Latest / Best of: Features / Steve Hilton is convinced he's going to win. Hahahaha.

Transcript

Steve Hilton is convinced he's going to win. Hahahaha. · Best of: Features

• 0:05
  Steve Hilton is convinced he's going to win. Written by Drew Mugari
• 0:11
  This article is being read by an automated voice generated by Everlet.
• 0:17
  There's a midterm election coming on november third, which includes a race
• 0:21
  here in California to determine who will replace Governor Gavin Newsom. On
• 0:25
  the blue side of the ticket is unremarkable Democrat Xavier Bacera, whose
• 0:29
  chief positive attribute is that he is not a Republican. On the
• 0:33
  red side is Steve Hilton, an immigrant from the UK who gained
• 0:36
  US citizenship in twenty twenty one. Hilton's most high profile political experience
• 0:42
  came back in the early 2010 S, when he served as an
• 0:45
  advisor to then UK Prime Minister and alleged Porcine enthusiast David Cameron.
• 0:50
  But that experience, plus a lengthy stint as a commentator for Fox
• 0:54
  News, was enough to convince Hilton that he not only should run
• 0:57
  for governor, but that he will be the state's next governor. On
• 1:01
  the surface, he makes for an attractive candidate. Hilton is good company,
• 1:05
  and when I met him, he was as good at explaining the
• 1:08
  issues, as you would expect a seasoned broadcaster to be. He's even
• 1:12
  reaching out to the gay community, albeit in somewhat awkward fashion. Listen
• 1:16
  to the man talk, and you might come away thinking he's a
• 1:19
  Democrat. But Steve Hilton is not a Democrat, he's a Republican, one
• 1:24
  who plans to give tax breaks to the wealthy, massively increase funding
• 1:27
  to the police, and let artificial intelligence companies do basically whatever they
• 1:32
  want without fear of California regulation. Most importantly to me, he is
• 1:36
  backed by president and aspiring dictator Donald Trump. So Hilton can't run
• 1:41
  as a Republican, especially not in a state as firmly blue as
• 1:44
  California, without having to answer for that party's standard bearer. But God
• 1:48
  bless Hilton, he gave it a try, repeatedly, when I
• 1:51
  met with him in August. This was true right from my opening
• 1:55
  question, when I asked him why he wanted to run for governor
• 1:58
  here at all. I
• 1:59
  love California and it's obviously not working, he told me. Sixteen years
• 2:03
  of one party rule, it's a disaster. So we've got to turn
• 2:06
  things around. Okay, I shot back, but why would I trust a
• 2:10
  Republican to change any of this in this administration? At this Hilton
• 2:15
  feigned ignorance in which administration the Trump's new two administration I don't
• 2:21
  see the relevance of that to California. California's voters will likely see
• 2:25
  the relevance, given that Trump recently just, you know, invited Iran to
• 2:29
  bomb the state's two biggest cities. Trump has also sent the National
• 2:34
  Guard to LA and tried to do the same thing in San
• 2:37
  Francisco, cut off vital healthcare funding to the state, and initiated both
• 2:41
  a global trade war and a literal war in Iran that have
• 2:44
  sent the cost of everything in this country, including in California, skyrocketing.
• 2:49
  Hilton acknowledged none of those things. Instead, he continually portrayed himself as
• 2:54
  a heroic outsider. I'm not the president, he insisted with a showman's
• 2:58
  vigor. I'm not him, I'm me. When I brought up the President
• 3:02
  later in our conversation, he complained to me, I don't know why
• 3:06
  you keep talking about Trump. That's why I'm here, I told him.
• 3:10
  Because you're a Republican. I want you to explain to me how
• 3:14
  you could possibly exist as a functional Republican with the standard bearer
• 3:18
  of that party, exercising a ridiculous amount of influence over the party,
• 3:22
  and being a general omniscient presence over the entire country, California included.
• 3:27
  Well, I think that description, it just doesn't match the facts, Hilton
• 3:31
  told me. The polls at the time implied that voters did not
• 3:34
  agree. When I met Hilton in August, he
• 3:36
  was trailing Bacera badly, so I asked him why he was running
• 3:40
  a campaign that was doomed to fail. That gap in the polls
• 3:43
  is shrinking, he said to me, with no lack of confidence. The
• 3:47
  gap went from twenty five to eighteen in the Berkeley poll. What
• 3:51
  was the next one? Our own internal poll, down to fourteen points.
• 3:54
  There's a poll that we're hearing about next week, where the gap
• 3:57
  will be under ten percent. Hilton didn't mention that he was quoting
• 4:01
  polls from before and after the primary, and the gap fell from
• 4:05
  twenty one, not twenty five, which is very much a Republican thing
• 4:09
