Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Good to see you, sir.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here. My pleasure. Thanks for being here. It is a terrible time for Los Angeles, and unfortunately, you did not win. I wanted you to win. Thank you. I was rooting for you. Thank you. It's just the politics in LA, 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, I think it's going to work out.

Well, there's a lot of things that aren't working out. There's a lot of things that are. Listen, I know like you, spending time and living in LA, it's an amazing city. It's amazing. When I ran for office, as much as I loved LA, I I actually fell in love with it more because I got to see places that I wouldn't normally see. It was really amazing, and people, and the diversity, and the deerness of so many neighborhoods and people. But what's happened to LA over the last decade is just tragic, and people are paying huge consequences for it, and it's sad to watch.

If you get to the heart of it, if you won and you became the mayor of LA, what could you do to try to turn this battleship around? Because it's a big battleship.

It's a big battleship, and people will argue that the mayor of LA doesn't have a lot of authority like other mayors. I learned a lot, Joe. I worked for three mayors. I worked for Tom Bradley when I was in my mid-20s as a commissioner. I was the Head of Department of Water and Power. I worked for Dick Reardon. He brought me back in to head of DWP during the energy crisis. The department was under a A lot of financial strain. Then I worked for Jim Hunt, who brought me in to turn around LAPD, and I was the Police Commissioner, the head of the Police Commission. I've seen really good leadership. Honestly, what we've had in the last two mayors is not good leadership, and we're paying a price for it. 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, if you're not worried about getting reelected or reappointed, it's really amazing what can happen because you can make decisions that are actually in the best interest of the people. I believe the career politicians are always worried about getting reelected.

They are scared to death of getting a real job. They've never had to sign the front of a check, only the back. So it's very difficult for them to even think about being out of office. So they just circulate. They go from the city council to the state assembly to the state senate. We I end up with the same look and feel of leadership, which is pretty weak. I think Dick Rubin was a good example of a guy who came in and did a lot of great stuff. I actually think Jimmy Hyne did a lot of great stuff as mayor. I would go in there with some strong leadership. I would certainly go in there and reach across the aisle and find common ground and all of those things you need to do to move forward. But I would certainly plant some really strong goals that everybody knew we were working towards because I believe that you either lead, follow, or get out of the way. I really admire people who lead. 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.

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. You were running for mayor because you're a businessman, and realized that this was not being run like a successful business. You knew how to run a successful business. You knew the difference. La is just constantly plagued by this crony political movement, the same people, same type of people, shuffling in and out, and it just nothing ever changes. Yeah.

Again, to give you a little bit of background, I am so indebted to LA. It sounds a little bit corny, but my paternal and maternal grandparents, they were both immigrants. My grandfather, paternal grandfather was a gardener in Los Angeles. He lived in Boyle Heights. He started as a coal miner. 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, he was the dynamiter. He was the guy that had to go in the lead. Oh, boy. Yeah, set the dynamite and get the hell out in time. And his brother, who immigrated with him, said, Come to LA, It's sunny. My dad was actually born in a coal mining camp outside the coal mine. But anyway, he was a gardener out here, and we actually grew up in his truck as he would go around. And they had this small little home they rented in Boyle Heights. And I think about what LA gave to my grandparents, to my dad, to me, my family, the opportunity to build a business. And so running for mayor, the motivation was, I want to give back to the city that gave me so much.

And by the way, all the problems that we've got, you can fix them with a little bit of backbone, a little bit of smarts. If you're equipped right, bring together some really smart people. You I did fix everything. And to your point, what happened when I was tied at the end of the race and actually a little bit ahead? Biden flies into campaign. Kamala flies into campaign. Pelosi, Bernie. And at the end of the day, when we're 10 days before election day, they finally convinced Obama to do a message. And so the system is so... It's a closed-looped, right? And the idea that somebody was going to come in the tent that's an outsider was horrifying to them. And we would laugh about it as a family. It's like, you might as well just load up Air course one all at one time and bring everybody out. But I loved every minute of it. I hope at some point that system is changing. 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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Yeah, for sure. The difference between 2020 and 2024, how many different counties went red that were blue historically. So let's break down the problems with LA and what could be done to fix it. What do you see as the primary issues of LA right now?

Well, you got a homeless problem that continues to grow. Let's talk about that. Okay. 70,000 people in LA County.

One of the things we've covered on that, it's at least a thousand. If they have a real accurate count. But the real question is why, and why is so much money spent on it and no results? We've covered it on this podcast. There's people that are bureaucrats that work for this Department of Homelessness, and they're making a quarter million dollars a year, and they have no incentive whatsoever to make anything better because it doesn't hurt them. They're not paid based on whether or not they clean up the homeless issue. They're just paid. So the longer the homeless The issue goes on, the more they keep their job. It's a profitable job. They just rant on and on about, We need housing. That's not the problem.

But I had a plan, and I'm confident my plan would have worked. Let's talk about housing for a minute. La and LA County, they put in a tax called HSH to build 10,000 units. At least about a year ago, I think they had maybe short of a thousand units built.

That's amazing.

Over 10 years. Over 10 years.

I'm amazed they built one.

Yeah, I know. But you know what they built them for? 800,000 a unit. That was the cost of it. If you go to 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. But what happens in the city, in the government, there's so many layers of waste on top of waste, on top of waste. It's ridiculous. So, yeah, you're right. Very little is happening. Almost no housing is being built by the government, even though they have massive taxes. We got another tax called ULA. When you sell your home, you have to pay another 5 %, over $5 million. So there's taxes on top of taxes. There is a solution to the homeless. So I'll just give you an example. There's a company called Boxable outside of Vegas, and they're building units that are 5, 600 square feet. On average, they're about 60, $70,000 a unit. This young guy figured out how to build up basically a production line to knock these things out. And when I was campaigning, I said to him, When I win, I'm going to give you a contract for 30,000 units.

And there's so much open space, Joe, in and around Los Angeles that's controlled by the city. And we're going to start getting people in homes, getting them taken care of, giving them the service they need. But the other thing we need to do, you can't have open drug dealing on the streets. We welcome it. And if you look around MacArthur Park, the great old Langer's Deli, and the poor owner, Norm Langer, who basically said, After 70 years, I got to close my restaurant. Terrible. Terrible. Amazing old place. And then Mayor Bass promised, I'm going to be down there. I'm going to clean it up. We're going to fix it.

It hasn't changed in six months since she said that.

It can be cleaned up. It can be fixed.

You got to have some backbone. A lot of it is a mental health issue, correct? Very much so. Probably half. And drug addiction. Drug addiction, a lot of that comes from mental health issues as well, right? Yes. So what could be done? You're dealing with an enormous population of people that have this issue. It's probably closer to 100,000 in LA County. Maybe. That's the high estimates, right? So let's say 70,000 to 100,000 people. You have a lot of people. What could be done to have some 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? 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.

Not just the sale, but the open use. I mean, meth, cooking meth right out in front of everybody. You're right. All the above. I mean, literally in downtown, there's tents that are run by the drug dealers where everybody everybody knows to go to get their drugs. So you got to start there. But I'm a big believer that government alone can't solve major problems, right? And you've got organizations downtown that are really doing great stuff. Downtown Women's Center is doing great stuff. Union Rescue Mission, great stuff. And they're bringing people in. They're giving them the help and the treatment they need for drug addiction and mental health care, and they're giving them housing. Scale those people up. 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. And their success, Joe, is like a 90 % success rate. And scale it.

Why go reinvent a model that's already working well? And there's probably a dozen organizations downtown that are doing a good job.

And what are they doing? And you do it at a fraction of the cost. I already interrupted. Do it at a fraction of the cost. These people that are being successful, how are they doing it? What's their method? You know, it's 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. No judgment. Downtown Women's Center. 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. It's terrible that we allow this. It's a crime we allow this. But an example of downtown Women's Center, they accept them the way they are, mental health condition, drug addiction condition. They have embedded services downtown in their facility. They have housing there platform, and they give them the treatment. It's happening in real-time, and they're very effective doing it. Like I said, they've got about a 90% success rate. They have highly-educated, skilled workers that know how to react and deal with the people on the street.

That's what we need more of. I don't think you need to build new big institutions. What I do think you need to do is cut all the red tape, start building quickly, funding these organizations, and fund them quickly. If you talk to downtown Women's Center, it will take them an average of six years to build new housing.

