I found that video of Steve Maviglio climbing on a woman's car and then ripping off her windshield wiper

America's Landlord, or the Windshield Swiper?

A triptych that rivals The Garden of Earthly Delights.

We all saw it on Reddit last year: the clip of California political ghoul Steve Maviglio (a.k.a. America’s Landlord — more on that below) climbing onto the hood of a car, awkwardly splaying himself over the windshield, and then tearing a wiper off before falling to the side of the hood and running away.

It was a jarring glimpse of a political insider which, for many of us, justified our interpretation of Maviglio as the worst of the worst in California politics. Over the course of his career, he’s built a reputation for being terrible to women. This was the logical manifestation.

But the video was gone as quickly as it came — deleted from the r/Sacramento subreddit without a trace. And it left us all wondering: What was that all about, and where can I get my hands on this cinematic masterpiece?

Well, dear reader, wonder no more. I have retrieved the clip that we have been scouring the web over the last year to find. And in a later write-up I will explain in detail the origin of the clip.

But first, for the uninitiated: Who exactly is Steve Maviglio, this unhinged man on the hood of a car?

I first heard of Maviglio in my early years in Sacramento, when former NBA star Kevin Johnson was still mayor. Maviglio was a hired communications consultant for KJ, known for enjoying the rough and tumble of California politics. (He first gained prominence in Sacramento years before as the communications henchman for Governor Gray Davis.)

Now, this game is dirty. That’s fine. But in 2016 Maviglio crossed into a space from which he’d never return, after the mayor’s sexual assault accuser from his NBA years came forward 20 years later (she was 16 at the time): Maviglio went on Fox 40 and claimed that the young woman was paid by a media outlet to speak out.

From Dave McKenna at Deadspin (who covered this scandal doggedly), in an article titled “More Women Come Forward To Publicly Accuse Kevin Johnson Of Sexual Misconduct:”

The shamelessness of Johnson and those around him continued after the HBO telecast. Steven Maviglio, his former campaign manager, went on KTXL-TV, the Sacramento Fox affiliate, and insinuated that [the accuser] was motivated by greed to come forward with accusations against Johnson.

“We’re not sure if she was paid for this. Deadspin sorta waffled when they were asked about this,” Maviglio said.

[She] was not paid by Deadspin, which has to this date not paid anybody for any of the interviews, videos, audio tapes or documents used in our reporting on Kevin Johnson.

The only payment I’m aware of to [her] came from Johnson himself, and that was made to stop her from talking. In 1997, Johnson and his lawyers wrote up a contract that paid the then-teenage [accuser], her family, lawyers, and doctors a total of $230,600. In exchange for that money, she was told not to talk about what happened between her and Johnson, except to “a priest, a therapist, or a lawyer.”

Four years later, during the George Floyd protests of 2020, Maviglio outed himself once more as a pile of trash.

You may recall a story in the Washington Post about a man opening his home to dozens of D.C. demonstrators who had been kettled by police on his block and were on the verge of being illegally arrested. Just about everyone with a heart in the country viewed that guy as a hero.

But not his landlord, a Sacramento man by the name of (you guessed it) Steve Maviglio.

“I own that home,” Maviglio tweeted. “A real hero pays his rent to the owner of the home so I can pay taxes that support our community.”

It was a massively tone-deaf tweet in a time where millions of Americans were having trouble making ends meet (COVID lockdowns had just begun three months earlier). Backlash against Maviglio was widespread and severe, and he was soon a reviled figure throughout the country.

He also faced consequences locally, with the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op asking him to step down from their board. Maviglio refused at first, but was pushed out months later (speaking of which, some great leftists were just elected to their board this week — progress!).

Many in Sacramento took to calling Maviglio “America’s Landlord” in the years following his embarrassing Washington Post story.

But Maviglio is known for other things locally, such as his long history of harassing young women in local politics. Anyone who’s been on Twitter the past four years has witnessed his relentless attacks against Sacramento city council member Katie Valenzuela, or his constant chirping at female journalists at the Sacramento Bee.

It should surprise no one, of course, that footage has surfaced of Maviglio harrassing another woman, as shown in the below clip, by jumping onto her vehicle and terrorizing her.

All said, not a great guy.

Now, without further ado, here is the uncut, unedited clip of Steve Maviglio losing his mind, climbing onto the hood of a car, ripping off a windshield wiper, and running away: