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Spencer Pratt on Joe Rogan: Why LA Fire Money Missed Victims

FireAid spread donations to hundreds of NGOs, leaving fire victims with little; Pratt argues LA homelessness billions follow the same accountability gap.

Joe RoganhostSpencer Prattguest
Apr 15, 20262h 0mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 1:38

    Why Spencer Pratt decided to run for LA mayor after the Palisades fire

    1. SP

      Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat rock music]

    2. JR

      What's going on, Mr. Mayor? [laughs]

    3. SP

      [laughs] I'm so thankful to be here.

    4. JR

      My pleasure. Um, so first of all, how did this idea even get into your head of running for mayor in LA?

    5. SP

      To be clear, I never wanted to run for any political office or have anything to do with politicians. What happened was, after spending a year uncovering how my house and my parents' house burned down, and my neighbors burned alive, and, and 7,000 houses burned, and then I realized there's a, a cover-up going on, all the negligence, and I keep posting about it, and I have all the facts, I have all the whistleblowers, I have all the evidence, and business as usual. And I see that nobody is stepping up to run against the mayor who's responsible for this disaster and so many other disasters. So it became to the point where I got so sick of just being a, as the younger people say in the comments section, a yapper. Like, I felt like I was just yapping. I'm like making these videos, I'm telling the, the truth, I'm do-

    6. JR

      Right

    7. SP

      ... I got a congressional investigation. I went to Washington, I met with everyone possible that I could do as just a citizen, and I, I was like, "Okay, well, game on now. I'm gonna go into your, into your headquarters and just take your job, and then remove all these toxic entities that are destroying our way of life in Los Angeles."

  2. 1:38 – 3:10

    Fire narratives vs. preparedness: climate change, wind claims, and accountability

    1. JR

      So let's start from the fire. Um, so the narrative was, my God, there was a lot of terrible, stupid, fake narratives, and one of them was climate change. That was the craziest one, that climate change is causing the fire. Look, I lived in LA for 29, 30 years, whatever it was, and I guess it was, yeah, somewhere around there. Eh, maybe even more. Whatever it was. Uh, when I lived in LA, fire season happened every year. It, this is not climate change. This is not some new thing over the last couple of decades. I was evacuated three different times. Uh, I used to live in Bell Canyon, and my neighbors, three of the homes right across the, right across the street from my house burned to the ground in 2018. There, there's always been fires in Los Angeles. But the lack of preparation for the Palisades fires was astonishing. The fact that the reservoir was empty was criminal mismanagement. I mean, it was just insanity that everybody knew that we had fires, like massive fires, that it was a dry place, and when the Santa Ana winds would blow, if something caught fire, it was a real problem. We had known that forever. And when you see all these people that are passing the buck and moving the blame, and then the fund, when they had that big charity thing for the fire, and

  3. 3:10 – 8:15

    FireAid and NGO funding: where the donations went (and didn’t go)

    1. JR

      you found out that hundreds of millions of dollars was raised. You know, if you're, you're looking at it in, it, it, like a, an, a rational person, a rational person would say, "Oh, this is great. All these people who lost their homes will have some funds from this, and they'll be able to rebuild." And then you find out that the money was given to, what was it? Like 108 different NGOs?

    2. SP

      200 plus.

    3. JR

      200 plus, where that money got distributed to these organizations, these supposed nonprofit organizations, and most of that money goes to overhead. And almost nothing goes to the people who lost their homes.

    4. SP

      So to rewa- rewind, let's start with what we thought.

    5. JR

      Right.

    6. SP

      We were told climate change, and with the climate change, because I've spent hours and hours arguing with people that will argue with that. I go, "Okay, great. The climate changes," right? So we're aware of this dry weather. It hasn't rained. So what should we actually be doing? Should we just say, "Oh, everybody should burn alive and houses burn down"? Or should we clear the dead brush? Should we pre-deploy? Should we make sure that both reservoirs have water in it? So the idea that climate change is the, the get out of jail, burn everything down excuse, it doesn't even add up. So we know that, so let's make a difference. And I went and met with the chief of the U.S. Forest Service and talked to him for a few hours. This guy, Chief Garcia, he's one of the most famous fire chiefs from the Hotshots, and I quizzed him, and he told me this was not a surprise. He said they all have a map. And I forget the name of this map, that it goes to all cities and emergency personnel. They have photos. You look at them. He showed them to me. Everything is bright red leading up to January 7th. Bright red. They knew this was coming to the point where Chief Garcia had all of his firefighters on the tarmac, kitted up, in their helicopters. He said his whole team was standing by their computers because it was so obvious this fire was coming based off of, if you want to say, climate change. Because it s- it had not rained, it was record dry. So this idea that they use that, it's, it's just an excuse. And then the big one that everyone falls for to this day that I... Is the best propaganda ever, is hurricane winds. We were told, you know, Newsom's doing the thing and he's saying the winds would come in the hurricane. He lit his hair on fire. There was no hurricane winds in the Pacific Palisades. The max wind speed was 40 miles per hour. And for the first six hours, when the helicopter is the initial attack, when you put out the, the fire, it was max, I think, 27 miles per hour. So they got everyone with, "It's unprecedented, it's hurricane winds, it's climate change." No responsibility.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. SP

