He Called Out Newsom. 5 Days Later, The State Showed Up

0:00 Am I alone in feeling rather intense about, call it grievances, that I have with the way that my government's taken me? You're not alone. And the thing is, is it actually transcends party lines. That's the craziest part about this, is that you can have a conversation with anybody out on the street right now, not knowing what their political persuasion is, and they will agree with all of your grievances, but then they'll vote in a different way. Wow. Why is this? You're right. I mean, California's been messed up for 16 plus years. Total Democrat control. right? But they don't vote any different. In fact, if you look at things, when we have the opportunity to give ourselves a tax increase, we, the people somehow vote for that tax increase. We, we even vote the wrong way, but the, but the party itself just continues to repeat the same. And you would not think that they would be rewarded, but it appears that way. I've learned that local, everything is local, right? Local politics. If you want to see change tomorrow, you focus on local politics, school boards, local city council, and certain committees and commissions. That is where it all starts. Everything grows from there. Those are the roots.

1:05 You have to plant the seeds and those are the roots. You don't change, like tomorrow, I'm not going to be able to change anything from a federal perspective. So for me, if I, everybody's been asking me for years, are you ever going to get involved in politics? The answer unequivocally was no, I'm not. And then two years ago, when Tony Strickland, who was on city council, moved to state senate. There was an open seat. Michael Gates, who's currently running for attorney general, he came to me and he said, would you have any interest in perhaps taking that seat? And I laughed. I said, of course not. Like, no. And I went and I told my wife, I said, can you believe this? He asked me. But that seed was planted. And about a month later, he asked me again. And he asked me again. And finally, I said, you know what? I have to go talk to my family about this. We need to think about it. And then ultimately I realized if I'm ever going to change anything in regards to politics, this is where it has to start and potentially stop. And it was funny because I remember Michael originally told me, oh, it's going to be, it's two meetings a month, maybe five, 10 hours, but that's not the type of person I am.

2:06 When I do something, I go all in almost to the point where my wife says, slow down. Yeah. Pull back. So, um, you know, Huntington beach is the tip of the spear when it comes to fighting everything that's happening, not just in Sacramento, but nationally. Yes. Because our federal, here's my biggest problem. Our government has gotten way too big, and we know that. We see it with the numbers. The numbers don't lie, right? Let's take all the emotion out, look at the federal deficit. Grotesque. The budget, all of that. Now, I'm a food guy, right? So what really triggered me 15 years ago was when I looked and I saw that the federal spending on health care was 15%, then 20%, then 25%. We've only gotten sicker over the past 10, 20, 30 decades. So we're tripling the spend and we're only getting sicker. Well, that is emblematic of every single aspect of government. The more we spend, the more we insert ourselves, the worse the problem gets or the more problems there are. Now let's get back to California. That's the formula for California. Sacramento, every single time they get involved in a subject, a problem, the problem gets worse or another problem starts that otherwise wasn't there to begin with. And then they increase the size of government to fix the very problem that they created. The American way, throw money at it.

3:20 Surely we can fix it. Exactly. And as we are learning through various brave people like Nick Shirley and others, where the money, nobody can find it. Where is it at? Where did it go? We may never know. But that said, tell our audience a little bit, and then we'll get back to the political thing. And tell us about Andrew Gruhl. Tell us about your remarkable career. I mean, people recognize you immediately. I see you on Fox. I see you in all kinds of things, plus your podcast. But for those who may not know, who are you? And how is it that you got into the food industry and not only got into it, but your multiple restaurants? It's just amazing. So who are you? Thank you so much. So I guess I would say I'm an accidental chef. I actually, I grew up in a world with two working parents. My mom was involved in politics and ultimately law enforcement.

4:14 My father was politically engaged, but they were both two hardworking parents. I did not grow up with home-cooked meals and all those great stories about sitting on grandma's knee and making fresh pasta. Norman Rockwell moment. Exactly. I grew up, it was the microwave generation, right? It was SpaghettiOs and microwave pound cake on Christmas morning. No culinary background at all. But I got my first job. My dad said, you're getting a job once you turn 15. It was with a friend's mother's catering company. Then the next job, I said, well, I know food. So I started working for a five-star hotel at 16. Wow. And then I continued going through the culinary world through my career. But I went to college at 17, 18. I actually went up to a small liberal arts college up in Maine studying social and political philosophy and piano performance. I mean, I was like one step away from protesting capitalism. This is true. Yeah, exactly. But I started working in restaurants up there, lobstering.

