The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2268

00:00:00.000 The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day Good to see you sir Thanks for having me.

00:00:15.000 My pleasure.

00:00:15.000 Thanks for being here.

00:00:17.000 It is a terrible time for Los Angeles, and unfortunately, you did not win.

00:00:23.000 I wanted you to win.

00:00:25.000 Thank you.

00:00:25.000 I was rooting for you.

00:00:26.000 Thank you.

00:00:27.000 It's just...

00:00:28.000 The politics in L.A. are, it's almost like watching people who are in a cult, who are being confronted by the cult experts who are telling them, hey, this is all crazy and fake, and you're ruining your life, and they're like, no, no, no, I think it's going to work out.

00:00:44.000 Yeah.

00:00:45.000 Well, there's a lot of things that aren't working out.

00:00:47.000 Yeah.

00:00:47.000 There's a lot of things that are.

00:00:48.000 I mean, listen, I know like you, spending time and living in L.A., it's an amazing city.

00:00:54.000 It's amazing.

00:00:58.000 As much as I loved L.A., I actually fell in love with it more because I got to see places that I wouldn't normally see.

00:01:05.000 And so it was really amazing.

00:01:06.000 And people and the diversity and the dearness of so many neighborhoods and people.

00:01:11.000 But what's happened to L.A. over the last decade is just tragic.

00:01:17.000 And people are paying huge consequences for it.

00:01:20.000 And it's sad to watch.

00:01:22.000 So if you get to the heart of it, like if you did, if you won and you became the mayor of L.A., what could you do to try to turn this battleship around?

00:01:33.000 Because it's a big battleship.

00:01:35.000 It's a big battleship, and people will argue that the mayor of L.A. doesn't have a lot of authority, like other mayors.

00:01:42.000 You know, I learned a lot, Joe.

00:01:44.000 I worked for three mayors.

00:01:45.000 I worked for Tom Bradley when I was in my mid-20s as a commissioner.

00:01:49.000 I was the head of Department of Water and Power.

00:01:52.000 I worked for Dick Reardon.

00:01:53.000 He brought me back into head of DWP. During the energy crisis, the department was under a lot of financial strain.

00:02:01.000 And then I worked for Jim Hahn, who brought me in to turn around LAPD, and I was the police commissioner, the head of the police commission.

00:02:08.000 So I've seen really good leadership.

00:02:11.000 And honestly, what we've had in the last two mayors is not good leadership, and we're paying a price for it.

00:02:17.000 So you may not have a lot of power, but actually, I think the most powerful thing you can have that I learned as a police commissioner...

00:02:25.000 If you're not worried about getting reelected or reappointed, it's really amazing what can happen.

00:02:31.000 Because you can make decisions that are actually in the best interest of the people.

00:02:37.000 And I believe the career politicians are always worried about getting reelected.

00:02:42.000 They are scared to death of getting a real job.

00:02:46.000 They've never had to sign the front of a check, only the back.

00:02:49.000 So it's very difficult for them to even think about being out of office.

00:02:53.000 So they just circulate.

00:02:54.000 You know, they go from the city council to the state assembly to the state senate.

00:02:58.000 And we end up with the same sort of look and feel of leadership, which is pretty weak.

00:03:06.000 I think Dick Rudin was a good example of a guy who came in and did a lot of great stuff.

00:03:11.000 I actually think Jimmy Hahn did a lot of great stuff as mayor.

00:03:14.000 So I would go in there with some strong leadership.

00:03:16.000 I would certainly go in there.

00:03:18.000 And reach across the aisle and find common ground and all of those things you need to do to move forward.

00:03:25.000 But I would certainly plant some really strong goals that everybody knew we were working towards.

00:03:32.000 Because I believe that you either lead, follow, or get out of the way.

00:03:36.000 And I really admire people who lead.

00:03:41.000 I wouldn't mind being a little bit controversial if it's in the interest of doing what's in the best interest of the residents.

00:03:46.000 Well, that's what I enjoyed about your campaign, and that's what I was really hopeful about, is that it seemed like you were not Running for mayor because you wanted to be the mayor.

00:03:57.000 You were running for mayor because you're a businessman, and you realized that this was not being run like a successful business.

00:04:02.000 You knew how to run a successful business.

00:04:04.000 You knew the difference.

00:04:06.000 And L.A. is just constantly plagued by this crony political movement.

00:04:13.000 The same people, same type of people shuffling in and out, and just nothing ever changes.

00:04:20.000 Yeah.

00:04:21.000 And again, to give you a little bit of background, I am so indebted to L.A. It sounds a little bit corny, but my paternal and maternal grandparents, they were both immigrants.

00:04:33.000 My paternal grandfather was a gardener in Los Angeles.

00:04:36.000 He lived in Boyle Heights.

00:04:38.000 He started as a coal miner.

00:04:40.000 He actually probably had one of the worst jobs you could ever have in life when he immigrated here to a little town called Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

00:04:48.000 He was the dynamiter.

00:04:49.000 He was the guy that had to go in the lead.

00:04:51.000 Oh boy.

00:04:52.000 Yeah, set the dynamite and get the hell out in time.

00:04:55.000 And his brother, who immigrated with him, said, come to L.A. It's sunny.

00:05:00.000 My dad was actually born in a coal mining camp outside the coal mine.

00:05:07.000 But anyway, he was a gardener out here.

00:05:08.000 And we actually grew up in his truck as he would go around.

00:05:12.000 And they had this small little home they rented in.

00:05:16.000 In Boyle Heights.

00:05:17.000 And I think about what L.A. gave to my grandparents, to my dad, to me, my family, the opportunity to build a business.

00:05:27.000 And so running for mayor, the motivation was, I want to give back to the city that gave me so much.

00:05:34.000 And by the way, all the problems that we've got, you can fix them.

00:05:38.000 With a little bit of backbone, a little bit of smarts, if you're equipped right, bring together some really smart people, you can fix everything.

00:05:46.000 And to your point, what happened when I was tied at the end of the race and actually a little bit ahead?

00:05:54.000 You know, Biden flies into campaign.

00:05:58.000 Kamala flies into campaign.

00:06:00.000 Pelosi.

00:06:02.000 Bernie.

00:06:03.000 And at the end of the day, when we're 10 days before Election Day, they finally convinced Obama to do a message.

00:06:12.000 And so the system is so – it's a closed loop, right?

00:06:16.000 And the idea that somebody was going to come in the tent that's an outsider was horrifying to them.

00:06:24.000 And we would laugh about it as a family.

00:06:27.000 It's like you might as well just load up Air Force One all at one time and bring everybody out.

00:06:33.000 But I loved every minute of it.

00:06:36.000 And I hope at some point that system is changing.

00:06:40.000 And I think people are getting – More frustrated lately, and they're looking for people who are competent rather than just people who may share ideology.

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00:07:57.000 Well, you saw the difference in the California electoral map, right?

00:08:01.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:08:02.000 The difference between 2020 and 2024, how many different counties went red that were blue historically.

00:08:09.000 So let's break down the problems with LA and what could be done to fix it.

00:08:14.000 What do you see as the primary issues of LA right now?

00:08:19.000 Well, you know, you got a homeless problem that continues to grow.

00:08:24.000 So let's talk about that.

00:08:25.000 Okay, 70,000 people in LA, Canada.

00:08:27.000 One of the things we've covered on that is it's at least 70,000.

00:08:30.000 I mean, if they have a real accurate count.

00:08:32.000 But the real question is, why?

00:08:35.000 And why is so much money spent on it and no results?

00:08:40.000 We've covered it on this podcast that there's people that are bureaucrats that work for this department of...

00:08:47.000 Homelessness, and they're making a quarter million dollars a year.

00:08:50.000 And they have no incentive whatsoever to make anything better because it doesn't hurt them.

00:08:54.000 They're not paid based on whether or not they clean up the homeless issue.

00:08:57.000 They're just paid.

00:08:58.000 So the longer the homeless issue goes on, the more they keep their job.

00:09:02.000 And it's a profitable job.

00:09:04.000 And they just rant on and on about, we need housing.

00:09:08.000 That's not the problem.

00:09:10.000 But you know, I had a plan, and I'm confident my plan would have worked.

00:09:15.000 Let's talk about housing for a minute.

00:09:18.000 LA and LA County, they put in a tax called HHH to build 10,000 units.

00:09:26.000 At least about a year ago, I think they had maybe short of 1,000 units built.

00:09:32.000 That's amazing.

00:09:33.000 Over 10 years.

00:09:34.000 Over 10 years.

00:09:35.000 I'm amazed they built one.

00:09:36.000 Yeah, I know.

00:09:37.000 But you know what they built them for?

00:09:39.000 $800,000 a unit.

00:09:41.000 Wow.

00:09:42.000 That was the cost of it.

00:09:45.000 The sector, the nonprofit sector that's actually doing amazing work with the homeless, like down on Skid Row, Ground Zero, they're building on average 300,000 a unit.

00:09:57.000 But what happens in the city, in the government, there's so many layers of waste on top of waste on top of waste.

00:10:03.000 It's ridiculous.

00:10:05.000 So yeah, you're right.

00:10:06.000 Very little is happening.

00:10:07.000 Almost no housing is being built by the government, even though they have massive taxes.

00:10:11.000 We got another tax.

00:10:13.000 Called ULA. When you sell your home, you have to pay another 5%, over $5 million.

00:10:18.000 So there's taxes on top of taxes.

00:10:21.000 There is a solution to the homeless.

00:10:23.000 So let's just give you an example.

00:10:25.000 There's a company called Boxable outside of Vegas.

00:10:28.000 And they're building units that are 500, 600 square feet.

00:10:34.000 On average, they're about $60,000, $70,000 a unit.

00:10:37.000 This young guy figured out how to build basically a production line.

00:10:41.000 To knock these things out.

00:10:43.000 And when I was campaigning, I said to him, when I win, I'm going to give you a contract for 30,000 units.

00:10:50.000 And there's so much open space, Joe, in and around Los Angeles that's controlled by the city.

00:10:55.000 And we're going to start getting people in homes, getting them taken care of, giving them the service they need.

00:11:01.000 But the other thing we need to do, you can't have open drug dealing on the streets.

00:11:05.000 We welcome it.

00:11:06.000 And if you look around MacArthur Park, the great old Langer's Deli, And the poor owner, Norm Langers, who basically said, after 70 years, I've got to close my restaurant.

00:11:17.000 It's terrible.

00:11:18.000 Terrible.

00:11:19.000 Amazing old place.

00:11:19.000 And then, you know, Mayor Bass promised, I'm going to be down there, I'm going to clean it up, we're going to fix it.

00:11:24.000 It hasn't changed in six months since she said that.

00:11:27.000 It can be cleaned up.

00:11:28.000 It can be fixed.

00:11:29.000 You've got to have some backbone.

00:11:31.000 A lot of it is a mental health issue, correct?

00:11:34.000 Very much so.

00:11:35.000 Probably half.

00:11:36.000 And drug addiction.

00:11:37.000 Drug addiction, a lot of that comes from mental health issues as well, right?

00:11:41.000 Yes.

00:11:41.000 So what could be done?

00:11:43.000 I mean, you're dealing with an enormous population of people that have this issue.

00:11:46.000 It's probably closer to 100,000 in LA County.

00:11:49.000 Maybe.

00:11:50.000 I mean, that's the high estimates, right?

00:11:52.000 So let's say 70,000 to 100,000 people.

00:11:55.000 You have a lot of people.

00:11:56.000 What could be done to have some sort of a large program that gets real results with helping these people with their mental health issues and helping these people with their drug addiction issues?

00:12:09.000 I think you start first by enforcing the law and don't allow the sale of drugs on the street and holding the drug dealers accountable.

00:12:16.000 Not just the sale, but the open use.

00:12:18.000 I mean, meth, cooking meth right out in front of everybody.

00:12:22.000 You're right, all of the above.

00:12:22.000 I mean, literally in downtown, there's tents that are run by the drug dealers where everybody knows to go to get their drugs.

00:12:31.000 So you've got to start there.

00:12:33.000 But I'm a big believer that government alone can't solve major problems, right?

00:12:38.000 And you've got organizations downtown that are really doing great stuff.

00:12:43.000 Downtown Women's Center.

00:12:45.000 Is doing great stuff.

00:12:46.000 Union Rescue Mission, great stuff.

00:12:48.000 And they're bringing people in.

00:12:49.000 They're giving them the help and the treatment they need for drug addiction and mental health care.

00:12:54.000 And they're giving them housing.

00:12:57.000 Scale those people up.

00:12:58.000 Take the dollars we're spending and wasting on the city trying to do it and start pushing dollars to organizations that have a proven track record of success.

00:13:07.000 And their success, Joe, is like a 90% success rate.

00:13:11.000 And scale it.

00:13:12.000 Why go reinvent a model that's already working well?

00:13:15.000 And there's probably a dozen organizations downtown that are doing a good job.

00:13:20.000 And what are they doing?

00:13:21.000 And you do it at a fraction of the cost.

00:13:22.000 I already interrupted you.

00:13:23.000 Do it at a fraction of the cost.

00:13:24.000 These people that are being successful, how are they doing it?

00:13:27.000 What's their method?

00:13:28.000 You know, it's like I'm not the expert in it, but when I went down there and spent time during the campaign and since then, because we've been supportive of their efforts as a family, they actually welcome people as they are.

00:13:40.000 No judgment.

00:13:41.000 Downtown Women's Center.

00:13:43.000 Tonight, in Los Angeles, there'll be about 20,000 women that will go to sleep on the street, and the majority of those women will in some form or fashion be abused, sexually abused, right?

00:13:56.000 It's terrible that we allow this.

00:13:57.000 It's a crime we allow this.

00:13:59.000 But an example of Downtown Women's Center, they accept them the way they are, mental health condition, drug addiction condition.

00:14:07.000 They have embedded services.

00:14:10.000 Downtown in their facility, they have housing there for them, and they give them the treatment.

00:14:16.000 And it's happening in real time.

00:14:18.000 And they're very effective doing it.

00:14:20.000 Like I said, they've got about a 90% success rate.

00:14:23.000 So they have highly educated, skilled workers that know how to react and deal with the people on the street.

00:14:30.000 That's what we need more of.

00:14:32.000 I don't think you need to build new big institutions.

00:14:36.000 What I do think you need to do is cut all the red tape.

00:14:39.000 Start building quickly, funding these organizations, and fund them quickly.

00:14:44.000 If you talk to Downtown Women's Center, it will take them an average of six years to build new housing.

00:14:51.000 Six years.

00:14:52.000 That's crazy.

00:14:53.000 It's crazy.

00:14:54.000 It's in Skid Row.

00:14:55.000 It's not like you're building in a sensitive environmental area.

00:14:59.000 Right.

00:15:00.000 Right?

00:15:00.000 Right.

00:15:00.000 Give the damn permits and say go.

00:15:03.000 I first encountered Skid Row when we used to film Fear Factor downtown.

00:15:06.000 Oh.

00:15:07.000 And I'd heard of it.

00:15:09.000 I had no idea.