Six years. That's crazy. It's crazy. And it's in Skid Row. It's not like you're building in a sensitive environmental area. Right. Give the damn permits and say, go. I first encountered Skid Row when we used to film Fear Factor downtown. I'd heard of it. I had no idea. We had done a bunch of the Fear Factor stunts in abandoned buildings. It makes good backdrops, creepy. When I went there, one time, I took a wrong turn, and I went right into the meat of everything, and I was like, this is insanity. This was 2004, 2003? So this was 20 years ago, 22 years ago. Even back then, it was bananas. Come see it now. Oh, I've heard. Well, we watched that documentary. Is it the Carlyle Hotel, Jamie? I think so. One of the documentaries on one of the old downtown hotels, and it went into the history of Skid Row. And 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. They had 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.

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, We got a spot, we could just stick them. Let's just take it here. We could turn our back on it.

Then, of course, every business in that area got devastated. All those hotels, this glorious old classic hotels. In fact, the Morrisons Hotel just caught fire because vagrants were living in it, and it's gone now. So these methods that these people are using that are successful, what are they? What are they doing? Well, what they're doing is they're giving them the treatment they need. Now, Union Rescue Mission has a different approach. Union Rescue Mission, that's a faith-based organization. It's hugely successful. It's overflowing. They can't accommodate everybody. They need a lot more funding. But they don't allow anybody to use drugs or alcohol the minute they check in and they get an apartment. 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, to get the mental health care that they need. So they have skilled workers. They're literally daily classes. There's protocols, there's requirements of the residents on what they can do and what they can't do. To give them structure. They give them structure. That's right. That's a great word. You're exactly right.

They give them structure, they give them training, they give them hope, and they give them a path forward.

I've always said this, let's assume your number's right. There's 100,000 homeless on the streets in LA County, whatever the number is. People say, You can't solve the whole problem. Why don't we start with solving half of it? Yeah, be nice. Yeah. Let's start with, let's solve for the group of people that, for whatever reason, are down and out, lost their job, lost their apartment. You've got more families on the streets now, Joe, than ever before. Let's start with that group, and let's help them very quickly. Give them training, give them a job, give them a path forward.

And then you work through the system. But we're not even doing that. And now you've had the fires. The estimate is there's another 180,000 people in LA that are homeless. Is that insane to think about?

It's insane.

The 180,000, though, a lot of them, it's just because they're trying to find a place, but they're not destitute. A lot of these people are people that had some money. Who knows what's going to happen with the insurance? Right? Right. But see, that's the problem. Unfortunately, the fire insurance issue in Los Angeles is insane. It's terrible. Where we were talking in the lobby before I was evacuated three times when I lived in LA. Two of my neighbors lost homes, and watching those folks cry in front of the rubble of where they lived, it's just horrible. But they kept their lives. And this was 2018, and they rebuilt some of them. Two of the houses are still gone in my old neighborhood. They never rebuilt. Sorry to hear about that. They just pulled out. It's like, What am I going to do? They lose everything. Mel Gibson lost books from the 1600s. Mel is a very religious man, and he collects these ancient irreplaceable books. Then, of course, the loss of lives is horrifying. That issue is an issue that has plagued LA in California forever. A big point of contention during the election, and even during the first Trump administration, was the use of water, and that water was being funneled into the Pacific Ocean, and now a Apparently, you could tell me more, you probably know more than I do.

What has been done about that water? Because it seems like Trump has changed that. 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, and I'm grateful. 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. 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. And I hope he continues to hold all the elected officials accountable. He can make a big difference, and we need it. On the water issue, listen, I headed up Department of Water and Power, like I said, for 10 years. I have a pretty good understanding of the water issues. What's happening in the north really Really has not as much of an impact as happening down in Southern California in terms of how the water gets transferred around. It doesn't mean we should be pouring water into the ocean.

We should not be. We should be doing a lot of things. We should be collecting water, we should be holding water, we should be recycling water. We should be doing a lot of things. What happened in Los Angeles, which is just close to negligence, if not negligence, Joe, the fire hydrants ran out. We We evacuated our home. We're in Brentwood, so you know the area. We're 15 minutes in the Palisades where the fire started. It was my birthday. We were having family dinner. From the second floor, we saw the flames. We said, We're going to have to get out of here. The power went off. We said, We're out. Gathered the family. We moved down to a home we have in Newport Beach. I get a call from one of my senior executives who embedded in with the fire command post, and my heart dropped. He said, We just lost your daughter's home. I said, Oh, my God, Banion, how the hell did that happen? He said, You can't believe it. The hoses ran dry, and the whole neighborhood went up. I was so angry that I... Fox 11 11: 00, the local Fox station was on with Alex Michelson, and I texted him because they were reporting live.

This is about 10: 30 at night. I said, Are you getting reports that they've run out of water? He said, Not at all. I said, You need to report this. He said, Do you want to come on live? I said, Yeah, hook me up. I went on. He couldn't believe it. And some of the media was trying to spin it. I saw that.

It's not true. Yeah.

And then they went right to the fireman. Went right to the fireman, right? The fireman said, Yeah, we're standing there empty hoses. 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? And you knew this was coming. They gave warnings of catastrophic winds. The reservoir is empty over, I think it was 1. 7 million gallons. I think it's 11 million. Maybe 11 million. Yeah. Probably right. It's empty during fire season? Yeah. You've got brush that hasn't been cleared for 40 years. There was a whole bunch of us raising hell about that after the fire in Brentwood six years ago. Nothing was done. The fire department wasn't pre-deployed, so there weren't engines staffed in different areas. You've got a fire department that's underfunded, and you've got fire equipment that's mothballed. And then the mayor flies to Ghana. And the mayor is out of town.

So What should have been done and who's responsible? Well, I think the leadership is responsible at every level.

I think the mayor is responsible for not being better prepared. I think she's certainly responsible for not staying in town. It's a lack of judgment. If you want to be a leader, the first thing you have to do is be present. I don't know what all the meetings that she had beforehand to make sure everybody was prepared. But years ago, the brush should have been cleared.

Yes.

You probably couldn't prevented the fire. Maybe you couldn't have prevented the fire. Only God knows. Well, we don't really know.

You could have mitigated it. We don't really know the source of the fire yet, and we do know there was quite a bit of arson.

That's true. To your point, there was a fire in New Year's Eve from fireworks. There's some talk that it may have been in that same area that this sparked up again, or maybe it was another arson that went up there.

But it seems like there were several fires that started very close to each other. It seems like highly unlikely. Could be. That there was just three accidents that took place at the same time as these catastrophic winds. Could be. The most sinister version of it is that somebody wanted this to happen, maybe some mentally ill person. I know they did arrest- It's a sickness. It is a sick... Arsonists, they're really sick people, and it's a known psychological illness. There's a guy that they arrested that was a known arsonist, several times arrested, who had a fake fire truck and drove down. I saw that.

Yeah, drove down from Oregon to do who knows what.

Can you imagine? Yeah. Well, there's- You got to be really sick. There's some psychos out there. Yeah, there's some real sick people out there. There's some weird people also that enjoy watching other people lose everything. It's very strange. 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.

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

Which is just the craziest thing to say in America. But it gives them an excuse. It gives them an excuse. It also gives them a pathway to vent their anger and instead point it productively at their own lives. Why am I in this position right now? What could I have done differently? What personal responsibility do I have for the way I live right now?

Instead of that, it's like, No, these rich people, they fucked you over. That's right. They took advantage of us. The water. Why What is the explanation for why that enormous reservoir that provides the Palisades with water was empty? Well, the explanation that's been said is it's out of service because the cover on it needed to be repaired. Oh, the cover? The cover. Because we're very sensitive in LA that bad things don't get in our water, so they have to keep all these reservoirs covered, which in general, I get.

I get the safety of that. But how about this? You know that you have catastrophic winds coming. Start pumping water in it because nobody gives a shit about what's in the water when you need it in your fire hydrant. Yeah. That could have been done in probably a couple of weeks. Whatever it took. Yeah. It's not like we don't know. La has fire season. I remember every year because where I still live in Bell Canyon, it's about 35 minutes from LA, and it gets rough out there. It's like a lot of big rolling hills, and it gets all filled with grass.

And if it catches and the start whipping through those canyons, the winds in California, for people that don't know, every year we get the Santa Ana winds. That's right. And they're crazy. They are crazy. Some of them were 100 miles an hour this year. If you ever been out there for that, that's nuts.

