Pod Insights The Joe Rogan Experience #2268 - Rick Caruso About this episode Rick Caruso is a businessman, civic leader, and philanthropist. He is the owner and executive chairman of Caruso, one of the largest privately held real estate companies in the world, and founder of Steadfast LA: a nonprofit focused on private-sector involvement in rebuilding wildfire-affected communities.
www.steadfastla.com
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Transcript 20,635 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 The Joe Rogan Experience. Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
0:11 Joe Rogan? Good to see you, sir.
0:13 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
0:15 Joe Rogan? 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.
0:24 Speaker 02 Thank you.
0:25 Joe Rogan? I was rooting for you.
0:26 Speaker 02 Thank you.
0:27 Joe Rogan? It's just, the politics in LA are, it's almost like watching people who are in a cult, who are being confronted by the cult experts who are telling them, "Hey, this is all crazy and fake, and you're ruining your life." And they're like, "No, no, no, I think it's gonna work out."
0:44 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that aren't working out.
0:47 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
0:48 Speaker 02 There's a lot of things that are. I mean, listen, I know like you, being, spending time and living in LA, it's an amazing city.
0:54 Joe Rogan? It's amazing.
0:55 Speaker 02 And when I ran for office, as much as I loved LA, I actually fell in love with it more, because I got to see places that I wouldn't normally see. And so, it was really amazing, and people, and the diversity, and the dearness 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.
1:22 Joe Rogan? So, if you get to the heart of it, like, if you did, 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.
1:35 Speaker 02 It's a big battleship, and people argue that the mayor of LA doesn't have a lot of authority, like other mayors. You know, 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 Riordan, he brought me back in to head up DWP during the energy crisis. The department was under a lot of financial strain. And then I worked for Jim Hahn, who brought me in to turn around LAPD, and I was the police commissioner, the head of the police commission. So, I've seen really good leadership. And honestly, what we've had in the last two mayors is not good leadership. And we're paying a price for it. So you may not have a lot of power.
2:20 Speaker 02 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. And I believe that 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. You know, they go from the city council to the state assembly to the state senate.
2:59 Speaker 02 And we end up with the same sort of look and feel of leadership, which is pretty weak. I think Dick Rudin was a good example of a guy who came in and did a lot of great stuff. I actually think Jimmy Hine did a lot of great stuff as mayor. So 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, you know, I believe that you either lead, follow, or get out of the way. And I really admire people who lead.
3:39 Speaker 02 And 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.
3:46 Joe Rogan? 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 you realized that this was not being run like a successful business. You knew how to run a successful business. You knew the difference. And LA is just constantly plagued by this crony political movement. This, these, the same people, same type of people shuffling in and out. And it just, nothing ever changes.
4:19 Speaker 02 Yeah. And again, to give you a little bit of background. I am so indebted to LA. It sounds a little bit corny, but you know, 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.
4:51 Joe Rogan? Oh, boy.
4:52 Speaker 02 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
5:35 Speaker 02 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 can fix everything. And to your point, what happened when I was tied at the end of the race and actually a little bit ahead? You know, 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 loop,
6:16 Speaker 02 right? And the idea that somebody was going to come in the tent that's an outsider was horrifying to him. And, you know, we would laugh about it as a family. It's like, you might as well just load up Air Force One all at one time and bring everybody out.
6:32 Joe Rogan? Right.
6:33 Speaker 02 But I loved every minute of it. And you know, I hope at some point that system's changing and I think people are getting more frustrated lately and they're looking for people who are competent rather than just people who may share ideology.
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7:31 Joe Rogan? sweeteners ever. AG1 is a great way to invest in your health now and in the long run, which is why I've partnered with them for so long. Try AG1 and get a free bottle of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription at drinkag1.com/joerogan. That's a $76 value gift for free when you go to drinkag1.com/joerogan. Check it out. Well, you saw the difference in the California electoral map, right?
8:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:01 Joe Rogan? 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 like the primary issues of LA right now?
8:18 Speaker 02 Well, you know, you got a homeless problem that continues to grow.
8:23 Joe Rogan? So let's talk about that.
8:25 Speaker 02 Okay, 70,000 people in LA County.
8:27 Joe Rogan? One of the things we've covered on that, it's at least 70,000. I mean, 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 that there's people that are bureaucrats that work for this
8:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:46 Joe Rogan? Department of homelessness and they're making quarter million dollars a year.
8:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:50 Joe Rogan? 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.
8:57 Speaker 02 That's right.
8:57 Joe Rogan? They're just paid.
8:58 Speaker 02 That's right.
8:58 Joe Rogan? So the longer the homeless issue goes on, the more they keep their job. And it's a profitable job.
9:04 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:04 Joe Rogan? And they just rant on and on about, "We need housing." Like, that's not the problem.
9:10 Speaker 02 But you know, I had a plan and I, I'm confident my plan would have worked. Let's, let's talk about housing for a minute. LA and LA County, they put in a tax called HHH, um, to build 10,000 units. At least about a year ago, I think they had maybe short of a thousand units built.
9:32 Joe Rogan? That's amazing.
9:33 Speaker 02 Over 10 years. Over 10 years.
9:35 Joe Rogan? I'm amazed they built one.
9:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I know. But you know what they built them for? Eight hundred thousand a unit. That was the cost of it. If you go to the, if you go to the, 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.
10:20 Speaker 02 There's, there is a solution to the homeless. So let's give, I'll just give you an example. There's a company called Boxable outside of Vegas and they're building units that are 500, 600 square feet.
10:34 Speaker 02 On average, they're about sixty, seventy thousand 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 gonna give you a contract for thirty thousand units." And there's so much open space, Joe, in and around Los Angeles that's controlled by the city. And we're gonna 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's, who basically said, "After seventy years, I gotta close my restaurant." It's terrible.
11:18 Joe Rogan? Terrible. Amazing old place.
11:20 Speaker 02 And then, you know, Mayor Bass promised, "I'm gonna be down there, I'm gonna clean it up, we're gonna fix it." Hasn't changed in six months since she said that. It can be cleaned up. It can be fixed. You gotta have some backbone.
11:31 Joe Rogan? It's, uh, a lot of it is a mental health issue, correct?
11:34 Speaker 02 Very much so. Probably half. And drug addiction.
11:37 Joe Rogan? Drug addiction, a lot of that comes from mental health issues as well, right?
11:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
11:42 Joe Rogan? So what could be done, I mean, you're dealing with an enormous population of people that have this issue. It's probably closer to a hundred thousand in LA County.
11:49 Speaker 02 Maybe.
11:50 Joe Rogan? Could, I mean, that's the high estimates, right? So let's say seventy thousand to a hundred thousand people. You have a lot of people. What could be done to, um, have some sort of a, a, 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?
12:09 Speaker 02 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.
12:16 Joe Rogan? Not just the sale, but the open use. I mean, meth, cookin' meth right out in front of everybody.
12:21 Speaker 02 You're right. All the above. I mean, literally, in, in downtown, there's tents that are run by the drug dealers where everybody knows to go to get their drugs. So you gotta start there. But I'm a big believer that government alone can't solve major problems, right?
12:38 Joe Rogan? Right.
12:39 Speaker 02 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.
12:57 Speaker 02 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.
13:20 Joe Rogan? And what are they doing?
13:21 Speaker 02 And you do it at a fraction of the cost. I already interrupted you. Do it at a fraction of the cost.
13:24 Joe Rogan? Well, these people that are being successful, what, how are they doing it? What are they, what's their method?
13:28 Speaker 02 You know, it's, like, I'm not the expert in it, but when I went down there and spent time during the campaign and since then, because we've been supportive of their efforts as a family, they actually welcome people as they are. 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, right? It's terrible that we allow this. It's a crime we allow this. But an example of Downtown Women's Center, they, they accept them the way they are. Mental health condition, drug addiction condition, they have embedded services downtown in their
14:12 Speaker 02 facility, they have housing there for them, and they give them the treatment. And it's happening in real time. And they're very effective doing it. Like I said, they've got about a 90% success rate. So 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 be, 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.
14:52 Joe Rogan? That's crazy.
14:53 Speaker 02 It's crazy, and it's in Skid Row. It's not like you're building in a sensitive environmental area.
14:59 Joe Rogan? Right.
15:00 Speaker 02 Right?
15:00 Joe Rogan? Right.
15:01 Speaker 02 Give the damn permits and say, "Go."
15:03 Joe Rogan? I first encountered Skid Row when we used to film Fear Factor downtown.
15:07 Speaker 02 Oh.
15:07 Joe Rogan? And I, you know, I'd heard of it. I had no idea. And we were driving, we were, we, we had done a bunch of the Fear Factor stunts in abandoned buildings. It makes a good backdrop.
15:17 Speaker 02 Sure.
15:18 Joe Rogan? Creepy. And when I went there, one time I took a wrong turn, and I went like right into the meat of everything. And I was like, "This is insanity." And this was 2004, 2003? So this is 20 years ago, 22 years ago? And even back then, it was bananas.
15:38 Speaker 02 Come to see it now.
15:39 Joe Rogan? Oh, I've heard. Well, we watched that documentary, is it the Carlisle Hotel, Jamie? One of the documentaries on the, one of the old downtown hotels, and it went into the history of Skid Row. And that what Skid Row was, they would take people, they would arrest them for being vagrants somewhere else, and they'd bring them to Skid Row and just leave them there and basically box them in and leave them in this area. And they had, you know, soup kitchens and places where they could get food and they were allowed to just sleep on the street, and so they just stayed there. 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 they said, "Let's just, you know, we got a spot, we could just stick them. Let's take it here."
16:20 Speaker 02 We could turn our back on it.
16:21 Joe Rogan? And then, of course, every business in that area got devastated.
16:24 Speaker 02 Yep.
16:24 Joe Rogan? All those hotels is glorious old, classic hotels. I mean, in fact, the Morrison Hotel just caught fire because vagrants were living in it, and it's gone now.
16:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:34 Joe Rogan? So, these methods that these people are using that are successful, what are they? What are they doing?
16:42 Speaker 02 Well, what they're doing is they're giving them the treatment they need. Now, Union Rescue Mission is, has a different approach. Union Rescue Mission, you know, that's a faith-based organization.
16:50 Joe Rogan? Okay.
16:51 Speaker 02 Hugely successful, it's overflowing, they can't accommodate everybody, that 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.
17:24 Joe Rogan? They give them structure.
17:25 Speaker 02 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?
17:47 Joe Rogan? Yeah, it'd be nice.
17:49 Speaker 02 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 sort of work through the system, but we're not even doing that. Right? And so, 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?
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20:43 Joe Rogan? Visit lifelock.com and save up to 30% your first year with the promo code JRE. That's promo code JRE. Or go to lifelock.com/JRE for 30% off. Terms apply. 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 have had some money. You know, who knows what's gonna happen with insurance, right? Right, but see, that's the problem. Unfortunately, the fire insurance issue in Los Angeles is kind of insane. It's terrible. Where, you know, we were talking in the lobby before I was evacuated three times when I lived in LA.
21:26 Joe Rogan? Two of my neighbors lost their homes, you know, and watching those folks cry in front of the rubble.
21:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:33 Joe Rogan? Where they lived, it's just, it's just horrible, you know, um, but they kept their lives and, you know, they, and this was 2018 and, you know, they rebuilt some of them. Two, two of the houses are still gone in my old neighborhood.
21:48 Speaker 02 Hmm.
21:49 Joe Rogan? They never rebuilt.
21:50 Speaker 02 Sorry to hear about that.
21:51 Joe Rogan? They just, they just pulled out. It's like, what am I gonna do? They lose everything. I mean, Mel Gibson lost books from the 1600s.
21:57 Speaker 02 Hmm.
21:58 Joe Rogan? You know, Mel is a very religious man and he collects like these ancient irreplaceable books.
22:04 Speaker 02 Wow.
22:05 Joe Rogan? And, and then, you know, of course, the loss of lives is horrifying. Um, that issue is an issue that has plagued LA and California forever. Uh, so 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 apparently, you could tell me more, you probably know more than I do, what has been done about that water? Cause it seems like Trump has changed that.
22:35 Speaker 02 Well, I think what Trump did a good job of, first of all, I'm grateful for the, for the fact that he flew out, had a meeting and I'm grateful and, you know, I have my differences at time to time on some issues with him, but he sat down and he was forceful in a very strong way of holding the elected officials accountable, like get the people back in their homes now. So the fact that in this tragedy, we've got a president who's also a builder, who understands what needs to be done, I think is great. And I, 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,
23:20 Speaker 02 like I said, for 10 years. I have a pretty good understanding of the water issues. What's happening in the north? Really has not as much of an impact as happening down in Southern California in terms of how the water gets transferred around. 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 evacuated our home and we're in Brentwood, so you know the area.
24:05 Speaker 02 We're 15 minutes in the Palisades where the fire started. And it was my birthday. We were having family dinner. From the second floor, we saw the flames. We said, we're gonna 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. And I get a call from one of my senior executives who's sort of embedded in with the fire command post. And my heart dropped. He said, we just lost your daughter's home. And I said, oh, my God, Bannon, how the hell did that happen? You know? He said, you can't believe it.
24:46 Speaker 02 The hoses ran dry and the whole neighborhood went up. And I was so angry that I Fox 11, 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. And I said, you need to report this. He said, do you want to come on live? I said, yeah, hook me up. And I went on. He couldn't believe it. And some of the media was trying to spin it.
25:22 Joe Rogan? I saw that.
25:23 Speaker 02 Like it's not true.
25:24 Joe Rogan? Yeah. And then they went right to the firemen.
25:27 Speaker 02 Went right to the firemen, right? The firemen 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 the fire, you knew this was coming, right? They gave warnings of catastrophic winds.
25:47 Speaker 02 The reservoir is empty over, I think it was 1.7 million gallons.
25:53 Joe Rogan? I think it's 11 million.
25:54 Speaker 02 Maybe 11 million.
25:55 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
25:55 Speaker 02 Probably right. It's empty during fire season?
25:59 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
26:00 Speaker 02 You've got brush that hasn't been cleared for 40 years. There was a whole bunch of us um raising hell about that after the fire in Brentwood six years ago.
26:10 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
26:10 Speaker 02 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.
26:24 Joe Rogan? And then the mayor flies to Ghana.
26:26 Speaker 02 And the mayor's out of town.
26:27 Joe Rogan? So what, what should have been done and who's responsible?
26:32 Speaker 02 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, uh the first thing you have to do is be present. Um, 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.
26:55 Joe Rogan? Yes.
26:56 Speaker 02 Right? And if you probably couldn't have prevented the fire. Maybe you couldn't have prevented the fire. I, only God knows.
27:02 Joe Rogan? Well, we don't really know.
27:02 Speaker 02 You could have mitigated it.
27:03 Joe Rogan? We don't really know the source of the fire yet, and we do know there was quite a bit of arson.
27:08 Speaker 02 That's, that's true. That's true. And there was a fire, to your point, there was a fire on New Year's Eve uh from fireworks. And 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.
27:23 Joe Rogan? But it seemed like there were several fires that started very close to each other. It seems like highly unlikely.
27:31 Speaker 02 Could be.
27:32 Joe Rogan? That there was just three accidents that took place at the same time as these catastrophic winds.
27:37 Speaker 02 Could be.
27:38 Joe Rogan? And then the, you know, the most sinister version of it is that somebody wanted this to happen, maybe some mentally ill person. I know they did arrest.
27:43 Speaker 02 It's a sickness. Yeah.
27:44 Joe Rogan? It is a sick, arsonists are, they're really sick people.
27:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:48 Joe Rogan? And it's a known psychological illness.
27:52 Joe Rogan? There's a guy that they arrested that was a known arsonist, several times arrested, who had a fake fire truck and drove down.
28:01 Speaker 02 I saw that.
28:02 Joe Rogan? Yeah, drove down from Oregon to do who knows what.
28:04 Speaker 02 Can you imagine?
28:05 Joe Rogan? Yeah, well, there's-
28:06 Speaker 02 You gotta be really-
28:07 Joe Rogan? There's some psychos out there.
28:08 Speaker 02 Really sick.
28:09 Joe Rogan? 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.
28:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:16 Joe Rogan? 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 kinda tells people that the reason why other people are successful is because they've stolen from you.
28:31 Speaker 02 Right.
28:31 Joe Rogan? Which is just the craziest thing-
28:33 Speaker 02 Craziest thing.
28:34 Joe Rogan? -to say in America.
28:35 Speaker 02 But it gives them an excuse.
28:36 Joe Rogan? It gives them an excuse. And it also gives them a pathway to vent their anger and instead point it productively at their own lives. It's like, why am I in this position right now? What could I have done differently?
28:46 Speaker 02 That's exactly right.
28:46 Joe Rogan? What personal responsibility do I have for the way I live right now?
28:49 Speaker 02 Right.
28:50 Joe Rogan? Instead of that, it's like, no, no, no, these rich people, they fucked you over.
28:53 Speaker 02 That's right. They took advantage of us.
28:54 Joe Rogan? Yeah. Um, so, the water. Why, what is the explanation for why that enormous reservoir that provides the Palisades with water was empty?
29:05 Speaker 02 Well, the explanation that's been said is it's out of service because the cover on it needed to be repaired.
29:10 Joe Rogan? Oh, the cover?
29:11 Speaker 02 The cover. Because, you know, 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, I, I get the safety of that, but, how about this? You know that you have catastrophic winds coming. Start pumping water in it, cause nobody gives a shit about what's in the water.
29:32 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
29:33 Speaker 02 When you need it in your fire hydrant.
29:34 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
29:34 Speaker 02 Right?
29:35 Joe Rogan? That could've been done in probably a couple of weeks.
29:38 Speaker 02 Whatever it took.
29:39 Joe Rogan? Yeah. And it's not like we don't know. Uh, LA has fire season. I remember every year because, uh, when I, where I used to live in Bell Canyon is, you know, it's about 35 minutes from LA.
29:49 Speaker 02 Right.
29:50 Joe Rogan? And it, it gets rough out there. It's like a lot of like big rolling hills and it gets all filled with grass and if it catches and the winds start whipping through those canyons, the winds in California, for people that don't know, every year we get this Anna Anna winds.
30:04 Speaker 02 That's right.
30:05 Joe Rogan? And they're crazy.
30:06 Speaker 02 They are crazy.
30:07 Joe Rogan? Some of them were 100 miles an hour this year. That is just, if you've ever been out there for that, that's nuts. And if there's fires blowing- Boy.
30:15 Speaker 02 It's no, it's it's it's a terrible combination. I mean, the early settlers called them the devil winds.
30:20 Joe Rogan? Mm hmm.
30:21 Speaker 02 They've been there forever.
30:22 Joe Rogan? Forever.
30:22 Speaker 02 To your point, they've been there forever. So just think about, you know, had the brush been cleared, had the reservoirs been full, had the fire trucks been stationed, had there been a whole series of protocols in place, again.
30:37 Joe Rogan? We could have saved some houses.
30:38 Speaker 02 It could have saved a lot, a lot of lives, a lot of houses, a lot of jobs, a lot of pain.
30:44 Joe Rogan? Lot of pain.
30:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:45 Joe Rogan? 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.