00:15:10.000 And we had done a bunch of the Fear Factor stunts in abandoned buildings.

00:15:15.000 It makes good backdrops.

00:15:17.000 Sure.

00:15:17.000 Creepy.

00:15:18.000 And when I went there, one time I took a wrong turn.

00:15:23.000 And I went right into the meat of everything.

00:15:27.000 And I was like, this is insanity.

00:15:28.000 And this was 2004?

00:15:32.000 2003?

00:15:33.000 So this was 20 years ago?

00:15:34.000 22 years ago?

00:15:35.000 And even back then it was bananas.

00:15:38.000 Come see it now.

00:15:39.000 Oh, I've heard.

00:15:40.000 Well, we watched that documentary.

00:15:42.000 Is it the Carlisle Hotel, Jamie?

00:15:45.000 One of the documentaries on one of the old downtown hotels.

00:15:50.000 It went into the history of Skid Row.

00:15:52.000 And what Skid Row was, they would take people, they would arrest them for being vagrants somewhere else, and they'd bring them to Skid Row and just leave them there and basically box them in and leave them in this area.

00:16:02.000 And they had, you know, soup kitchens and places where they could get food and they were allowed to just sleep on the street, and so they just stayed there.

00:16:09.000 And so they essentially, instead of fixing this problem of homeless people and mentally ill people, they just pushed them into this one area and said, let's just, you know, we got a spot, we could just stick them.

00:16:20.000 We could turn our back on it.

00:16:21.000 And then, of course, every business in that area got devastated.

00:16:24.000 All those hotels, glorious, old, classic hotels.

00:16:28.000 In fact, the Morrison Hotel just caught fire because vagrants were living in it, and it's gone now.

00:16:34.000 So these methods that these people are using that are successful, what are they?

00:16:40.000 What are they doing?

00:16:42.000 Well, what they're doing is they're giving them the treatment they need.

00:16:44.000 Now, Union Rescue Mission is...

00:16:46.000 As a different approach.

00:16:47.000 Union Rescue Mission, you know, that's a faith-based organization.

00:16:51.000 Hugely successful.

00:16:52.000 It's overflowing.

00:16:54.000 They can't accommodate everybody.

00:16:56.000 They need a lot more funding.

00:16:57.000 But they don't allow anybody to use drugs or alcohol the minute they check in and they get an apartment.

00:17:04.000 The other organizations that I'm aware of allow them to continue that, but they're required to go on programs to get off the drugs.

00:17:13.000 To get the mental health care that they need.

00:17:14.000 So they have skilled workers.

00:17:16.000 They're literally daily classes.

00:17:19.000 There's protocols.

00:17:20.000 There's requirements of the residents on what they can do and what they can't do.

00:17:24.000 They give them structure.

00:17:25.000 They give them structure.

00:17:26.000 That's right.

00:17:26.000 That's a great word.

00:17:27.000 You're exactly right.

00:17:28.000 They give them structure.

00:17:29.000 They give them training.

00:17:29.000 They give them hope.

00:17:30.000 And they give them a path forward.

00:17:33.000 I've always said this.

00:17:35.000 Let's assume your number's right.

00:17:36.000 There's 100,000 homeless on the streets in L.A. County, whatever the number is.

00:17:41.000 People say you can't solve the whole problem.

00:17:45.000 Why don't we start with solving half of it?

00:17:48.000 Yeah, that'd be nice.

00:17:49.000 Yeah.

00:17:51.000 Let's solve for the group of people that for whatever reason are down and out, lost their job, lost their apartment.

00:18:02.000 You've got more families on the streets now, Joe, than ever before.

00:18:07.000 Let's start with that group.

00:18:09.000 And let's help them very quickly.

00:18:11.000 Give them training.

00:18:12.000 Give them a job.

00:18:13.000 Give them a path forward.

00:18:15.000 And then you sort of work through the system.

00:18:17.000 But we're not even doing that.

00:18:19.000 Right?

00:18:20.000 And now you've had the fires.

00:18:23.000 The estimate is there's another 180,000 people in L.A. that are homeless.

00:18:29.000 Is that insane to think about?

00:18:31.000 It's insane.

00:18:31.000 The 180,000, though, a lot of them...

00:18:35.000 It's just because they're trying to find a place, but they're not destitute.

00:18:38.000 A lot of these people are people that had some money.

00:18:41.000 You know, who knows what's going to happen with insurance, right?

00:18:44.000 Right, but see, that's the problem.

00:18:45.000 Unfortunately, the fire insurance issue in Los Angeles is kind of insane.

00:18:49.000 It's terrible.

00:18:50.000 Where, you know, we were talking in the lobby before I was evacuated three times when I lived in L.A. Two of my neighbors lost their homes, you know, and watching those folks cry in front of the rubble.

00:19:04.000 Yeah.

00:19:05.000 Where they lived, it's just horrible.

00:19:10.000 But they kept their lives, and this was 2018, and they rebuilt some of them.

00:19:17.000 Two of the houses are still gone in my old neighborhood.

00:19:20.000 They never rebuilt.

00:19:22.000 Sorry to hear about that.

00:19:22.000 They just pulled out.

00:19:23.000 It's like, what am I going to do?

00:19:25.000 They lose everything.

00:19:25.000 Mel Gibson lost books from the 1600s.

00:19:29.000 Mel is a very religious man.

00:19:32.000 He collects these ancient, irreplaceable books.

00:19:36.000 And then, of course, the loss of lives is horrifying.

00:19:41.000 That issue is an issue that has plagued L.A. and California forever.

00:19:48.000 So, a big point of contention during the election, and even during the first Trump administration, was the use of water.

00:19:56.000 And that water was being funneled into the Pacific Ocean.

00:19:59.000 And now, apparently, you could tell me more, you probably know more than I do.

00:20:02.000 What has been done about that water?

00:20:05.000 Because it seems like Trump has changed that.

00:20:07.000 Well, I think what Trump did a good job of, first of all, I'm grateful for the fact that he flew out, had a meeting.

00:20:15.000 And I'm grateful.

00:20:16.000 And, you know, I have my differences at time to time on some issues with him, but he sat down and he was forceful in a very strong way of holding the elected officials accountable, like, get the people back in their homes now.

00:20:31.000 So the fact that in this tragedy we've got a president who's also a builder, who understands what needs to be done, I think is great.

00:20:40.000 And I hope he continues to hold.

00:20:43.000 All the elected officials accountable.

00:20:45.000 He can make a big difference, and we need it.

00:20:48.000 On the water issue, listen, I headed up Department of Water and Power, like I said, for 10 years.

00:20:53.000 I have a pretty good understanding of the water issues.

00:20:56.000 What's happening in the north really has not as much of an impact as happening down in Southern California in terms of how the water gets transferred around.

00:21:06.000 It doesn't mean we should be pouring water into the ocean.

00:21:09.000 We should not be.

00:21:10.000 We should be doing a lot of things.

00:21:11.000 We should be collecting water.

00:21:13.000 We should be holding water.

00:21:14.000 We should be recycling water.

00:21:16.000 We should be doing a lot of things.

00:21:17.000 What happened in Los Angeles, which is just close to negligence, if not negligence, Joe, the fire hydrants ran out.

00:21:29.000 We evacuated our home.

00:21:32.000 And we're in Brentwood, so...

00:21:36.000 You know the area.

00:21:37.000 We're 15 minutes from the Palisades where the fire started.

00:21:40.000 And it was my birthday.

00:21:43.000 We were having family dinner.

00:21:46.000 From the second floor, we saw the flames.

00:21:49.000 We said, we're going to have to get out of here.

00:21:51.000 The power went off.

00:21:52.000 We said, we're out.

00:21:54.000 Gathered the family.

00:21:55.000 We moved down to a home we have in Newport Beach.

00:21:59.000 And I get a call from one of my senior executives who sort of embedded in with the fire command post.

00:22:06.000 And my heart dropped.

00:22:08.000 He said, we just lost your daughter's home.

00:22:10.000 And I said, oh my God, Banyan, how the hell did that happen, you know?

00:22:15.000 He said, you can't believe it.

00:22:17.000 The hoses ran dry.

00:22:20.000 And the whole neighborhood went up.

00:22:23.000 And I was so angry that I, Fox 11, the local Fox station was on with Alex Michelson, and I texted him.

00:22:35.000 Because they were reporting live.

00:22:37.000 This is about 1030 at night.

00:22:39.000 I said, are you getting reports that they've run out of water?

00:22:42.000 He said, not at all.

00:22:45.000 And I said, you need to report this.

00:22:47.000 He said, do you want to come on live?

00:22:48.000 I said, yeah, hook me up.

00:22:50.000 And I went on.

00:22:51.000 He couldn't believe it.

00:22:52.000 And some of the media was trying to spin it.

00:22:54.000 I saw that.

00:22:55.000 Like it's not true.

00:22:56.000 Yeah.

00:22:57.000 And then they went right to the fireman.

00:22:59.000 Went right to the fireman, right?

00:23:00.000 Yeah.

00:23:01.000 The fireman said, yeah, we're standing there, empty hoses.

00:23:04.000 How in God's name, the second largest city in the country, can you have a water system that runs out of water in a fire?

00:23:12.000 And you knew this was coming, right?

00:23:15.000 They gave warnings of catastrophic winds.

00:23:19.000 The reservoir is empty over, I think it was 1.7 million gallons.

00:23:25.000 I think it's 11 million.

00:23:26.000 Maybe 11 million?

00:23:27.000 Yeah.

00:23:27.000 Probably right.

00:23:28.000 It's empty during fire season?

00:23:31.000 Yeah.

00:23:32.000 You've got brush.

00:23:34.000 That hasn't been cleared for 40 years.

00:23:36.000 There was a whole bunch of us raising hell about that after the fire in Brentwood six years ago.

00:23:42.000 Nothing was done.

00:23:43.000 The fire department wasn't pre-deployed, so there weren't engines staffed in different areas.

00:23:50.000 You've got a fire department that's underfunded, and you've got fire equipment that's mothballed.

00:23:56.000 And then the mayor flies to Ghana.

00:23:57.000 And the mayor's out of town.

00:23:59.000 So what should have been done?

00:24:02.000 And who's responsible?

00:24:04.000 Well, I think the leadership is responsible at every level.

00:24:07.000 I think the mayor is responsible for not being better prepared.

00:24:10.000 I think she's certainly responsible for not staying in town.

00:24:13.000 That's a lack of judgment.

00:24:14.000 If you want to be a leader, the first thing you have to do is be present.

00:24:19.000 I don't know what all the meetings that she had beforehand to make sure everybody was prepared.

00:24:24.000 But years ago, the brush should have been cleared.

00:24:27.000 Yes.

00:24:27.000 And you probably couldn't have prevented the fire.

00:24:31.000 Maybe you couldn't have prevented the fire.

00:24:32.000 Only God knows.

00:24:33.000 But you could have mitigated it.

00:24:35.000 We don't really know the source of the fire yet.

00:24:37.000 And we do know there was quite a bit of arson.

00:24:40.000 That's true.

00:24:41.000 That's true.

00:24:41.000 And there was a fire, to your point, there was a fire on New Year's Eve from fireworks.

00:24:48.000 And there's some talk that it may have been in that same area that this sparked up again.

00:24:53.000 Or maybe it was another arson that went up there.

00:24:55.000 But it seems like...

00:24:56.000 There were several fires that started very close to each other.

00:25:01.000 Yeah.

00:25:01.000 It seems like highly unlikely.

00:25:03.000 Could be.

00:25:04.000 That there was just three accidents that took place at the same time as these catastrophic winds.

00:25:09.000 Could be.

00:25:10.000 The most sinister version of it is that somebody wanted this to happen, maybe some mentally ill person.

00:25:14.000 I know they did arrest- It's a sickness.

00:25:16.000 Yeah.

00:25:16.000 It is a sick- arsonists are- they're really sick people.

00:25:20.000 Yeah.

00:25:20.000 And it's a known psychological illness.

00:25:24.000 There's a guy that they arrested that was a known arsonist, several times arrested, who had a fake fire truck and drove down from Oregon to do who knows what.

00:25:36.000 Can you imagine?

00:25:37.000 You've got to be really, really sick.

00:25:39.000 There's some psychos out there.

00:25:40.000 Yeah, there's some real sick people out there.

00:25:41.000 There's some weird people also that enjoy watching other people lose everything.

00:25:47.000 It's very strange.

00:25:48.000 Yeah.

00:25:48.000 But I guess people who feel like they have nothing and they feel like the world has screwed them over and they haven't got the breaks they deserve, they literally want to watch.

00:25:56.000 And there's this entitled culture that we live in that kind of tells people that the reason why other people are successful is because they've stolen from you.

00:26:03.000 Right.

00:26:03.000 Which is just the craziest thing to say in America.

00:26:07.000 But it gives them an excuse.

00:26:08.000 It gives them an excuse.

00:26:09.000 And it also gives them a pathway to vent their anger.

00:26:12.000 And instead...

00:26:14.000 Point it productively at their own lives.

00:26:15.000 Like, why am I in this position right now?

00:26:17.000 What could I have done differently?

00:26:18.000 What personal responsibility do I have for the way I live right now?

00:26:21.000 Instead of that, it's like, no, no, no.

00:26:23.000 These rich people, they fucked you over.

00:26:25.000 That's right.

00:26:25.000 They take advantage of us.

00:26:26.000 Yeah.

00:26:27.000 So, the water.

00:26:30.000 What is the explanation for why that enormous reservoir that provides the Palisades with water was empty?

00:26:37.000 Well, the explanation that's been said is it's out of service because the cover on it needed to be repaired.

00:26:42.000 Oh, the cover.

00:26:43.000 The cover.

00:26:44.000 Because, you know, we're very sensitive in L.A. that bad things don't get in our water.

00:26:48.000 So they have to keep all these reservoirs covered, which in general I get.

00:26:53.000 I get the safety of that.

00:26:55.000 But how about this?

00:26:57.000 You know that you have catastrophic winds coming.

00:27:00.000 Start pumping water in it because nobody gives a shit about what's in the water.

00:27:04.000 Yeah.

00:27:05.000 When you need it in your fire hydrant.

00:27:06.000 Yeah.

00:27:06.000 Right?

00:27:07.000 That could have been done in probably a couple of weeks.

00:27:09.000 Whatever it took.

00:27:11.000 Yeah.

00:27:11.000 And it's not like we don't know.

00:27:13.000 L.A. has fire season.

00:27:15.000 I remember every year because where I used to live in Bell Canyon is, you know, it's about 35 minutes from L.A. Right.

00:27:22.000 And it gets rough out there.

00:27:23.000 It's like a lot of like big rolling hills and it gets all filled with grass.

00:27:28.000 And if it catches and the winds start whipping through those canyons, the winds in California, for people who don't know, every year we get the Santa Ana winds.

00:27:36.000 That's right.

00:27:37.000 And they're crazy.

00:27:38.000 They are crazy.

00:27:39.000 Some of them were 100 miles an hour this year.

00:27:41.000 That is just, if you've ever been out there for that, that's nuts.

