Sometimes people have asked me, well,

how did you end up supporting President Trump? In many ways,

I think the campaign I'm running is not particularly partisan. However,

there are realities about running for office in the US. But look,

he's not on the ballot and this is a point of choice for California.

Steve Hilton once a British political strategist,

now a Trump backed Republican running for governor of California. Do you

agree with his decision to go to war in Iran?

Well, look, I'm just focused on this race.

You really don't think the voters of California deserve to hear you express a

view on that?

How, how can I effect that?

You're trying to be a leader of the state.

No, I understand, but then there's plenty to fix and focus on in California.

From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Mishal Husain Show.

Over the next few months,

the US political climate is set to become even more intense.

As we approach the midterms.

This November's set of elections will mark the halfway point between one

presidential vote and the next,

and while the main focus will be on Congress and whether the Democrats

can seize control of one or both houses,

there are some fascinating races elsewhere.

One of them is the race to be the next governor of California.

It's a notable Democratic-leaning state,

but it has had Republican governors, Ronald Reagan,

more recently Arnold Schwarzenegger,

and this time a Republican is through to the final stage,

one of the two candidates who will be on the ballot in November.

His name is Steve Hilton and he's unusual,

not least because he only became a US citizen five years ago. He's

someone whose name I've known for about 20 years from his time in embedded

in UK politics, working for the Conservative leader David Cameron,

before and after he became prime minister.

So when I saw Steve Hilton's advance through the California governor

primary, I knew I wanted to understand it. He's up against Democrat,

Xavier Becerra who used to work for Joe Biden,

but California is such an important place economically,

not just in US terms but globally,

and that means this conversation does go beyond state matters.

Above all,

I hope that through it you get a much better sense of the man who wants to be

California's next leader.

How are you doing?

Hello. I'm very well. How are you?

I'm very well. Great to see you.

Thank you for saying yes to my email, out of the blue. How are you,

most importantly.

Good, thanks. Onto the next round.

Well, yeah, I know. Absolutely.

It doesn't stop.

Next round of interviews or next round of the campaign?

The campaign, the next fight. There's no break. We've got to keep going.

There's not much time now.

Well, look, we'll talk about all of that and it's clearly,

clearly it's been a remarkable few weeks for you.

You've obviously been involved in politics for a long time.

You've been a strategist, you've been a political aide,

you've been a commentator on Fox News.

I'm still curious about the moment when you decided to run for office yourself

because that's a very big decision to make.

I don't think there was one specific moment,

but there was a period of time that I can recall. As you mentioned,

I'd been a host on television, a most unexpected turn in my career in media.

I greatly enjoyed that, but as the years went on,

I felt that I wanted to get back into actually doing things rather than just

talking about things. I love California, been living here since 2012,

raised my family here, started a business here.

I could see that things were going off the rails pretty badly from a policy

point of view. So I started a policy organization, Golden Together,

started working on some of our big problems in California.

I then started engaging with Sacramento,

trying to advance those policy ideas through the legislature,

and that was the point where I realized just how dysfunctional and broken

California's system of government is because every single meeting I had

with legislators, Democrats, Republicans, it was the same story. Yes,

you are right. These policies you are advocating would make a huge difference.

We'd get more housing built, we'd lower the cost. All those things are true.

However,

it can never happen because the unions won't allow it.

The climate activists won't allow it. The system just can't make it happen,

and I just realized then that something has to change otherwise this state that

I love is just going to go, continue to decline.

Yeah, it's the state you've made your home,

in the country that you've made your home. Having left the UK,

and we're going to dig into all of this and the nuts and bolts of your campaign

in a moment, but I just want to understand you more broadly to start with,

would you say that being on Fox, having that kind of prominence on TV,

that's got to have played an important role in rising in the Republican Party?

Donald Trump, it helped his rise.

He was known from television and he was a fan of your show on Fox.

I think that's right, that it gives you a platform,

but I think it's that combination actually of media experience,

policy and government experience,

and business experience that actually is a good fit for this role,

not only of running for governor, but as I plan to be, being the next governor.

But when did you actually become a Republican? Because,

2017 you were very clearly saying you weren't partisan and you

were neither Democrat or Republican.

Well, it's interesting.

In many ways I think the campaign I'm running is not particularly partisan.

It's based on some broad common sense principles that I think most people

can get behind.

So I've never thought of myself as a particularly partisan person. However,

there are realities about running for office in the US.

