campaign. I used to go around in a T-shirt saying, wake up, California. And actually, here’s the really important point for everyone who doesn’t know.

2:22 My opponent, Becerra, he’s a 36-year career politician, totally useless and a failure in every job he’s done. When he was HHS secretary for Biden, he was responsible for for nearly half a million unaccompanied migrant children. He lost track of hundreds of thousands of them. Many thousands were sent directly to child, sex, and labor traffickers. It is absolutely

2:45 horrendous what he did, totally disqualifying. He’s the one also, when he was at HHS, who dismantled the fraud unit. So now we look at fraud now and that massive scandal that’s being uncovered by the vice president and his task force, of course, Nick Shirley and others. And what most of it is in Medicaid fraud, most of it,

3:04 most of the actual fraud in health care spending. And the biggest chunk is in California. All of that you can trace back to Becerra. So this is a very clear choice. You can have four more years of the same old costs and corruption and failure and incompetence with Becerra.

3:21 Or actually, with me, you can have lower tax, cheaper gas, getting California back on track.

3:27 Speaker 1 So you feel that the California people are finally realizing it. Can you put enough controls on voter fraud to be able to stop the Democratic machine from creating it?

3:41 Speaker 2 Well, I think that, you know, we’re clearly making progress. You know, there was a debate the other week on CNN. The first poll that came out after the debate said, It’s an overwhelming victory. It’s like 72 percent, or I think the number was, thought that I won that debate.

3:55 And also in the actual voting intention, you saw the poll show the gap between me and Becerra, the smallest it’s ever been, six points, 46-40. Now, look, we’re still behind. I just want to be clear about that. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. But that’s a gap that we can close. And it reminds me very much of Bruce

4:13 in New York and the same kind of battle and these fighting battles. very strongly. And we’re very similar situations. I think it’s pretty, you know, slightly worse in California. We’ve had more of a, you know, the Republicans have underperformed for many, many years here and much worse than in New York state. But I think people are waking

4:31 up in terms of the votes and the ballots. You’re completely right. They’ve built this system that suits them with the ballot harvesting and the taxpayer funded nonprofits running around harvesting ballots, all their unions, and so on. But we’re not going to be able to change the system in the next three weeks or so. So I say to

4:50 all my supporters, I say at every event, we’ve only got one practical option, beat them at their own game. Why should we leave ballot harvesting to the unions and all the activist groups that are part of the Democrat machine?

5:04 We need to do our own. And I say to every single person, you need to get not just your own vote, get 10 other votes, You can do ballot harvesting. We put out a plan for people to do ballot harvesting pizza parties. Invite your friends and neighbors and co-workers.

5:21 Bring their ballots. Do it all together and then drop them off. We may not like this system, but we’ve got to use it and beat them at their own game.

5:31 Speaker 1 Well, if I ask you, we talked about voting and ballot harvesting. We talked about the gasoline prices. Give me one more problem and we’ll call it a day.

5:44 Speaker 2 So the number one thing that I’m going to my top priority is to help people with the cost of living in California. And the top priority there is very simple. The quickest way to get more money in people’s pockets is for the government to take less out. I’ve got lots of long-term plans to, you know, improve the way

6:02 we build housing and get abundant, affordable energy and water for our farmers, all those things. That’ll take a bit of time to work through. The quickest way is for the government to take less money out of your pocket.

6:14 And that’s why my priority is what I call the working class tax cut. Your first 150 grand tax free, no state income tax. That will save people thousands of dollars a year. You can actually work out exactly how much it would save you if you live in California by going to savewithsteve.vote. And you can figure out how

6:35 much you’ll get with me. The average California household will save $ 11, 047 a year when you add it all up. That is a big, big saving and a big difference. And that’s why this election matters so much. It can really make a difference to your life. And I say to everyone, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats or independents, look,

6:55 we’ve been doing the same thing for 16 years in California. It’s time to do something different. Let’s try it. Just try something different. Just try it.

7:06 Speaker 1 Well, Steve Hilton, thank you for, well, I hope we can bring the cost of gasoline down in California. The people deserve to pay what the rest of the states are paying. Thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning. And we have like, what, 20, 23 days to go. Thank you so much.

7:26 Speaker 2 Yeah. Thank you, John. Great to be with you. Thank you.