And if there's the fire's blowing, boy.

No, it's a terrible combination. I mean, the early settlers called them the devil winds. They've been there forever.

Forever. To your point, they've been there forever. So just think about, had the brush been cleared, had the reservoirs been full, had the firetrucks been stationed, had there been a whole series of protocols in place, again- We could have saved some houses.

It could have saved a lot.

A lot of lives, a lot of houses, a lot of jobs, a lot of pain. A lot of pain. Yeah. So that's just incompetence. There's no way you could say, Oh, I see why they didn't do that. Oh, I see why they didn't have the resources. Oh, it's not their fault. No, there's none of that there. No one's saying that. That's right.

Everyone is saying it's a failure.

It's a failure because they're not equipped to deal with the leadership they needed. Even the spin masters, even the greatest of gaslighters have nothing. There's not one person who's tried to pass the buck.

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

We have amazing leadership. We're really proud of them. We're really lucky we have them. Not one. You're right. Not one. That's crazy. It is crazy. Because they gaslight everything, no matter what it is. Everything's safe and effective. Everybody's fine. Everything's great. He's sharp as a tack. They gaslight the shit out of you with everything. But with this one, there's nothing you could say. I agree with it because the facts are the facts. The facts are the facts. You just can't argue around the facts. Also, there's a thing that happens when an area bigger than Manhattan that's filled with the most liberal people. They're the most liberal. They're the most blue no matter who, the most compassionate, kind people that view being a Democrat and being a liberal as being the ultimate expression of being a good person. They're getting slapped in the face by the reality. I think the politics have changed. It's a big weekend. Get in on the action of The Big Game and UFC 312 at DraftKings Sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of the UFC. The men's middleweight and women's strawweight titles will be on the line in the co-main events of UFC 312.

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That destroys an organization. This is an organization that's not in the business of being necessarily doing what's politically important at the time. It's in the business of delivering water and power. And the failure is also So there. I don't understand how the current general manager of the department, I don't know what she did and didn't do, but the failure that's on her desk where the buck stops, she needs to resign. She needs to be fired, in my opinion, by the mayor, and be held accountable for whoever made bad decisions, including herself. But we're allowing this. And so the minute you allow that, that continues this creep of incompetence is tolerated. It shouldn't be tolerated because people lost their lives. They lost their homes.

Am I right about that? You're 100% right. I think you're 100% right about politics. The problem with politics is that people want to preserve the structure that pays them. They want to preserve the entity that they're invested in, that they have their time in, they have all their connections. This is the weird the world of politics versus the world of business. What's fascinating right now is we're getting a chance to see what happens when you take a business approach to the government 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. You're seeing someone look this thing that is incredibly efficient, almost by design. Instead of saying, 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. Instead of that, you're seeing a politician, a president who's coming in who can't get reelected, so he's just going ham, and he's just cleaning out everything, and people are freaking out.

The same people that say we need radical change. We need radical change. We've got corruption. We need radical change. Okay, well, here's your radical change. We don't need this, but you do. The government does. They need oversight, and they haven't had that. Because of that, you're seeing this not just waste. You could call it waste, but it's deeper. It's deeper than waste. It's corruption. You're seeing that corruption get weeded out. I am hoping that this is successful and that it yields a benefit to the American people, to the working to everybody where they recognize like, Hey, we can't just be spending all our fucking tax money on nonsense. It all should be done with a real clear understanding of getting results. If that happens, and that idea spreads across the country because ideas spread and people change their minds. Sometimes it happens, one guy in the neighborhood to go, You know what? Fuck this. I'm fed up. Then everybody like, Yeah, I've been thinking that, too. I just didn't want to say it. It's exactly right, Joe. And then people start talking, and then it's not a scary thing to discuss anymore.

That's right. It opens the door, 100 %. And you're seeing that now. I feel it in LA. You're seeing that now. Like I said, it's terrible that it took this tragedy to have people seeing it. I'm a big believer it can change. I'm a big believer that LA can turn around. I'm a big believer we can fix the problems. I'm a big believer we can fix the problems in California. I really am. And I think we have started to turn this corner where people are saying, you know what, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, to me, it doesn't matter. Are you competent? Do you have experience? Are you going to make decisions for the right reason? When I was the President of the Police Commission, it was the most It was an amazing experience because Jim Hans, mayor, we have a police Department that was failing miserably after the Rodney King riots. The police Department was under a A federal consent decree. A federal judge was overseeing it. We had Bernie Parks, who was the Chief of Police. I don't know if you remember Bernie Parks. I do not. He was probably there when you were living there.

He came out of central casting. Very handsome, proud, Black man and wore the uniform beautifully, rose through the ranks. Super nice guy. We were friends. Jim Hong calls me and says, Hey, I want to appoint you as a President of Police Commission. I said, Mr. Mayor, I really I appreciate it, but I don't want the job because I knew what the job was going to entail, potentially having to fire a very, very popular chief of police. And he's two or three times called back. I finally did it. So glad I did because I learned so much from the experience. At the end of the day, decided we needed to move on and have a different chief of police. What was wrong? What was he doing? What he was doing, Joe, is he had put in procedures, disciplined procedures that were so onerous on the officers that one, officers were leaving, 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. And so the officers started getting all these complaints on their record. And once they did, it held up any promotion or transfer.

So what did the cops started doing? They started saying, I'm just not going to go to that area. And the minute they abandoned that area, the gangs controlled it and crime was going crazy. How clever.

Yeah, right?

Yeah. So I would go to the chief and say, Come on, you got to change the discipline process. Nope, not changing a thing. Very stubborn guy. He had all the answers. I don't mean that. It's facetious. He didn't I have all the answers, obviously. So that was a main problem. So if you had an area of the city that bordered LA County, LA City crime was rising, LA County was going down because the sheriffs are actually proactively, and not in an abusive They were proactively policing. Lapd was retreating. Cops were upset, cops were leaving, the academy is empty, all of these things were happening. I had to change leadership. I had people burning me an effigy, literally. My wife would call me and say, Oh, my God, they're burning you outside a city hall. They're marching. It was crazy to put pressure on me to keep Bernie Parks. Not because Bernie Parks was the best chief of police, because it was politically correct to do that. I remember calling Jimmy Khan, the mayor, and I said, I'm going to make a recommendation, and you're probably not going to like it because you're going to come under a lot of heat.

To his credit, he said, Just do what's right. I'll take the heat. And I recommended we hire Bill Bratten, and we brought this guy in to LA, his Boston accent and all, best cop in the country, built a team around him. We got crime down to levels not seen since 1950, doing all the right things, engaging the community, senior lead officers, walking the beat, getting to know the neighborhoods, started hiring. People wanted to be a member of LAPD. There was now back a pride in it. Completely turned it around within a couple of years. But that all came, and then Jimmy lost re-election because the Black community, unfortunately, abandoned him because of not keeping Bernie Parks. It's one of the reasons. But he did the right thing. He didn't care about his political future. He cared about the city. He never gets enough credit for this. And I just learned that lesson, which I talked about earlier. If you've got the freedom to make a decision without worrying about getting reelected, it's probably where the President's head is. I'm just going to do what I think is right. It really is amazing what can happen.

Let's get more people like that who just understand, let's do what's right for people. I'm in public service. Serve the damn people.

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

I think you do. Because everybody- I know that sounds self-serving, but I think you do.

Of course, it would sound self-serving coming from someone who wants you're outside of it, want to be the mayor. But I think that's the correct response because the people that are in it are just too tied in. They're too tied in to- They're too beholding. They're too beholding. It's entwined. The octopus has many tentacles. It's wrapped around everything, and it just stalls all progress and change. No real radical change can ever be met. 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. They want to pretend that this is the only way to go forward. Then if someone does come along and changes things radically, it makes them all look terrible. It's dangerous. It's dangerous for business. They're not in the business of helping people. They're in the business of keeping their job.

A hundred %.

Yeah, and that's what's gross.

It is really gross.

It's gross. 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. There's a lot of things that could be fixed, and they're not being done, and we could do it.

Yeah. And you know the issue with that is it's such a tough system There's so much that gets thrown at you.

Yeah, like the whole entire party of Democrats came to go after you.

I know.

I'm a Democrat.

I'm very moderate. I'm fiscally very conservative. I'm socially But what gives the incentive to the person on the outside to do it? Right.