5:09 And after two years, I realized my passion is serving people through food. And I'm not going to spend time in college anymore. I'm going to go into the culinary arts. So I traveled around the world working, cooking, ended up back in culinary school in Colorado after doing some stints, apprenticeships. Long story short, went back and worked for the Ritz-Carlton for a while, Marriott International, went back to business school, got food business degree as well. And then I ended up in California after 10, 15 years of working through the restaurant industry when the economy tanked in 2009. So there was an opportunity at the Aquarium of the Pacific to start a sustainable seafood program. They wanted a chef to connect consumers to seafood because our seafood consumption in the United States is actually one of the most low per capita consumption of any developed country in the world. That's why we have so many chronic diseases in our general kind of calculus of health. So if we could get people to eat more seafood and more of the right types of seafood, especially California fresh U.S. domestically caught seafood, because 80% of the seafood we consume in the U.S. is imported, and all the seafood that we catch here is exported.

6:18 Largest trade deficit behind oil and automobiles is seafood. So it's this classic government. Kind of off, maybe not off, how did Trump's tariffs affect that then? For the good, right? It actually did affect it for the good. That's a great point that you make. And I harped on that with seafood for a while because it's about fixing that trade imbalance. Um, now I, so I did this program for a couple of years and then instead of going back to the East coast where I'm from New York, New Jersey, I said, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to take this, the thesis of this program, which is getting people to eat more of the right types of seafood, sustainable, well-caught seafood, U.S. seafood. And I'm going to start my own business. I couldn't raise any money in 2011. So I started as one food truck and I went out and I leased it for a week. In California? In Irvine. I was one of the original kind of gourmet food trucks. And it was called slap fish.

7:11 Fish so fresh it'll slap you. Oh my gosh. I know this. And we, so after one week, I went back to the guy that I was leasing the truck. He said, give it to me for another week. Then I want another truck. So from May of 2011 to December of 2011, we went from one to four food trucks. And then I basically shut them down, leased an old bagel shop in Huntington Beach, opened my first brick and mortar in 2012. And then we grew that. We opened about 50 restaurants over.

7:40 More importantly, I got married, have four kids in that time frame. My wife is a chef. She runs a business. Because you didn't have enough going on. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Exactly. And that, you know, that's kind of the trajectory of my career. 2020 comes. Boom. COVID. And I kept my mouth shut. Yeah, well, okay, keep going because you come out on top at the end of the story. Well, so what's interesting is I'd been doing Food Network in that time frame leading up to 2020. And, you know, it was kind of horrible shows. You've probably never seen them. It was awful, but it was fun. And when the pandemic hits, I remember I had said to my wife, I said, it's time. I can't keep my mouth shut anymore. Like all these years of being quiet. And everybody knew that, you know, I was very much a small government conservative. And I opened up my mouth and immediately it was backlash. And I remember to this day, Newsom shut down outdoor dining a week after he was caught dining at the French Laundry.

8:40 I remember. And all these people are attacking me online for protesting that. And I remember they're all calling me an a-hole. And I went out and I went on this tirade. I handed my wife my phone. We're standing in the kitchen. And I remember vividly, I say, record this. And I go on this tirade and I end it and I say, I'm not the a-hole. Newsom's the a-hole. and within, I post it and we go to take our kids out to the park. And I remember my phone, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And then we have this rule. I turn the phone off because when would the kids be focused? And I turn my phone on a couple hours later, New York Post, Food Network chef called Newsom an a-hole. Bam, bam, bam, bam, just going viral. Lambasting. All over the place. Five days later, I get served a labor investigation by the Newsom administration. Of course, that's how it works. criticize the government and you're going to expect a visit. I start getting, we start getting death threats.

9:35 I mean, it just went off. And I remember we leave our house and we go and we say, we're going to do a staycation. We had just had a baby, right? So our fourth baby was just born. And I remember we're staying at a local hotel and I turned to Lauren and I said, I should probably stop. She goes, no. She goes, we're in. Oh, I like her. She said, double down. No, you never apologize. Okay, this is your wife telling you, keep fighting, fight more. Yeah, she said, double down, don't stop now. She's like, we're in. And it was that. So the next morning, we get a call from somebody who had lost their job because not only did Newsom close all the restaurants, employees had no way of getting unemployment because if you recall, $50 billion in unemployment fraud. And Lauren said to me, use the attention we're getting right now. let's start our own fund to help these employees. That was so incredibly compassionate.

10:30 So that was the start of it. We started the next week, 86 restaurant struggle. We started a nonprofit and we raised over a half a million dollars and distributed it in $1,000 checks across the country for the next eight months. And after that, I got dropped from all the TV stuff I was doing and who was standing there with open arms, obviously Fox News. And the rest is kind of ultimately history. Remarkable. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so living in Huntington Beach, I assume, yeah, because city council, I mean, there's some cities, I'd ask you that because there's actually some cities I'm aware of that they have people on council that don't live within the city. I don't understand how that works. I know. Okay, that's pretty weird. But that said, let me ask you this question that you probably get asked a lot. I get this asked a lot. When are you going to move? When are you going to leave the state. I had a chance to talk with Donald Trump, his first administration, and it was pretty clear Trump was basically saying the same thing. California is gone. Get out of there. Flee while you can. But that's not who I am. And that said, why are you still here?

11:44 I look at Huntington Beach as a state in and of itself, right? So if you look at the geography of California, that's New England from Maine all the way down, past New Jersey, et cetera. How many states are in that geography? That's right. And each one of those states, or some of those states are more conservative than others. So when you look at it from that perspective, I see Huntington Beach, a city of over 200,000 people in a county which has millions and millions of people and drives so much of the economy in California that if we can take back some of that local control, we're fortified. That's right. Isn't that something? Yes, good, by the way. And you said something earlier about how important local politics really is.

12:28 I just recently, I'm not going to say the guy's name, but I was speaking with a U.S. federal prosecutor, and his job is to examine and investigate election fraud. and he spoke. I watched him speak to some people and he made that so clear that people think, I'll just vote in the general election or I'll just vote. I'll go to the ballot or I'll fill out my ballot and I'll just vote for president or I'll just vote for governor. Not knowing that in the grand scheme of things, the governor or the president doesn't have all that massive power over you as much as your local government does. And boy, we, I learned that during COVID as well, being a church where our local government and county leaders who are very involved in this church kept me insulated from Gavin Newsom's attacks because I got a letter from his AG every two weeks for almost two years. We're going to shut you down. You're out of violation.

13:38 and my local government said, give those to us. Don't answer any of his calls. We'll take it from here. That's awesome. What happened? Like you said, local government became the most important thing. And so that said, if you used a word that I've never even thought about before in this context, you guys have been fortifying Huntington Beach. and Andrew, I think that might be one of the reasons why, even in a recent debate, the one and only debate between hopefully our new governor, Steve Hilton and Javier Becerra, Javier Becerra in the debate brought up Huntington Beach as a, he said, I sued Huntington Beach.

14:28 Wow. Huntington Beach has become the target because you guys have been exercising your constitutional freedoms. If our founding fathers were to come back today, and I say this reverently because I read those guys, I know those guys. If they were to come back today, they would say, what's wrong with the rest of you people? You should do what Huntington Beach is doing because that's what we did 250 years ago. All it takes is one small story. Fight, fight, fight. I fight on council in Huntington Beach. And when other people in cities all across America see that, they'll also continue to fight. So often we think that the fight is fruitless and we give up. We're exhausted. We're tired. It's strenuous. The endurance it takes to fight past 99% when you're about to give up. It's not just a marathon, right? It's an ultra marathon. But in Huntington Beach, we've learned you fight because guess what? You're going to wear them down. And the thing, you know, it's a blessing and a curse. You have this, this, this, this construct of a power hungry, overly aggressive, greedy government in Sacramento. And we see that everywhere, right? We see it in Europe right now. It's grown into its own beast and now it's eating its own tail and it's out of control. And it's happening in California. And then Democrats in Washington are saying, that's what we want for America. Where California goes, America goes.