30:56 Speaker 02 That's right.
30:57 Joe Rogan? Everyone is saying it's a failure.
30:59 Speaker 02 It's a failure because they're not equipped to deal with the leadership they needed.
31:02 Joe Rogan? Even the spin masters, even the 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.
31:23 Speaker 02 You're right.
31:24 Joe Rogan? Not one. That's kind of crazy.
31:26 Speaker 02 It is kind of crazy.
31:27 Joe Rogan? Because they gaslight everything, no matter what it is. Everything's safe and effective. Everybody's fine. Everything's great. He's the sharpest attack. Everything, they gaslight the shit out of you with everything. But with this one, they're like, but there's not, nothing you could say.
31:42 Speaker 02 I agree with that because the facts are the facts.
31:44 Joe Rogan? The facts are the facts.
31:45 Speaker 02 You just can't argue around the facts.
31:46 Joe Rogan? And 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 the most like, like compassionate, like kind people that like view being a Democrat and being a liberal as being the the ultimate expression of being a good person. And they're getting slapped in the face by the reality.
32:13 Speaker 02 I think the politics have changed.
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33:38 Speaker 02 I think the reality has set in, honestly, and it's unfortunate it's taken this, but the reality really has set in that you've got to have competent leadership.
33:48 Joe Rogan? Yes.
33:49 Speaker 02 And what happened at DWP, because I was there for 13 years, 10 of which I was president,
33:55 Speaker 02 or close to 10, is the head of that department got politicized. Years ago, under Bradley and under Reardon, under Hahn, the general manager of Department of Water and Power was always somebody who came through the ranks, who was just this exceptional engineer. And that department was regarded as best in class in the country as a utility, bar none. The best financial rating, the best engineers wanted to work there. It built some of the most amazing projects in history, including Hoover Dam. So let's just start with that one, right? Then what happened? Politics creeped into who was the general manager.
34:39 Speaker 02 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 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 kind of 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.
35:24 Speaker 02 And so the minute you allow that, that continues, this creep of incompetence is tolerated. And it shouldn't be tolerated. Because people lost their lives, they lost their homes. Right?
35:37 Joe Rogan? Well-
35:38 Speaker 02 Am I right about that?
35:39 Joe Rogan? You're 100% right. And I think you're 100% right about politics. And 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. And this is the weird world of politics versus the world of business. And, you know, 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, and just a lot of weird shady shit with NGOs and where an
36:22 Joe Rogan? enormous amount of money is going. And you're seeing someone look at this thing that is incredibly efficient, almost by design.
36:33 Joe Rogan? And instead of saying like, well, this is just how it is. And this is how these politicians get funded. So let's just keep this thing going the same way it is and make some incremental changes to try to make people happy. So we still get elected.
36:44 Speaker 02 Right.
36:45 Joe Rogan? 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.
36:58 Speaker 02 Right.
36:58 Joe Rogan? 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.
37:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:05 Joe Rogan? The government does. They need oversight. And they haven't had that. And 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. And 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 class people, to everybody. Where they recognize like, hey, we can't just be spending all our fucking tax money on nonsense.
37:35 Speaker 02 Right.
37:35 Joe Rogan? And it all should be done with a real clear understanding of getting results.
37:41 Speaker 02 Right.
37:42 Joe Rogan? If that happens and that's that idea spreads across the country, because ideas spread.
37:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
37:48 Joe Rogan? And people change their minds.
37:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:50 Joe Rogan? And you know, and sometimes it happens. One guy in the neighborhood go, you know what? Fuck this, I'm fed up. And then everybody like, yeah, I've been kind of thinking that too. I just didn't want to say it. And then people start talking. And then it's not a scary thing to discuss anymore.
38:02 Speaker 02 That's right. It opens the door.
38:03 Joe Rogan? Right.
38:04 Speaker 02 A hundred percent. And I think 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 kind of 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? What are you, Democrat or Republican? To me, sort of doesn't matter. Are you competent? Do you have experience? Are you going to make decisions for the right reason? When? When I was the president of the police commission, it was the most amazing experience
38:45 Speaker 02 because Jim Hahn's mayor, we have a police department that was failing miserably after the Rodney King riots. The police department was under the 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.
39:06 Joe Rogan? I do not.
39:06 Speaker 02 He was probably there when you were living there. He looked, 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 Hahn calls me and says, "Hey, I want to appoint you as the president of the police commission." And I said, "Mr. Mayor, I really 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.
39:51 Joe Rogan? What was wrong? What was he doing?
39:53 Speaker 02 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 kind of promotion or transfer. So what did the cops started doing? They started saying, "I'm just not going to go to that area."
40:35 Speaker 02 And the minute they abandoned that area, the gangs controlled it and crime was going crazy.
40:40 Joe Rogan? How clever.
40:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, right?
40:42 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
40:43 Speaker 02 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, but... Yeah, and I don't mean that... It's facetious. He didn't have all the answers, obviously. But, 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 way, proactively policing it. LAPD was retreating. Cops were upset, cops were leaving, the academy is empty, all of these things were happening. Had to change leadership. I had people burning me an effigy, literally.
41:28 Speaker 02 My wife would call me and say, "Oh, my God, they're burning you outside of 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. And I remember calling Jimmy Hahn, the mayor, and I said, "I'm gonna make a recommendation, and you're probably not gonna like it, because you're gonna come under a lot of heat." And to his credit, he said, "Just do what's right. I'll take the heat." And I recommended we hire Bill Bratton. And we brought this guy in to LA, his Boston accent and all,
42:10 Speaker 02 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 reelection. Because the black community unfortunately abandoned him. Because of not keeping Bernie Parks. It's one of the reasons.
42:53 Speaker 02 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 gonna do what I think is right." It really is amazing what can happen. So 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.
43:26 Joe Rogan? It almost seems like at this point.
43:28 Speaker 02 It's pretty simple.
43:29 Joe Rogan? You need someone who's outside of politics to, to run for office.
43:33 Speaker 02 I think you do.
43:34 Joe Rogan? Because everybody.
43:35 Speaker 02 I know that sounds self-serving, but I think you do.
43:37 Joe Rogan? It, of course, it would sound self-serving coming from someone who wants, you're outside of it, wanted to run, be the mayor. But it's, I think that's the correct. Response because. The people that are in it are just too tied in, you're just, they're too tied in to.
43:52 Speaker 02 Too beholding.
43:53 Joe Rogan? They're too beholding, it's just, it's entwined, the octopus has many tentacles.
43:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:58 Joe Rogan? It's wrapped around everything and it just stalls all progress and change and no, no real radical change can ever be met. Because, no one wants to go with it because it's going to disrupt all their different ideas and businesses and, and people are gonna. 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.
44:18 Speaker 02 Right.
44:19 Joe Rogan? And then if someone does come along and changes things radically, I mean, it, it makes them all look terrible. And it's, it's dangerous.
44:25 Speaker 02 Yep.
44:25 Joe Rogan? It's dangerous for business.
44:26 Speaker 02 Yep.
44:27 Joe Rogan? They're, they're not in the business to help people, they're in the business of keeping their job.
44:31 Speaker 02 Hundred percent.
44:32 Joe Rogan? Yeah, and that's what's gross.
44:33 Speaker 02 It is really gross.
44:34 Joe Rogan? And it's gross and it seems like the only way that that ever gets. Resolved is you have to bring in someone who's a businessman. Or a businesswoman, someone who understands business, who's outside of this political system and says. I've studied this for years, there's a lot of things that could be fixed. And they're not being done and we could do it.
44:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you know, the issue with that is. It, it's such a tough system. There's so much that gets thrown at you.
45:00 Joe Rogan? Yeah, like the whole entire party of the Democrats came to go after you.
45:05 Speaker 02 I know, and I was a Democrat, I'm very moderate.
45:09 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
45:09 Speaker 02 You know, I'm fiscally very conservative, I'm socially liberal.
45:14 Speaker 02 But they were, so you know, what gives the incentive to the person on the outside to do it?
45:20 Joe Rogan? Right, nothing.
45:21 Speaker 02 And that's what we've got to figure out. Listen, I, 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.
45:33 Joe Rogan? I hope he does too. That place was amazing at one point in time. I used to love going to San Francisco. I haven't gone in years. It's just because it's too crazy.
45:39 Speaker 02 No, it's terrible. It's a dump.
45:42 Joe Rogan? It's unbelievable. That one of the greatest cities in the country.
45:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:46 Joe Rogan? Has just completely fallen. But no course correction until now. But I'm, I'm hopeful for this new mayor as well. And I'm also hopeful that a lot of the new, young tech people are fed up.
45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:58 Joe Rogan? You know, 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 is the only way to be. Like, we're, we're the kind, intelligent, well-read, progressive people on the west coast. It's our responsibility to be compassionate. You know, and to be the most charitable people possible. And they just didn't realize, like, you're, you're not doing anybody a service by letting them camp out in front of your house and smoke meth. That's not, none of that's good.
46:29 Speaker 02 That's right.
46:30 Joe Rogan? It's all real bad for them. It's all real bad for your kids.
46:32 Speaker 02 Yep, and all those businesses moved out.
46:35 Joe Rogan? Yes, all those businesses moved out. San Francisco just became insane watching all these enormous chains just pull out. And then people get angry and cry racism when they pull out, like, what are you doing? You're not, how do you know? It's just from the outside. It's like, moving to Texas was such an eye opener too.
46:54 Speaker 02 I'm jealous with every, you know, being here in Austin today, all the new buildings going up.
47:00 Joe Rogan? Yes.
47:00 Speaker 02 I said to my wife, oh my God, look at this.
47:02 Joe Rogan? It's booming.
47:03 Speaker 02 It's booming. There's.