Nothing.

And that's what we've got to figure out. Listen, I've got high hopes for San Francisco with their new mayor, Again, an outsider came in and won. I think that's great. I hope he does great.

I hope he does too. That place was amazing at one point, Tom. I just love going to San Francisco. I haven't gone in a year.

It's just too crazy. No, it's terrible. It's a dump.

It's unbelievable. It was one of the old time great cities. That one of the greatest cities in the country has just completely fallen. But no course correction until now. I'm hopeful for this new mayor as well. I'm also hopeful that a lot of the new young tech people are fed up. I think the new people who grew up with the internet understand the corruption and the bullshit, whereas the old people from a couple of decades ago were really just spoon-fed bullshit from the mainstream media, and they thought that this was the only way to be. Where are the kind, intelligent, well-read, progressive people on the West Coast. It's our responsibility to be compassionate and to be the most charitable people possible. They just didn't realize you're not doing anybody a service by letting them camp out in front of your house to smoke meth. That's None of that's good. That's right. It's all real bad for them. It's all real bad for your kids.

Yeah. All those businesses moved out.

Yes. All those businesses moved out. San Francisco just became insane watching all these enormous chains just pull out. Then people get angry and cry racism when they pull out. Like, What are you doing? It's just from the outside. Moving to Texas was such an eye opener, too.

I'm jealous. Being here in Austin today, all the new buildings going up.

Yes.

I said to my wife, Oh, my God, look at this. It's booming. It's booming. There's... Freedom. 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 The city's clean. Everywhere I drove around last night today, just immaculate.

But it's also... I talked to Steven Adler, who was the former mayor of Austin. Great guy. He was explaining to me the homeless situation. We had a long talk about it because it really boomed during COVID. He was saying, Look, LA is too big. I think I can fix the problem in Austin. They did an enormous-How did they do it? They did a fantastic job. They bought a bunch of hotels. They put people up. They started programs. They put a lot of effort into it. But they were only dealing with a few thousand homeless people. They had like 3,000. This is what Steven Adler was saying. He was saying, You could fix that. You can't fix it when it gets to 80,000, 90,000. He's like, It just gets too big with the bureaucratic process as government functions today without the outsider coming in and making radical change. The way it functions today is like, it's just too big. He goes, I think I can fix Austin, and I think I can fix Austin before I get out. I think he did a great job. There's still problems. You're always going to have problems. You have cities.

You're going to have mentally ill people. You're going to have drug addicts. 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- It's very sad. It's very sad. 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. A lot of it happened during the Reagan administration when they changed the They closed them down.

Yes.

They closed down mental health institutes and just said, you're on your own and just let these people loose on the street. Then on top of that, you have the cracker epidemic that comes around at the same time. It's like chaos, just full chaos. I saw the changes in the cities. I saw the changes in the cities. I saw the changes in the news. I saw people were recognizing that this is a new problem. But it's never been like Los Angeles, where you're driving on the street, you just see blocks and blocks of tents. It's just like, how is this not fixed? You're not even allowed to litter. If you're not allowed to litter, how are you allowed to do that?

There's definitely a couple of standards that It's so different. I'm not giving up that it can be fixed, though. I understand there's a big difference with solving for 3,000 versus 80,000, whatever the number is. But it can be fixed because it has to be fixed.

I think it has to be fixed by an outsider as well. Well, I agree with that. What Steven Adler's point was, ultimately Really? It's like being in the system.

I agree with that. There's no doubt it has to. Again, somebody that's willing to risk their political career by doing the right thing for the people on the street. These are human beings that have a right to be given a chance to have a better life. A lot of people are there just because everything went wrong in their life. God bless them. You got to try to fix it. The waste of the money in doing it as a crime. Anyway, we've talked about it, but I'm still hopeful. I know I run overly optimistic in life, but I think it can be done.

Well, it's worked out well for you.

Well, I've been pretty fortunate and blessed in my life. No complaints.

Working hard and being overly optimistic actually works out sometimes, a lot of times. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about law and order. That's a giant issue in Los Angeles. People do not feel as safe as they used to feel. They feel like there's more violent crime, it's more unreported crime. Maybe more concerning is that people get arrested and then immediately get released. There doesn't seem to be any repercussions for that. Right. What would you do to change that?

Well, thank In the '90s, state law got changed. 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. It was insanity. Insanity.

Just insanity.

They weren't bundled. You could In a Syrianian fashion, keep stealing $900 every hour.

It was still a misdemeanor.

That law changed. Great progress. Holding bad people accountable is really important. I'm also a big believer to give people a chance to rebuild their lives. No doubt. It goes hand in hand. But we made a big change by getting rid of George Gascogna One is our district attorney who was not prosecuting and allowing people. It was just a turnstile. You got arrested, you were let out.

Can we get to the heart of that? Sure. What's the motivation for that?

Motivation for doing that? Yes. Well, I probably won't explain it right because I don't agree with it, is that from a social justice standpoint, you don't want to overpopulate the prisons. You don't want to hold people and take away their life for a minor crime.

But a lot of it wasn't minor crimes.

A lot of it was a minor crime.

There was one of them that was a guy who was this crazy homeless guy who pulled a knife on a sheriff. Then two weeks later, at least somewhere A short time after that, I don't know if it's two weeks, attacked a man with his family with a machete on the beach.

Yeah. No, I know. You're right. That's a violent criminal. What George did, you're right. You're absolutely right. I can't explain it because it It's so messed up. I don't even know how you justify letting somebody out of jail or not holding them with bail, any of that. I don't understand it. I think most people got to the point they were so worried about where crime was going. They did finally get rid of George, and we brought in Nathan Hockman, and I think Nathan's doing a great job. I can't explain it.

But the fear is that it's done on purpose. This is the fear. Oh, of course it is. That's the fear. 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.

What's the end goal of that?

It has to be profit. I mean, someone has to be profiting off of it.

Who profits off of that?

I don't know. Ask George Soros. Yeah. I ask the people that fund these extremely liberal district attorneys that all seem to have the same idea.

But do you think that time is turning?

No cash bail. I do. I do think that time is turning. I know that Elon Musk wants to do the exact opposite, to try to find... He's been talking about that, financing people that are much more reasonable and that believe in law and order.

Well, Nathan is a good example of that.

That's great. We need fair laws. We need kind justice. We do need rehabilitation, but we also need to protect people that aren't criminals. Of course. That's the primary thing. It's to protect the general public, serve and protect. That's the whole idea. We need to protect everybody else. Then the people that were life did them wrong and they've wound up, let's figure out a way to actually rehabilitate with them instead of just putting them in cages.

People are doing that. There's some very successful programs that are doing that. But I agree with you. 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. Give them the ability to build a business, raise your family, keep your community safe. It's just so basic. It's so basic. It's gone upside down.

Yeah, that's what's crazy is that law and order thrown out the window. Without law and order, no one safe. You don't 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. Then you've got more of them out than ever before. Self-perpetuating. 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 LA jails. He's like, I'm getting out of town. This guy was a hardcore gang member. He's like, LA is going to get too crazy in the next year. That's very scary when you think about that. It's just nuts. There was the whole defund the police movement, which was just catastrophic. Seeing politicians, including Kamala Harris, seeing politicians openly say and posted on Twitter, We need to defund the police, which is just crazy.

It is as wrong as it can be. Yeah.

Certainly hold bad cops accountable, certainly have better training, certainly have higher standards. But defunding the police, what are you talking about? You need to do the opposite. That's right. You need to train them better, refund them. Right. Definitely make the bad ones accountable. Definitely make people feel safe that they're interacting with police officers. But respect these people. Respect these people that are protecting your life. That's right. Because all those people, when something goes down, they call 911. They're furious when cops don't show up. That's right. All these people who talk shit about the cops that are protected. Defund the police. You're protected by armed security people. You're saying defund the police. This is fucking nonsense. It's nonsense.

I couldn't agree more.

For people that suffered 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. 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. I think it could be reached with a person like you that is a compassionate, the liberal guy when it comes to social issues, but understands business and understands accountability and that you have to see positive results. You have to do what needs to be done to get those positive results. You can't just do the same shit over and over again and pay more people and we need a bigger budget. Oh, let's raise the... We've increased the budget to fix the problem. You're not fixing it. It keeps getting bigger. It's just nuts. It needs someone outside the system, and that's That's why I was really happy to talk to you. That's why I'm really happy that you're still involved. Because a lot of people like yourself that are very wealthy and you don't have to do this.