00:27:44.000 And if there's fires blowing, boy.

00:27:47.000 No, it's a terrible combination.

00:27:49.000 I mean, the early settlers called them the devil wins.

00:27:52.000 They've been there forever.

00:27:54.000 Forever, yeah.

00:27:54.000 To your point, they've been there forever.

00:27:56.000 So just think about, you know, had the brush been cleared, had the reservoirs been full, had the fire trucks been stationed, had there been a whole...

00:28:06.000 Series of protocols in place.

00:28:09.000 Again...

00:28:09.000 We could have saved some houses.

00:28:10.000 We could have saved a lot of lives, a lot of houses, a lot of jobs, a lot of pain.

00:28:15.000 A lot of pain.

00:28:16.000 Yeah.

00:28:17.000 So that's just incompetence.

00:28:19.000 There's no way you could say, oh, I see why they didn't do that.

00:28:23.000 Oh, I see why they didn't have the resources.

00:28:25.000 Oh, it's not their fault.

00:28:26.000 No, there's none of that there.

00:28:27.000 No one's saying that.

00:28:28.000 That's right.

00:28:29.000 Everyone is saying it's a failure.

00:28:30.000 It's a failure because they're not equipped to deal with the leadership they needed.

00:28:34.000 Even the spinmasters, even the greatest of gaslighters have nothing.

00:28:40.000 There's not one person who's tried to pass the buck.

00:28:43.000 I've not seen one successful person go on the air and say everything was done that could have been done.

00:28:49.000 We have amazing leadership.

00:28:50.000 We're really proud of them.

00:28:52.000 We're really lucky we have them.

00:28:53.000 Not one.

00:28:55.000 You're right.

00:28:56.000 Not one.

00:28:57.000 That's kind of crazy.

00:28:58.000 It is kind of crazy.

00:28:59.000 Because they gaslight everything, no matter what it is.

00:29:01.000 Everything's safe and effective.

00:29:03.000 Everybody's fine.

00:29:04.000 Everything's great.

00:29:05.000 He's sharp as a tack.

00:29:07.000 They gaslight the shit out of you with everything.

00:29:09.000 But with this one, they're like, there's nothing you can say.

00:29:14.000 I agree with that because the facts are the facts.

00:29:16.000 The facts are the facts.

00:29:16.000 You just can't argue around the facts.

00:29:18.000 And also there's a thing that happens when an area bigger than Manhattan that's filled with the most liberal people.

00:29:24.000 They're the most liberal.

00:29:25.000 They're the most blue no matter who.

00:29:27.000 The most compassionate, kind people that view being a Democrat and being a liberal as being the ultimate expression of being a good person.

00:29:42.000 And they're getting slapped in the face.

00:29:44.000 I think the politics have changed.

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00:31:10.000 I think the reality has set in, honestly, and it's unfortunate it's taken this, but the reality really has set in that you've got to have competent leadership.

00:31:20.000 Yes.

00:31:21.000 And what happened at DWP, because I was there for 13 years, 10 of which I was president, or close to 10, is the head of that department got politicized.

00:31:33.000 Years ago under Bradley and under Reardon, under Hahn, The general manager of the Department of Water and Power was always somebody who came through the ranks, who was just this exceptional engineer, and that department was regarded as best in class in the country as a utility, bar none.

00:31:52.000 The best financial rating, the best engineers wanted to work there.

00:31:57.000 It built some of the most amazing projects in history, including Hoover Dam.

00:32:01.000 So let's just start with that one, right?

00:32:04.000 Then what happened?

00:32:06.000 Politics creeped into who was the general manager.

00:32:10.000 That destroys an organization.

00:32:12.000 This is an organization that's not in the business of being necessarily doing what's politically important at the time.

00:32:22.000 It's in the business of delivering water and power.

00:32:27.000 And the failure is also there.

00:32:30.000 I don't understand.

00:32:32.000 How the current general manager of the department, I don't know what she did and didn't do, but the kind of failure that's on her desk where the buck stops, she needs to resign.

00:32:44.000 She needs to be fired, in my opinion, by the mayor, and be held accountable for whoever made bad decisions, including herself.

00:32:53.000 But we're allowing this.

00:32:55.000 And so the minute you allow that...

00:32:58.000 That continues this creep of incompetence is tolerated.

00:33:03.000 And it shouldn't be tolerated.

00:33:05.000 Because people lost their lives.

00:33:07.000 They lost their homes.

00:33:08.000 Right?

00:33:09.000 Am I right about that?

00:33:10.000 You're 100% right.

00:33:12.000 And I think you're 100% right about...

00:33:14.000 Politics.

00:33:15.000 And the problem with politics is that people want to preserve the structure that pays them.

00:33:21.000 They want to preserve the entity that they're invested in, that they have their time in, they have all their connections.

00:33:28.000 And this is the weird world of politics versus the world of business.

00:33:33.000 And what's fascinating right now is we're getting a chance to see what happens when you take a business approach to the government.

00:33:41.000 In the White House, we're seeing right now with this whole USAID thing where they're uncovering massive amounts of corruption and waste and just a lot of weird shady shit with NGOs and where an enormous amount of money is going.

00:33:56.000 And you're seeing someone look at this thing that is incredibly efficient almost by design.

00:34:05.000 And instead of saying, like, well, this is just how it is, and this is how these politicians get funded, so let's just keep this thing going the same way it is and make some incremental changes to try to make people happy so we still get elected.

00:34:16.000 Instead of that, you're seeing a politician, a president, who's coming in who can't get re-elected, so he's just going ham.

00:34:24.000 And he's just cleaning out everything, and people are freaking out.

00:34:28.000 The same people that say we need radical change.

00:34:30.000 We need radical change.

00:34:31.000 We've got corruption.

00:34:32.000 We need radical change.

00:34:33.000 Okay, well, here's your radical...

00:34:34.000 We don't need this.

00:34:36.000 But you do.

00:34:37.000 The government does.

00:34:38.000 They need oversight.

00:34:39.000 And they haven't had that.

00:34:41.000 And because of that, you're seeing this.

00:34:44.000 Not just waste.

00:34:45.000 You could call it waste, but it's deeper.

00:34:47.000 It's deeper than waste.

00:34:48.000 It's corruption.

00:34:49.000 And you're seeing that corruption get weeded out.

00:34:52.000 I am hoping that this is successful and that it yields a benefit to the American people, to the working class people, to everybody, where they recognize, like, hey, we can't just be spending all our fucking tax money on nonsense.

00:35:07.000 And it all should be done with a real clear understanding of getting results.

00:35:14.000 If that happens, and that idea spreads across the country, because ideas spread, and people change their minds.

00:35:22.000 And sometimes it happens, one guy in the neighborhood will go, you know what, fuck this, I'm fed up.

00:35:26.000 And then everybody will be like, yeah, I've been kind of thinking that too, I just didn't want to say it.

00:35:30.000 And then people start talking, and then it's not a scary thing to discuss anymore.

00:35:34.000 That's right, it opens the door, 100%.

00:35:36.000 And you're seeing that now, I feel it in LA. You're seeing that now.

00:35:41.000 Like I said, it's terrible that it took this kind of tragedy to have people seeing it.

00:35:45.000 I'm a big believer it can change.

00:35:47.000 I'm a big believer that L.A. can turn around.

00:35:49.000 I'm a big believer we can fix the problems.

00:35:51.000 I'm a big believer we can fix the problems in California.

00:35:54.000 I really am.

00:35:55.000 And I think we have started to turn this corner where people are saying, you know what?

00:36:01.000 Whether you're Democrat or Republican, to me, sort of doesn't matter.

00:36:04.000 Are you competent?

00:36:06.000 Do you have experience?

00:36:08.000 Are you going to make decisions for the right reason?

00:36:11.000 When I was the president of the police commission, it was the most amazing experience because Jim Hahn's mayor, we have a police department that was failing miserably after the Rodney King riots.

00:36:27.000 The police department was under a federal consent decree.

00:36:31.000 A federal judge was overseeing it.

00:36:33.000 We had Bernie Parks, who was the chief of police.

00:36:36.000 I don't know if you remember Bernie Parks.

00:36:38.000 He was probably there when you were living there.

00:36:40.000 He came out of Central Casting.

00:36:43.000 Very handsome, proud black man, and wore the uniform beautifully, rose through the ranks.

00:36:49.000 Super nice guy.

00:36:51.000 We were friends.

00:36:53.000 Jim Hunt calls me and says, hey, I want to appoint you as a president of the police commission.

00:36:58.000 And I said, Mr. Mayor, I really appreciate it, but I don't want the job.

00:37:02.000 Because I knew what the job was going to entail.

00:37:04.000 Potentially having to fire a very, very popular chief of police.

00:37:08.000 And he's two or three times called back.

00:37:11.000 I finally did it.

00:37:13.000 So glad I did because I learned so much from the experience.

00:37:16.000 At the end of the day, decided we needed to move on and have a different chief of police.

00:37:23.000 What was wrong?

00:37:24.000 What was he doing?

00:37:25.000 What he was doing, Joe, is he had put in...

00:37:31.000 Discipline procedures that were so onerous on the officers that one, officers were leaving.

00:37:39.000 But more importantly, the bad guys, particularly the gangs, were very smart that they would start filing complaints in certain areas that they wanted to control around the city.

00:37:54.000 The officers started getting all these complaints on their record, and once they did, it held up any kind of promotion or transfer.

00:38:02.000 So what did the cops start doing?

00:38:04.000 They started saying, I'm just not going to go to that area.

00:38:07.000 And the minute they abandoned that area, the gangs controlled it, and crime was going crazy.

00:38:12.000 How clever.

00:38:13.000 Yeah, right?

00:38:14.000 Yeah.

00:38:15.000 So I would go to the chief and say, come on, you've got to change the discipline process.

00:38:19.000 Nope, not change anything.

00:38:20.000 Very stubborn guy.

00:38:22.000 He had all the answers.

00:38:24.000 Yeah, and I don't mean that.

00:38:28.000 It's facetious.

00:38:29.000 He didn't have all the answers, obviously.

00:38:31.000 So that was the main problem.

00:38:32.000 So if you had an area of the city that bordered L.A. County, L.A. City crime was rising.

00:38:38.000 L.A. County was going down because the sheriffs were actually proactively, and not in an abusive way, proactively policing.

00:38:46.000 LAPD was retreating.

00:38:47.000 Cops were upset.

00:38:48.000 Cops were leaving.

00:38:49.000 The academy is empty.

00:38:50.000 All of these things were happening.

00:38:52.000 Had to change leadership.

00:38:55.000 I had people burning me in effigy, literally.

00:39:00.000 My wife would call me and say, oh my God, they're burning you outside of City Hall.

00:39:04.000 They're marching.

00:39:05.000 It was crazy to put pressure on me to keep Bernie Parks.

00:39:10.000 Not because Bernie Parks was the best chief of police, because it was politically correct to do that.

00:39:17.000 And I remember calling Jimmy Hahn, the mayor, and I said, I'm going to make a recommendation.

00:39:22.000 And you're probably not going to like it because you're going to come under a lot of heat.

00:39:27.000 And to his credit, he said, just do what's right.

00:39:29.000 I'll take the heat.

00:39:31.000 And I recommended we hire Bill Bratton.

00:39:34.000 And we brought this guy in to L.A., his Boston accent and all, best cop in the country, built a team around him.

00:39:48.000 We got crime.

00:39:50.000 Down to levels not seen since 1950. Not

00:40:20.000 keeping Bernie Parks.

00:40:23.000 It's one of the reasons.

00:40:24.000 But he did the right thing.

00:40:26.000 He didn't care about his political future.

00:40:28.000 He cared about the city.

00:40:29.000 He never gets enough credit for this.

00:40:31.000 And I just learned that lesson, which I talked about earlier.

00:40:35.000 If you've got the freedom to make a decision without worrying about getting reelected, it's probably where the president's head is.

00:40:42.000 I'm just going to do what I think is right.

00:40:45.000 It really is amazing what can happen.

00:40:47.000 So let's get more people like that who just understand.

00:40:53.000 Let's do what's right for people.

00:40:55.000 I'm in public service.

00:40:57.000 Serve the damn people.

00:40:58.000 It almost seems like at this point you need someone who's outside of politics to run for office.

00:41:05.000 I think you do.

00:41:06.000 I know that sounds self-serving, but I think you do.

00:41:10.000 Of course, it would sound self-serving coming from someone who wants you outside of it and wanted to be the mayor.

00:41:18.000 Response, because the people that are in it are just too tied in.

00:41:22.000 They're too tied in.

00:41:24.000 They're too beholding.

00:41:25.000 They're too beholding.

00:41:26.000 It's entwined.

00:41:28.000 The octopus has many tentacles.

00:41:29.000 It's wrapped around everything.

00:41:31.000 And it just stalls all progress and change.

00:41:34.000 And no real radical change can ever be met.

00:41:38.000 No one wants to go with it because it's going to disrupt all their different ideas and businesses, and people are going to look like they're responsible or incompetent, so they don't want change.

00:41:48.000 They want to pretend that this is the only way to go forward.

00:41:50.000 And then if someone does come along and changes things radically, I mean, it makes them all look terrible, and it's dangerous.

00:41:57.000 It's dangerous for business.

00:41:59.000 They're not in the business of helping people.

00:42:00.000 They're in the business of keeping their job.

00:42:03.000 100%.

00:42:03.000 Yeah, and that's what's gross.

00:42:05.000 It is really gross.

00:42:06.000 It's gross.

00:42:06.000 And it seems like the only way that that ever gets resolved is you have to bring in someone who's a businessman or a businesswoman, someone who understands business, who's outside of this political system and says, I've studied this for years.

00:42:20.000 There's a lot of things that could be fixed.

00:42:22.000 And they're not being done and we could do it.

00:42:24.000 Yeah.

00:42:24.000 And, you know, the issue with that is it's such a tough system.

00:42:30.000 There's so much that...

00:42:32.000 Yeah, like the whole entire party of the Democrats came to go after you.

00:42:37.000 I know.

00:42:37.000 And I was a Democrat.

00:42:40.000 I'm very moderate.

00:42:41.000 Yeah.

00:42:41.000 You know, I'm fiscally very conservative.

00:42:43.000 I'm socially liberal.

00:42:45.000 But they were...

00:42:47.000 So, you know, what gives the incentive to the person on the outside to do it?

00:42:52.000 Right.

00:42:52.000 Nothing.

00:42:53.000 And that's what we've got to figure out.

00:42:55.000 Listen, I've got high hopes for San Francisco with their new mayor.

00:42:59.000 Again, an outsider came in and won.

00:43:02.000 I think that's great.

00:43:03.000 I hope he does great.

00:43:04.000 I hope he does, too.

00:43:06.000 He changes the city.

00:43:06.000 That place was amazing at one point in time.

00:43:08.000 I used to love going to San Francisco.

00:43:09.000 I haven't gone in years.

00:43:10.000 I'm right with you.

00:43:10.000 It's too crazy.

00:43:11.000 No, it's terrible.