15:48 A hundred percent. But you've got this little, you know, David who's in Huntington Beach, who's fighting, who's fighting and fighting and fighting. And they're saying, leave us alone. We're trying to deal with all this other stuff. We want to be globalists. Stop it, Huntington Beach. Yeah, get in line, will you? And eventually they don't realize it, but we've slashed their ankle. We're getting up to their knee. We're making it so that they can't move forward as fast as they otherwise would. And it's all because we just don't stop fighting in Huntington Beach. But I will say this, there's exhaustion. Of course. People in Huntington Beach are saying, you know what, it's time to give up. No. We're conservative, but let's just, that's what they want. That's what they want. Yeah, the Bible says, do not grow weary at well-doing. Think about that. If you're doing what's right, you got to stay at it. In fact, I'll say this, Andrew. If what you're doing is right, you are going to experience opposition. You're going to experience hatred directed in your way.

16:46 and you are going to naturally grow weary because even though truth and good are immutable, it's hard to maintain those things because we naturally as humans, I'm going to get mail on this because people are born good. That's not exactly true because little babies are born innocent. But once, you know, you got to keep your little kid from stealing cookies out of the cookie jar because it's in them. That said, it's easier to go downstream with the crowd. It's easy to stop fighting and just say, I'm throwing in the towel. That's easy to do, but nothing that is valuable has ever come out of what's easy. And so what you guys have done, Huntington Beach, yes, of course, was the legendary Surf City USA, the American birthplace of surfing, this iconic beach location.

17:45 I grew up in SoCal. I remember riding my bike to the beach and having to go around certain areas of Huntington because I wasn't allowed to go down those streets because they were so bad. And those were in the days when there was a different party in charge and it was pretty crazy. Now the exact opposite has happened. You guys have turned that city around. People want to move to that city. This is an important thing. People don't realize that good government, like Jeremiah 29 verse 7 tells us that the city that you're in, you should look out for its own welfare. And if you do that, it will be at peace. And those within that city, they will enjoy the peace. What a verse. That's what you guys have done. Yes. Well, I'm a fighter and the value system is there. Every single decision that I make on council, I'd look through a filter, right? There's a moral North Star, but then there's also a calculus of removing government from the equation.

18:40 There's a Thomas Sowell approach as well is that what does this cost? You know, are we creating a bigger problem? But I'm not just willy nilly making decisions. There's arithmetic to this, right? It is a word problem of sorts and you conjugate it through the right framework. Other politicians I've noticed, and I'm fortunate on Huntington Beach Council because Pastor Chad Williams is on council who is also another council member. And he's even shown me the way when it comes to make the decision that's right, not based upon how other people are influencing you. So voting for me means that I'm going to be voting based on what's right and not influence. You know, I am on the battlefield right now. Of course, if anybody who's watching this has friends in Huntington Beach, spread that good word. Or if they're watching and they want to help equip me with more artillery, they can help support my campaign. But what happens in Huntington Beach matters across the entire country. because when people read stories about Huntington Beach, they say, wow, in a sea of blue, how is this city operating so strong from a financial perspective, right?

19:42 Five to one asset to liability ratio when we've got bankruptcies all around. That's right. How are we decreasing homelessness at all time rates? So true. How has our crime gone down so significantly? Why when you drive through Huntington Beach, do you see the cleanest streets, the cleanest parks? It's true. 10 miles of beautiful beaches, 1,100 acres of the most gorgeous parks in the world. and one of the most historic libraries in the heart of Huntington Beach that we've kept clean and pure. Perfect. They look at that and say, what is the common denominator there? Oh, they're all conservative. Maybe we should consider voting conservative. Yeah. What's crazy about what you just said, and it's so hypocritical, everything you just said is so true, but the crazy libtard progressive cultural wrecker, they're not altogether stupid, and they're looking for a new home. They're going to, we want to move down to the beach. And they'll see, they'll go on, like a normal person, they'll go on crime rates. Ooh, Huntington Beach is a safe place to live.

20:40 And then if you happen to take a drive, either down PCH or any one of the Huntington Beach streets, you see kids like I was in the 60s riding bicycles with surfboards on their bikes. They're alone. They're going to the beach. They don't have to have a bodyguard. And it's awesome. It's old school awesome. But even the person that is a radical progressive, if they're going to be looking for a home, they'll look for a home in Huntington because good schools, safe community, not realizing that it's the conservative power that's in place that has provided these things where a culture can thrive. Well, I would even push that further and say it's not the conservative power. It's actually the, it's a moral mindset, right? And I think that's broader even than conservative versus liberal or neoliberal, right?