You're not going to make money doing this. This is probably going to be a huge strain, a tremendous amount of pressure. But some people feel a calling, and they feel like, I think I can do something and fix this that other people maybe won't be able to do.

I appreciate that. I do. I do because what's the alternative? We stay in the same path?

It gets worse. The alternative is it gets worse.

It's going to get worse. More and more people are leaving, more and more businesses closed down. But here's what really hit me on the campaign. I was telling our family, I've got four kids, and they're 35 to 25. And just incredible people. My wife is wonderful. I'm really incredibly blessed with all of that. I was so worried when I decided to run for mayor, the impact on the family. A little bit scary, high profile, all these things. It ended up being the It was a vast experience. We would go into neighborhoods, hardworking neighborhoods of people that just wanted the ability to work hard and live their life, 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'd be somebody that would attack her on the way to school. The most basic things. We'd give them a hug. They would cry, we cry. And I would tell the kids that cry is hope. 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.

So the politicians forget about them, right? Because they're not likely voters necessarily. But we were trying to mobilize it. And we were also trying to give a voice to people that don't have a voice. How inspiring that was for me. That's what fueled me. And you're right. I don't want a career as a politician. 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 and give them an opportunity to grow. That was my grandfather as an immigrant, as a gardener. But he had the opportunity to raise his family where he didn't have to worry about all this shit. It's just changed so much. So I believe we've got to get our elected officials. If we take people who are the hardest working, the dearest people that have the most impact because of crime, because of homelessness, because of being overly taxed, all of these things, and we give them hope and a path forward, Everybody benefits from it. You start solving so many problems, Joe. There was a little school in the middle of the heart of the worst part of Los Angeles with the homelessness in a row, and it's called Pada Los Niños.

My wife and I have been supporting that school for over 30 years now. 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. You open that door and it's beautiful and caring and loving. This school that we support, there's a series of schools, takes in children from six months to five years old. The parents are all working parents, below the poverty line working parents. So they're working in the sweatshops, whatever the case may be. They're living down on Skidron Apartments, two or three in an apartment, working their tail off to just survive, and then to be able to get their child in this school to cost them nothing. It's fully supported. Those are the dearest, sweetest children in the world. We love going down there. Our kids have worked down there since they were little kids. We do a Christmas party for them. And what gives us such joy is seeing the hope in their eyes. And I know it sounds corny, but it's such an important path that we've got to get our elected officials to more supportive of that and get more of these schools and give more of these families the opportunity to do well because they want to do well.

But the system is frankly against them. And that's what I wanted to change more than anything.

Well, let's talk about that. This school, there's no reason why they should have to encounter that environment outside that school. You're right. There's no reason. This is not nuclear waste. This is not something that can't be cleaned up for five million years. We have to leave it alone. This is human beings. This is human devastation out there in the street. 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? This is what you're seeing every day? You absorb that from your environment, the sadness and the devastation all around you, and you're seeing people with lost lives out in the street right in front of your school. When you're a young kid and you're a developing mind, and that's the environment that you encounter all the time, that is going to fuck your head up forever.

Yeah, it's very tough.

Then there's the question of the sweatshops. Why? How come people that work their tail off constantly have to live three, four families in an apartment? What the hell is going on there?

I agree. But that's what I'm saying. That's what I think we got to start fixing. Yes. If you start fixing that... Now, your point is right. 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. It's terrible. But thank God that school is there, because if that school wasn't there-They have nothing. They got nothing. They're on the street.

It's amazing. The problem outside the school, that should be fixed. That should be a public health issue. 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 you're going to lose at life. You want less losers. The best chance you can have less losers is start them off on a good path when they're young.

That's right.

Well said. 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, giving them hope, giving them examples of good people that you could strive to be like, What would Mike do? I'll probably want to do what he does. He would get up and get this done. I admire that person. Having people you that are examples of someone who lives a life that you admire. When you're just seeing people peeing on themselves and throwing up and walking through the streets just covered in cardboard shelters and tents, That's not hope. You're not seeing good examples. What are you depending on for your examples? That's a travesty. That should be cleaned up immediately. Let's talk about that. What could be done for Skid Row, which is probably the worst example of LA's homeless problem.

It's the same thing with any place else that we talked about. You have to, I believe, supercharge these organizations like Aparal Lois communities that are doing well, that are really changing lives, like the Downtown Women's Center, like Common Concern, there's Union Rescue Mission. There's dozens up there.

Where do you put all those people? You got all these people on the streets. You got 100,000 people on the streets.

There's endless land. There's endless land. We The city of Los Angeles has something like over 300 or 400 parcels of land that are vacant. They're just sitting there vacant. Densify them, build on them, build housing. Absolutely do it. Skid Row, there's a lot of opportunity to do that, and a lot of organizations that will do that. But we can never say, well, create enterprise zones. I mean, I wanted to create enterprise zones. You go to South LA or whatnot, there's areas that they were burned out years ago from the riots that have never been rebuilt. Create an enterprise zone, give tax incentives to go down there and build housing. The tax code, when I was a young lawyer, they changed all the tax laws. They had a lot of tax credits, a lot of incentives to do things. It's a great way to incentivize businesses, mobilize the private financial markets to invest and do things. There's an enormous amount of capital in this country. We're the wealthiest country in the world.

Especially LA.

La is so wealthy. State of California, fifth largest economy in the world. We have an economy larger than India.

It's nuts.

It's nuts. And do we have problems? Of course. Can you imagine if we fixed the problems, what this state could do? It would be incredible. There's nothing like it. 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. Break some eggs as you're doing it because you're saving lives. And I think once you get that in motion, it starts taking off. I really do. Because people do not want to continue the way we're continuing. And if there's a handful of people that do, who cares? God bless them. Leave them there. But not the far majority of the people.

I think those handful of people are fed a narrative. The narrative is there's one way that's good and there's one way that's evil. There's the right wing people that want to be fascists, totalitarian, dictators, and they just want the wealthy to get wealthier and they want the poor to starve. Then you have the left wing side that has this idea of compassionate care and letting everybody be themselves and let people camp out. We need to treat people like human beings, and they're not homeless, they're the unhoused, and you start reframing things. It's just a bunch of nonsense. Unfortunately, these people are all conditioned to think that everybody opposed to them, hate civil rights, hates women's rights, hates gay rights. They're right wing, hard core, fascist assholes. 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 being a progressive person in terms of social issues, but yet understands human nature and understands business. You have to do things if you want to change things. You can't just throw money at it. You can't just have a bunch of people that are just bullshitting and not getting anything done.

This is the problem with LA that we see.

Well, there's no doubt. But don't you think that is changing All right. We've talked about that.

I think it's changing. I think it's changing. La will snap right back to the old way. If you just give them a couple of good years, they'll be convinced that...

We got to fight that good fight, though, Joe. We got to fight that good fight. There's too much at risk.

There is too much at risk. I do think it all really depends on how successful Trump is in this four years that he has and the structure that he sets up and how he can... If it really shows people that, Hey, guess what? Gay people aren't losing rights. Hey, guess what? Women aren't losing rights. Hey, guess what? Civil rights aren't being eroded. This is not what's happening. Then the whole country benefits. If we see GDP go up, if we see- I agree. Homeless, jobless, joblessness, go down, that would be amazing. It would be amazing. If that happens, then maybe people could wake their mind up to the fact that you're not in this binary system and that you really shouldn't be a part of a team. You should be a part of Team America. Team America is like, we want the The whole thing to be better. Everybody, all of us.

Wouldn't that be great? It'd be amazing.

It can be done.

It can be done.

Most people, I think, are reasonable, kind people. Most people. Yes. But I think people get trapped in ideologies. And California is one of the better examples of a place that's just trapped. You're either a Democrat or you're a fucking asshole. That's how people look at it.

Oh, God.

That's how people look at it.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of that.

There's a lot of that.

I have a little bit a little bit more, 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. I really do. I'm hearing a lot of that, even from some of my most liberal friends, they want change. Oh, yeah.

Well, you could push people up to a point.

Yeah. Now, I do think the success of Trump is going to have a big influence on that. Especially in California, because the majority is very leery, right? Los Angeles is very leery of that. If he could do more of what he did that day at that press conference, out on the Palisades, it would be great because he did show a compassion. He did show a strength. He showed that what he cared about was the people getting back in their homes and let's take care of them. He showed an impatience with the bureaucracy that was... They were spinning it, boy, the elected officials that day, and he was pushing back on it. Yeah. Very professionally, very nicely, but very strongly.