00:43:12.000 It's a dump.

00:43:13.000 It's unbelievable.

00:43:15.000 It was one of the old-time great cities.

00:43:16.000 One of the greatest cities in the country has just completely fallen.

00:43:19.000 But no course correction.

00:43:21.000 Until now.

00:43:22.000 I'm hopeful for this new mayor as well.

00:43:25.000 And I'm also hopeful that a lot of the new young tech people are fed up.

00:43:29.000 I think the new people who grew up with the internet understand the corruption and the bullshit, whereas the old people from a couple decades ago were really just spoon-fed bullshit from the mainstream media.

00:43:41.000 And they thought that this is the only way to be.

00:43:43.000 We're the kind, intelligent, well-read, progressive people on the West Coast.

00:43:48.000 It's our responsibility to be compassionate.

00:43:51.000 You know, and to be the most charitable people possible.

00:43:54.000 And they just didn't realize, like, you're not doing anybody a service by letting them camp out in front of your house and smoke meth.

00:43:59.000 That's right.

00:44:00.000 None of that's good.

00:44:01.000 That's right.

00:44:01.000 It's all real bad for them.

00:44:02.000 It's all real bad for your kids.

00:44:04.000 Yep.

00:44:05.000 And all those businesses moved out.

00:44:07.000 Yes.

00:44:07.000 All those businesses moved out.

00:44:08.000 San Francisco just became insane watching all these enormous chains just pull out.

00:44:13.000 And then people get angry and cry racism when they pull out.

00:44:17.000 What are you doing?

00:44:21.000 It's just from the outside.

00:44:22.000 It's like moving to Texas was such an eye-opener, too.

00:44:26.000 I'm jealous.

00:44:28.000 Being here in Austin today, all the new buildings going up.

00:44:32.000 Yes.

00:44:32.000 I said to my wife, oh, my God, look at this.

00:44:34.000 It's booming.

00:44:35.000 It's booming.

00:44:36.000 Freedom.

00:44:37.000 Go to a restaurant last night, people are happy, having a great time, and there's new buildings going up and high-rises, and the city's clean.

00:44:45.000 Everywhere I drove around last night today.

00:44:47.000 Just immaculate.

00:44:48.000 But it's also, you know, I talked to Stephen Adler, who was the former mayor of Austin.

00:44:52.000 Great guy.

00:44:53.000 And, you know, he was explaining to me the homeless situation.

00:44:55.000 We had a long talk about it because it really boomed during COVID. And he was saying, look, LA's too big.

00:45:02.000 I think I can fix the problem in Austin.

00:45:04.000 And they did an enormous...

00:45:06.000 How did they do it?

00:45:07.000 They did a fantastic job.

00:45:08.000 They bought a bunch of hotels.

00:45:10.000 They put people up.

00:45:11.000 They started programs.

00:45:12.000 They put a lot of effort into it.

00:45:13.000 But they were only dealing with a few thousand homeless people.

00:45:16.000 They had like 3,000.

00:45:18.000 And this is what Steve and Adler were saying.

00:45:21.000 He was saying, you could fix that.

00:45:23.000 You can't fix it when it gets to 80,000, 90,000.

00:45:28.000 He's like, it just gets too big with the bureaucratic process, like as government functions today without the outsider coming in and making radical change.

00:45:38.000 The way it functions today, he's like, it's just too big.

00:45:42.000 He goes, I think I can fix Austin, and I think I can fix Austin before I get out.

00:45:46.000 And I think he did a great job.

00:45:47.000 I mean, there's still problems.

00:45:49.000 You're always going to have problems.

00:45:50.000 You have cities.

00:45:50.000 You're going to have mentally ill people.

00:45:52.000 You're going to have drug addicts.

00:45:53.000 You're going to have people that have just been abused their whole life and they're just destroyed mentally and then they're out and then you have schizophrenia and all these other...

00:46:01.000 Yeah, it's very sad.

00:46:02.000 It's very sad.

00:46:03.000 You know, we clearly need better mental health institutions set up in this country to deal with a lot of these people because that's what a lot of it...

00:46:11.000 And a lot of it happened during the Reagan administration when they changed the...

00:46:14.000 They closed them down.

00:46:16.000 Yes, they closed...

00:46:16.000 It goes down mental health institutes and just said, you're on your own and just let these people loose on the street.

00:46:21.000 And then on top of that, you have the crack epidemic that comes around at the same time.

00:46:25.000 It's like chaos, just full chaos.

00:46:28.000 And you saw, like I saw the changes in the cities.

00:46:34.000 I saw the changes in the news.

00:46:35.000 I saw, you know, and people were recognizing that this is like a new problem.

00:46:40.000 But it's never been like Los Angeles, where you're driving down the street, you just see blocks and blocks of tents.

00:46:49.000 It's just like, how is this not fixed?

00:46:52.000 You're not even allowed to litter.

00:46:54.000 So if you're not allowed to litter, how are you allowed to do that?

00:46:57.000 There's definitely a couple of standards that are different.

00:47:00.000 I'm not giving up that it can be fixed, though.

00:47:02.000 And I understand there's a big difference with solving for 3,000 versus 80,000, whatever the number is.

00:47:08.000 But it can be fixed because it has to be fixed.

00:47:10.000 I think it has to be fixed by an outsider.

00:47:12.000 Well, I agree with that.

00:47:13.000 It's like, you know, being in the system.

00:47:17.000 I agree with that.

00:47:18.000 There's no doubt it has to.

00:47:19.000 And again, somebody that's willing to risk their political career by doing the right thing for the people on the street.

00:47:26.000 These are human beings that have a right to be given a chance to have a better life.

00:47:32.000 And a lot of people are there, you know, just because...

00:47:37.000 Everything went wrong in their life.

00:47:39.000 And God bless them.

00:47:40.000 And you've got to try to fix it.

00:47:43.000 And the waste of the money in doing it is a crime.

00:47:45.000 Anyway, we've talked about it, but I'm still hopeful.

00:47:48.000 I know I run overly optimistic in life, but I think it can be done.

00:47:52.000 Well, it's worked out well for you.

00:47:53.000 Well, I've been pretty fortunate and blessed in my life.

00:47:56.000 Working hard and being overly optimistic actually works out sometimes.

00:48:01.000 A lot of times.

00:48:03.000 Okay, so let's talk about law and order.

00:48:07.000 That's a giant issue in Los Angeles.

00:48:09.000 People do not feel as safe as they used to feel.

00:48:14.000 They feel like there's more violent crime.

00:48:16.000 It's more unreported crime.

00:48:17.000 And maybe more concerning is that people get arrested and then immediately get released.

00:48:22.000 Right.

00:48:23.000 And there doesn't seem to be any repercussions for that.

00:48:25.000 Right.

00:48:26.000 So what would you do to change that?

00:48:28.000 Well, thank goodness.

00:48:30.000 State law got changed.

00:48:32.000 I mean, that's another really good example of what happened in California, that they repealed the law that allowed anything under $900 to just be a misdemeanor.

00:48:40.000 It was insanity.

00:48:40.000 Insanity.

00:48:41.000 Just insanity.

00:48:42.000 And they weren't bundled.

00:48:43.000 So you could, like, in a Syrian fashion, keep stealing $900 every hour.

00:48:51.000 Right.

00:48:51.000 Yeah, as long as it's out of pop.

00:48:53.000 It was still a misdemeanor.

00:48:54.000 So that law changed.

00:48:56.000 Great progress.

00:49:00.000 Bad people accountable is really important.

00:49:03.000 I'm also a big believer to give people a chance to rebuild their lives.

00:49:07.000 No doubt.

00:49:08.000 It goes hand in hand.

00:49:10.000 But we made a big change by getting rid of George Gascon as our district attorney, who was not prosecuting and allowing people.

00:49:18.000 It was just a turnstile.

00:49:19.000 You got arrested.

00:49:20.000 You were let out.

00:49:22.000 Can we get to the heart of that?

00:49:24.000 Sure.

00:49:24.000 What's the motivation for that?

00:49:27.000 Motivation for doing that?

00:49:28.000 Yes.

00:49:30.000 Well, I probably won't explain it right because I don't agree with it, is that from a social justice standpoint, quote-unquote, You don't want to overpopulate the prisons.

00:49:42.000 You don't want to hold people and take away their life for a minor crime.

00:49:48.000 But a lot of it wasn't minor crimes.

00:49:50.000 A lot of it wasn't minor crimes.

00:49:51.000 But there was one of them that was a guy who was this crazy homeless guy who pulled a knife on a sheriff and then two weeks later, at least somewhere, a short time after that, I don't know if it was two weeks, attacked a man with his family with a machete on the beach.

00:50:05.000 Yeah.

00:50:06.000 No, I know.

00:50:06.000 You're right.

00:50:07.000 You're right.

00:50:08.000 I mean— So that's a violent criminal?

00:50:10.000 Yeah, you're right.

00:50:11.000 You're absolutely right.

00:50:13.000 And I can't explain it because it's just—it's so messed up.

00:50:16.000 I don't even know how you justify letting somebody out of jail or not holding them with bail, any of that.

00:50:23.000 I don't understand it.

00:50:24.000 I think most people got to the point—they were so worried about where crime was going, they did finally get rid of George.

00:50:31.000 And we brought in Nathan Hockman, and I think Nathan's doing a great job.

00:50:35.000 So I can't explain it.

00:50:38.000 But the fear is that it's done on purpose.

00:50:41.000 This is the fear.

00:50:42.000 Oh, of course it is.

00:50:43.000 That's the fear.

00:50:43.000 The great fear is that there are people in this world that want LA and major cities in this country to be in complete disarray, to have constant chaos and to be able to push liberal prosecutors and then push even more liberal prosecutors to go against them and continue this cycle and make it so that people live in a constant state of fear.

00:51:07.000 And what's the end goal of that?

00:51:08.000 It has to be profit.

00:51:10.000 I mean, someone has to be profiting off of it.

00:51:11.000 Who profits off of that?

00:51:12.000 I don't know.

00:51:13.000 Ask George Soros.

00:51:14.000 Yeah, right.

00:51:15.000 Ask the people that fund these, like, extremely liberal district attorneys that all seem to have the same idea.

00:51:21.000 But do you think that tide is turning?

00:51:23.000 I do.

00:51:24.000 I do think that tide is turning.

00:51:25.000 And I know that Elon Musk wants to do sort of the exact opposite.

00:51:30.000 He's been talking about that, financing people that are much more reasonable and that believe in law and order.

00:51:36.000 Well, Nathan is a good example of that.

00:51:38.000 That's great.

00:51:39.000 We need fair laws.

00:51:40.000 We need kind justice.

00:51:42.000 We do need rehabilitation.

00:51:43.000 But we also need to protect people that aren't criminals.

00:51:46.000 Of course.

00:51:46.000 That's the primary thing.

00:51:48.000 It's protect the general public.

00:51:49.000 Serve and protect, right?

00:51:51.000 That's the whole idea.

00:51:51.000 We need to protect everybody else.

00:51:53.000 And then the people that did them wrong, and they've wound up like, let's figure out a way.

00:52:01.000 Yeah.

00:52:02.000 And people are doing that.

00:52:04.000 I mean, there's some very successful programs that are doing that.

00:52:07.000 But I agree with you.

00:52:07.000 I mean, we got to get back to the point where government's primary function is to protect the public and give them the ability to prosper.

00:52:17.000 Give them the ability to build a business, raise your family, keep your community safe.

00:52:21.000 It's just so basic.

00:52:22.000 It's so basic.

00:52:23.000 It's gone upside down.

00:52:24.000 Yeah, that's what's crazy is that law and order thrown out the window.

00:52:28.000 Without law and order, no one is safe.

00:52:30.000 That's right.

00:52:31.000 You need to understand that if you just don't go after bad people, then they have no fear of doing whatever they want, and then you're letting them out of jail, so then you've got more of them out than ever before.

00:52:43.000 Self-perpetuating.

00:52:43.000 There was a podcast that I listened to where there was a former gang member who was talking about how they're going to let 70,000 hard criminals out of the L.A. jails.

00:52:51.000 And he's like, I'm getting out of town.

00:52:54.000 This guy was a hardcore gang member.

00:52:56.000 He's like, L.A. is going to get too crazy in the next year.

00:52:59.000 It's just nuts.

00:53:01.000 And, you know, there was the whole defund the police movement, which was just catastrophic.

00:53:05.000 That whole and seeing politicians, including Kamala Harris, seeing politicians openly say and post it on Twitter, we need to defund the police, which is just.

00:53:16.000 Just crazy.

00:53:18.000 It is as wrong as it can be.

00:53:21.000 Yeah.

00:53:21.000 Certainly hold bad cops accountable.

00:53:23.000 Certainly have better training.

00:53:25.000 Certainly have higher standards.

00:53:26.000 But defunding the police, like, what are you talking about?

00:53:29.000 You need to do the opposite.

00:53:30.000 That's right.

00:53:31.000 You need to train them better.

00:53:32.000 Refund them.

00:53:34.000 Definitely make the bad ones accountable.

00:53:36.000 Definitely make people feel safe that they're interacting with police officers.

00:53:39.000 But respect these people.

00:53:41.000 Respect these people that are protecting your life.

00:53:44.000 That's right.

00:53:44.000 Because all those people, when something goes down, they call 911. They're furious when cops don't show up.

00:53:49.000 That's right.

00:53:50.000 All these people who talk shit about the cops that are protected.

00:53:53.000 Defund the police.

00:53:53.000 You're protected by armed security people.

00:53:56.000 Right.

00:53:57.000 And you're saying defund the police.

00:53:59.000 This is fucking nonsense.

00:54:00.000 It's nonsense.

00:54:01.000 Couldn't agree more.

00:54:02.000 And for people that suffered.

00:54:04.000 Because of this defund the police thing and this whole wave of crime that went through LA in the wake of it all, those people are the people that you can get to.

00:54:15.000 The people that saw it, experienced it, know the consequences of this foolish direction that everything is going in, those are the people that you can still reach.

00:54:24.000 And I think it could be reached with a person like you that is...

00:54:28.000 A compassionate, kind, liberal guy when it comes to social issues, but understands business and understands accountability and that you have to see positive results.

00:54:39.000 You have to do what needs to be done to get those positive results.

00:54:43.000 You can't just do the same shit over and over again and pay more people and we need a bigger budget.

00:54:49.000 You know, like, oh, let's raise the budget.

00:54:50.000 We've increased the budget to fix the problem.

00:54:52.000 You're not fixing it.

00:54:54.000 It keeps getting bigger.

00:54:55.000 It's just nuts.

00:54:57.000 It needs someone outside the system.

00:54:59.000 And that's why I was really happy to talk to you.

00:55:01.000 And that's why I'm really happy that you're still involved.

00:55:03.000 Because a lot of people like yourself that are very wealthy and you don't have to do this.

00:55:08.000 You're not going to make money doing this.

00:55:11.000 This is probably going to be a huge strain, a tremendous amount of pressure.

00:55:16.000 But some people feel a calling.