21:34 And in that sense, what I mean is that in so many of these cities where we see success, one thing we don't see at every corner is government. What do we see? We see community doing what community does best, churches doing what they do best, nonprofits, NGOs, sports teams, sports coaches, all of those things that make a community a community, you don't see government in there. I was at a quasi-debate last night, and it was driven by the Chamber of Commerce, so a lot of the questions were business-focused. But in the answers, I was picking up a common denominator, almost an analog for the way in which they think, where every problem, the solution they offered was a government program. Oh, well, businesses on this side of town don't do well because nobody can get there. Let's create a public transportation program that we fund, right? Oh, well, we need more councils and committees so that we can make decisions as a government to drive the marketing. And all I keep hearing is government when I'm thinking to myself, we have the greatest community in Huntington Beach.

22:31 Let me tell you a real quick story because this is emblematic of this. So when the fires hit in January of 25, I was laying on the floor putting my son to sleep, and I see that the winds are picking up in the fires, and I tweet out. I said, if anybody needs a place to stay, I'm going to go to the restaurant, open it up. We have 85 parking spots. come down bring your rv whatever i'll be open wow my wife comes running in a room she goes did you really tweet that i said yeah i'm gonna go swing by the restaurant she goes let's just look on the cameras cars start coming down right from from from los angeles from yeah yeah so we start feeding people i'm cooking through the night at the restaurant the next morning my wife goes well let's put out a call for what we need some diapers some water the basic stuff's in the very beginning i went up to the pasadena um shelter and then my wife got in touch with guys on the fire line so she brings a box over to the restaurant i tweet out again suddenly products start showing up right one hour two hours three hours 10 cars 20 30 40 50 fast forward two weeks all right we have shut our entire parking lot down we have a full operation there's full on working 75 cars wrapped down the street on pch all the way down the street we ended up having we ended up distributing roughly, it was like, I got to go back and look at the economy, $600,000 in goods to the Dream Center through Matthew Barnett. I know the Barnetts. Yeah. So Matthew was my partner in this.

23:52 Perfect. And Matthew and I, so it was great. I used to do my last drive up with my kids in the back to feed all the volunteers at the Dream Center. Usually around midnight, we took the kids out of school and Matthew would always be standing there. I'd give him the lobster rolls and we had to say, what do we need for tomorrow? And it was an inspiration. But here's the point of the story. There was no government involved. No, that's why it worked. Of the people in Huntington beach. I called at the time I was not on council. I called, um, uh, Gracie Vandermark. Uh, and I said, Hey, Gracie, am I going to get in trouble because we're blocking traffic within 10 minutes? She not only had the police chief over there directing traffic. She pulled three public works trucks offline to load goods up and drive them to the dream center. That's government. And that's, I mean, that is to me, if you could use government to help as opposed to get in the way. That's how it's supposed to work.

24:46 It's amazing. The only reason we need government is to help facilitate the good that our community members do. Man, I don't want to get off Andrew Gruel because I want you to win this race. But I would just say this very quickly. When Hurricane Katrina, you weren't even born yet probably, I don't know. But when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, that was so devastating. and a friend of mine, Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council knew the governor, Bobby Jindal at the time. Okay. And they had great needs, but FEMA and OSHA and everybody was there and the FDA and people showed up with foods. People had brought their Texans, had barbecued their beef or their pork and they were trucking it on over. And I literally got a phone call saying, Jack, can you put out the word? Can you do something? because we can't feed these people.

25:38 The food is prepped. It's there, but they don't have a health permit. The federal government's not allowing this to happen. And this is unbelievable. You know what we had to do, Andrew? I'll divulge this now. We had some people from this church who owned ranches up in central and northern California. They started slaughtering cattle. Wow. And they put it all into whatever that's called, where you've got your burger and you've got your steaks and you've got your whatever you do with a cow.

26:10 They trucked it down here. We wound up getting two refrigerator trucks. And then we were told, wait, as soon as this meat crosses the state line, it's illegal. The feds are going to confiscate it. Yep. So do you know what we had to do? I called Tony Perks and I said, we can't, we got, we got a bunch of cows to send you on two full-blown 18-wheelers. to feed these people, we can't do it because we can't cross the state line. The governor of Louisiana called the states, the governors where I-40 ran through. And got. And said, can you let these trucks through? Every one of those governors said, we'll have our troopers make sure those trucks get through. Our trucks got into Louisiana with the needed food. we had to fight the federal government to get those people fed. That's government in the way. That's what government does when it's too big because it's got to get its hands into everything.