47:05 Joe Rogan? Freedom.
47:05 Speaker 02 Go to a restaurant last night, people are happy, having a great time, and there's new buildings going up and high rises and the city's clean. Everywhere I drove around last night today, just a mess.
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49:16 Speaker 02 I kill it.
49:17 Joe Rogan? But it's also, you know, I talked to Steven Adler, who was the former mayor of Austin, great guy. And, you know, he was explaining to me the homeless situation. We had a long talk about it because it really boomed during COVID.
49:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:28 Joe Rogan? And he was saying, look, LA is too big. I think I can fix the problem in Austin. And they did an enormous.
49:34 Speaker 02 How did they do it?
49:35 Joe Rogan? 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.
49:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:45 Joe Rogan? They had like 3,000. Like, that's enough. And 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. Like, as government functions today, without the outsider coming in and making radical change, the way it functions today, he's 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. And I think he did a great job.
50:15 Speaker 02 That's good.
50:16 Joe Rogan? There's still problems. You're always gonna have problems. You have cities. You're gonna have mentally ill people. You're gonna have drug addicts.
50:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:21 Joe Rogan? You're gonna 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.
50:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's very sad.
50:30 Joe Rogan? It's very sad. You know, we clearly need better mental health institutions set up in this country to deal with a lot of these people. Because that's what a lot of it. And a lot of it happened during the Reagan administration when they changed the.
50:43 Speaker 02 They closed them down.
50:44 Joe Rogan? Yes, they closed down mental health institutes and just said, you're on your own and just let these people loose on the street. And then on top of that, you have the crack epidemic that comes around at the same time. It's like chaos, just full chaos. And you saw, like, I saw the changes in the cities. I saw the changes in the news. I saw, you know, and people were recognizing that this is like a new, a new problem. But it's never been like Los Angeles where you're driving down the street, you just see blocks and blocks of tents. Which is like, how is this not fixed? You're not even allowed to litter. So if you're not allowed to litter, how are you allowed to do that?
51:26 Speaker 02 There's definitely a couple of standards that are different. I'm not giving up that it can be fixed, though. And 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.
51:38 Joe Rogan? I think it has to be fixed by an outsider, is what Stephen Adler's point was, ultimately, really.
51:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:44 Joe Rogan? Is like, you know, being in the system.
51:46 Speaker 02 I agree with that. There's no doubt it has to. And 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. And a lot of people are there, you know, just because everything went wrong in their life.
52:07 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
52:08 Speaker 02 And God bless them. And you gotta try to fix it. And the waste of the money in doing it is 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.
52:20 Joe Rogan? Well, it's worked out well for you.
52:22 Speaker 02 Well, I've been pretty fortunate and blessed in my life, so I've got no complaints.
52:26 Joe Rogan? Working hard and being overly optimistic actually works out sometimes. A lot of times.
52:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
52:31 Joe Rogan? Okay, so, so let's talk about law and order. Um, that's a giant issue in Los Angeles.
52:38 Speaker 02 Yes, it is.
52:38 Joe Rogan? People do not feel, um, as safe as they used to feel. They feel like there's more violent crime, there's more unreported crime. And maybe more concerning is that people get arrested and then immediately get released.
52:50 Speaker 02 Right.
52:51 Joe Rogan? And there doesn't seem to be any repercussions for that.
52:54 Speaker 02 Right.
52:54 Joe Rogan? So what would you do to change that?
52:57 Speaker 02 Well, thank goodness, 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.
53:09 Joe Rogan? Insanity.
53:10 Speaker 02 Just insane. And they weren't bundled, so you could like, in a Syrianic fashion, keep stealing $900.
53:17 Joe Rogan? Right, every day.
53:18 Speaker 02 Every hour.
53:19 Joe Rogan? Right, yeah, as long as it's out of pop.
53:21 Speaker 02 It was still a misdemeanor. So that law changed. Great progress.
53:27 Speaker 02 Holding bad people accountable is really important. I'm also a big believer to give people a chance to rebuild their lives. No doubt. Goes hand in hand. But...
53:40 Speaker 02 We made a big change by getting rid of George Gascon as our district attorney, who was not prosecuting and allowing people, it was just a turnstile, you got arrested, you were let out.
53:50 Joe Rogan? What, could we get to the heart of that?
53:52 Speaker 02 Sure.
53:53 Joe Rogan? What's the motivation for that?
53:55 Speaker 02 Motivation for doing that?
53:56 Joe Rogan? Yes.
53:57 Speaker 02 That, well, I probably won't explain it right because I don't, I don't agree with it, is that from a social justice standpoint, quote unquote, um, you don't want to overpopulate the prisons, you don't want to hold people and take away their life for a minor crime.
54:16 Joe Rogan? But a lot of it wasn't minor crimes.
54:18 Speaker 02 A lot of it wasn't minor crimes.
54:19 Joe Rogan? There was one of them, that was a guy, who was this crazy homeless guy who pulled a knife on a sheriff, and then two weeks later, there, at least somewhere, a little, a short time after that, I don't know if it was two weeks, attacked a man with his family with a machete on the beach.
54:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, I know, you're right, you're right, I mean.
54:36 Joe Rogan? So that's a violent criminal.
54:38 Speaker 02 What George did, yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right. And I can't explain it because it's just, it's so messed up. I, 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.
55:04 Speaker 02 So, I, I, I can't, I can't explain it, but.
55:07 Joe Rogan? But the fear is that it's done on purpose, this is the fear.
55:10 Speaker 02 Oh, of course it is.
55:11 Joe Rogan? That's the fear, the, the, 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.
55:35 Speaker 02 And what's the end goal of that?
55:37 Joe Rogan? It has to be profit, I mean, someone has to be profiting off of it.
55:40 Speaker 02 Who profits off of that?
55:41 Joe Rogan? I don't know, ask George Soros.
55:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, right.
55:43 Joe Rogan? Ask the people that fund these, like, extremely liberal district attorneys that all seem to have the same idea.
55:50 Speaker 02 Do you think that tide is turning?
55:52 Joe Rogan? I do. I do think that tide is turning. And I know that Elon Musk wants to do sort of the exact opposite. Like, to try to find, he's been talking about that. Financing people that are much more reasonable and that believe in law and order.
56:05 Speaker 02 Well, Nathan is a good example of that.
56:07 Joe Rogan? That's great. We need fair laws. We need, we need kind justice. We need, we do need rehabilitation. But we also need to protect people that aren't criminals.
56:14 Speaker 02 Of course.
56:15 Joe Rogan? But that's the primary thing. Is protect the general public. Serve and protect, right? That's the whole idea.
56:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:20 Joe Rogan? We need to protect everybody else. And then the people that were, life did them wrong. And they've wound up, like, let's figure out a way to actually rehabilitate them instead of just putting them in cages.
56:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. And people are doing that. I mean, there's some very successful programs that are doing that. But I agree with you. I mean, we gotta 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.
56:51 Joe Rogan? It's so basic.
56:51 Speaker 02 It's gone upside down.
56:53 Joe Rogan? Yeah, it's, that's what's crazy is that law and order thrown out the window. Without law and order, no one is safe.
56:58 Speaker 02 That's right.
56:59 Joe Rogan? You need to understand that if you just don't go after bad people, then they have no fear of doing whatever they want. And then you're letting them out on jail. So, out of jail. So then you've got more of them out than ever before.
57:11 Speaker 02 Self-perpetuating.
57:11 Joe Rogan? There was a podcast that I listened to where there was a former gang member who was talking about how they're gonna let 70,000 hard criminals out of the LA jails. And he's like, "I'm getting out of town." This guy was a hardcore gang member. He's like, "LA is gonna get too crazy in the next year." It's just nuts. And, you know, there was the whole "defund the police" movement, which was just catastrophic. That, that whole, and seeing politicians, including Kamala Harris, seeing politicians openly say and post it on Twitter, "We need to defund the police," which is... Just crazy.
57:46 Speaker 02 It is.
57:47 Joe Rogan? It doesn't mean.
57:48 Speaker 02 As wrong as it can be.
57:49 Joe Rogan? Yeah, certainly hold bad cops accountable, certainly have better training.
57:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:53 Joe Rogan? Certainly have higher standards.
57:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:55 Joe Rogan? But defunding the police, like, what are you talking about? You need to do the opposite.
57:59 Speaker 02 That's right.
57:59 Joe Rogan? You need to train them better, refund them.
58:01 Speaker 02 Right.
58:02 Joe Rogan? 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.
58:12 Speaker 02 That's right.
58:13 Joe Rogan? Because all those people, when something goes down, they call 911. They're furious when cops don't show up.
58:17 Speaker 02 That's right.
58:18 Joe Rogan? All these people who talk shit about the cops that are protected, defund the police. You're protected by armed security people. And you're saying defund the police. This is fucking nonsense. It's nonsense.
58:29 Speaker 02 Couldn't agree more.
58:30 Joe Rogan? And for people that suffered because of this defund the police thing and this whole wave of crime that went through LA, you know, in, in the wake of it all, you know, those people are the people that you can get to.
58:43 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
58:44 Joe Rogan? The, 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. And I think it could be reached with a person like you that is a compassionate, kind, liberal guy when it comes to social issues, but understands business and understands like accountability and that you have to, 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, you know, like, oh, let's raise the bu- we've increased the budget to fix the problem, that's, you're not fixing it. Keeps getting bigger.
59:23 Speaker 02 That's right.
59:24 Joe Rogan? It's just nuts.
59:25 Speaker 02 You got it.
59:26 Joe Rogan? It, it needs someone outside the system and that's why I was really happy to talk to you and 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, this is, it's not gonna be, you're not gonna make money doing this. Like, this is probably gonna 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.