00:55:18.000 And they feel like, I think I can do something and fix this that other people maybe won't be able to do.

00:55:23.000 I appreciate that.

00:55:24.000 And I do.

00:55:25.000 I do because...

00:55:26.000 What's the alternative?

00:55:28.000 We stay in the same path?

00:55:29.000 It gets worse.

00:55:30.000 The alternative is it gets worse.

00:55:31.000 It's going to get worse.

00:55:32.000 And more and more people are leaving.

00:55:34.000 More and more businesses close down.

00:55:36.000 But here's what really hit me on the campaign.

00:55:38.000 And I was telling our family, I've got four kids and they're 35 to 25 and just incredible people.

00:55:47.000 And my wife is wonderful.

00:55:48.000 I'm really incredibly blessed with all of that.

00:55:50.000 I was so worried when I decided to run for mayor the impact on the family.

00:55:54.000 Right?

00:55:55.000 A little bit scary.

00:55:56.000 High profile, all these kind of things.

00:55:58.000 It ended up being the greatest experience.

00:56:00.000 And we would go into neighborhoods, hardworking neighborhoods of people that just wanted the ability to work hard and live their life.

00:56:11.000 That would just want the ability to allow their daughter to be able to walk to school on her own and not have to walk around an encampment or for fear that there would be somebody that would attack her on the way to school.

00:56:22.000 The most basic things.

00:56:26.000 And we'd give them a hug.

00:56:28.000 You know, they would cry.

00:56:29.000 We would cry.

00:56:30.000 And I would tell the kids that cry is hope.

00:56:34.000 And what we're seeing there is for the first time, there's actually somebody coming into their neighborhood, a neighborhood that historically doesn't vote in large chunks.

00:56:47.000 So the politicians forget about them, right?

00:56:50.000 Because they're not likely voters necessarily.

00:56:52.000 But we were trying to mobilize it.

00:56:54.000 And we were also trying to give a voice to people that don't have a voice.

00:57:00.000 How inspiring that was for me.

00:57:02.000 That's what fueled me.

00:57:03.000 And you're right.

00:57:05.000 I don't want a career as a politician.

00:57:08.000 I want a career of being able to give back and help and take the group of people that have the least voice but are some of the hardest working people of our society.

00:57:21.000 And give them an opportunity to grow.

00:57:23.000 That was my grandfather as an immigrant, as a gardener.

00:57:28.000 But he had the opportunity to raise his family where he didn't have to worry about all this shit.

00:57:35.000 It's just changed so much.

00:57:37.000 So I believe we've got to get our elected officials.

00:57:41.000 If we take people who are the hardest working, the dearest people that have the most...

00:57:49.000 Impact because of crime, because of homelessness, because of being overly taxed, all of these kind of things.

00:57:56.000 And we give them hope and a path forward.

00:58:00.000 Everybody benefits from it.

00:58:02.000 You start solving so many problems, Joe.

00:58:04.000 There's a little school in the middle of the heart of the worst part of Los Angeles with the homelessness in Skid Row.

00:58:15.000 And it's called Para Los Ninos.

00:58:18.000 And my wife and I have been supporting that school for over 30 years now.

00:58:23.000 Outside the doors is the biggest sea of inhumanity of homeless people just strewned out on the street, drugged out, all terrible mental health conditions.

00:58:34.000 You open that door and it's beautiful and caring and loving.

00:58:40.000 And this school that we support, there's a series of schools, takes in children from six months to five years old.

00:58:48.000 The parents are all working parents, below the poverty line working parents.

00:58:54.000 So they're working in the sweatshops, whatever the case may be.

00:58:56.000 They're living down on Skid Row in apartments, two or three families in an apartment, working their tail off to just survive, and then to be able to get their child in the school that costs them nothing, that's fully supported.

00:59:10.000 Those are the dearest, sweetest children in the world.

00:59:13.000 We love going down there.

00:59:14.000 Our kids have worked down there since they were little kids.

00:59:16.000 We do a Christmas party for them.

00:59:19.000 And what gives us such joy is seeing the hope in their eyes.

00:59:23.000 And I know it sounds corny, but it's such an important path that we've got to get our elected officials to be more supportive of that and get more of these kind of schools and give more of these families the opportunity to do well because they want to do well.

00:59:37.000 But the system is frankly against them.

00:59:41.000 And that's what I wanted to change more than anything.

00:59:44.000 Well, let's talk about that.

00:59:45.000 This school, there's no reason why they should have to encounter that environment outside that school.

00:59:52.000 You're right.

00:59:53.000 There's no reason.

00:59:54.000 This is not nuclear waste.

00:59:55.000 This is not something that can't be cleaned up for five million years.

00:59:58.000 We have to leave it alone.

00:59:59.000 This is human beings.

01:00:01.000 This is human...

01:00:02.000 Human devastation out there in the street.

01:00:04.000 The fact that these kids have to encounter that, first of all, what does that do for your sense of hope and your future of the world?

01:00:11.000 Like, this is what you're seeing every day?

01:00:13.000 Like, you absorb that from your environment.

01:00:17.000 Of course.

01:00:17.000 The sadness and the devastation all around you.

01:00:21.000 And you're seeing people with lost lives out in the street right in front of your school.

01:00:24.000 When you're a young kid and you're a developing mind and that's the environment that you encounter all the time, like, that is going to fuck your head up forever.

01:00:31.000 Yeah.

01:00:32.000 It's very tough.

01:00:33.000 And then there's the question of the sweatshops.

01:00:35.000 Like, why?

01:00:36.000 How come people that work...

01:00:40.000 They're tail-off constantly have to live three, four families in an apartment.

01:00:44.000 Like, what the hell's going on there?

01:00:47.000 I agree.

01:00:48.000 Yeah.

01:00:48.000 But that's what I'm saying.

01:00:51.000 That's what I think we've got to start fixing.

01:00:53.000 Yes.

01:00:53.000 Right?

01:00:54.000 And if you start fixing that...

01:00:55.000 Now, your point is right.

01:00:58.000 These kids having to see that every day, they're being yelled at by people as they're walking through the doors and all that.

01:01:04.000 It's terrible.

01:01:05.000 But thank God that school's there, because if that school wasn't there...

01:01:08.000 They have nothing.

01:01:08.000 They got nothing.

01:01:09.000 They're on the street.

01:01:11.000 It's amazing.

01:01:12.000 The problem outside the school, that should be fixed.

01:01:16.000 That should be a public health issue.

01:01:19.000 The future human beings, if you want to look at this country and you want to make America a great place, what you want is less people that are going to lose at life.

01:01:30.000 You want less losers.

01:01:33.000 Best chance you can have less losers is start them off on a good path when they're young.

01:01:40.000 That's right.

01:01:41.000 Well said.

01:01:42.000 If you're starting them off on a good path when they're young, if you're giving them the tools that they need to have a successful life...

01:01:47.000 Giving them hope, giving them examples of good people that you could strive to be like, like, what would Mike do?

01:01:53.000 I'll probably want to do what he does.

01:01:55.000 He would get up and get this done.

01:01:56.000 And, you know, I admire that person.

01:01:58.000 And having people around you that are examples of someone who lives a life that you admire.

01:02:04.000 And when you're just seeing people peeing on themselves and throwing up and walking through the streets just covered in Cardboard shelters and tents.

01:02:14.000 That's not hope.

01:02:16.000 You're not seeing good examples.

01:02:19.000 So what are you depending on for your examples?

01:02:22.000 That's a travesty.

01:02:24.000 That should be cleaned up immediately.

01:02:27.000 So let's talk about that.

01:02:28.000 What could be done for Skid Row, which is probably the worst example of LA's homeless problem?

01:02:35.000 It's the same thing with any place else that we talked about.

01:02:38.000 You have to, I believe, supercharge these organizations like Aparo Los Ninos that are doing well, that are really changing lives, like the Downtown Women's Center, like Common Concern.

01:02:50.000 There's Union Rescue Mission.

01:02:51.000 There's dozens of them.

01:02:52.000 Where do you put all those people?

01:02:54.000 You've got all these people on the streets.

01:02:55.000 You've got 100,000 people on the streets.

01:02:57.000 There's endless land.

01:02:58.000 There's endless land.

01:03:01.000 The city of Los Angeles has something like over 300 or 400 parcels of land that are vacant.

01:03:06.000 They're just sitting there vacant.

01:03:09.000 Densify them.

01:03:10.000 Build on them.

01:03:11.000 Build housing.

01:03:14.000 Absolutely do it.

01:03:15.000 Skid Row, there's a lot of opportunity to do that and a lot of organizations that will do that.

01:03:20.000 But we can never say, well, create enterprise zones.

01:03:24.000 I mean, I wanted to create enterprise zones.

01:03:26.000 You go to South L.A. or whatnot, there's areas that they were burned out years ago from the riots that have never been rebuilt.

01:03:34.000 Create an enterprise zone, give tax incentives to go down there and build housing.

01:03:39.000 The tax code, when I was a young lawyer, they changed all the tax laws.

01:03:43.000 They had a lot of tax credits, a lot of incentives to do things.

01:03:46.000 It's a great way to incentivize businesses, mobilize the private financial markets to invest and do things.

01:03:55.000 There's an enormous amount of capital in this country.

01:03:57.000 We're the wealthiest country in the world.

01:03:59.000 Especially L.A. L.A. is so wealthy.

01:04:02.000 The state of California, fifth largest economy in the world.

01:04:05.000 We have an economy larger than India.

01:04:08.000 It's nuts.

01:04:09.000 It's nuts.

01:04:10.000 And do we have problems?

01:04:11.000 Of course.

01:04:12.000 Can you imagine if we fixed the problems, what this state could do?

01:04:17.000 It would be incredible.

01:04:19.000 There's nothing like it.

01:04:21.000 And so I think we just have to have some really basic goals of how we're going to change things little by little, start attacking them, but start getting people off the streets, start building, start giving the incentives to do it.

01:04:38.000 Break some eggs as you're doing it because you're saving lives.

01:04:41.000 And I think once you get that in motion, it starts taking off.

01:04:46.000 I really do.

01:04:47.000 Because people do not want to continue the way we're continuing.

01:04:52.000 And if there's a handful of people that do, who cares?

01:04:56.000 God bless them.

01:04:58.000 Leave them there.

01:04:59.000 But that's not the far majority of the people.

01:05:01.000 I think those handful of people are fed a narrative.

01:05:04.000 And the narrative is there's one way that's good and there's one way that's evil.

01:05:08.000 And there's the right-wing people that want to be fascist, totalitarian dictators, and they just want the wealthy to get wealthier, and they want the poor to starve.

01:05:17.000 And then you have the left-wing side that has this idea of compassionate care, and letting everybody be themselves, and let people camp out, and we need to treat people like human beings, and they're not homeless, they're the unhoused, and you start reframing things, and it's just a bunch of nonsense.

01:05:37.000 Unfortunately, these people are all conditioned to think that everybody opposed to them hates civil rights, hates women's rights, hates gay rights.

01:05:47.000 They're right-wing, hardcore, fascist assholes.

01:05:52.000 What we need is someone—this is one of the things that made me happy about you—is that you need someone who appeals to people's sense of kindness and caring and, you know, being a progressive person in terms of, like, social issues.

01:06:07.000 Right.

01:06:07.000 But yet understands human nature and understands business.

01:06:12.000 Like, you have to do things if you want to change things.

01:06:16.000 You can't just throw money at it.

01:06:18.000 You can't just have a bunch of people that are just— Bullshitting and not getting anything done.

01:06:23.000 And this is the problem with L.A. that we see.

01:06:26.000 Well, there's no doubt.

01:06:27.000 But don't you think that is changing now, right?

01:06:30.000 We've talked about that.

01:06:31.000 I think it's changing.

01:06:32.000 I think it's changing.

01:06:33.000 But, you know, L.A. will snap right back to the old way.

01:06:37.000 I mean, if you just give them a couple of good years, they'll be convinced that, you know...

01:06:41.000 We've got to fight that good fight, though, Joe.

01:06:43.000 We've got to fight that good fight.

01:06:44.000 There's too much at risk.

01:06:46.000 There is too much risk.

01:06:47.000 I do think it all really depends on how successful Trump is.

01:06:52.000 In this four years that he has and the structure that he sets up and how he can kind of...

01:06:57.000 If it really shows people that, hey, guess what?

01:07:01.000 Gay people aren't losing rights.

01:07:02.000 Hey, guess what?

01:07:03.000 Women aren't losing rights.

01:07:04.000 Hey, guess what?

01:07:05.000 Civil rights aren't being eroded.

01:07:07.000 This is not what's happening.

01:07:08.000 And then the whole country benefits.

01:07:10.000 If we see GDP go up, if we see homelessness go down, that would be amazing.

01:07:17.000 If that happens, then maybe people could wake their mind up to the...

01:07:21.000 The fact that you're not in this binary system and that you really shouldn't be a part of a team.

01:07:26.000 You should be a part of Team America.

01:07:27.000 And Team America is like we want the whole thing to be better.

01:07:30.000 Everybody.

01:07:31.000 All of us.

01:07:32.000 Wouldn't that be great?

01:07:33.000 It'd be amazing.

01:07:34.000 It can be done.

01:07:35.000 And it can be done.

01:07:36.000 I agree.

01:07:36.000 Most people, I think, are reasonable, kind people.

01:07:39.000 Most people.

01:07:40.000 Yes.

01:07:41.000 I think people get trapped in ideologies.

01:07:44.000 And California is one of the better examples of a place that's just trapped.

01:07:47.000 You're either a Democrat or you're a fucking asshole.

01:07:51.000 That's how people look at it, you know?

01:07:53.000 Oh, God.

01:07:54.000 That's how people look at it.

01:07:55.000 Yeah, I think there's a lot of that.

01:07:57.000 There's a lot of that.

01:07:58.000 I'm a little bit more...

01:08:00.000 Again, I run a little bit more optimistic in the faith of my fellow Angelenos and Californians that I think there's a real desire to make Significant change.

01:08:12.000 I really do.

01:08:13.000 I'm hearing a lot of that.

01:08:14.000 Even from some of my most liberal friends, they want change.

01:08:20.000 Oh, yeah.

01:08:20.000 Well, you can push people up to a point.

01:08:23.000 Yeah.

01:08:24.000 Now, I do think the success of Trump is going to have a big influence on that.

01:08:29.000 And so, especially in California, you know, because, you know, the majority is very leery.

01:08:38.000 Right?

01:08:38.000 Yeah.

01:08:39.000 And Los Angeles, very leery of that.

01:08:42.000 And if he could do more of what he did that day at that press conference, out on the Palisades, it would be great.

01:08:50.000 Because he did show a compassion.

01:08:52.000 He did show a strength.

01:08:54.000 He showed that what he cared about was the people getting back in their homes and let's take care of them.

01:08:59.000 He showed an impatience with the bureaucracy that was...

01:09:04.000 You know, they were spinning it, boy, the elected officials that day, and he was pushing back on it.

01:09:09.000 Yeah.

01:09:10.000 Very professionally, very nicely, but very strongly.