It's basically a two-party system,

and of course I identify very much with the principles that

underlie the Republican Party just as I do the Conservative Party,

where I worked for some years and was part of a coalition government led by

a Conservative prime minister,

the basic ideas that you would associate with the center-right

are ideas that I share ,in terms of limiting the role of government,

enhancing individual freedom.

Those sorts of things have always been part of my political philosophy and

therefore connect very much with the Republican Party here in America.

I of course,

remember you from your time in the UK working for David Cameron before he got

elected, after he became prime minister.

You were part of that effort to detoxify the Conservative Party,

to make it more electable, bring it into more of the center ground,

more socially liberal, more climate conscious.

Are you still the same guy who did that?

Oh, very much, very much.

I understand that some people who haven't been following the intervening years

may look at that and say, well, that's very different.

David Cameron's a very different personality to the president who's the

leader of the Republican Party in America today. I can see that, very clearly,

but everyone has their own personal style,

but the ideas that really drove that process of change

for the Conservative Party in particular focusing on people who've been left

behind on dealing with poverty and inequality on helping working people.

That was a really big part of the work that we did 20 years or so ago

with the Conservative Party,

and that's a big driver of what I'm really arguing for here,

and there's many other similarities as well.

I think perhaps the broadest one is a sense,

that I've always had,

which is a sense that we need to put power in people's hands and enable them

to fight back against establishments or systems or centralized power

that benefits a small group rather than the majority of people.

That's always been a really important driving force.

But what you did for David Cameron, the person who you still say you are,

that is very, very far from not only Donald Trump himself, but MAGA,

and I just wonder how you reconcile that because you are endorsed by President

Trump himself.

What you are representing yourself as is I think more the Arnold Schwartzenegger

wing of the Republican Party in California and he's someone who endorsed Kamala

Harris in the last presidential election.

Well,

I don't think the boxes are quite as neat and defined

as that, I'm endorsed by many different kinds of Republicans.

Of course political parties are coalitions and as I say, I think this campaign,

everything I'm arguing for is not particularly partisan.

The fact that we've got Democrats supporting the campaign is an example of that,

and I think that what I've always tried to focus on is really the

substance, the idea specific things.

I'm a pragmatic candidate in this race, not an ideologue.

The arguments I'm making about how we need to turn California around,

we've got the highest cost of living by far.

I'm not sure it's appreciated around the world because you look at the headline

for California, we're the fourth biggest economy,

and there's a sense of complacency there on the part of the current leadership.

They keep saying that as if that answers all questions.

Underneath that this is a state that's in real trouble,

especially from an economic point of view,

and the solutions there actually go across party lines.

They're just practical things to make life easier for families and businesses.

So I think this whole conversation around labels and whatever

doesn't really get to the point about what is needed in order to help

California get back on track.

Okay,

but I don't think you can bat away being the fourth largest economy in the world

quite so lightly. This happened last year, it was the fifth largest,

then California overtook Japan under Gavin Newsom.

It doesn't feel like a failure to many people in the state,

I would suspect, and certainly to people outside.

Well,

I think it does to many people inside because they're struggling to even live.

That's why during Gavin Newsom's tenure as governor,

nearly 2 million Californians have actually moved out.

They can't live here anymore because it's so expensive.

Let's just look at that number. The fourth biggest economy in the world.

That's driven by two things that don't actually tell a story of health

in terms of our economy.

Partly it's driven by very small number of tech companies,

fantastic success stories, which I strongly support.

I'm very proud of the fact that we are leading the AI revolution in California.

They generate enormous amounts of revenue, but not very many jobs.

The second part of the story in terms of the size of our economy is that it

includes the size of government.

They've doubled the budget of the state of California in the last 10 years or

so. Meanwhile, the results on every measure, education standards,

the quality of our infrastructure,

the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states,

the highest poverty rate of all 50 states tied with Louisiana.

I think if we don't change direction this year,

California really is heading for economic disaster.

I've heard from so many business leaders that they're waiting to see what

happens in November and if we don't vote for change in California,

they're out.

And the exodus of businesses from California that you've seen in the last few

years could turn into a stampede.

So if California is doing that badly,

I want to put two other points to you.

One is whether you think there is something longer term going on that is

affecting the poorest in California and elsewhere,

and that is a long-term decline in living standards.

That's happened over the course of the last 50 years.

So it's not about the Democrats ruling California now.

It is about something more systemic that reflects poorly on American leadership

for decades.

Well, I agree with you actually. Sometimes people have asked me, well, how did,

going back to your earlier conversation,

how did you end up supporting President Trump?

