#2542 - Steve Hilton

Yo, Theon, let’s go. We’ve been friends fourteen years, since our kids were playing on a New York beach. You’d just come from England, and somehow our families met and it stuck.

Your two girls, my two boys, and your wife was there before you. Then you came down the beach and I thought, who is this guy? Proper American cultural moment.

When I first came on, I didn’t know what a podcast was. I expected ten minutes; then we talked for hours. Business, restaurants, government, Stanford—none prepared me for the sex, swearing, and total lack of filter.

Nobody knew what podcasts were then, which was nice. You could talk without absorbing reactions. The internet is full of bad-faith people taking the least charitable view. It’s a poisoned well.

From teaching to business, Fox, and now governor, the abuse got louder. I’m tempted to answer somebody insulting my bald head or telling me to leave with, “Good point,” but I resist.

A lot of it isn’t real people: bots, paid posters, state-backed operations, now AI. X is great for breaking news, but once you enter the takes, it’s horse shit.

I used to have no phone because nothing ever goes wrong. Now I check X morning, midday, evening. Instagram and TikTok are built to eat attention; I saw lip-syncing years ago and thought, surely this won’t take over. Amazing.

TikTok goes boom, another video, another video, and an hour disappears. China’s version supposedly pushes sports, science, martial arts, and cuts kids off at night. Attention is the commodity.

Parents everywhere worry about screens, games, and AI doing homework. Since my 2015 book, I’ve argued under-sixteens should have simple phones, not smartphones. The screen is the core problem.

Forcing platforms to redesign is dangerous, but algorithms hook us on outrage and nonsense. An algorithm-free platform, where you seek what you want, sounds healthier.

We need human scale economically too. Capitalism can be brutal, but handing everything to the state is awful. I visited communist Hungary; those state grocery stores were grim.

Safety nets for tragedy, absolutely—but dependence can kill ambition. A basic income could replace a jungle of programs and bureaucrats deciding how people live.

That’s close to my business-friendly living wage. Full-time workers should be able to live, especially in California. Cut the middleman: reduce business burdens and let more money reach workers.

California calls a hundred-thousand-dollar income low-income in places. We began with no state income tax below that, then moved to one-fifty because around Los Angeles people earning that can still be barely hanging on.

Entry-level work matters: show up, get your check, see taxes taken out. But forty hours at fifteen bucks is brutal. Government expands while population and business shrink—that’s a slush fund, not real jobs.

The doom loop is leaders see struggle, raise taxes, expand benefits, and make life pricier. We doubled the budget in roughly a decade and things got worse: nonprofit salaries, homelessness spending, prison costs—madness.

Downtown L.A. has blocks nobody wants to develop because encampments, crime, and filth make life sketchy. The lost businesses and tax base are enormous.

Near City Hall on a Saturday night, it’s shocking: terrible distress and degradation in the richest state. LAPD could be half staffed for the Olympics while taxes rise. First homelessness point: enforce existing laws.

I support decent public-service retirement, but pensions swallow money before classrooms get it. Interest groups captured everything; they’re playing power games, not fixing California.

Unchecked one-party rule is dangerous whoever has it. I like ideas from both sides, but narrative enforcement means officials protect donors, unions, connected nonprofits, and themselves instead of regular people.

I’m Republican because an independent can’t realistically win here, not because I’m a machine person. Democrats have held every statewide office, supermajorities, cities, counties, and a friendly court for sixteen years. Nobody should own everything forever.

People are fed up. California liberalism used to mean civil rights and a reasonable safety net. Now ideology becomes religion: say approved phrases, follow doctrine, don’t question bureaucracy, don’t laugh wrong.

Comedy should go after power, not obey the fashionable side. I’d missed Superbad until recently—brilliant. Campaigning gives me a new appreciation for stand-up; I need jokes, but comics must keep everyone laughing.

Stand-up is the hardest easy thing. Getting there means writing alone, talking bullshit with comics, trying ideas that die, rearranging words. Onstage, think about what you’re saying; don’t wait mechanically for the next line.

That’s campaigning. I’ve got long and short high-speed-rail bits, and halfway through the long one I’m thinking, shit, land this. One changed word or order can make it work.

High-speed rail is perfect because it’s real: roughly thirty billion to connect San Francisco and L.A. by 2020; now around two hundred thirty billion, maybe late 2030s, no completed track, and a proposed Bakersfield-to-L.A. bus. Fucking nuts.

Hidden energy charges help fund it while workers get crushed by gas and electric bills. We shut production, import oil on dirty tankers, then posture. Innovation, solar, batteries—fine. But families need common sense.

I hope you win, man. You make sense, and I knew you before politics. You’re the same good guy, not a skin suit with a lizard inside. California needs people challenging the machine.

Thank you, man. It’ll be fun—hilarious, even. If I pull it off, come to the inauguration. I’m only doing this because you moved away, really. We’ve got to give people reason to believe California can stop sliding.