27:11 And again, our founding fathers would not even recognize what this nation does like that. They would look at our government today and think that it was a huge corporation. And when they found out it was the government, they would say, what are we doing? I'll tell you what Sam Adams would have said, that's a foreign entity. Yeah. It's an enemy. There we go. That's intense, but that's real. Yeah. That's how it works. So where do people go to give you money? I want people to give you money so that you win because it matters. It actually matters. In fact, can you talk about the opposition money? Yes. They're right now in the Huntington Beach race, both city council as well as the assembly and some of the other periphery races, there are millions of dollars coming in from the California Democrats. To stop you guys. To stop us on council in addition to stopping some of the other former council members that are going up, trying to go to assembly, District 72, which is in Huntington Beach, and then there's the supervisors races as well. But millions of dollars are coming in.

28:09 To the opposition. To the opposition. Not you. Millions of dollars. So we're fighting, right? I'm fighting. I'm out there on front lines fighting, and I need resources in order to continue fighting the millions of dollars. because California Democrats have so much money that they've taken from, interestingly, the hard workers of California, right? That union money that people have to spend into the machine off of the backs of the hard workers in California gets then jammed into these races to perpetuate the policies that make it worse for the workers. You know, people say that the Democrats are the workers' party. No, the Republicans are the workers' party. That's right. We are always here to help the workers. And right now, I'm struggling. I'm flapping out there like one of those things at a car dealership going like this. And I'm so used to giving in my life, giving food, right? Feeding people, helping people that it's not going to lie.

29:02 It's hard for me to ask for help to equip myself so that I can continue. Well, I appreciate that about you. And that comes across to people who are logical, pick up on that insensible. That's why I'm happy to have you on. We wanted you on because I want to be the one that says for people, please send your support to Andrew because I would even go so far as to say this. Somebody might be watching right now and they are in, they're in Montana and in their particular county or city, it's good. They got it good. Everything's fine. They don't have to, you don't have to reach into your pocket to keep your local government healthy. It's already healthy. So what I'm saying is why don't you consider this like a war and that you're going to be sending armaments to Huntington Beach because Andrew said it earlier, what happens in Huntington and or California is exported to 49 other states. A wise general would say, if you've got it good in these other areas of America and you see Huntington doing the right thing, you don't have to invest in your local town because it's upright, it's working, it's fine. Help these guys out. I'm a big fan of that. And so where would people go to support you? Where do they send in help?

30:23 So it's www.gruel, G-R-U-E-L, just think Gruel the porridge, forcouncil.com. So gruelforcouncil.com. I'm surprised you haven't made a joke yet about the irony of my last name. So I appreciate that because that's how the left is insulting me. A chef named Gruel, you remember the old porridge? Oh, yes, of course. But, well, they would. They would because didn't they recently? There's something out there that caught Karen Bass talking to some people. And they're talking about Steve Hilton. And this is the Democrat Party in California. And they said, how could you vote for somebody who has a foreign accent? Yes. Yep. Oh, excuse me. They're the ones that want to open up the floodgates of the borders to have people come in with foreign accents. They turn around and say, how could you vote for somebody with a foreign accent? I thought it was incredibly, incredibly sweet. Well, their xenophobia is okay.

31:19 Yours is bad. It's so true. That's always the way that it is. And I'll draw this other analogy for the gentleman who, or the family that's in Montana, is that bad government is a sickness, a disease, a cancer that metastasizes so rapidly and spreads and goes viral like any other disease. So what we're trying to do is that we're actually lopping the dead branches off the tree so that it can't metastasize into areas like Montana. And we want to go viral with good as opposed to going viral with bad. In addition to the fact that we're a family operation. I've got four young kids right now between the ages of 5 and 15. I've got their endorsement just recently. That was a hard one to get. If you can get family endorsement, that's it. And my wife, who is my business partner, she runs the restaurants. When I'm at these events, she's in the kitchen. She's on the floor. She's picking the kids up from school. I fly back to New York every two weeks for Gutfeld and Fox. So I'm on the road a lot. Bring the kids with me.