59:51 Speaker 02 I appreciate that. And I do. I do because what's the alternative? We stay on the same path?
59:58 Joe Rogan? It gets worse. The alternative is it gets worse.
1:00:00 Speaker 02 It's gonna get worse. And more and more people are leaving. More and more businesses close down. But here's what really hit me on the campaign, and I was telling our family, I've got four kids and they're 35 to 25 and just incredible people. And 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, right? A little bit scary, high profile, all these kind of things. It ended up being the greatest experience and 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
1:00:44 Speaker 02 on her own and not have to walk around in an encampment or for fear that there'd be somebody that would attack her on the way to school, right? The most basic things. And we'd give them a hug, you know, they would cry, we would cry, and I would tell the kids, that cry is hope. And what we're seeing there is for the first time, there's actually somebody coming into their neighborhood, a neighborhood that historically doesn't vote in large chunks. 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.
1:01:28 Speaker 02 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, and, 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.
1:02:10 Speaker 02 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 kind of things, and we give them hope and a path forward, everybody benefits from it.
1:02:30 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:02:31 Speaker 02 You start solving so many problems, Joe. There's a little school in the middle of the, the, the heart of the worst part of Los Angeles with the, with the homelessness, in Skid Row. And it's called Padre Los Niños. And my wife and I have been supporting that school for over thirty years now. You, outside the doors is the biggest sea of inhumanity of homeless people, just strewn out on the street, drugged out, all terrible mental health conditions. You open that door, and it's beautiful, and caring, and loving. And this school that we support, there's a series of schools, takes in children from
1:03:14 Speaker 02 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 Skid Row in apartments, two or three families in an apartment, working their tail off to just survive, and then to be able to get their child in this school that costs them nothing, that'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.
1:03:47 Speaker 02 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 be more supportive of that. And get more of these kind of schools and give more of these families the opportunity to do well because they want to do well. But the system is frankly against them. And that's what I wanted to change more than anything.
1:04:12 Joe Rogan? Well, let's talk about that. This, this school, there's no reason why they should have to encounter that environment outside that school.
1:04:20 Speaker 02 You're right.
1:04:21 Joe Rogan? There's no reason. That's, 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, 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, your future of the world? Like, this is what you're seeing every day? Like, you, you, you absorb that from your environment. The, 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, like that is gonna fuck your head up forever.
1:05:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's very tough.
1:05:01 Joe Rogan? And then there's the question of the sweatshops. Like, why? Why? How, how come people that work their tail off constantly have to live three, four families in, in an apartment? Like, what the hell's going on there?
1:05:15 Speaker 02 I, I agree.
1:05:16 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:05:17 Speaker 02 But that's what, that's what I'm saying. That's what I think we gotta start fixing.
1:05:21 Joe Rogan? Yes.
1:05:22 Speaker 02 Right? And if you start fixing that, now, your point is right. These kids having to see that every day, they're being yelled at, you know, 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.
1:05:36 Joe Rogan? They have nothing.
1:05:37 Speaker 02 They got nothing.
1:05:38 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:05:38 Speaker 02 They're on the street.
1:05:39 Joe Rogan? No, it's amazing. But I mean, it, the problem outside the school, that should be fixed. That should be a public health issue. I mean, if you're worried, the... The future human beings, if you want to look at this country and you want to make America a great place, what you want is less people that are going to lose at life. You want less losers. The best chance you can have less losers is start them off on a good path when they're young.
1:06:08 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:06:09 Joe Rogan? And 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, like, what would Mike do? I'll probably want to do what he does. He would get up and get this done and, you know, I admire that person. And having people around you that are examples of someone who lives a life that you admire. And when you're just seeing people peeing on themselves and throwing up and walking through the streets just covered in cardboard shelters and tents, like, that's not hope. You're not going to see, you're not seeing good examples. So what are you depending on for your examples? That, that's a travesty.
1:06:52 Joe Rogan? That should be cleaned up immediately. So let's talk about that. What could be done for Skid Row, which is probably the worst example of LA's homeless problem?
1:07:03 Speaker 02 It's the same thing with any place else that we talked about. You have to, I believe, supercharge these organizations like Aparos Ninos 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 of them.
1:07:21 Joe Rogan? Where do you put all those people? You've got all these people on the streets. You've got 100,000 people in the streets.
1:07:25 Speaker 02 There's endless land. There's endless land. 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.
1:08:08 Speaker 02 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, 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.
1:08:27 Joe Rogan? Especially LA.
1:08:28 Speaker 02 LA is so wealthy. State of California, fifth largest economy in the world. We have an economy larger than India.
1:08:36 Joe Rogan? It's nuts.
1:08:37 Speaker 02 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.
1:09:21 Speaker 02 And if there's a handful of people that do, who cares? God.
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1:11:13 Speaker 02 Bless them.
1:11:14 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:11:14 Speaker 02 Leave them there. But that's not the far majority of the people.
1:11:17 Joe Rogan? I think those handful of people are fed a narrative. And the narrative is there's one way that's good and there's one way that's evil.
1:11:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:25 Joe Rogan? And there's the right wing people that want to be fascist totalitarian dictators and they just want the wealthy to get wealthier and they want the poor to starve. And then you have the left wing side that has this idea of compassionate care and letting everybody be themselves and let people camp out and let, you know, and we need to treat people like human beings and they're not homeless, they're the unhoused. And you start reframing things and it's just a bunch of nonsense. And unfortunately, these people are all conditioned to think that everybody opposed to them hates civil rights, hates women's rights, hates gay rights. They're right wing hardcore fascist assholes.
1:12:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:12:09 Joe Rogan? What we need is someone, this is one of the things that made me happy about you, is that you need someone who appeals to people's sense of kindness and caring and, you know, being a progressive person in terms of like social issues.
1:12:23 Speaker 02 Right.
1:12:23 Joe Rogan? But yet understands human nature and understands business. Like you have to do things if you want to change things.
1:12:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:12:33 Joe Rogan? 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. And this is the problem with LA that we see.
1:12:42 Speaker 02 Well, there's, there's no doubt, but it, but don't you think that is changing though, right? We've talked about that.
1:12:47 Joe Rogan? I think it's changing.
1:12:48 Speaker 02 I think it's changing.
1:12:49 Joe Rogan? But, you know, LA will snap right back to the old way. I mean, if you just give them a couple of good years, they'll, they'll be convinced that, you know.
1:12:57 Speaker 02 We gotta fight that good fight, though, Joe. We gotta fight that good fight. There's too much at risk.
1:13:02 Joe Rogan? There is too much at risk. I, I do, 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 kind of, if, 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. And then the whole country benefits. If we see GDP go up, or we see.
1:13:28 Speaker 02 I agree.
1:13:29 Joe Rogan? Homelessness, jobless, joblessness go down, that 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. And Team America is like, we want the whole thing to be better. Everybody, all of us.
1:13:48 Speaker 02 Wouldn't that be great?
1:13:49 Joe Rogan? It'd be amazing. It's, it can be done.
1:13:51 Speaker 02 And it can be done.
1:13:52 Joe Rogan? It can be, most people, I think, are reasonable, kind people. Most people.
1:13:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:13:57 Joe Rogan? 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. Like, that's, that's how you look at it. You know?
1:14:09 Speaker 02 Oh, God.
1:14:10 Joe Rogan? That's how people look at it.
1:14:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there's a lot of that.
1:14:13 Joe Rogan? There's a lot of that.
1:14:14 Speaker 02 I have a little bit more, again, I, I run a little bit more optimistic in the, in the faith of my fellow Angelinos 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, they want change.
1:14:36 Joe Rogan? Oh, yeah. Well, you could push people up to a point.
1:14:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:14:39 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:14:40 Speaker 02 Yeah. Now, I do think. The success of Trump is gonna have a big influence on that. And so, especially in California, you know, cuz, you know, they're, the majority is very leery, right?
1:14:55 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:14:55 Speaker 02 And Los Angeles, very leery of that. And if he could do more of what he did that day at that press conference, out on the Palisades, it would be great. Cuz he did show a compassion. He, 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, you know, they were spinning it, boy, the elected officials that day, and he was pushing back on it.
1:15:25 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:15:26 Speaker 02 Very professionally, very nicely, but very strongly.
1:15:31 Joe Rogan? He's much better at handling people this time around. I think he sort of corrected a lot of the way he used to communicate with people, and he's much more even and measured.
1:15:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:40 Joe Rogan? He's much more effective.
1:15:41 Speaker 02 I agree. I was impressed. And 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, you know, here's the 10 things you need to do.
1:15:56 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:15:57 Speaker 02 And it should only take, I mean, that's what we're doing, this new foundation I launched, with a bunch of really smart thought leaders in industry, um, have come together, we launched it yesterday, just to go tackle problems. Don't, don't tell me what the problem is without the solution. You know, I just live by that. And there is a solution to every problem. It may not be the solution you want, but there's a solution out there, so work towards it. And I'll, I'll give you an example, you know, I've been pushing since the fires, we've gotta underground all the power lines. You can't go rebuild the Palisades or Altadena the way it was built 70 years ago.
1:16:32 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:16:33 Speaker 02 It'd be insane.
1:16:33 Joe Rogan? It's insane.
1:16:34 Speaker 02 So, underground the power lines, redo the water mains, redo the fire, higher fire 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. Two-hundred-and-fifty billion dollars 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,
1:17:17 Speaker 02 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." And then we're gonna hold you accountable to implement it.
1:17:29 Joe Rogan? What is the answer when they say, "We don't have the money"? If you have California, which is just insanely enormous economy.
1:17:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:39 Joe Rogan? And a very high tax rate.
1:17:40 Speaker 02 One of the highest, that's right.
1:17:41 Joe Rogan? So you have high taxes, so you have an enormous economy. That means you've got a lot of money.