I do remember back in 2015,

I for the first time saw this chart based on US data.

This is going back 10 years now,

11 years showing the earnings of the majority of workers

in California. I think the technical term was non-managerial,

non-supervisory workers, roughly 80% of the workforce after inflation,

and it's basically a straight line, just flat.

So through Republican and Democrat governance in 50 years since

1974, I think it was.

Basically the economic position of most people ... Angus Deaton,

Nobel Prize winning economist has done the seminal work on that,

and I dunno if those are the figures you're referring to,

but he's absolutely laid this out for the last 50 years.

But that's exactly why I think the challenge is much broader than the political

points you are making.

It is one about choices that America's leaders have made. Right.

I agree with that,

and I think that there needs to be a much bigger emphasis on the gap

between the very top and the super rich and so on. Of course,

that's been in the news with the SpaceX IPO and so on.

I think the real issue is the fact that you've got so many people in the lower

end of the income scale who just feel stuck and that social mobility has gone.

I think that's absolutely a broad point. However, within that,

one of the great things about America and our system here is that you've got

this experiment in policymaking through the federal system. In fact,

you've got 50 states that do things a different way and even within the overall

framework, which I agree needs serious reform.

Some states are doing better than others,

and you can see it in the fact that people and businesses are leaving California

and moving to states with more welcoming policies to business and where the cost

of living is much lower. Texas, Florida, Tennessee,

even our neighboring states, Nevada,

you've got a lot of evidence now that the high tax,

high spending,

progressive model of governance that you see in the blue states as they're known

like California, like New York is not working.

We've had 16 years of one party rule in California where one controlled

everything.

There's really been no barrier to the Democratic philosophy being

implemented fully in California. The results are among the worst in the country.

But on people leaving,

there's an aspect of this on which you could agree with Gavin Newsom,

which is that he is trying to stop the wealth tax on billionaires

that's been proposed by one of the labor unions.

He's determined to try and stop it because he thinks it will drive more people

away. So, area of agreement, yes,

between you and Governor Newsom?

Very much, very much. Although I have to say,

given his close relationship with the unions,

I would've hoped he would've acted sooner to stop that even becoming

a consideration. For example, right now,

there's a process going on in Sacramento, very typical,

it's going to horse trading process where it's possible it won't,

that the union itself will take it off the ballot. Now,

because they're negotiating some other kind of agreements.

That could have been done a year ago.

But he's working on this. He's working on this. That's the point.

No, I agree with that,

but as often with Gavin Newsom a little bit more attention and focus

earlier, would've worked wonders.

The other point I wanted to put to you about your economic critique of

California is a question really about whether the policies of the federal

government are playing a role in making life more unaffordable for

Californians.

Well, it's certainly true that if you ...

which examples are you thinking of particularly? I'm wondering, well,

let's take tariffs for starters and their impact on the cost of some goods.

Well, I think that if you look at the detail on that,

it's nothing like as significant. We have the highest grocery prices,

for example in the country.

The main drivers of that are policies made in California,

energy costs the highest in the country,

the labor and environmental regulations that make operating here so

expensive.

Can I give you others?

This is Bloomberg analysis from earlier in the year that the jumps in the prices

of children's clothing, tools, outdoor equipment, furniture, bedding,

motor vehicle parts,

all of this is linked to tariff policy and trade policy that the

administration brought in last year.

But if you basically look at where we settled on tariffs in terms of the

percentage rates,

and you look at the way that the international trading system has worked for

a long time before the tariff,

it is a levelling of the system and I think that the impulse that

drove that policy is absolutely correct,

which is that there hasn't been fairness. Most other countries,

most of America's trading partners, for example,

have a value added tax which distorts the picture in terms of imports and

export.

So you support the imposition of tariffs?

Well, it's not a California state policy,

so I try and avoid weighing in on policies where there aren't really the subject

of this campaign. I mean,

I can give you a general observation that I think it was important to try

and do something to bring manufacturing back to the US and that's happening.

Unfortunately, it's not happening for California. That's a really good example.

I mean I've read you talking about global and supporting globalization.

So has your view completely changed on that?

Because that was something that used to say you believed in?

That globalization was a force for good and a force that created wealth rather

than reduced it.

For sure it's lifted ... right, but nothing is all good or all bad.

I mean,

I think the point about policy generally in all sorts of areas,

it's about trade-offs.

