The Derek Hunter Show · WMAL | CMLS Washington DC

Hour 2 March 16th, 2026

·37 min·2 clips

Derek Hunter says Gavin Newsom's California tax pitch is a "blatant verifiable falsehood."

Derek Hunter opens Hour 2 with Gavin Newsom. He takes a swipe at the California governor's presidential appetite and leans on the gap between slick and slimy, using a used-car-salesman comparison that lands cleanly. He does not stop there. The riff keeps widening, putting Newsom in the same bucket as politicians who can talk through a question and still leave you with polish and suspicion. Then he shifts to a housing mess. The report he works from says a building that was supposed to become permanent supportive housing has sat unfinished for almost four years, with permits, funding, and construction all moving at a glacial pace. The money is the part that sticks. He keeps coming back to the fact that the project has climbed to roughly $20 million for only 32 units while the site still looks skeletal and nearby residents are not exactly optimistic. The joke almost writes itself. Hunter lingers on the absurdity of a government project needing a permit before spending money the government already approved. Then he widens the lens. He moves into a riff about pride, poverty, and the old instinct not to treat a free lunch as the first choice if you can help it. That sets up his final target. A clip from a member of Congress running for governor saying a company should keep her healthy becomes, in his hands, a bigger argument about misplaced responsibility. He says the line is not just semantic fluff. It reflects a mindset that expects other people to solve private problems, and he treats that as corrosive. The hour moves fast. It bounces from presidential ambition to public waste to personal responsibility without pausing for a polite transition. He sounds most at home when the target is obvious. That is the engine here: clip, jab, explain, and move on before the next outrage cools off.

As heard by us

A brisk, combative hour that turns political polish and public waste into one hard-edged argument.

Derek Hunter spends the hour tying Gavin Newsom's presidential ambitions to a long-delayed homeless housing project and to the familiar claim that other people are meant to carry the load.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a blunt Gavin Newsom roast, a stalled housing-project disaster, and a hard conservative riff on responsibility, press play now.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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