1:17:45 Speaker 02 Right.
1:17:46 Joe Rogan? So where's the money going?
1:17:48 Speaker 02 Where the money's gone, I can't tell you. You know, we used to have a surplus in California, now we have a deficit. So if that happens at your home or my home, that means we mismanaged our money. It's pretty simple.
1:18:00 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:18:01 Speaker 02 In solving the problem for the Palisades or Altadena 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, there's state grants, there's private capital. We're gonna 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 gonna go do this, and now we're gonna solve how to pay for it." And we're gonna do it quickly, to get people back in their homes and start building again. And I believe we can bend the curve.
1:18:43 Speaker 02 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 nine 11 on getting the rebuilding done. And 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 Manhattans. Two Manhattans.
1:19:24 Joe Rogan? That's how big it is.
1:19:25 Speaker 02 Can you imagine that?
1:19:26 Joe Rogan? That's insane.
1:19:27 Speaker 02 14, 15,000 structures.
1:19:30 Joe Rogan? It's so hard for people to imagine that. I just went back, like I was telling you, I was there a couple of weeks ago for the UFC.
1:19:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:37 Joe Rogan? And, you know, you see it and when you're flying over, it just doesn't even make sense.
1:19:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:42 Joe Rogan? And we see, we showed the drone footage as well of the Palisades. I mean, it doesn't make sense. It's so much devastation. Altadena is gone.
1:19:49 Speaker 02 Gone.
1:19:50 Joe Rogan? Gone, which is, and, you know, Altadena, my friend Jimmy Dore was just talking about this the other day in a video. It was this beautiful, like, nice neighborhood.
1:20:00 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:20:00 Joe Rogan? Tree-lined streets and...
1:20:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, cottage homes. Dear sweet neighborhood.
1:20:05 Joe Rogan? And gone.
1:20:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, gone.
1:20:07 Joe Rogan? One of the nice neighborhoods, I mean, like a beautiful neighborhood, a drive-through.
1:20:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:12 Joe Rogan? It's gone.
1:20:13 Speaker 02 And those people mostly, Joe, as you know, so many of them, there's no safety net.
1:20:18 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:20:18 Speaker 02 I mean, very moderate income.
1:20:20 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:20:21 Speaker 02 You know, working class, hard working class people. And I was, I've been telling all the elected officials, you gotta have programs that start supporting people because they are down and out. They have nowhere to go. And we've got to do something to help them, you know, day to day to live.
1:20:39 Joe Rogan? 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.
1:20:50 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:20:51 Joe Rogan? And then it would just ruin that area.
1:20:53 Speaker 02 Can't do it.
1:20:54 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:20:55 Speaker 02 Can't do it. It's wrong. Yeah, this is not the time to be reimagining anybody's neighborhood.
1:21:01 Joe Rogan? No.
1:21:01 Speaker 02 Off the backs of the devastation and the pain. I've been really vocal about that. And this is, you know, this is the creep you get, what you're talking about. There's 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. And there's also, you're going to have people that won't be able to move back to their neighborhood because they may not be wealthy, but they may make more money than what is
1:21:45 Speaker 02 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, we, oh, let me back up. So we have this crazy law in the city of Los Angeles.
1:22:11 Speaker 02 Crazy law in the city of Los Angeles is something to this effect. I may not get it exactly right.
1:22:17 Speaker 02 If you tear down an existing apartment building that's market rate, you have to replace it with low-income housing. Okay.
1:22:27 Joe Rogan? All of it?
1:22:29 Speaker 02 Maybe it's not all of it. I think it's the majority of it. But whatever the number is, okay? My point is, when you do that, you provide a disincentive to reinvest in the city.
1:22:41 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:22:41 Speaker 02 So, let's turn it around and provide an incentive. Say if you close, knock it down and rebuild, or it's burned down in the Palisades, and want to rebuild, then give a bonus density and allow that person to build more to compensate them for providing housing that is low income, right? It just seems to be more fair. Everybody gets the benefit.
1:23:04 Joe Rogan? How would you do that? How's that, how does that work?
1:23:05 Speaker 02 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 gonna let you build 20 units. And out of the 20 units, give us 6 units that are low-income housing. Whatever the numbers are.
1:23:24 Joe Rogan? Mm-hmm.
1:23:25 Speaker 02 But, let's have governments start thinking about an incentive-based system, right? 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, right? You're not required to work harder. You're incentivized to work harder or work smarter. And I think if we build that kind of thinking into government to provide capital, to provide investment, especially on the rebuilding, you can have some social policies that are very important and very good, like low income. What I would even say is, why don't we, why don't we give an incentive to build workforce housing in the Palisades and Altadena?
1:24:10 Speaker 02 Where the workforce housing goes to the first responders, firefighters, um, 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 2 hours to get home and 2 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.
1:24:37 Joe Rogan? Especially in a place like the Pacific Palisades. I think people deeply resent the idea of being forced to have any kind of low-income housing. The idea is that it's hard to live in the Palisades. It's expensive, it's beautiful, it's an incredible piece of land, or it was.
1:24:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:24:53 Joe Rogan? Before the fires devastated it. It was a glorious place to live, like. And it was very difficult to afford to live there. So 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 Palisades 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.
1:25:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't know, Joe. I think there's people. 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. And I think there's people that would allow.
1:25:40 Joe Rogan? That's different, though. That's different than apartment buildings.
1:25:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, but even in an apartment. But even in an apartment setting, I think it can work. I mean, listen, I think there's people in the Palisades that would very much welcome affordable housing, low-income housing. I certainly would, and I'm a big landowner in the Palisades. But what I don't like about it is the requirement.
1:26:01 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:26:01 Speaker 02 Off the backs of people who have lost everything.
1:26:04 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:26:04 Speaker 02 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.
1:26:14 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:26:15 Speaker 02 It's a timing issue 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.
1:26:25 Speaker 02 And again, I I mean, I'll be very honest, the government just cannot do it alone. There's just no way. There's just no way.
1:26:33 Joe Rogan? One of the things that people complain a lot about California is regulations.
1:26:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:37 Joe Rogan? And how regulated it is and how difficult it is to start businesses and to maintain businesses.
1:26:43 Speaker 02 Hugely overregulated.
1:26:45 Joe Rogan? What could be done about that?
1:26:46 Speaker 02 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, and it's to the point that you would never, 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, you know, moderate, hardworking people. The tax rate's 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.
1:27:32 Speaker 02 Like just having outdoor dining. Like, 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 like 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 let, have a system that people can earn money, become successful.
1:27:57 Joe Rogan? What's the cause of overregulation? How does it start?
1:28:01 Speaker 02 I don't, 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, you know, will go crazy and do terrible things and running around the streets. And it's just not the way it works, right? Capitalism is a really good system. We've proven that. And overregulation starts squeezing capitalism to the point that it pushes out people from investing and creating jobs and creating opportunity.
1:28:38 Speaker 02 And LA has gotten to the point, it's certainly over the bridge, it needs to get pulled back. I mean, 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, you know, we have a very safe environment, friendly environment, family environment, all those kinds of 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 and millions of dollars of private security. And that's a whole nother problem because what about the individual landowner in a neighborhood
1:29:22 Speaker 02 that doesn't have the kind of protection they need? And, and they don't have the police force to protect them and running a business. It becomes impossible. So, and again, those things are just fixable. They really are fixable.
1:29:37 Joe Rogan? So, regulations, water, law and order. What, what other things are, are giant issues about LA that you think need to be addressed?
1:29:50 Speaker 02 Well, I think we have to, on the positive side, I want to be more business friendly. I want to, I want to invite businesses back to California. I want to invite businesses back to LA.
1:30:01 Joe Rogan? That's a tough sell.
1:30:02 Speaker 02 I know, I want to get Elon back to LA. I don't want him to leave LA. I've told him that, you know, and I think he would come back. I think all these businesses would come back.
1:30:12 Joe Rogan? Sure, if it was reasonable.
1:30:13 Speaker 02 If it was reasonable.
1:30:14 Joe Rogan? They didn't leave because it was awesome. That's, that's what people have done. I didn't leave because it was awesome.
1:30:19 Speaker 02 Right.
1:30:19 Joe Rogan? I left because I just didn't want this group of people that I thought were inept telling me what to do.
1:30:24 Speaker 02 Of course, and they gave you, in a weird way, they gave you the incentive to leave and not the incentive to stay.
1:30:31 Joe Rogan? Yes.
1:30:31 Speaker 02 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. You know, all of those basic things are really important. And again, Joe, maybe I'm overly optimistic in it, but it can come back. And I think California, if unleashed.
1:30:51 Speaker 02 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've got to let that flourish, you know. Set the platform that's encouraging these youngest brightest minds to come here and start your business.
1:31:19 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:31:19 Speaker 02 And and do the right thing. And you've made the point, you're absolutely right. I've talked to a lot of the tech people. Uh, you know, 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. It's, 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.
1:31:49 Joe Rogan? So in order to incentivize people, if they wanted to come back to California, you you've got these enormous taxes.
1:31:58 Speaker 02 Right.
1:31:58 Joe Rogan? Like, so something has to be done on a state level, not just on a city level.
1:32:02 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:32:03 Joe Rogan? To address that. So how do you address that?
1:32:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, 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 know, 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 to make it fair. We've got the highest gas uh, costs in the country. Why does a gallon of gas in California cost more than a gallon?
1:32:31 Joe Rogan? Well, isn't that because in California you're required to sell gas that's refined in California?
1:32:36 Speaker 02 I don't know if that's the case.
1:32:37 Joe Rogan? See if that's the case, Jamie.
1:32:39 Speaker 02 But I know, I think, I think the, I think the gas in California is also highly taxed.