01:09:15.000 He's much better at handling people this time around.

01:09:16.000 I think he sort of corrected a lot of the way he used to communicate with people, and he's much more even and measured.

01:09:24.000 Yeah.

01:09:24.000 He's much more effective.

01:09:25.000 I agree.

01:09:26.000 I was impressed.

01:09:27.000 And like I said earlier, he's a builder.

01:09:30.000 He's a successful builder.

01:09:34.000 To give a little blueprint to the city of LA and say, you know, here's the 10 things you need to do.

01:09:40.000 And it should only take...

01:09:42.000 I mean, that's what we're doing.

01:09:43.000 This new foundation I launched with a bunch of really smart thought leaders in industry have come together.

01:09:50.000 We launched it yesterday.

01:09:51.000 Just to go tackle problems.

01:09:53.000 Don't tell me what the problem is without the solution.

01:09:56.000 You know, I just live by that.

01:09:58.000 And there is a solution to every problem.

01:10:00.000 It may not be the solution you want.

01:10:02.000 But there's a solution out there, so work towards it.

01:10:05.000 And I'll give you an example.

01:10:07.000 You know, I've been pushing since the fires.

01:10:08.000 We've got to underground all the power lines.

01:10:11.000 You can't go rebuild the Palisades or Altadena the way it was built 70 years ago.

01:10:16.000 Right.

01:10:16.000 It'd be insane.

01:10:17.000 It's insane.

01:10:18.000 So underground the power lines, redo the water mains, redo the higher fighting system, blah, blah, blah.

01:10:23.000 And I get this pushback.

01:10:25.000 We don't have the money.

01:10:26.000 We don't have the time.

01:10:28.000 You just had the largest urban disaster in the history of the United States, $250 billion worth of damage, and you're telling me you don't have the money to do the right thing?

01:10:42.000 Didn't we just have the largest infrastructure bill in history passed about a year ago?

01:10:47.000 We must have the money, and we'll find the money, but that can't stop you from doing what's right.

01:10:55.000 This organization I put together is to go be the advocate for those homeowners, to be the advocate for those business people that lost their businesses, and work alongside government and say, listen, we'll solve the problem for you and hand the blueprint to you.

01:11:10.000 And then we're going to hold you accountable to implement it.

01:11:13.000 What is the answer when they say, we don't have the money?

01:11:17.000 If you have California, which is just...

01:11:20.000 Insanely enormous economy.

01:11:21.000 And a very high tax rate.

01:11:24.000 One of the highest, that's right.

01:11:25.000 So you have high taxes, so you have an enormous economy.

01:11:28.000 That means you've got a lot of money.

01:11:29.000 Right.

01:11:30.000 So where's the money going?

01:11:32.000 Where the money's gone, I can't tell you.

01:11:35.000 You know, we used to have a surplus in California.

01:11:37.000 Now we have a deficit.

01:11:38.000 So if that happens at your home or my home, that means we mismanaged our money.

01:11:43.000 It's pretty simple.

01:11:44.000 Yeah.

01:11:46.000 In solving the problem for the Palisades or Altadena on the electric issues or the infrastructure issues, listen, the city has bonding authority.

01:11:55.000 Department of Water and Power has bonding authority.

01:11:58.000 There's federal grants.

01:11:59.000 There's state grants.

01:12:00.000 There's private capital.

01:12:01.000 We're going to go solve that and give some answers to the city.

01:12:06.000 But my point is the answer can't be let's not do what's right.

01:12:11.000 We've done enough of that.

01:12:13.000 The answer has to be we're going to go do this and now we're going to solve how to pay for it.

01:12:18.000 And we're going to do it quickly to get people back in their homes and start building again.

01:12:24.000 And I believe we can bend the curve.

01:12:26.000 If somebody thinks it's going to take five years, let's go figure out how we get it done in two years.

01:12:31.000 This is where private enterprise needs to come in and help the government because the government alone can't fix this problem.

01:12:39.000 It's too big.

01:12:40.000 They work too slow.

01:12:41.000 You need innovation and entrepreneurship that private enterprise brings.

01:12:45.000 We saw that in COVID with Project Warp Speed and getting the medicines that were needed at the time.

01:12:52.000 We saw it at 9-11 on getting the rebuilding done.

01:12:55.000 And we need to implement the same thing in Los Angeles to get the city rebuilt.

01:12:59.000 Because it's an impact on the American economy to have the size of two Manhattans.

01:13:06.000 Two Manhattans burned down.

01:13:09.000 Can you imagine that?

01:13:10.000 That's insane.

01:13:11.000 14,000, 15,000 structures.

01:13:14.000 It's so hard for people to imagine that.

01:13:16.000 I just went back, like I was telling you, I was there a couple weeks ago for the UFC. Yeah.

01:13:21.000 And, you know, you see it, and when you're flying over, it just doesn't even make sense.

01:13:25.000 Yeah.

01:13:26.000 We showed the drone footage as well of the Palisades.

01:13:29.000 It doesn't make sense.

01:13:31.000 It's so much devastation.

01:13:32.000 Altadena's gone.

01:13:33.000 Gone.

01:13:34.000 Gone.

01:13:34.000 And, you know, Altadena, my friend Jimmy Dore was just talking about this the other day in a video.

01:13:40.000 It was this beautiful, like, nice neighborhood.

01:13:44.000 Oh, yeah.

01:13:44.000 Tree-lined streets.

01:13:45.000 Yeah.

01:13:46.000 Cottage homes.

01:13:48.000 Dear, sweet neighborhood.

01:13:49.000 And gone.

01:13:50.000 Yeah, gone.

01:13:50.000 One of the nice neighborhoods, like, a beautiful neighborhood to drive through.

01:13:54.000 Yeah.

01:13:55.000 It's gone.

01:13:56.000 And those people mostly, Joe, as you know, so many of them, there's no safety net.

01:14:01.000 Right.

01:14:02.000 I mean, very moderate income.

01:14:04.000 Right.

01:14:05.000 You know, working class, hard working class people.

01:14:10.000 I've been telling all the elected officials, you've got to have programs that start supporting people because they are down and out.

01:14:16.000 They have nowhere to go.

01:14:18.000 And we've got to do something to help them, you know, day-to-day to live.

01:14:23.000 One of the things that was bothering me was they were talking about replacing all those beautiful streets that were filled with single-family homes with big apartment buildings.

01:14:34.000 And then it would just ruin that area.

01:14:37.000 Can't do it.

01:14:38.000 Yeah.

01:14:38.000 Can't do it.

01:14:39.000 It's wrong.

01:14:41.000 Yeah, this is not the time to be reimagining anybody's neighborhood off the backs of the devastation and the pain.

01:14:48.000 I've been really vocal about that.

01:14:50.000 And this is, you know, this is the creep you get, what you're talking about.

01:14:55.000 There's social justice.

01:14:57.000 Well, now let's say in the Palisades, let's start building a whole bunch of low-income housing.

01:15:02.000 I'm all for low-income housing.

01:15:04.000 I'm building workforce housing.

01:15:06.000 For our employees that are low income, because I want to make sure they have a home.

01:15:10.000 So I'm all into that.

01:15:11.000 But now is not the time to do it in a neighborhood that's been devastated.

01:15:16.000 And there's also, you're going to have people that won't be able to move back to their neighborhood because they may not be wealthy, but they may make more money than what is required to move into a low-income apartment.

01:15:33.000 They can't move back.

01:15:35.000 Don't do that.

01:15:35.000 That's not fair.

01:15:36.000 If you want to do that, what I've told the elected officials is provide an incentive, not a requirement.

01:15:44.000 If you build some low-income units in an apartment building you're replacing – oh, let me back up.

01:15:51.000 So we have this crazy law in the city of Los Angeles.

01:15:54.000 The crazy law in the city of Los Angeles is something to this effect.

01:15:58.000 I may not get it exactly right.

01:16:03.000 An existing apartment building that's market rate.

01:16:06.000 You have to replace it with low-income housing.

01:16:10.000 Okay.

01:16:11.000 All of it?

01:16:12.000 Maybe it's not all of it.

01:16:14.000 I think it's the majority of it.

01:16:15.000 But whatever the number is, okay?

01:16:18.000 My point is, when you do that, you provide a disincentive to reinvest in the city.

01:16:24.000 Yeah.

01:16:25.000 So let's turn it around and provide an incentive.

01:16:28.000 Say if you close, knock it down and rebuild, or it's burned down in the Palisades and want to rebuild, then give a bonus density and allow that person to build more to compensate them for providing housing that is low income, right?

01:16:45.000 It just seems to be more fair.

01:16:47.000 Everybody gets the bill.

01:16:48.000 How would you do that?

01:16:48.000 How does that work?

01:16:49.000 Well, let's say you have a 12-unit apartment building that burnt down in the Palisades.

01:16:54.000 Instead of requiring low-income housing for, let's say, 20%, 30%, 40% of it, say instead of building 12, we're going to let you build 20 units.

01:17:03.000 And out of the 20 units, give us 6 units that are low-income housing, whatever the numbers are.

01:17:08.000 But let's have governments start thinking about an incentive-based system, right?

01:17:14.000 I mean, you look at your life or my life or the people that work here, the harder you work.

01:17:21.000 The more that you do, you're more rewarded, right?

01:17:24.000 You're not required to work harder.

01:17:28.000 You're incentivized to work harder or work smarter.

01:17:31.000 And I think if we build that kind of thinking into government to provide capital, to provide investment, especially on the rebuilding, you can have some social policies that are very important and very good, like low income.

01:17:44.000 What I would even say is, why don't we...

01:17:48.000 Why don't we give an incentive to build workforce housing in the Palisades and Altadena, where the workforce housing goes to the first responders, firefighters, police, and teachers.

01:18:01.000 So now you can have firefighters, police, and teachers living in the neighborhoods they're serving.

01:18:06.000 As you know, L.A. is so expensive, most of the cops drive two hours to get home and two hours to get to work.

01:18:13.000 Same with the firefighters.

01:18:15.000 You want them to be in the neighborhood they serve.

01:18:18.000 That's a great public policy.

01:18:20.000 Do it around an incentive.

01:18:21.000 Especially in a place like the Pacific Palisades, I think people deeply resent the idea of being forced to have any...

01:18:28.000 Kind of low-income housing.

01:18:30.000 The idea is that it's hard to live in the Palisades.

01:18:32.000 It's expensive.

01:18:33.000 It's beautiful.

01:18:34.000 It's an incredible piece of land, or it was, before the fires devastated it.

01:18:38.000 It was a glorious place to live, and it was very difficult to afford to live there.

01:18:42.000 So the people that made the most money were the ones who could buy the homes there.

01:18:47.000 They don't want someone to open up low-income housing in the same neighborhood that's very difficult to live in.

01:18:53.000 The whole idea is that you make enough money.

01:18:56.000 Where you could live in a place that's very difficult to live in, but it's beautiful and it's really safe.

01:19:00.000 And that's what the Palisades was.

01:19:02.000 They don't want this to be replaced with low-income housing.

01:19:06.000 They don't want incentives for it to be replaced with low-income housing.

01:19:09.000 Yeah, I don't know, Joe.

01:19:11.000 I think there's a lot of people that would be very excited to have workforce housing, especially if you tie your workforce housing into first responders.

01:19:22.000 And I think there's people that would allow...

01:19:24.000 That's different, though.

01:19:25.000 That's different than apartment buildings.

01:19:27.000 Yeah, but even in an apartment setting, I think it can work.

01:19:31.000 I mean, listen, I think there's people in the Palisades that would very much welcome affordable housing, low-income housing.

01:19:38.000 I certainly wouldn't.

01:19:39.000 I'm a big landowner in the Palisades.

01:19:41.000 But what I don't like about it is the requirement off the backs of people who have lost everything.

01:19:48.000 That's just not right.

01:19:49.000 That's not the time to do it.

01:19:51.000 If you want to go rezone stuff, let the place get rebuilt and let people get back on their feet and then go have that discussion.

01:19:58.000 It's a timing issue on it, in my opinion.

01:20:01.000 But listen, there's a lot of issues the city's got to tackle to get these places rebuilt.

01:20:06.000 It's immensely complicated.

01:20:09.000 And again, I mean, I'll be very honest.

01:20:12.000 The government just cannot do it alone.

01:20:14.000 There's just no way.

01:20:16.000 There's just no way.

01:20:17.000 One of the things that people complain a lot about California is regulations.

01:20:21.000 Yeah.

01:20:21.000 And how regulated it is and how difficult it is to start businesses and to maintain businesses.

01:20:27.000 Hugely over-regulated.

01:20:29.000 What can be done about that?

01:20:30.000 Cut through the red tape.

01:20:31.000 We have more regulations.

01:20:32.000 It's insane to run a business.

01:20:34.000 I run a business, obviously, in L.A. and in California.

01:20:38.000 And it's to the point that I would never restart the business in L.A. and in California.

01:20:45.000 It's too expensive.

01:20:47.000 The tax rates are too high for everybody, not just people that are making money.

01:20:51.000 I'm talking about people who are, you know, moderate, hardworking people.

01:20:56.000 The tax rate's too high.

01:20:57.000 But the regulation on small businesses in Los Angeles, you have businesses now closing because it's overregulated.

01:21:04.000 And then it got even, frankly, worse post-COVID because a lot of the restrictions they took away during COVID. In order to allow businesses to survive and restaurants to operate, they started taking them away, like just having outdoor dining.

01:21:18.000 Like, why would you do that?

01:21:19.000 Why would you make it more difficult for a small business owner to operate a restaurant?

01:21:24.000 So that gets back to, like, the business approach to running government.

01:21:30.000 Let people prosper.

01:21:32.000 Have a system.

01:21:33.000 There's certain laws you need, obviously, to operate safely and smartly, but have a system that people can...

01:21:39.000 Earn money, become successful.

01:21:41.000 What's the cause of reform regulation?

01:21:43.000 How does it start?

01:21:45.000 Joe, that's a good question.

01:21:47.000 I think that there's a group of people that feel like government is the only way that society can be safe and regulated, that people left on their own will go crazy and do terrible things and running around the streets.

01:22:05.000 It's just not the way it works, right?

01:22:07.000 Capitalism is a really good system.

01:22:09.000 We've proven that.

01:22:10.000 And overregulation starts squeezing capitalism to the point that it pushes out people from investing and creating jobs and creating opportunity.

01:22:22.000 And L.A. has gotten to the point it's certainly over the bridge and needs to get pulled back.

01:22:27.000 I mean, I can't even tell you how overregulated it is.

01:22:34.000 Too few cops.

01:22:36.000 And so the obligation to protect your property is getting pushed to private landowners.

01:22:42.000 So like on our shopping centers, we have a very safe environment, friendly environment, family environment, all those kind of things we're very protective of.

01:22:52.000 LAPD wants to do the right thing.

01:22:54.000 They don't have the resources.

01:22:54.000 So we've had to supplement it.

01:22:56.000 Millions and millions of dollars of private security.

01:23:00.000 And that's a whole other problem because...

01:23:02.000 What about the individual landowner in a neighborhood that doesn't have the kind of protection they need?