He's much better in handling people this time around. I think he corrected a lot of the way he used to communicate with people, and he's much more even and measured. It's much more effective.

I agree. I was impressed. Like I said earlier, he's a builder He's a successful builder. And I would love to him to give a little blueprint to the city of LA and say, Here's the 10 things you need to do. That's what we're doing. This new foundation I launched with a bunch of really smart thought leaders in industry have come together. We launched it yesterday. Just to go tackle problems. Don't tell me what the problem is without the solution. I just live by that. And there is a solution to problem. It may not be the solution you want, but there's a solution out there, so work towards it. I'll give you an example. I've been pushing since the fires. We've got to underground all the power lines. You can't go rebuild the Palisades or Altadina the way it was built 70 years ago. It'd be insane.

It's insane.

So underground the power lines, redo the water mains, redo the higher fight system, blah, blah, blah. And I get this pushback. We don't have the money, we don't have the time. 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? Didn't we just have the largest infrastructure bill in history, passed about a year ago? We must have the money, and we'll find the money. But that can't stop you from doing what's right. So 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. Then we're going to hold you accountable to implement it.

What is the answer when they say, We don't have the money. If you have California, which is just insanely enormous economy and a very high tax rate.

One of the highest, that's right.

You have high taxes, so you have an enormous economy. That means you got a lot of money. Right. So where's the money going?

Where the money is gone, I can't tell you. We used to have a surplus in California, now we have a deficit. If that happens at your home or my home, that means we mismanaged our money. It's pretty simple. Yeah. In solving the problem for the Palisades or Altadina on the electric issues or the infrastructure issues, listen, the city has bonding authority. Department of Water and Power has bonding authority. There's federal grants or state grants, there's private capital. We're going to go solve that and give some answers to the city. But my point is, the answer can't be, let's not do what's right. We've done enough of that. The answer has to be, We're going to go do this, and now we're going to solve how to pay for it. We're going to do it quickly to get people back in their homes and start building again. I believe we can bend the curve. If somebody thinks it's going to take five years, let's go figure out how we get it done in two years. This is where private enterprise needs to come in and help the government, because the government alone can't fix this problem.

It's too big. They work too slow. You need innovation and entrepreneurship that private enterprise brings. We saw that in COVID with Project Warp Speed and getting the medicines that were needed at the time. We saw it at 9/11 on getting the rebuilding done. We need to implement the same thing in Los Angeles to get the city rebuilt because it's an impact on the American economy to have the size of two Manhattan's. Two Manhattan's burned down. That's how big it is. Can you imagine that?

That's insane.

14, 15,000 structures.

It's so hard for people to imagine that. I just went back. I was telling you, I was there a couple of weeks ago for the UFC, and you see it. When you're flying over, it just doesn't even make sense. We showed the drone footage as well of the Palestine. It doesn't make sense. It's so much devastation. Altadina is gone. Altadina is gone. Altadina, my friend Jimmy Dore was just talking about this the other day in a video. It was this beautiful, nice neighborhood, tree Fine streets.

Yeah. Cotage homes. Deer's sweet neighborhood. And gone. Yeah, gone.

One of the nice neighborhoods, a beautiful neighborhood to drive through. Yeah. It's gone.

And those people, mostly, Joe, as you know, so many of them there's no safety net. I mean, very moderate income, working class, hard working class people. I've been telling all the elected officials, you got to have programs that start supporting people because they are down and out. They have nowhere to go. We've got to do something to help them day to day to live.

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. And then it would just ruin that area.

Can't do it. Can't do it. It's wrong. This is not the time to be reimagining anybody's neighborhood off the backs of the devastation and the pain. I've been really vocal about that. This is the creep you get, what you're talking about, the social justice. Well, now, let's say in the Palisades, let's start building a whole bunch of low-income housing. I'm all for low-income housing. I'm building workforce housing for our employees that are low-income because I want to make sure they have a home. So I'm all into that. But now is not the time to do it in a neighborhood that's been devastated. 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, they can't move back. Don't do that. That's not fair. If you want to do that, what I've told the elected officials is provide an incentive, not a requirement. If you build some low-income units in an apartment building you're replacing... Let me back up. We have this crazy law in the city of Los Angeles.

Crazy law in the city of Los Angeles is something of this effect. I may not get it exactly right. If you tear down an existing apartment building that's market rate, you have to replace it with low-income housing. Okay. All of it? Maybe it's not all of it. I think it's the majority of it. But whatever the number is. My point is, when you do that, you provide a disincentive to reinvest in the city. Yeah. So let's turn it around and provide an incentive. Say if you close It's 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. It just seems to be more fair. Everybody gets to be- How would you do that?

How does that work?

Well, let's say you have a 12-unit apartment building that burnt down in the Palisades. 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. Out of the 20 units, give us six units that are low income housing, whatever the numbers are. But let's have governments start thinking about an incentive-based system. I mean, you look at your life or my life or the people that work here, the harder you work, the more that you do, you're more rewarded. You're not required to work harder. You're incentivized to work harder or work smarter. And I think if we build that 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. What I would even say is, why don't we give an incentive to build workforce housing in the Palisades and Altadina, where the workforce housing goes to the first responders, firefighters, police, Police and teachers. So now you can have firefighters, police, and teachers living in the neighborhoods they're serving. As you know, LA is so expensive.

Most of the cops drive two hours to get home and two hours to get to work. Same with the firefighters. You want them to be in the neighborhood they serve. That's a great public policy. Do it around an incentive.

Especially in a place like the Pacific Palestates, I think people deeply resent the idea of being forced to have any low-income It's really interesting. The idea is that it's hard to live in the Palestates. It's expensive, it's beautiful. It's an incredible piece of land, or it was before the fires devastated it. It was a glorious place to live. It was very difficult to afford to live there. The people that made the most money were the ones who could buy the homes there. They don't want someone to open up low income housing in the same neighborhood that's very difficult to live in. The whole idea is that you make enough money where you could live in a place that's very difficult to live in, but it's beautiful and it's really safe, and that's what the Palestates was. They don't want this to be replaced with low-income housing. They don't want incentives for it to be replaced with low income housing.

Yeah, I don't know, Joe. 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. I think there's people that would allow- That's different, though.

It is. That's different than apartment buildings, the low-income apartment buildings.

But even in an apartment setting, I think it can work. Listen, I think there's people in the Palestine that would very much welcome affordable housing, low-income housing. I certainly would, and I'm a big landowner in the Palestine. But what I don't like about it is the requirement off the backs of people who have lost everything. That's just not right. That's not the time to do it. 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. It's a timing on it, in my opinion. But listen, there's a lot of issues the city's got to tackle to get these places rebuilt. It's immensely complicated. And again, I'll be very honest, the government just cannot do it alone. There's just no way. There's just no way.

One of the things that people complain a lot about California is regulations. Yeah. And how regulated it is and how difficult it is to start businesses and to maintain businesses.

Hugely overregulated.

What could be done How about that?

Cut through the red tape. We have more regulations. It's insane to run a business. I run a business, obviously, in LA and in California. It's to the point that I would never restart the business in LA and in California. It's too expensive. The tax rates are too high for everybody, not just people that are making money. I'm talking about people who are moderate, hardworking people. The tax rate is too high. But the regulation on small businesses in Los Angeles, you have businesses now closing because of it's overregulated. 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. Just having outdoor dining. Why would you do that? Why would you make it more difficult for a small business owner to operate a restaurant? So that gets back to the business approach to running government Let people prosper. Have a system. There's certain laws you need, obviously, to operate safely and smartly, but have a system that people can earn money, become successful.

What's the cause of more regulation? How does it start?

Joe, that's a good question. 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 running around the streets. It's just not the way it works. Capitalism is a really good system. We've proven that. Overregulation starts squeezing capitalism to the point that it pushes out people from investing and creating jobs and creating opportunity. And LA has gotten to the point it's certainly over the bridge and needs to get pulled back. I can't even tell you how overregulated it is. And then on top of it, in LA now, we have too few cops. And so the obligation to protect your property is getting pushed to private landowners. So like on our shopping centers, we have a very safe environment, friendly environment, family environment, all those things we're very protective of. Lapd wants to do the right thing. They don't have the resources. So we've had to supplement it. Millions of millions of dollars of private security. That's a whole other problem, because what about the individual landowner in a neighborhood that doesn't have the protection they need?