And of course it's true that over the years that we've seen the

globalization of trade and so on,

you've seen tremendous advances in economic opportunity in some parts of the

world, and that's a good thing. Obviously, I think anyone would support that,

but at the same time, partly because of sometimes the speed of transition,

partly sometimes because of the concentrated effects of a transition,

places have really lost out and suffered.

And so the policy goal is to try and keep as much of the positive while

alleviating the negatives. And I always bring it back,

I am running now for governor of California, what does it mean in California?

Going back to the AI companies, you look at Nvidia, Anthropic,

these big companies making major investments in the US,

none of them in California.

The job creation that's coming from the AI boom in America is happening outside

of the home state of those companies. That's something I want to change.

So we get the full stack as I describe it, of AI jobs in California.

So I do want to ask you about your attitude to big tech because I remember

you being really critical of these companies, Facebook as it was then,

Amazon and Google talking about their dominant position,

how you'd like the kind of framework where if they became too dominant in the

market,

then you'd want them to be treated as a monopoly that you'd want maximum pay

rates for senior executives. Have you changed your mind?

And at that time you were talking about regulation of big tech being really

important to you and now I don't see that kind of thing in your set of policies

changed.

I've changed my job, which is now running for governor,

and as I plan to be governor, my job, my responsibility.

Does that mean you can't afford to take on big tech?

If I just finish the point,

which is that my responsibility will be to support

every business in California to help them grow.

So we create jobs and wealth and opportunity in our state.

So regardless of my personal opinions about this or that company,

I see it as the responsibility of the governor of any state to stand up

for the people and the businesses, small business, medium sized,

big global corporations, whatever it is, that is my responsibility.

So what is your personal opinion of big tech?

Well, I think that we were just talking about in other areas brought tremendous

advances and changed people's lives in a positive way.

I'm hugely proud of the tech sector and the fact that we are leading and

dominating once again in this new wave of

innovation. That's fantastic and I'm proud of that. But as with everything,

there's positives and downsides and the goal of policy makers

should be to be really careful about not leaping into

trying to fix things.

There really is a danger of overcorrecting and having

unintended consequences. I think that's the skill

of governance and I think that when you look at tech,

of course it's had positive transformational effects.

Remember people are choosing to use this technology,

no one's forcing it on anyone.

People are using it because they find it helpful and businesses are using it

because they find it helpful. I don't want to stand in the way of that.

Yeah, and I do understand of course,

that you are doing a different job now and running for office is different to

being a commentator and having much more freedom when you can say,

but there is also a question of belief and core principles and you clearly

felt strongly and thought a lot about tech,

not least because you've spent so many years seeing it up close

and living in California.

So do you not have any concerns today about the dominance of these companies

in our lives? They're a key part of the stock market.

A lot of American wealth is wrapped up in them. They're at the forefront of AI,

which will change if not destroy many jobs.

Have those concerns gone away or you just can't talk about them anymore?

No, no. I think that, well, first of all, not just observed.

I started and ran a tech company. I taught at Stanford University,

so I absolutely agree with you that you're seeing

companies with a huge transformational effect,

but that's new and it's what innovation is. We've got to

be careful about what happens.

That's my attitude to the whole question of

the impact of technology on society is to just be very

open about what's going on,

but not necessarily think that we,

speaking now as someone who's running for office has the ability to really

drive a change without causing unintended consequences.

Right now, for example on AI,

you've got major disagreement about what's happening even within the

leaders of the sector. No one really knows.

What do you think is going to be your biggest hurdle in this race in the next

few months?

Well,

I think it's actually a belief that we can turn the desire for change.

There's no question that California wants change.

Every single piece of data you look at shows that there's a clear majority of

people who think that we're on the wrong track and that we need to change

direction. Now,

what you've got to do is close that gap between the desire of people

for change and actually voting for it by doing something that

they haven't done in sufficient numbers in recent years,

which is actually voting Republican. And so my job is to say, look,

I'm running as someone with a positive,

pragmatic plan for very specific benefits that will help you in your

life. $3 gas, cut your electric bills in half,

your first 150 grand tax free,

starter homes for young people so they can afford to buy a home in California.

These are positive, practical things,

and my job is to get out there and show people how it can be done and then I

think we'll win. I'm very confident of that.

You're going to need to have Democrats vote for you essentially.

Absolutely. I mean, it's a clear

requirement that given the numbers that you've seen in recent

years,

of course it's true that Democrats and Independents,

as it's called in California,

no party preference voters need to join our movement for change.

They already are. I mean,

we've been doing events up and down the state for a year now, town halls,

hundreds of events, thousands and thousands of people now have come out.