01:23:08.000 And they don't have the police force to protect them in running a business.

01:23:13.000 It becomes impossible.

01:23:15.000 So, and again, those things are just fixable.

01:23:19.000 They really are fixable.

01:23:21.000 So, regulations, water, law and order, what other things are giant issues about L.A. that you think need to be addressed?

01:23:35.000 Well, I think we have to, on the positive side, I want to be more business friendly.

01:23:40.000 I want to invite businesses back to California.

01:23:42.000 I want to invite businesses back to L.A. That's a tough sell.

01:23:46.000 I know.

01:23:46.000 I want to get Elon back to L.A. I don't want him to leave L.A. I've told him that.

01:23:52.000 And I think he would come back.

01:23:54.000 I think all these businesses would come back.

01:23:56.000 Sure, if it was reasonable.

01:23:57.000 If it was reasonable.

01:23:57.000 I mean, they didn't leave because it was awesome.

01:24:00.000 That's what people have to understand.

01:24:01.000 I didn't leave because it was awesome.

01:24:02.000 I left because I just didn't want this group of people that I thought were inept telling me what to do.

01:24:08.000 Of course.

01:24:09.000 And they gave you, in a weird way, they gave you the incentive to leave and not the incentive to stay.

01:24:15.000 Yes.

01:24:15.000 I want to give people the incentive to stay.

01:24:17.000 Start your business.

01:24:18.000 Grow your business.

01:24:19.000 Raise your family.

01:24:20.000 Let's protect you.

01:24:21.000 Clean the streets.

01:24:22.000 You know, all of those basic things are really important.

01:24:26.000 And again, Joe, maybe I'm...

01:24:28.000 Overly optimistic in it, but it can come back.

01:24:31.000 And I think California, if unleashed, is just a mighty powerhouse.

01:24:36.000 It could really change the direction of this whole country.

01:24:39.000 The innovation that we have in California, the technical knowledge, what's happening in our universities, some of the best in the world, what's happening in the tech field with AI, it's all based here in California.

01:24:53.000 And you've got to let that flourish.

01:24:56.000 Set the platform that's encouraging these youngest, brightest minds to come here and start your business.

01:25:02.000 Right.

01:25:03.000 And do the right thing.

01:25:04.000 You made the point.

01:25:05.000 You're absolutely right.

01:25:07.000 I've talked to a lot of the tech people.

01:25:10.000 They want a different leadership that is supporting the growth of technology that's going to change the world.

01:25:18.000 It's going to happen somewhere.

01:25:21.000 We saw it happen in China with their new AI company.

01:25:26.000 And we better be prepared to be the best at it.

01:25:29.000 And we have to provide the platform to do that.

01:25:32.000 So, in order to incentivize people, if they wanted to come back to California, you've got these enormous taxes.

01:25:43.000 So something has to be done on a state level, not just on a city level.

01:25:46.000 That's right.

01:25:47.000 To address that.

01:25:48.000 That's right.

01:25:48.000 So how do you address that?

01:25:49.000 You should have competitive tax rates.

01:25:51.000 I don't know why California needs to tax people much higher than any other state.

01:25:56.000 Why would you?

01:25:57.000 The cost of operating a state, you know, you've got very sophisticated states, very dense states.

01:26:02.000 It's a matter of setting priorities.

01:26:04.000 And we've got to look at the tax code to make it fair.

01:26:07.000 We've got the highest gas costs.

01:26:11.000 In the country.

01:26:12.000 Why does a gallon of gas in California cost more than a gallon of gas?

01:26:15.000 Well, isn't that because in California you're required to sell gas that's refined in California?

01:26:19.000 I don't know if that's the case.

01:26:21.000 See if that's the case, Jamie.

01:26:23.000 But I think the gas in California is also highly taxed.

01:26:27.000 Of course.

01:26:28.000 Why wouldn't they be?

01:26:29.000 This is the question, though, Rick.

01:26:31.000 It's like, where's all this money going?

01:26:32.000 I don't know.

01:26:33.000 It's an insanely high tax rate, but yet you don't have any money to fix the power lines.

01:26:38.000 You've got this insanely high tax rate, but you can't clean up the homeless problem, even though you're throwing a lot of money on it.

01:26:44.000 Where's that money going?

01:26:45.000 I don't know.

01:26:45.000 It's not going to the school system.

01:26:47.000 They need to get these super nerds that are on top of this Department of Government efficiency and set them loose.

01:26:54.000 Set them loose on California.

01:26:55.000 We've got a lot of smart people in California, along with them, that really want to help the system.

01:27:01.000 And I think the minute you bring some really smart people...

01:27:05.000 This is what I did with this foundation.

01:27:06.000 You look at the list of people that are donating their time and talent.

01:27:10.000 They're just brilliant people.

01:27:12.000 I made one phone call to each of them.

01:27:15.000 Would you give me your time and talent?

01:27:17.000 I don't want a dollar from you.

01:27:19.000 Yes, I'm in.

01:27:20.000 Whatever it is, I'm in.

01:27:23.000 And that's what we need to do more of, is have the elected officials have the courage.

01:27:29.000 And the competency to reach out and get the smartest people in different industries to come in and help get their ideas and then implement them.

01:27:39.000 That's the greatest form of government.

01:27:42.000 Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't really matter if you've got great ideas.

01:27:46.000 And if you're a big thinker, that's what I would do.

01:27:50.000 That's what I am doing.

01:27:52.000 But on a state level, like the taxes for the state, that would have to be addressed by the governor, right?

01:27:58.000 The governor and the legislature, yeah.

01:27:59.000 Yeah.

01:28:00.000 What could be done about that?

01:28:02.000 I think you've got to rebuild it, Joe.

01:28:06.000 I don't want to give you a specific proposal here, but it doesn't need to be as high as it is in order to operate the state of California if the state of California has their priorities right of what they're spending money on.

01:28:17.000 And by the way, the best way, and we learned this from Reagan, to raise revenue for the government...

01:28:24.000 Is to allow businesses and families to grow and create jobs and industries, not to suppress them.

01:28:31.000 So the many you keep overtaxing people, all you're doing is giving people the incentive to leave, which we've seen, right?

01:28:38.000 The exodus.

01:28:40.000 If you start giving people a rate that allows them to be benefited by staying in the state of California, that business will grow and California is going to make more revenue.

01:28:49.000 It's not rocket science.

01:28:50.000 The economy grows.

01:28:52.000 People have more money.

01:28:54.000 It's better for everybody.

01:28:55.000 And you get some jobs.

01:28:56.000 You get people off the streets.

01:28:57.000 This whole thing starts changing the dynamic.

01:29:00.000 How great would that be?

01:29:02.000 It would be pretty incredible.

01:29:03.000 I just don't want to get my hopes up.

01:29:04.000 Let's do it.

01:29:05.000 No, come on!

01:29:07.000 Don't leave me.

01:29:09.000 I think it's possible.

01:29:11.000 It's just a daunting task.

01:29:13.000 It is a daunting task, but okay.

01:29:15.000 I'm not throwing flowers at you.

01:29:16.000 Look at what you've accomplished in your career.

01:29:19.000 That was a daunting task.

01:29:21.000 Yeah, but I didn't think about it.

01:29:23.000 It just sort of lucked out.

01:29:24.000 It wasn't luck.

01:29:26.000 It was a little bit of luck.

01:29:27.000 Everybody's got a little bit of luck.

01:29:28.000 For sure.

01:29:29.000 It was a hell of a lot of hard work and you were very focused and you had your head down and you just kept going forward.

01:29:34.000 So it can be done.

01:29:35.000 I couldn't do what you did.

01:29:37.000 Yeah, you could.

01:29:38.000 Oh, no.

01:29:39.000 I can't.

01:29:40.000 In fact, I just want to go on a tangent for a second.

01:29:42.000 Sure.

01:29:44.000 Okay, my boys got me addicted to taking an ice bath.

01:29:49.000 Okay?

01:29:51.000 You're insane.

01:29:53.000 What's the temperature of yours?

01:29:55.000 34. Oh, my God.

01:29:56.000 Okay.

01:29:56.000 I saw a picture of you removing a sheet of ice.

01:29:59.000 Yeah.

01:30:00.000 Yeah.

01:30:01.000 I'm nowhere near the stud that you are, obviously.

01:30:04.000 It's not that hard.

01:30:05.000 It's just three minutes, and it makes the rest of the day wait.

01:30:08.000 I'm at 50. 50's cold.

01:30:10.000 Yeah, and I'm addicted to it.

01:30:12.000 Yeah, it's great.

01:30:12.000 How long are you in for?

01:30:13.000 Three minutes.

01:30:14.000 You'll still get the benefits at 50. Okay.

01:30:16.000 What I get at 30 is much more suck, and getting through the suck is part of it.

01:30:22.000 How long is the suck part?

01:30:24.000 It sucks for about a minute.

01:30:25.000 Yeah, the first minute.

01:30:26.000 The first minute really sucks.

01:30:27.000 Yeah, that's with me at 50. I'm like heavy breathing.

01:30:30.000 I got some stem cells shot into my shoulder recently, and when I do that, you have to take like 72 hours.

01:30:36.000 Because the inflammation is actually good from the initial injection to heal the area.

01:30:42.000 And so I took three days off.

01:30:44.000 And it's funny.

01:30:45.000 Just taking three days off, when you get back in, the suck is worse.

01:30:48.000 Yeah.

01:30:49.000 But for me, it doesn't get any easier, though.

01:30:52.000 It doesn't?

01:30:53.000 After the first minute?

01:30:54.000 No, no, no, no, no.

01:30:55.000 Oh, every day.

01:30:56.000 Every day.

01:30:56.000 Yeah.

01:30:57.000 It gets a little easier.

01:30:58.000 It never gets easy.

01:30:59.000 But it's like it's easier now.

01:31:02.000 Now I'm like four or five days in.

01:31:05.000 Pop the lid off of it.

01:31:06.000 I don't even think about it.

01:31:08.000 I just go, get in there.

01:31:09.000 Just shut up.

01:31:10.000 Put the timer on.

01:31:11.000 Get in there.

01:31:11.000 Just sit.

01:31:13.000 Just sit there.

01:31:14.000 I do love it.

01:31:14.000 But the thing about it is the way you feel when you get out is so amazing.

01:31:20.000 You feel alive.

01:31:22.000 You feel energized.

01:31:23.000 You feel like your brain is firing.

01:31:26.000 It kicks up your dopamine levels by 200%.

01:31:30.000 It lasts for hours and hours.

01:31:32.000 You feel wonderful.

01:31:34.000 And that's the thing.

01:31:34.000 It's like we need to delay gratitude.

01:31:36.000 You need to delay...

01:31:39.000 People like to feel comfortable now.

01:31:42.000 You need to delay that.

01:31:44.000 Put that on the side.

01:31:45.000 I like that.

01:31:46.000 Just suck it up for a while.

01:31:48.000 Yeah, I like that.

01:31:49.000 And doing that, forcing yourself to have voluntary adversity, just like have three minutes a day that's horrible, is going to make the whole rest of your day better.

01:31:57.000 It's only three minutes.

01:31:58.000 How much time have you spent on Instagram?

01:32:00.000 Just flipping through nonsense.

01:32:02.000 Just looking at bullshit.

01:32:03.000 Getting upset at Twitter.

01:32:05.000 What are these people talking about?

01:32:07.000 Three minutes!

01:32:09.000 No, it's addicting to me.

01:32:10.000 I never thought I would be addicted to it.

01:32:12.000 I love it.

01:32:13.000 I love it.

01:32:14.000 And the other thing I love, which I heard you do, is the infrared.

01:32:17.000 Yeah, I do that too.

01:32:18.000 I do that today.

01:32:19.000 I do it every day.

01:32:20.000 I love it.

01:32:21.000 Oh, you're talking infrared sauna.

01:32:22.000 I do a red light bed every day.

01:32:24.000 I do a regular sauna, a dry sauna, because I think...

01:32:28.000 There's more research that's been done, particularly out of Finland.

01:32:32.000 You know, they did a 20-year study where they showed a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality for people who use the sauna four days a week.

01:32:41.000 Yeah.

01:32:42.000 More than an infrared?

01:32:43.000 Just an old-fashioned dry sauna?

01:32:45.000 It's just not more than an infrared.

01:32:47.000 I think, look, infrared is definitely beneficial.

01:32:49.000 I think the whole idea is heat shock proteins.

01:32:51.000 The whole idea is raising your body temperature to the point where your body develops these heat shock proteins in order to mitigate...

01:32:58.000 The effects of the extreme heat.

01:33:00.000 Because you can really only tolerate that extreme heat for a certain amount of time.

01:33:04.000 A regular dry sauna gets way hotter.

01:33:06.000 So my sauna, I like to keep it at 196. So I get in there at 196 for 25 minutes.

01:33:12.000 And it's not fun.

01:33:14.000 It's not fun.

01:33:15.000 It sucks.

01:33:17.000 That stress of doing that is what makes your body stronger.

01:33:21.000 It's the response, your body's response to that extreme stress that makes it stronger.

01:33:25.000 And this is what develops the heat shock proteins, and this is what is responsible for this.

01:33:32.000 There's an EPO-like effect on your blood where you have more red blood cells.

01:33:38.000 It raises your endurance.

01:33:40.000 It's almost like static.

01:33:43.000 Even though you're sitting there, you know, I wear a heart rate monitor sometimes when I'm in there, and my heart's jacked up to 147 beats a minute at the end.

01:33:50.000 I mean, it's pretty high.

01:33:52.000 When you're hitting that 21-minute mark and you're looking at your watch going, oh, Jesus Christ, four more minutes of this shit?

01:33:58.000 And then is your recovery quick once you get up, your heart rate's down?

01:34:01.000 I'm so used to it.

01:34:03.000 But another benefit is living in Texas.

01:34:06.000 When I go out in the heat and the sun, it doesn't bother me at all.

01:34:08.000 My body's fully adapted to being hot.

01:34:11.000 It's hot every day.

01:34:15.000 Again, it's just voluntary adversity.

01:34:18.000 It's forcing yourself to do something physically, and it makes the rest of your day way easier.

01:34:22.000 Okay, so you should get into politics.

01:34:25.000 Voluntary adversity.

01:34:26.000 No, no, no, no.

01:34:28.000 Voluntary adversity.

01:34:29.000 I would way rather have people like you on and try to help you out than get involved myself.

01:34:33.000 Well, I appreciate that.

01:34:34.000 I'm grateful for that.

01:34:36.000 I have zero interest in getting involved myself.

01:34:37.000 Is this where your interests end, though?

01:34:40.000 Is it just mayor stuff, or do you ever look bigger than that?

01:34:43.000 I don't know.

01:34:44.000 You know, right now, honestly, I was looking at a couple of different options.

01:34:49.000 And then when January 7th hit with the fire, The world sort of stopped.

01:34:54.000 And I want to spend a lot of time right now trying to get it rebuilt.

01:34:57.000 There's going to be time for politics for me, for sure.