1:32:44 Joe Rogan? Of course.
1:32:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's taxes based.
1:32:46 Joe Rogan? This is the question, though, Rick. It's like, where's all this money going? If you've got this insanely high tax rate, but yet you don't have any money to fix the power lines. You got this insane insanely high tax rate, but you can't clean up the homeless problem. And even though you're throwing a lot of money on it. Where's that money going?
1:33:01 Speaker 02 I know. It's not going to the school system.
1:33:03 Joe Rogan? 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.
1:33:11 Speaker 02 We've got a lot of smart people in California, along with them, that, you know, 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.
1:33:56 Speaker 02 That's, that's the greatest form of government. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't really matter if you've got great ideas and if you're a big thinker. That's what I would do. That's what I am doing.
1:34:07 Joe Rogan? So, but on a state level, like the taxes for the state, that would have to be addressed by the governor, right?
1:34:14 Speaker 02 The governor and the legislature, yeah.
1:34:16 Joe Rogan? Yeah. What could be done about that?
1:34:18 Speaker 02 I think you've got to, you've got to rebuild it, Joe. I, 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.
1:34:47 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:34:48 Speaker 02 So the minute you keep overtaxing people, all you're doing is giving people the incentive to leave, which we've seen, right? 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's gonna make more revenue.
1:35:05 Joe Rogan? It's just simple logic. The economy grows, people have more money, it's better for everybody.
1:35:11 Speaker 02 And you get some jobs, you get people off the streets.
1:35:13 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:35:14 Speaker 02 You know, this whole thing starts changing the dynamic. How great would that be?
1:35:18 Joe Rogan? It would be pretty incredible. I just don't wanna get my hopes up.
1:35:20 Speaker 02 Let's do it. No, no, come on! Don't leave me.
1:35:24 Joe Rogan? No, yeah, I think it's possible. It's just a daunting task.
1:35:29 Speaker 02 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.
1:35:37 Joe Rogan? Yeah, but I didn't think about it. I just, it just sort of lucked out.
1:35:41 Speaker 02 It wasn't luck.
1:35:42 Joe Rogan? Yeah, whatever.
1:35:42 Speaker 02 It was a little bit of luck. Everybody's got a little bit of luck.
1:35:45 Joe Rogan? For sure.
1:35:45 Speaker 02 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.
1:35:53 Joe Rogan? Yeah, you could.
1:35:54 Speaker 02 No, oh, no, yours is done. I couldn't. I can't. It could be done. In fact, I just wanna go on a tangent for a second.
1:35:58 Joe Rogan? Sure.
1:36:00 Speaker 02 Okay, my boys got me addicted to taking an ice bath.
1:36:04 Joe Rogan? Hahaha.
1:36:07 Speaker 02 You're insane. I, wha- what's the temperature of yours?
1:36:11 Joe Rogan? Thirty-four.
1:36:12 Speaker 02 Oh my god. Okay, I, I, I saw a picture of you removing a sheet of ice.
1:36:15 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:36:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. I, I, I'm, I'm nowhere near the stud that you are, obviously.
1:36:21 Joe Rogan? It's not that hard. It's just three minutes and it makes the rest of the day wait.
1:36:25 Speaker 02 I'm at fifty.
1:36:25 Joe Rogan? Fifty's cold.
1:36:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I, I'm addicted to it.
1:36:28 Joe Rogan? Yeah, it's great.
1:36:29 Speaker 02 How long are you in for?
1:36:29 Joe Rogan? Three minutes. You'll still get the benefits at fifty.
1:36:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:36:32 Joe Rogan? What I get at thirty is much more suck and getting through the suck is part of it.
1:36:38 Speaker 02 Is it? How long is the suck part?
1:36:40 Joe Rogan? Sucks for about a minute.
1:36:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, the first minute.
1:36:42 Joe Rogan? The first minute really sucks.
1:36:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's with me at fifty.
1:36:45 Joe Rogan? Yeah, I took a-
1:36:46 Speaker 02 I'm like heavy breathing.
1:36:47 Joe Rogan? I got some stem cells shot into my shoulder recently and when I do that, you have to take like seventy-two hours. Because the, the actual, 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.
1:37:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, but it doesn't, for me, it doesn't get any easier though.
1:37:08 Joe Rogan? It doesn't? After the first minute?
1:37:10 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, no, like.
1:37:11 Joe Rogan? Oh, every day?
1:37:12 Speaker 02 Every day.
1:37:12 Joe Rogan? Yeah, it gets a little easier. It never gets easy. But it gets a li- it's like it's easier now, like three day, like now I'm like four or five days in. It's like, so when I pop the lid off of it, I just, I don't even think about it. I just go, get in there.
1:37:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:25 Joe Rogan? Just shut up, put the timer on, get in there, just sit.
1:37:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:29 Joe Rogan? Just sit there.
1:37:30 Speaker 02 I do love it.
1:37:31 Joe Rogan? But the thing about it is, the way you feel when you get out is so amazing.
1:37:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:37 Joe Rogan? You feel alive, you feel energized, you feel like your brain is firing.
1:37:42 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:37:43 Joe Rogan? All your endor- it kicks up your dopamine levels by 200%, it lasts for hours and hours.
1:37:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:48 Joe Rogan? You feel wonderful, and that's the thing. It's like, we need to delay gratitude. You need to delay these, this, people like to like feel comfortable now. You need to delay that.
1:38:00 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:38:00 Joe Rogan? Put that on the side.
1:38:01 Speaker 02 I like that.
1:38:02 Joe Rogan? Just suck it up for a while.
1:38:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I like that.
1:38:05 Joe Rogan? And doing that, forcing yourself to have voluntary adversity, just like have three minutes a day that's horrible, is gonna make the whole rest of your day better.
1:38:13 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:38:13 Joe Rogan? It's only three minutes. How much time you spend on Instagram? Just flipping through nonsense, just looking at bullshit, getting upset at Twitter, going on to, what are these people talking about? And like, three minutes!
1:38:25 Speaker 02 No, it's addicting to me. I'm a, I never thought I would be addicted to it.
1:38:28 Joe Rogan? I love it.
1:38:29 Speaker 02 I love it. And the other thing I love, which I heard you do, is the infrared?
1:38:33 Joe Rogan? Yeah, I do that too. I do that today. Yeah.
1:38:35 Speaker 02 I do it every day.
1:38:36 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:38:37 Speaker 02 I love it.
1:38:37 Joe Rogan? Oh, you, you're talking infrared sauna. I do a red light bed every day. I do a regular sauna, a dry sauna, because I think there's more research that's been done, particularly out of Finland. You know, they did a 20-year study where they showed a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality for people who use the sauna four days a week.
1:38:57 Speaker 02 Really?
1:38:57 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:38:58 Speaker 02 More than an infrared? Just a old-fashioned dry sauna?
1:39:01 Joe Rogan? It's just not, 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.
1:39:42 Joe Rogan? 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 like, almost like static cardio. Even though you're sitting there, you know, I wear a heart rate monitor sometimes when I'm in there. And my heart's jacked up to 147 beats a minute at the end. I mean, it's pretty high then. 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.
1:40:14 Speaker 02 And then is your recovery quick once you get out, your heart rate's down?
1:40:18 Joe Rogan? 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's fully adapted to being hot. You know, it's just, it's hot every day. And this just, that's again, it's just voluntary adversity. It's forcing yourself to do something physically and it makes the rest of your day way easier.
1:40:39 Speaker 02 Okay, so you should get into politics, voluntary adversity.
1:40:42 Joe Rogan? No, no, no, no, no. I would way rather have people like you on and try to help you out than get involved myself.
1:40:50 Speaker 02 I appreciate that. I'm grateful for that.
1:40:52 Joe Rogan? I have zero interest in getting involved myself. Is this where your interests end though? Is it just mayor stuff or do you ever look bigger than that?
1:40:59 Speaker 02 I don't know. You know, right now, honestly, I was looking at a lot of, a couple of different options. And then when January 7th hit with the fire, the world sort of stopped. And 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 sure. Um, it's probably not right now.
1:41:18 Joe Rogan? So you think like one day like governor, one day like?
1:41:21 Speaker 02 Maybe.
1:41:22 Joe Rogan? President?
1:41:22 Speaker 02 Well, I don't, I, you know.
1:41:23 Joe Rogan? Come on, come on, Rick.
1:41:26 Speaker 02 You know what I want to do? I, I, I look at it, and I don't mean this in a morbid way. I, I mean it in a positive way. I'm at the, I'm sort of at the back nine of my life, right? And I've had an incredible life. And so what can I do? Like 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, and have a good time doing it, by the way, because I like having fun. Um, and where does that intersect? And so as time goes on, I'll figure that out.
1:42:08 Speaker 02 And whether it's the governor, or whether it's the mayor, I'm not quite sure, but, um, I want to do something at some point, but now I really want to get the place rebuilt. Let's, let's get moving.
1:42:20 Joe Rogan? What does that involve? You, you wanted to get the place rebuilt. So how long is this, uh, woman still going to be the mayor for?
1:42:27 Speaker 02 Well, she's there for, you know, I think about eighteen months or so, and she already announced before the fires, she's gonna, uh, run for reelection, but we'll see how that plays out. As a private citizen, it's this group that I put together that's gonna work really closely, pushing the city, finding solutions, sort of calling out when they're not doing what they need to be doing. Um, and I, I, I'm hopeful that that's gonna be really effective. And like I said, bending the curve, shortening the timeline to get people in. And that, that's gonna take most of my time and most of my day. I got a small, mighty staff that I hired for it. I'm gonna fund it myself. Um, I'm gonna use all the resources from my company
1:43:11 Speaker 02 and the talent we have in the company to help find answers to rebuild it. We got guys like, you know, uh, Joe Lonsdale's a part of that group, one of the biggest thinkers around. I got the head of Parsons. Um, you know, 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 then politics will come down the road. We'll figure that out.