32:10 Bring them to the campaign events. But I'll tell you what's the greatest thing about this is that the kids are learning about civic responsibility. I had my son out the other day, my five-year-old, on his bike, and he had yard signs. He was driving around knocking on doors. Can you put my dad's yard sign in front of the wall? That's old school. So we're driving around the neighborhood, and I said, why is that yard sign out there? I know that. That's a huge. they're a very liberal family and I love them. I love everybody. Right. And my son, my five-year-old goes, I told her she had to put it there. I said, you are changing minds. That's the guy. That's the guy. Isn't that great? It's amazing. But that is so good down home, old school way of living. Well, I tell that story because people are so scared to get involved politically. They're scared to say something because the left is so aggressive. They want you to be afraid to say what's right because then they can infiltrate. They scare you. It's intimidation. It's intimidation, right? And I spoke the other day to a business owner and he said to me, I love what you're doing.

33:10 I wish I could do the same, but I can't. I have a business. I said, I've got multiple businesses and my family's here in town. You got to fight. Like enough. And it was that aha moment of that's why so many conservatives say, well, I'm just going to do my own thing and I'm going to keep my mouth shut. So when people see me out there with my family, my four kids, my wife, and they know this guy's standing up and his business, I'll tell you what, my business has doubled since I got on council. My business has tripled since I started speaking back. Thank you for saying that. People need to know that. Pastors need to know this because some pastors think, oh, I could never encourage our people to register to vote. I don't want to lose people. Well, that's a really weird way of looking at church, but you'll find out that if you do do that, which is legal, by the way, you'll find your church will grow because people actually want to live their Christianity beyond the walls of the church. They actually want to live it every day. Who would have thought?

34:07 But no, no, that's awesome. So with the race that's coming up and Huntington Beach being deliberately, systematically singled out by the Democrat Party because you guys just won't obey. You're going to exercise your constitutional rights and freedoms. Who has been,

34:33 I should put it this way, have you been getting support from good citizens, from even churches, from people? How about immigrants? I would think that immigrants that have come here, that they wanted to start a new life? They see you guys fighting for their freedoms? Do they get it? Yes, they do, 100%. Tell us about it. Please encourage us. Well, I'm a restaurant owner. 90% of all the immigrants that have especially come here from Ecuador, from Mexico, are in the restaurant or hospitality to some degree. This is true. And I will tell you something fascinating. They don't love California, and here's why. Guess what none of them have been able to do, and I've hired these people. None of them have gotten any help from California. They've been used as a political pawn. So many of these people who did immigrate here and they came across the border undocumented, came in, got jobs. And then when Biden got in control, they went and they said to the state of California, please help me become legal.

35:30 And they said, no, we're not helping you at all. A lot of these people are actually getting more help under this current administration than previous administrations. You mean that word Trump? Yeah, exactly. That's the funniest thing about it. And what he's saying is, you know, we ignored the problem for 10, 20 years. Obama was bragging about the fact that he was exporting so many people that he was deporting. I say exporting, but he was deporting so many people. People don't realize this. Oh, by the way, the cages. Guess what? I was there. I was eyewitness, Andrew, at the border. Obama administration? Obama administration. You want to talk about putting kids in cages? It was Obama's administration, folks. When I went back with 35 pastors, Trump was taking the cages down. You don't hear that on CNN.

36:23 Oh, of course not. Of course not. And, you know, I think the hardest thing for me, and we tried for years. I knew guys in the restaurant industry that had worked for me at one point or worked at neighboring restaurants because it's always a community. And these are good people. And they were saying, okay, I went back to Mexico because that's what they told me to do. But I really need to get some sort of a green card of citizenship, X, Y, and Z. and there was no help from anyone in California. It's so broken. None at all. So, you know, now they're being used as pawns, political pawns, but then they're chewed up and spit out. That's right. In Huntington Beach, the key when it comes to not just immigrants, but all of the low-wage workers, right, because that's a huge problem in California is the depression of certain wages and certain industries up against an affordability crisis, which is frankly man-made, especially in California. That's right. And they're saying, okay, well, the great thing about Huntington Beach is that it's safe. We can bring our children here and we get paid more.