01:35:00.000 It's probably not right now.

01:35:02.000 So you think, like, one day, like, governor?

01:35:04.000 One day, like...

01:35:05.000 Maybe.

01:35:05.000 President?

01:35:06.000 Well, I don't...

01:35:07.000 Come on!

01:35:08.000 Come on, Rick!

01:35:10.000 You know what I want to do?

01:35:11.000 I look at it, and I don't mean this in a morbid way.

01:35:15.000 I mean it in a positive way.

01:35:18.000 I'm sort of at the back nine of my life, right?

01:35:21.000 And I've had an incredible life.

01:35:23.000 And so what can I do that's really meaningful at this point?

01:35:28.000 And I enjoy public service a lot.

01:35:31.000 I enjoyed when I worked for three different mayors.

01:35:35.000 And so I do want to do something at some point.

01:35:37.000 But the question for me is, where is the place that I can do the most good?

01:35:43.000 And have a good time doing it, by the way, because I like having fun.

01:35:47.000 And where does that intersect?

01:35:49.000 And so as time goes on, I'll figure that out.

01:35:52.000 And whether it's the governor or whether it's the mayor, I'm not quite sure.

01:35:55.000 But I want to do something at some point.

01:35:59.000 But now I really want to get the place rebuilt.

01:36:02.000 Let's get moving.

01:36:04.000 What does that involve?

01:36:05.000 You wanted to get the place rebuilt.

01:36:07.000 So how long is this woman still going to be the mayor for?

01:36:11.000 Well, she's there for, you know, I think about 18 months or so.

01:36:15.000 And she already announced before the fires she's going to run for re-election.

01:36:19.000 But we'll see how that plays out.

01:36:22.000 As a private citizen, it's this group that I put together that's going to work really closely, pushing the city, finding solutions, sort of calling out when they're not doing what they need to be doing.

01:36:36.000 And I'm hopeful that that's going to be really effective in, like I said, bending the curve, shortening the timeline to get people in.

01:36:43.000 And that's going to take most of my time and most of my day.

01:36:46.000 I've got a small, mighty staff that I hired for it.

01:36:49.000 I'm going to fund it.

01:36:52.000 Myself, I'm going to use all the resources from my company and the talent we have in the company to help find answers to rebuild it.

01:36:59.000 We got guys like, you know, Joe Lonsdale is a part of that group, one of the biggest thinkers around.

01:37:05.000 I got the head of Parsons, you know, one of the great Gensler architectural firms.

01:37:10.000 Everybody's donating time and talent.

01:37:12.000 And so we want to push the needle on this thing.

01:37:14.000 And then politics will come down the road.

01:37:16.000 We'll figure that out.

01:37:17.000 Well, that sounds wonderful, but it seems to me that, like, unless you're at the cockpit, unless you're, you know, controlling the direction of the city, it's going to be very hard to really change things in a meaningful way.

01:37:31.000 It's a good challenge, for sure.

01:37:33.000 But I can't change the leadership that's there now.

01:37:37.000 And the problem is now.

01:37:38.000 Right.

01:37:39.000 So I've got to figure out how I help the leadership be successful.

01:37:44.000 Has the leadership adjusted their perspective based on this enormous failure of the fire?

01:37:49.000 Because it seems like politically that's a giant handicap for them, right?

01:37:53.000 Obviously it was a huge disaster.

01:37:55.000 So in order to get re-elected, you have to give these people some faith that you've recognized that you've made some errors and that you're going to do things differently in the future.

01:38:06.000 I haven't heard that.

01:38:07.000 I haven't heard that.

01:38:08.000 Oh, that sounds crazy.

01:38:09.000 Yeah.

01:38:09.000 But, you know, I'll be really honest with you.

01:38:11.000 I'm always honest with you, with everybody.

01:38:15.000 When you're a leader and you weren't around to help prevent the problem, probably highly and likely you're going to be able to fix the problem if that was your judgment.

01:38:26.000 Yeah.

01:38:27.000 Right?

01:38:28.000 Right.

01:38:28.000 So if your judgment was, I'm going to go out of town when this catastrophic event is about to hit the city that I'm in charge of, you probably don't have the judgment to get it fixed.

01:38:42.000 I hope I'm wrong.

01:38:44.000 But I'm going to do whatever I can to help because the problem is bigger than the politics and the problem is bigger than her.

01:38:53.000 And the people that are suffering shouldn't be suffering because of her or anything that she did or who she appointed that failed in their job.

01:39:02.000 We've got to do a workaround.

01:39:04.000 It's the only option I've got right now.

01:39:07.000 And that's what we're going to do.

01:39:08.000 And that's what I'm going to do.

01:39:09.000 Well, that's very practical.

01:39:11.000 Is there anything else that you would think of that needs to be discussed about LA and that you think could be fixed?

01:39:18.000 You know...

01:39:19.000 We cover the regulations.

01:39:20.000 Yeah.

01:39:21.000 What about desalination?

01:39:24.000 Absolutely should be done.

01:39:26.000 Great idea.

01:39:27.000 I tried it when I was the head of Department of Water and Power.

01:39:30.000 Yeah?

01:39:31.000 Got fought by every environmental group there is.

01:39:34.000 Why?

01:39:35.000 Do they think we're going to empty the entire ocean?

01:39:37.000 It's crazy.

01:39:39.000 There's so much water right there!

01:39:41.000 It's crazy.

01:39:42.000 First of all, we're dumping sewage.

01:39:45.000 You know, there's tertiary treatment where water is potable.

01:39:48.000 We dump sewage, secondary treatment.

01:39:50.000 It doesn't hurt the ocean, but we're dumping it.

01:39:53.000 Take it to tertiary treatment.

01:39:55.000 Put it back in the natural underground aquifers and save it.

01:40:01.000 Yeah.

01:40:01.000 Right?

01:40:02.000 That could be done.

01:40:03.000 The abundance of water that goes into the ocean is sort of what you start out with.

01:40:07.000 Desal.

01:40:09.000 Brilliant.

01:40:10.000 Absolutely.

01:40:10.000 We should be doing it.

01:40:11.000 We should have desal plants supporting Los Angeles and big parts of Southern California.

01:40:17.000 Also, it creates jobs.

01:40:18.000 It creates jobs.

01:40:20.000 You can do it where it's environmentally safe.

01:40:23.000 Absolutely.

01:40:23.000 And it has a redundancy of power that comes off of it also that's helpful because we've got a power shortage in California.

01:40:32.000 Absolutely.

01:40:33.000 And we've got more and more demand on our grid than we know how to supply right now.

01:40:37.000 And again, back in the day...

01:40:39.000 How does it work as a redundancy of power?

01:40:41.000 Well, because you've got to generate a lot of power for the desal.

01:40:45.000 When the desal is not operating, you've still got an operating power plant there.

01:40:49.000 So you can skew up the operation in order to have additional energy coming off your desal plant.

01:40:57.000 Okay.

01:40:58.000 You've got to build a power plant to desal because of the amount of power it consumes to clean the water.

01:41:03.000 And how much...

01:41:05.000 Water could be desalinated.

01:41:07.000 Like, how much of an impact can that actually have?

01:41:09.000 Does it depend upon the size of the plant and how many of them there are?

01:41:11.000 It depends on the size of the plant.

01:41:12.000 You can, yeah, depends on the size of the plant.

01:41:15.000 Ideally, they should be set up, though, like at various intervals along the coast, and you'd probably fix the entire, I mean, California could be completely green.

01:41:25.000 Well, listen, it could be, but it's also, you mix sources of water.

01:41:30.000 Like, right now, in L.A., I'll just take L.A. You've got the aqueduct that's bringing water down that William Mulholland built at the turn of the century, right?

01:41:40.000 He was brilliant on how he did it.

01:41:42.000 There isn't one pump.

01:41:43.000 It's all gravity flow that comes down from Inyo County, Owens Valley comes down.

01:41:49.000 There was a whole bunch of controversy and everything, but all of that has sort of been fixed.

01:41:55.000 That water comes down.

01:41:56.000 There's some water that comes down from the state.

01:41:58.000 There's water that Los Angeles has natural aquifers we pump, right?

01:42:04.000 Again, and then you add decel to it, then you have one more supply that's backing up supply.

01:42:10.000 And then, of course, you want to capture rainwater, which we do a terrible job of.

01:42:15.000 We let it go in the ocean.

01:42:16.000 We don't capture as much rainwater in Los Angeles as we should.

01:42:20.000 Probably not much at all.

01:42:22.000 But even with the sewage, why wouldn't you just spend the investment and take the treatment and put it back in the aquifer and have clean water?

01:42:33.000 Yeah.

01:42:34.000 It's just a constant supply.

01:42:36.000 All we're doing now is we're dumping it in the ocean.

01:42:38.000 Yeah, it's very stupid.

01:42:40.000 And again, it's doing the same thing you've always done and hoping for a different result.

01:42:44.000 Yeah.

01:42:44.000 What was the pushback from the idea of desalination plants?

01:42:50.000 Because there's a long line of thinkers that there should be no power plants along the coast of California because of the emissions.

01:42:57.000 So years ago when I was president of DWP, Under Tom Bradley's leadership at the time, converted all the old oil plants on the coast to gas to be clean.

01:43:10.000 There's better technology now.

01:43:13.000 You can convert those.

01:43:15.000 They're testing out hydrogen and convert them to hydrogen plants.

01:43:18.000 There's a big plant that DWP built in Utah when I was president called Intermounter Power Project.

01:43:25.000 It was the cleanest coal-burning plant in the country at the time.

01:43:28.000 This is probably...

01:43:29.000 You know, 25 years ago now, 30 years ago.

01:43:32.000 They're now testing and converting it to hydrogen, which will be absolutely clean.

01:43:37.000 That's smart, right?

01:43:38.000 So we need...

01:43:39.000 Literally makes oxygen.

01:43:40.000 Right.

01:43:41.000 Yeah.

01:43:41.000 We need more...

01:43:42.000 The question is, how do you boil water?

01:43:45.000 Pick your source.

01:43:46.000 That's what a plant does.

01:43:47.000 A plant boils water, creates steam, spins a turbine, you got electricity.

01:43:51.000 Right.

01:43:51.000 You know, so whatever kind of fuel you want, we built...

01:43:54.000 We were partners in Palo Verde.

01:43:57.000 Which is the nuclear plant in Arizona.

01:43:59.000 We need more nuclear plants in this country.

01:44:02.000 And I don't know why the leadership in this state hasn't been aggressive in building more clean, burning plants because we need them.

01:44:13.000 Nuclear has a negative stereotype in the public eye, unfortunately, because of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, because of Fukushima.

01:44:23.000 People think nuclear.

01:44:25.000 They think disaster.

01:44:26.000 They think terrible waste.

01:44:28.000 You can't get away from it.

01:44:30.000 It pollutes the ground forever.

01:44:32.000 But it can be made very safe.

01:44:34.000 But it can be made much safer and much cleaner.

01:44:37.000 Not being done because we're...

01:44:38.000 And then also people have to understand that if you go back to the cars that were on the road at the time these nuclear power plants were built, those cars were polluting like crazy.

01:44:49.000 You got a brand new car.

01:44:50.000 The emissions are far less.

01:44:52.000 Or you get a Tesla.

01:44:53.000 You have none.

01:44:54.000 So why would we look at the same old architecture of these...

01:45:00.000 The Fukushima one's a prime example.

01:45:03.000 It only had one backup generator.

01:45:04.000 The backup generator went out.

01:45:06.000 We're done.

01:45:06.000 They have them now where they can actually shut them down.

01:45:10.000 There's new designs.

01:45:11.000 Oh, yeah.

01:45:12.000 And listen, Palo Verde, again, is probably 20 or 30 years old.

01:45:16.000 It's been an incredibly performing plant.

01:45:19.000 Never has had a problem.

01:45:21.000 So, again, this is where you sort of get into what your point is.

01:45:25.000 Get somebody from the outside who's thinking big, who's thinking outside the box, who wants to change the landscape for a...

01:45:34.000 for the better way of having a quality of life and is willing to think big.

01:45:39.000 And you're going to get kicked in the head sometimes and not every idea is going to make sense and work, but you only get there if you throw enough good ideas out on the table that you figure things out.

01:45:48.000 Right.

01:45:49.000 And so when you take a look at Los Angeles, when you take a look at California, I'm hopeful that you get leadership that just starts looking at things differently and we'll make some small moves that turns into big changes.

01:46:02.000 So we'll see.

01:46:03.000 I'm, Again, I'm optimistic about it.

01:46:06.000 Well, I'm optimistic too.

01:46:07.000 I am.

01:46:08.000 We're going to get you back there.

01:46:09.000 Good luck.

01:46:10.000 I'm never leaving Texas.

01:46:13.000 I'll never live in a big city again.

01:46:16.000 I think you get too big.

01:46:19.000 It's just people become a burden.

01:46:21.000 I think there's a psychic aspect to it.

01:46:24.000 Just the mindset of living in a smaller place is more relaxed.

01:46:29.000 It just feels better.

01:46:31.000 I get it.

01:46:31.000 I get that.

01:46:33.000 Especially raising a family.

01:46:34.000 Yes.

01:46:35.000 But I did love living in L.A. I lived there for 25 years.

01:46:38.000 I loved it.

01:46:39.000 I thought it was awesome.

01:46:40.000 Had a great time there.

01:46:42.000 I still miss parts of it.

01:46:44.000 I still miss the comedy store.

01:46:47.000 There's amazing aspects to L.A. still.

01:46:51.000 And there's an amazing group of human beings that live in L.A. still.

01:46:54.000 It's an incredible city.

01:46:55.000 But the problem is...

01:46:58.000 Everyone knew that it was amazing and everyone knew that everybody wanted to go there.

01:47:03.000 And so they just sort of took everybody for granted.

01:47:06.000 And they said, look, let's just text the shit out of these people.

01:47:08.000 They're staying.

01:47:09.000 They're not going anywhere.

01:47:10.000 It's California.

01:47:11.000 Where are you going to go?

01:47:12.000 That's right.

01:47:13.000 There's still that attitude, by the way.

01:47:15.000 Still that attitude.

01:47:16.000 Yeah, that's what I felt.

01:47:17.000 It doesn't work.

01:47:18.000 That's what I felt.

01:47:19.000 And that's what you hear from the governor and you hear from people when they brag about California.

01:47:25.000 Instead of addressing why are people leaving, they talk about how great California is.

01:47:28.000 Oh, we're kicking ass.

01:47:29.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, still, but not as much as before, and there's a reason.

01:47:33.000 You're on a downward trend.

01:47:35.000 It's the government.

01:47:36.000 And not as much as we could.

01:47:38.000 Yeah, not as much as we could.

01:47:39.000 Well, listen, Rick, whatever you do, I wish you the best.

01:47:42.000 Thank you, sir.

01:47:43.000 I do hope you run for mayor again, and I hope you win this time, and I hope you can...

01:47:52.000 Thank you very much.

01:47:57.000 This is really an honor.

01:47:58.000 My pleasure.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 05, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2268 - Rick Caruso

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