1:43:33 Joe Rogan? Well, that that sounds wonderful, but it seems to me that like unless you're at the cockpit, unless you're, you know, controlling the direction of the city.
1:43:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:43:43 Joe Rogan? It's going to be very hard to really change things in a meaningful way.
1:43:47 Speaker 02 It's it's a it's a good challenge, for sure. But I can't, I can't change the leadership that's there now. And the problem is now.
1:43:55 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:43:55 Speaker 02 Right? So I got to figure out how I help the leadership be successful.
1:44:00 Joe Rogan? 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.
1:44:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:44:12 Joe Rogan? In order to get reelected, you have to give these people some faith that you've recognized that you've made some errors and that you're going to do things differently in the future.
1:44:22 Speaker 02 I haven't heard that. I haven't heard that.
1:44:24 Joe Rogan? That sounds crazy.
1:44:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. But, you know, 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.
1:44:43 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:44:43 Speaker 02 Right?
1:44:44 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:44:45 Speaker 02 So if your judgment was, I'm going to go out of town when this catastrophic event is about to hit the city that I'm in charge of, you probably don't have the judgment to get it fixed. I hope I'm wrong. But what 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. And the people that are suffering shouldn't be suffering because of her or anything that she did or who she appointed that failed in their job. 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.
1:45:25 Joe Rogan? Well, 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?
1:45:35 Speaker 02 You know.
1:45:36 Joe Rogan? We cover the regulations.
1:45:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:37 Joe Rogan? What about desalination?
1:45:40 Speaker 02 Absolutely should be done. Great idea. I tried it when I was head of Department of Water and Power.
1:45:46 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:45:47 Speaker 02 Got fought by every environmental group there is.
1:45:50 Joe Rogan? Why? Do they think we're gonna empty the entire ocean?
1:45:53 Speaker 02 It's crazy.
1:45:55 Joe Rogan? There's so much water right there.
1:45:57 Speaker 02 Crazy. First of all, we're dumping sewage. You know, there's tertiary treatment where water is potable. We dump sewage secondary treatment. It's 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.
1:46:17 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:46:18 Speaker 02 Right? I mean.
1:46:18 Joe Rogan? That can be done.
1:46:19 Speaker 02 The abundance of water that goes into the ocean is sort of what you start out with. DSal? Brilliant.
1:46:26 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:46:26 Speaker 02 Absolutely. We should be doing it. We should have DSal plants supporting Los Angeles and big parts of the Southern California.
1:46:33 Joe Rogan? Also, it creates jobs.
1:46:34 Speaker 02 Creates jobs. You can do it where it's environmentally safe. Absolutely. And it has, it has a redundancy of power that comes off of it also that's helpful because we've got a power shortage in California. Absolutely. And we've got more and more demand in our grid than we know how to supply right now. And again, back in the day.
1:46:55 Joe Rogan? Work as a redundancy of power?
1:46:57 Speaker 02 Well, because you, you, you've got to generate a lot of power for the DSal. When the DSal is not operating, you've still got an operating power plant there. So you can skew up the operation in order to have additional energy coming off your DSal plant.
1:47:12 Joe Rogan? Hmm, okay. And.
1:47:14 Speaker 02 You gotta build a power plant to DSal because of the amount of power it consumes to clean the water.
1:47:19 Joe Rogan? And how much water could be desalinated? Like, 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?
1:47:28 Speaker 02 The size of the plant. You can, yeah. Depends on the size of the plant.
1:47:31 Joe Rogan? So ideally, they should be set up, though, like at various intervals along the coast. And you'd probably fix the, I mean, California could be completely green.
1:47:41 Speaker 02 Well, listen, it could be, but it's also, you mix, 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 O'Holland built at the turn of the century, right? 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 put, all of that has sort of 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, right?
1:48:20 Speaker 02 Again, if you, and then you add D cell 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?
1:48:49 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:48:50 Speaker 02 It's, it's just a constant supply. All we're doing now is we're dumping it in the ocean.
1:48:55 Joe Rogan? Yeah, it's very stupid. And it's, again, it's doing the same thing you've always done and hoping for a different result.
1:49:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:49:00 Joe Rogan? What was the pushback from the idea of desalination plants?
1:49:06 Speaker 02 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 president of DWP, under Tom Bradley's leadership at the time, converted all the old oil plants on the coast to gas to be clean. There's better technology now. Um, you know, you can convert those, they're testing out hydrogen and convert them to hydrogen plants. There's a big plant that you, DWP built in Utah when I was president called Intermountain Power Project. It was the cleanest coal burning plant in the country at the time. This is probably, you know, 25 years ago now, 30 years ago.
1:49:49 Speaker 02 They're now testing and converting it to hydrogen, which will be absolutely clean. That's smart, right? So we need-
1:49:55 Joe Rogan? Literally makes oxygen.
1:49:56 Speaker 02 Right.
1:49:57 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:49:58 Speaker 02 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.
1:50:07 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:50:07 Speaker 02 You know, so whatever kind of fuel you want, we built, uh, we were partners in Palo Verde, which is the nuclear plant in Arizona. We need more nuclear plants-
1:50:17 Joe Rogan? Yeah, I was gonna get to that.
1:50:18 Speaker 02 Right? So, and I don't know why the leadership in this state, you know, hasn't been aggressive in building more clean burning plants, because we need them.
1:50:29 Joe Rogan? Nuclear has a negative stereotype in the public eye.
1:50:34 Speaker 02 Yes, it does.
1:50:35 Joe Rogan? Unfortunately, because of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, because of Fukushima. People think nuclear, they think disaster. They think terrible waste.
1:50:45 Speaker 02 Right.
1:50:45 Joe Rogan? You can't get away from it. It pollutes the ground forever.
1:50:49 Speaker 02 But it can be made very safe.
1:50:50 Joe Rogan? But it can be made much safer and much cleaner, and it's not being done because we're- And then also, people have to understand that if you go back to the cars that were on the road at the time these nuclear power plants were built, those cars were polluting like crazy. You got a brand new car, the emissions are far less.
1:51:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:51:08 Joe Rogan? Or you get a Tesla, you have none.
1:51:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:51:11 Joe Rogan? Right? So like, why would we look at the same old architecture of these night- like, the Fukushima one's a prime example. It only had one backup generator. The backup generator went out, they were done. They have them now where they can actually shut them down. They have, like, there's new designs.
1:51:27 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. And listen, Palo Verde, 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 sort of get into what your point is. Get somebody from the outside who's thinking big, who's thinking outside the box.
1:51:46 Joe Rogan? Right.
1:51:47 Speaker 02 Who wants to change the landscape for a, for the better way of having a quality of life. And is willing to think big and you're gonna get kicked in the head sometimes and not every idea is gonna 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. I'm, again, I'm optimistic about it.
1:52:22 Joe Rogan? Well, I'm optimistic too. I am. I mean.
1:52:25 Speaker 02 We're gonna get you back there.
1:52:26 Joe Rogan? Good luck. I'm never leaving Texas.
1:52:28 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:52:29 Joe Rogan? I'll never live in a big city again. I think you get too big, it's just people become a burden. I think that there's a psychic aspect to it.
1:52:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:52:41 Joe Rogan? You know, the, just the mindset of living in a smaller place is more relaxed.
1:52:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:52:46 Joe Rogan? It just feels better.
1:52:47 Speaker 02 I get it.
1:52:48 Joe Rogan? Yeah.
1:52:49 Speaker 02 I get that, especially raising a family and.
1:52:50 Joe Rogan? Yes. But I did love living in LA. I lived there for 25 years. I loved it.
1:52:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:52:56 Joe Rogan? Thought it was awesome. Had a great time there. Uh, you know, I still miss parts of it. I still miss the Comedy Store and I still miss, you know. There's, there's amazing aspects to LA still and there's an amazing group of human beings that live in LA still.
1:53:10 Speaker 02 It's an incredible city.
1:53:11 Joe Rogan? Yeah. But the problem is everyone knew that it was amazing and everyone knew that everybody wanted to go there. And so they just sort of took everybody for granted.
1:53:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:23 Joe Rogan? And they said, look, let's just test the shit out of these people. They're staying, they're not going anywhere. It's California. Where are you gonna go?
1:53:28 Speaker 02 That's right. There's still that attitude, by the way.
1:53:30 Joe Rogan? Yes.
1:53:31 Speaker 02 Still that attitude.
1:53:32 Joe Rogan? Yeah, that's the one I felt.
1:53:33 Speaker 02 Doesn't work.
1:53:34 Joe Rogan? That's what I felt. And that's what you hear from the governor and you hear from people when they brag about California, you know, about instead of addressing why are people leaving, they talk about how great California is. Oh, we're kicking ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, still, but not as much as before and there's a reason. You're on a downward trend.
1:53:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:52 Joe Rogan? It's the government.
1:53:53 Speaker 02 And not as much as we could.
1:53:54 Joe Rogan? Yeah, not as much as could.
1:53:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:56 Joe Rogan? Well, listen, Rick, whatever you do, I wish you the best.
1:53:58 Speaker 02 Thank you, sir.
1:53:59 Joe Rogan? I really, I do hope you run for mayor again and 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.
1:54:10 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:54:11 Joe Rogan? I really do. So, thank you very much.
1:54:12 Speaker 02 Thank you very much. This is really an honor.
1:54:14 Joe Rogan? My pleasure. My honor. Thank you. Bye, everybody.
Previous #2267 - Dan Richards Next #2269 - Bret Weinstein Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