  for him to do, but I still gave him the benefit of
• 4:11
  the doubt. Let's say the poll numbers hold and you don't win
• 4:15
  the election, I said to him, where would you go after this?
• 4:19
  At this he laughed. I don't know. I haven't thought about it.
• 4:23
  I'm planning to win. I do believe that I'm going to be
• 4:25
  the next governor. I can see it. I believe it. Is that
• 4:29
  your ego talking? Have you convinced yourself? No, it's California talking. It's
• 4:34
  the conditions in our state. It's not the poles talking. Yes, but
• 4:39
  we're just at the start of the campaign. No one really pays
• 4:41
  attention until after Labor Day anyway. Everything points to this, being a
• 4:45
  change election in California. That means that I will win the election.
• 4:49
  That is my strong expectation. But that confidence only holds if Hilton
• 4:54
  pretends the Trump factor in this race isn't significant. Surely the voters
• 4:58
  he'd met along the trail had told him as much. That why
• 5:01
  I asked him, Have you not had voters talk to you specifically
• 5:04
  about what the President is doing? Never comes up. That answer floored
• 5:08
  me. Never. Literally never comes up, Hilton boasted. It's what are we
• 5:14
  going to do about the gas prices? Right now in California you'll
• 5:17
  see gas prices in the five to six dollars range. If you
• 5:20
  go to Texas today, they're in the three dollars range. Same country,
• 5:24
  same president, same Iran war going on, vastly different gas prices. That's
• 5:29
  entirely due to the policies that Democrats have pursued in California. He's
• 5:33
  partially correct, given that California's gas prices are high partially because the
• 5:38
  state has the highest gas tax in the country, and its fuel
• 5:41
  standards increase costs for producers. But he again fails to acknowledge the
• 5:45
  role the Trump administration has played in driving up prices nationwide. It's
• 5:50
  a form of denial That
• 5:51
  he's shown many times over, from asking voters to ignore Trump's endorsement
• 5:55
  of him after he accepted, to attempting to soften his affection for
• 5:59
  other members of the MAGA herd, including the late Charlie Kirk. Hilton
• 6:03
  came to our meeting sporting a wristband honoring the fallen white supremacist.
• 6:08
  I asked him why he had it. He was a good friend
• 6:11
  of mine, and someone gave it to me, Hilton said about that,
• 6:14
  so I just kept it. Did you like his way of going
• 6:18
  about things, because he was rather open about his views on race?
• 6:22
  I'm not sure what you're referring to, that he was a bigot.
• 6:26
  Well, he was a friend of mine. I'm sure we all agree
• 6:29
  that we are friends with many people. That doesn't mean we agree
• 6:32
  with one hundred percent of everything they've ever said or don’t You’d
• 6:36
  can still be friends with someone, just as I am with many
• 6:39
  Democrats. Don't agree with them, but we're friends. Do not count Bissera,
• 6:44
  the Democratic candidate, as one such friend. Hilton made sure to get
• 6:48
  in his jabs at Bissera in between all of my nagging questions.
• 6:51
  We haven't even talked about all the disqualifying factors for my opponent,
• 6:55
  who, in the words of former Biden official Susan Rice, is an
• 6:58
  idiot. You can't have an idiot as governor of California. I asked
• 7:03
  if he thought Becerra was especially idiotic given the current level of
• 7:07
  stupidity in the Trump administration, but he quickly sidestepped. I don't know.
• 7:12
  You'd have to ask Susan Rice. I don't know why she called
• 7:15
  him an idiot. Well, you just said it was a great quote
• 7:19
  about him, so you must think he's an idiot, too. I'm just
• 7:22
  telling you what people who have experience of working with him say.
• 7:26
  She also called him a bitch ass, whatever that means exactly. I
• 7:31
  think you know what a bitch ass means. I actually truly don't
• 7:35
  know exactly what that means. He must have learned in the interim,
• 7:39
  because one week ago Hilton faced off against Bessera in the only
• 7:43
  televised gubernatorial debate prior to the election. There he brought up the
• 7:47
  bitch ass comment from Rice directly to his opponent. He also constantly
• 7:51
  took umbrage any time Bessera tried to link him to the President.
• 7:56
  All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump, he admonished Becera. That's
• 8:00
  nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something
• 8:04
  to change in this state. If voters here are desperate for a
• 8:07
  change, they're not buying Hilton as the face of it. Two weeks
• 8:11
  after Labor Day, he is now down against Becerra by twenty five
• 8:15
  points. I don't think he's going to win this election. Because when
• 8:18
  you're a Republican, there's no hiding it.