Many times people come along, they're open to everybody,

and many times someone would stand up and say, I'm a Democrat.

I've never been to a Republican event before. I voted for Kamala Harris,

but something's got to change in California. You are already seeing that happen.

And I just wonder if that gets more difficult from this point onwards because

President Trump's popularity has declined. He's endorsed your ticket,

you've thanked him for that.

You are asking people who often will not like him at all and will feel

harmed by some of his economic policies or who are angry at the war in Iran

to vote for you.

No, I understand that, but look,

he's not on the ballot and this is a point of choice for California.

Do we keep going in the same direction or do we want to make a choice to go in a

new direction? There's a sense of desperation,

and I think that that is driven by factors

that are created in California. You mentioned the war, the Iran War, of course,

that's lifted up gas prices right across the country,

but they are $2 a gallon higher in California than anywhere else today.

Do you agree with the Iran war?

The prices you're seeing around the country that people are complaining about as

being incredibly high.

We would've welcomed that in California before the war because they're way lower

than we had imposed here.

President Trump is president in all these other states that have far lower

cost of living, gas prices, electric bills, housing costs, you name it.

And so it's clearly not his policies.

It's California policies that are the problem here.

Do you agree with the Iran War, his decision to go to war in Iran?

Well, look, I'm just focused on this race.

I'm really not a commentator on every political issue right now.

There's plenty to fix in California. That's my focus, 100%.

You really don't think you need to,

or the voters of California deserve to hear you express some view on that.

How can I effect it?

That's not the point. How can I effect it as a candidate? It's just to know

where you stand on it.

You're trying to be a leader of the state.

No, I understand. I understand.

But there's plenty to fix and focus on in California, and as I said,

I'm not a political commentator. I can give you my very strong view that

it's completely dangerous for the whole world for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

I think the basis

for that is something that's broadly shared across all political parties.

That's why leaders of all kinds have been trying to deal with this situation for

many, many years.

I've also expressed a strong belief that remember,

my parents are Hungarian, they fled communism in Hungary.

I've always believed that

the way in which the Iranian people have stood up to this brutal

authoritarian regime, something that we should support.

So just as

you take the side of people trying to overthrow oppression generally,

that's something of course I believe in. Now,

that doesn't mean that I've spent any time

looking at the specific details of the implementation of this or that policy.

I'm 100% focused on California.

You know how President Trump is talking about the regime members now

who the US is dealing with rational, smart, strong, not radicalized.

It's the same regime, and that's the way he's referring to them now.

Look, as I said, I'm just not,

I actually hadn't even heard those comments, truly. It's a big state.

I'm on the road from morning till night up and down this state making our case,

and I'm just not focused on anything other than California right now.

Okay, well then you mentioned your parents and them fleeing communism,

and I can imagine that that experience clearly formative for them,

formative for you as well growing up, I guess,

is it part of why you became a conservative because

you were not going to grow up to be someone on the left of the political

spectrum ever?

I think that's probably part of it.

One of my earliest political memories is in the UK. I was born in the UK.

Both my parents are Hungarian, also my stepfather's Hungarian.

My parents split up when I was young. My dad went back to Hungary,

my stepfather's Hungarian. Also someone who actually fled,

ran across the border with Austria,

ended up in a refugee camp and like so many working class

immigrants,

he had a massive appreciation for the opportunities of being

in a free country.

I grew up in a regular working class immigrant home. He worked construction.

He was a builder, as you'd say, in England.

And I really remember very strongly

around the early 80s,

when Margaret Thatcher had been elected,

this sense that she was for the workers, she was for working people

and people who wanted to,

the word that became very commonly associated with that strive and make progress

and get on in life,

and that sense of pursuing opportunity, climbing the ladder of opportunity,

upward mobility through hard work and effort.

That was something that I found that was very formative as I was

growing up. And I think that's part of it too.

And so that family experience in making a different life,

fleeing communism,

how does it make you view Cubans today who unlike in the past

are being deported? Some of them with criminal records, but not always.

These are also people who fled communism.

Well, I think that you,

I understand deeply as you just noted, the desire for freedom,

but you can't ... all of these migration patterns,

immigration and migration across borders,

everything falls apart if it's not done in a way that is legal and controlled.

Everyone must accept that.

You can't just have an open borders system.

It just causes chaos.

And so support for immigration,

for welcoming people who are fleeing persecution, all those things.

I've always ... actually David Cameron used to talk about it the same way.

Support for all of that depends on the government controlling that.

And when the government fails to control it, support declines.