And they don't have the police force to protect them, and running a business becomes impossible. Again, those things are just fixable. They really are fixable.

Regulations, water, law and order, what other things are giant issues about LA that you think need to be addressed?

Well, I think we have to on the positive side, I want to be more business friendly. I want to invite businesses back to California. I want to invite businesses back to LA That's a tough sell. I know. I want to get Elon back to LA. I don't want him to leave LA. I've told him that. He would come back. I think all these businesses would come back.

Sure.

If it was reasonable.

If it was reasonable. They didn't leave because it was awesome. That's what people have done. I didn't leave because it was awesome. I left because I just didn't want this group of people that I thought were inept telling me what to do.

Of course. In a weird way, they gave you the incentive to leave and not the incentive to stay. I want to give people the incentive to stay. Start your business, grow your business, raise your family. Let's protect you. Clean the streets. All of those basic things are really important. Again, Joe, maybe I'm overly optimistic in it, but it can come back. I think California, if unleashed, is just a mighty powerhouse. It could really change the direction of this whole country. 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, and you got to let that flourish. Set the platform that's encouraging these youngest, brightest this minds to come here and start your business and do the right thing. You made the point. You're absolutely right. I've talked to a lot of the tech people. They want a different leadership that is supporting the growth of technology that's going to change the world. It's going to happen somewhere. We saw it happen in China with their new AI company, and we better be prepared to be the best at it.

And we have to provide the platform to do that.

So in order to incentivize people, if they wanted to come back to California, you've got these enormous taxes. So something has to be done on a state level, not just on a city level. That's right. To address that. So how do you address that?

You should have competitive tax rates. I don't know why California needs to tax people much higher than any other state. Why would you? The cost of operating a state, you've got very sophisticated states, very dense states. It's a matter of setting priorities, and we've got to look at the tax code and make it fair. We've got the highest gas cost in the country. Why does a gallon of gas in California cost more than a gallon of gas in the world?

Isn't that because in California, you're required to sell gas that's refined in California?

I don't know if that's the case. See if that's the case, Jamie. But I know- I believe- But I know. I believe. But I think the gas in California is also highly taxed.

Of course. Why wouldn't it be?

It's taxed This is the question, though, Rick.

It's like, where's all this money going? I don't know. It's an insanely high tax rate, but yet you don't have any money to fix the power lines. You 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.

Where's that Where are you going? I don't know. It's not going to the school system.

They need to get these super nerds that are on top of this Department of Government efficiency and set them loose. Set them loose on California.

We've got a lot of smart people in California, along with them, that I really want to help the system. And I think the minute you bring some really smart people... This is what I did with this foundation. You look at the list of people that are donating their time and talent. They're just brilliant people. I made one phone call to each of them. Would you give me your time and talent? I don't want a dollar from you. Yes, I'm in. Whatever it is, I'm in. And that's what we need to do more of, is have the elected officials have the courage 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. That's the greatest form of government. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't really matter if you got great ideas. And if you're a big thinker, that's what I would do. That's what I am doing.

But on a state level, the taxes for the state, that would have to be addressed by the governor, right?

The governor and the legislature, Yeah.

What could be done about that?

I think you've got to rebuild it, Joe. 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. And by the way, the best way, and we learned this from Reagan, to raise revenue for the government is to allow businesses and families to grow and create jobs and industries. Not to suppress them. So the many you keep overtaxing people, all you're doing is giving people the incentive to leave, which we've seen, the exodus. 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. It's not rocket science. It's a simple logic. It's not rocket science.

The economy grows. People have more money. It's better for everybody.

And you get some jobs. You get people off the streets. This whole thing starts changing How great would that be?

It would be pretty incredible. I just don't want to get my hopes up.

Let's do it. No, no, come on. Don't leave me.

I think it's possible. It's just a daunting task.

It is a daunting task. But okay, I'm not throwing flowers at you. Look at what you've accomplished in your career. That was a daunting task.

Yeah, but I didn't think about it. It just lucked out.

It wasn't luck. It was a little bit of luck. Everybody's got a little bit of luck. For sure. 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. So it can be done. I couldn't do what you did. Yeah, you could. No, I couldn't. I can't. It could be done. I just want to go on a tangent for a second.

Sure. Okay, I get the benefits at 50. Okay. What I get at 30 is much more suck, and getting through the suck is part of it.

How long is the suck part?

Sucks for about a minute.

Yeah, the first minute.

The first minute really sucks.

Yeah, that's with me addicted to taking an ice bath. You're insane. What's the temperature of yours? Thirty-four. Oh, my God. Okay. I saw a picture of you removing a sheet of ice. Yeah. I took- He took heavy breathing.

I got some stem cells shot into my shoulder recently. When I do that, you have to take 72 hours because the inflammation is actually good from the initial injection to heal the area. And so I took three days off. And it's funny. Just taking three days off when you get back in, the suck is worse.

Yeah, but it doesn't... For me, it doesn't get any easier, though.

It doesn't? After the first minute?

No, no, no, no, no, It gets a little...

It's easier now. Now, I'm four or five days in. When I pop the lid off of it, I don't even think about it. I just go, get in there. Just shut up, put the Timer on, get in there. Just sit. Just sit there. I do love it. But the thing about it is the way you feel when you get out is so amazing. You feel alive, you feel energized, you feel like your brain is firing. It kicks up your dopamine levels by 200 %. It lasts for hours and hours. You feel wonderful. And that's the thing. It's like we need to delay gratitude. You need to delay this... People like to feel comfortable now. You need to delay that. Put that on the side. I like that. Just suck it up for a while. Yeah, I like that. Doing that, forcing yourself to have voluntary adversity, just have three minutes a day that's horrible, is going to make the whole rest of your day better. It's only three minutes. How much time you spend on Instagram, just flipper through nonsense. Just looking at bullshit, getting upset at Twitter, going on to, What are these people talking about?

Three minutes instead of that.

No, it's addicting to me. I never thought I would be addicted to it. I love it. I love it. The other thing I love, which I heard you do, is the infrared.

Yeah, I do that, too. I do that today.

I do it every day.

I love it. You're talking infrared sauna. I do a red light bed every day. I do a regular sauna, dry sauna, because I think there's more research research that's been done, particularly out of Finland. 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. Really? Yeah.

More than an infrared? Just an old-fashioned dry sauna.

It's just not more than an infrared. I think, look, infrared is definitely beneficial. I think the whole idea is heat shock proteins. The whole idea is raising your body temperature to the point where your body develops these heat shock proteins in order to mitigate the effects of the extreme heat. Because you can really only tolerate that extreme heat for a certain amount of time. A regular dry sauna gets way hotter. So my sauna, I like to keep it at 196. So I get in there at 196 for 25 minutes, and it's not fun. It's not fun. It sucks. But that stress of doing that is what makes your body stronger. It's the response, your body's response to that extreme stress that makes it stronger. And this is what develops the heat shock proteins, and this is what is responsible for this. There's an EPO-like effect on your blood where you have more red blood cells. It raises your endurance. It's almost like static cardio. Even though you're sitting there, 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. I mean, it's pretty high at the end.

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.

Is your recovery quick once you get out, your heart rates down?

I'm so used to it. But another benefit is living in Texas. When I go out in the heat and the sun, it doesn't bother me at all. My body is fully adapted to being hot. It's hot every day. Again, it's just voluntary adversity. It's forcing yourself to do something physically, and it makes the rest of your day way easier.

Okay. You should get into politics. Voluntary adversity. No, no, no.

Voluntary adversity. I would way rather have people like you on and try to help you out than get involved myself. Okay.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm grateful for that.

I have zero interest in getting involved myself. Is this where your interest end, though? Is it just mayor stuff, or do you ever look bigger than that?

I don't know. Right now, honestly, I was looking at a couple of different options. Then when January seventh hit with the fire, the world stopped. I want to spend a lot of time right now trying to get it rebuilt. There's going to be time for politics for me, for It's probably not right now.

Do you think one day, like governor, one day, like president?

Well, I don't. Come on.

Come on, Rick.