37:16 Why do we get paid more at restaurants and retail and hotels in California? Because the economy is stronger. And the reason the economy is stronger is because we're getting the lion's share of the economy, of the people who are going to come into Orange County. They come to Huntington Beach. Why? The basics. It's safe. It's clean. It's got the lowest tax rate, 7.75%, which they're trying to jam up. If we lose this election, it will be 8.25 on sales tax. I have people that drive in from Long Beach. from Los Angeles. My restaurant on weekends is 60% LA County because people don't want to pay 12, 13%. Of course, it's insane. And they don't want to spend money on a meal and have people laid out and doing the Fent dance in front of them. Kids alone, I mean, anytime I drive into LA, I get nervous about where I'm going to be with my kids, what I'm going to do, making sure they're protected. Andrew, frankly, I think the last event that we went to was sports-wise, it was a Dodger game.

38:11 and I said, that's the end of it. I mean, once you got into Dodger Stadium, it was fantastically beautiful. But God forbid, on the way in and the way out. And I said, that's it, I'm done. My grandkids were with me, never again. And then the other thing was, we went to a sporting event, a music event, excuse me, a music event, just recently, a Forrest Frank concert. And man, it was sketchy getting there. To a brand new arena, fantastic. What was it? the Intuit Dome Center. Fantastic venue. It's just getting in and getting out alive. Tragic. That said, you said something. I want people to know this.

38:51 During COVID, there was a business, and maybe you know, I'm not too familiar with it, although I should be, because we deliberately drove there to eat. Why? It was an Italian restaurant off of Victoria and Bouchard, maybe? Yeah, Basilico's. Basilico's. Tony Roman. They wouldn't close their doors. And they were standing, and we heard about it. Let's go. We went there. We were eating. I have to, I mean, this is between us, but I was so impressed. I think I lift a tip as big as the food bill because I was so happy for them and I wanted to bless them. And then we went back the second time and it was full of cop cars. And I didn't realize all the Huntington Beach cops were eating there. Yes. That was what happened with us as well in Huntington. Yes, it was fantastic. Police, fire, all of them.

39:44 It was hilarious. I remember the first time we were like, we're staying open. And these two police officers walk in. I'm like, here we go. Here it is. They walk up to the counter. Yeah, let me get two lobster rolls, grilled fish taco. Oh, that's good. Okay, I'll throw one in. Yeah, I mean, it was eye-opening. But I tell people this about the business. So when everybody was losing business during the pandemic, when we started our fund, 86 restaurant struggle, and then we started raising money and became more nationally known for being open, I thought that was it. I thought we were going to go down. That was it. Our sales tripled, quadrupled. I mean, the most busy we have been, and at that point that was Slapfish. I ultimately sold Slapfish, frankly, whole nother story, but because of the COVID controversy. But at that time, everyone came in as you just described. Because guess what?

40:35 People love courage. Courage tastes good. Courage is respectable. Tragically, and it's rare. Tragically, it's rare. So when people see it, they run to it. It is rare. And I just even told you anecdotally that it was my wife who had to and say double down. Because I started even second guessing myself. And look what that did to you, though. That was a wonderful thing. It was a wonderful thing. Now, granted, at that time, I was 6'8", 290 pounds. but you know, this has worn me down a little bit. Nonetheless, uh, it, it certainly gave me, it gave me another, um, you know, it's that nitro boost, right? And so we watch other people. So that's kind of the analogy with Huntington beach is what we're doing here. Anybody can do anywhere. And I talk to people all the time. They write to me, they call me, they say, I'm thinking about running for city council school board. I'm scared. How do I do it? Approach it through. There's not, There's no rubric to this, right? It's very simple. The only role of government is to do two things, provide public safety and infrastructure.

41:31 That's right. That's it. Anything beyond that is discretionary and it's redundant, most likely duplicative and unnecessary. Unnecessary. The third role is to get out of the way to then allow the economic development that funds number one and two. That is government. It's so simple. It's American, uniquely American. And for 250 years, it's worked just fine. It's worked for actually technically for 400 years. If you think about it, it's worked just fine. And everyone will say, well, you know, our democracy is on the line. We're not a democracy. We're not a democracy. Exactly. We are a constitutional republic. And that's the key is that with things with that, with what I just described to you being as simple as it is, one would imagine, well, hypothetically, how does that broad interpretation of the role of government not get misinterpreted? Guess what? Because we have a check and a balance. It's called the Constitution. Boom. The greatest system ever. Yeah. That's why they're against