You can actually see that change in public opinion.

You saw a drop in support for immigration and welcoming asylum

seekers and so on in the US during the open border years of Joe Biden's

administration.

So I think that you've got to combine the desire to offer

people that opportunity with a sense of orderly

management of that process.

Isn't the example of Cuba a bit different in the context of the United States?

I'm not sure what you are referring to specifically?

Because of fleeing communism that the US has traditionally ...

I don't suppose you're arguing that anyone who wants to flee communism should

be automatically accepted anyway.

Well, there are many Cuban,

many Cuban Americans today who feel very upset with

the deportation of Cubans for precisely that reason.

I guess you're telling me you think they're wrong.

Well, I actually don't know specifically the cases you are talking about,

are these illegal immigrants? I don't know exactly what you're describing.

I mean,

they are people who've entered the United States from Cuba and now they are

being deported.

Illegally?

Well, yeah.

Did they enter legally or illegally?

They would've entered and now been undocumented. But that has been the case ...

What, so illegally?

That has been the case for a long time.

But previous administrations didn't deport them because there was a certain

protection for Cuban Americans. It was different for others.

And that has changed now. Because of your family history.

I'm just wondering what you think of it.

No, I don't think my family history means that I support illegal immigration.

I don't see how that follows at all.

I think it's very important that we try and approach it in a calm and reasonable

way, lower the temperature.

I think there's been far too much divisive performative rhetoric on the Democrat

side. I think most people agree that immigration is a positive

thing, but should be managed and controlled by the government.

That's a common sense position that I think the vast majority of people support.

And of course, you're an immigrant yourself to the US.

Yes, a proud immigrant.

And you became a US citizen a few years ago.

You've renounced your British citizenship, which you didn't have to.

Was it just awkward to be running for office,

being a dual national or did you really feel that you just didn't want that

passport anymore?

No,

I feel very strongly that you are asking for people to put their faith in you,

their trust in you, and to make a commitment to you.

And I think you're obliged to make a commitment to them

and say, I am 100% all in for this country and this state,

which I am.

But I wanted to have absolutely no doubt about that in anyone's mind.

Is there anything you miss about the UK?

Well, not particularly. I mean obviously friends and family,

but we get back usually at Christmas time and

see people. And so I love California deeply.

I feel at home here in a way that I haven't ever before,

and I'm so proud to be an American,

proud to be a Californian and really honored to be in the position I'm in,

which is to actually do something you could say in a way to repay the incredible

opportunities that I've had here and to restore that idea of the California

dream,

which is a very particular thing about our state that other states really don't

have to really try and bring that to as many people as possible.

There's really nothing you miss? The pint in the pub, tea and biscuits.

That's a fair point. That's right. When we go back to London,

one of my first moves

is calling a friend or meeting up the friend. So yeah, we got to go to a pub.

That's a fair one.

How do you think the next few months are going to be? I mean,

they're going to be gruelling, right?

You're going to be on the road probably even more than before.

Yes, it's an honor to do it, truly, it's an honor to do it.

It's such a struggle for people in California,

and I feel this tremendous sense of responsibility to not let them down.

And that's why on election night when we got the first results and it seemed

that we were going to be okay, my feeling was overwhelmingly just relief,

truly that okay, this is good. We haven't let people down,

the people who place their real faith in you being able to help lead

a change. And now it's a very clear choice,

actually very helpfully clear because you've got my plan for change.

And on the other side, Xavier Becerra,

who's the living embodiment of more of the same.

And so it's a really clear choice for California,

and I'm excited about being on the road and putting it out there for people.

Would you like President Trump to come on the road with you?

Look, I haven't thought about that, honestly.

He's got a lot he's focused on,

so I don't suppose that's something that he's thought about either.

I feel he might not be an asset to you on the campaign trail in California.

Well, a lot of people voted for him,

more people voted for him in California than in any other state in 2024.

Of course, that's a function of being a big state.

But I would just say that California is actually more of a Republican state than

people think,

and I get a very strong sense that there's a groundswell of people

who've felt that it's just not possible in these years of one party dominance

that actually change isn't possible.

And part of the reason I'm running a campaign in such a high energy way,

which people say they haven't seen for a long time,

is to try and get that sense of belief back that we really can do

this.

Steve Hilton, thank you very much.

Great to be with you. Thank you.

And that is where we left the conversation. If you are a Bloomberg subscriber,

you can see the written version of this with my notes for added context and see

pictures of how Steve Hilton has evolved over the years.

That is all at bloomberg.com/mishal.