You know what I want to do? I look at it, and I don't mean this in a morbid way. I mean it in a positive way. I'm at the back nine of my life, right? And I've had an incredible life. And so what can I do that's really meaningful at this point? And I I enjoy public service a lot. I enjoyed when I worked for three different mayors. And so I do want to do something at some point. But the question for me is, where is the place that I can do the most good and have a good time doing I get, by the way, because I like having fun. Where does that intersect? As time goes on, I'll figure that out. Whether it's the governor or whether it's the mayor, I'm not quite sure. But I want to do something at some point. But now I really want to get the place rebuilt. Let's get moving.

What does that involve? You wanted to get the place rebuilt? How long is this woman still going to be the mayor for?

Well, she's there for, I think, about 18 months or so, and she already announced before the fire she's going to run for re-election. But we'll see how that plays out. As a private citizen, it's this group that I put together that's going to work really closely, pushing the city, finding solutions, calling out when they're not doing what they need to be doing. I'm hopeful that that's going to be really effective. Like I said, bending the curve, shortening the timeline to get people in. That's going to take most of my time and most of my day. I got a small, mighty staff that I hired for it. I'm going to fund it 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. We got guys like Joe Lonsdale is a part of that group, one of the biggest thinkers around. I got the head of Parsons, one of the great Gensler architectural firms. Everybody's donating time and talent. And so we want to push the needle on this thing. And And politics will come down the road. We'll figure that out.

Well, that sounds wonderful. But it seems to me that unless you're at the cockpit, unless you're controlling the direction of the city, it's going to be very hard to really change things in a meaningful way.

It's a good challenge for sure. But I can't change the leadership that's there now. And the problem is now. Right. Right. So I got to figure out how I help the leadership be successful.

Has the leadership adjusted their perspective based on this enormous failure of the fire? Because it seems like politically, that's a giant handicap for them, right? Obviously, it was a huge disaster. So in order to get reelected, you have to give Please give these people some faith that you've recognized that you've made some errors and you're going to do things different in the future. I haven't heard that.

I haven't heard that.

That sounds crazy.

Yeah. But I'll be really honest with you. I'm always honest with you, with everybody. When you're a leader and you weren't around to help prevent the problem, probably highly unlikely you're going to be able to fix the problem if that was your judgment.

Yeah.

Right?

Right.

So if your judgment My 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. I hope I'm wrong. 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. The people that are suffering shouldn't be suffering because of her or anything that she did or who appointed that failed in their job. We've got to do a workaround. It's the only option I've got right now, and that's what we're going to do, and that's what I'm going to do.

That's very practical. Is there anything else that you would think of that needs to be discussed about LA and that you think could be fixed? We cover the regulations. What about desalination?

Absolutely should be done. Great idea. I tried it when I was head of Department of Water and Power.

Yeah?

Got fought by every environmental group there is.

Why? Do they think we're going to empty the entire ocean?

It's crazy.

There's so much water right there.

It's crazy. First of all, we're dumping sewage. There's tertiary treatment where water is potable. We dump sewage, secondary treatment. It doesn't hurt the ocean, but we're dumping it. Take it to tertiary treatment. Put it back in the natural underground aquifers and save it. Yeah. Right? That could be done. The abundance of water that goes into the ocean is what you start out with. De-cell? Brilliant. Absolutely. We should be doing it. We should have De-cell plants supporting Los Angeles and big parts of Southern California.

Also, it creates jobs.

It creates jobs. You can do it where it's environmentally safe. Absolutely. It has a redundancy of power that comes off of it also that's helpful because we've got power shortage in California. Absolutely. We got more and more demand on our grid than we know how to supply right now.

Again, back in the day- How does it work as a redundancy of power?

Well, because you've got to generate a lot of power for the desale. When the desale is not operating, you still got an operating power plant there. So you can skew up the operation in order to have additional energy coming off your desale plant.

Okay.

You got to build a power plant to desale because of the amount of power it consumes to clean the water.

And how much water could be desalinated? How much of an impact can that actually have? Does it depend upon the size of the plant and how many of them there are? It depends on the size of the plant.

Yeah, it depends on the size of the plant.

Ideally, they should be set up, though, at various intervals on the Coast, and you'd probably fix the entire... I mean, California could be completely green.

Well, listen, it could be, but it's also you mix sources of water. Like right now in LA, I'll just take LA, you've got the aqueduct that's bringing water down that William Mulhollen built at the turn of the century. He was brilliant on how he did it. There isn't one pump. It's all gravity flow that comes down from Inyo County, Owens Valley comes down. There was a whole bunch of controversy and everything, but all of that has been fixed. That water comes down. There's some water that comes down from the state. There's water that Los Angeles has natural aquifers, we pump. Again, and then you add desal to it, then you have one more supply that's backing up supply. And then, of course, you want to capture rainwater, which we do a terrible job of. We let it go in the ocean. We don't capture as much rainwater in Los Angeles as we should, probably not much at all. 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. It's just a constant supply. All we're doing now is we're dumping it in the ocean.

Yeah, it's very stupid. And again, it's doing the same thing you've always done and hoping for a different result. What was the pushback from the idea of desalination plants?

Because there's a long line of thinkers that there should be no power plants along the Coast of California because of the emissions. So years ago, when I was present at DWP, The WPA, under Tom Bradley's leadership at the time, converted all the old oil plants on the Coast to gas to be clean. There's better technology now. You can convert those, they're testing out hydrogen and convert them to hydrogen plants. There's a big plant that DWP built in Utah when I was present called Intermatter Power Project. It was the cleanest coal burning plant in the country at the time. This is probably 25 years ago now, 30 years ago. They're now testing and converting it to hydrogen, which will be absolutely clean. That's smart, right?

So we need- It makes oxygen. Right.

We need more... The question is, how do you boil water? Pick your source. That's what a plant does. A plant boils water, creates steam, spins a turbine, you got electricity. So whatever fuel you want, we built... We were partners in Palo Verdi, which is the nuclear plant in Arizona. We need more nuclear plants in this country. 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.

Nuclear has a negative stereotype in the public eye, unfortunately, because of turnover, Three Mile Island, because of Fukushima. People think nuclear, they think disaster. They think terrible waste. You can't get away from it. It pollutes the ground forever.

But it can be made very safe.

But it can be made much safer and much cleaner. It's not being done because we're... 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. You got a brand new car. The emissions are far less, or you get a Tesla, you have none. Why would we look at the same old architecture The Fukushima one is a prime example. They only had one backup generator. The backup generator went out, they were done. They have them now where they can actually shut them down. There's new designs.

Oh, yeah. Listen, Palo Verdi, again, is probably 20 or 30 years old. It's been an incredibly performing plant. Never has had a problem. So again, this is where you get into what your point is. Get somebody from the outside who's thinking big, who's thinking outside box, who wants to change the landscape for the better way of having a quality of life and is willing to think big. 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, right? 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 will make some small moves that turns into big changes. So we'll see. Again, I'm optimistic about it.

Well, I'm optimistic, too. I am.

We're going to get you back there. Good luck.

I'm never leaving Texas. I'll never live in a big city again. I think you get too big. It's just people become a burden. I think there's a psychic aspect to it. Just the mindset of living in a smaller place is more relaxed. It It just feels better.

I get it. I get that, especially raising a family. Yes.

But I did love living in LA. I lived there for 25 years. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. Had a great time there. I still miss parts of it. I still miss the comedy and I still miss... There's amazing aspects to LA still, and there's an amazing group of human beings that live in LA still.

It's an incredible city.

But the problem is everyone knew that it was amazing, and everyone knew that everybody wanted to go there. And so they just took everybody for granted. And they said, look, we'll just text the shit out of these people. They're staying. They're not going anywhere. It's California. Where are you going to go?

That's right. There's still that attitude, by the way. Yes. Still that attitude.

Yeah, that's what I felt.

It doesn't work.

That's what I felt. And that's what you hear from the governor, and you hear from people when they brag about California. Instead of addressing why are people leaving, they talk about how great California is. I work, I can ask. Yeah, I am still, but not as much as before. And there's a reason you're on a downward trend. It's the government.

And not as much as we could.

Yeah, not as much as we could. Well, listen, Rick, whatever you do, I wish you the best. Thank you, sir. I do hope you run for mayor again. I hope you win this time, and I hope you can enact some of these ideas that you have because I think they're very, very promising. And I think government needs people like you, people from the outside. I really do. So thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

This is really an honor. My pleasure. My honor. Thank you.

Bye, everybody.