      So now we go to fire aid.This is this was another thing that just woke me up to, you know, we always heard about the homeless NGO scam and the homeless industrial complex, but living as a, a fire victim and watching all these celebrities go on stage, they actually took fire victims from Altadena on stage whose houses burned down, and they raised this hundred million dollars. And as a victim, I'm thinking, "Okay, you know, we're gonna get a few thousand dollars. That's nice." Or, you know, you break 100 million up, this should be a, a grand. You know, even FEMA and these places, when you get that thousand-dollar check, it's helpful. You're like, "Oh, I just lost everything." Every little thousand adds up. So when that happened and nobody I know anywhere got money, and Sue Pascoe from Circling the News, a local journalist, sh- whose house burned down, she spent months investigating, calling up every single NGO. "Who did you give money to? Which, which victim?" Nobody got money. And even the, the law firm that they hired to do the, you know, the coverup for, uh, the FireAid, the law firm says in their own little three-page document where they're defending FireAid, they say, "Several of the money went directly to fire victims." Well, I Googled just to see, 'cause I know the definition of several. I wanna see what does Google say several is. It was definitely under 10. So out of 200-plus NGOs, their own lawyers are saying several gave to fire victims. And then you look at the three that they name, like, "We gave gift cards to victims." Which victims? Which... You were just handing out if you were, but it, it was that that woke me up to if they will-

    9. JR

      They stole the money.

    10. SP

      Yeah. And if they'll do that to the people whose houses just burned down, of course they're gonna do it to our tax money with the homeless industrial zombie complex. So that was a real wake up that put me into, "Oh, here's where the 25, $30 billion goes. It doesn't go to solving anything or fixing it. It goes to scams."

  4. 8:15 – 16:28

    Homelessness as an ‘industrial complex’: audits blocked, incentives misaligned

    1. JR

      Well, I, I don't think before DOGE and before Elon started investigating into a lot of these NGOs, I don't think anybody was really aware, or most people were not aware of how this all works and how there's a, a whole bureaucracy, like a business that's set up where a bunch of people get paid from this money to essentially make no improvements whatsoever in whatever the problem is, whether it's homelessness. The homelessness is one of the biggest ones in LA because there was 24-plus billion dollars spent on homelessness, and when people, when representatives have tried to do an audit to find out where this money went, Newsom has blocked it. He has vetoed this audit.

    2. SP

      So it's, it's even worse in the sense that it's not going to just their salaries. There's actual cases now with the DOJ and the feds, they're arresting people who are just stealing 30 million, 20 million, buying Bentleys, mansions in Brentwood. So the idea that it's just going to salaries and people are paying themself out, that's one. But there's also people just straight up stealing money and, and you can't even figure out how they steal it. For instance, uh, this lovely lady, um, came on my podcast and she's, she created her own charity type thing, The Integrity Project, to expose NGOs, because she lives in Westwood, and all of a sudden one day on her block in this, you know, she invested with her husband to have a nice single family house on this nice street in Westwood, and the old person home, they're kicking all the senior citizens out. And she's like, "What's going on here?" And then next thing you know, the building's on the, on the market for sale, and it's for $11 million. Six days later, that building sells to a developer for $27 million. Ends up this NGO, Weingart, who's one of the top, I think they're at, um, maybe $100 million just this year. They haven't turned in their audit to the feds. It's late right now. But for instance, no one knows why it went from 11 million to 27 million over the weekend in three days. So people pocket that money. Here's the craziest part. Guess who... So you, the grant, you know, Weingart gets a grant from the city or the state. Guess who owns that building? Not the city or the state. Weingart. So our tax money buys for 20 extra million dollars a property to have it as a homeless housing. Each of these beds, 'cause I think there's maybe only 70 beds in it, it's now six years later, approximately, totally not finished, not done, more, you know, construction, this or that. They still get paid as operators. So these NGOs not only get the money for the grants to buy the building, then they get like a million dollars a year to be operators, and here's the best part. There's no mandatory that they have to actually put a body in the beds.

    3. JR

      [chuckles] Jeez.

    4. SP

      So, you know, so the scam is, like I keep saying, this is a cartel. This is mafia. This is real mafia criminal stuff going on, and the problem is... So one thing I'm so excited to do when I'm mayor, and people in the comment section will be like, "Oh, he's so stupid. You can't do that." I've met with the IRS criminal investigation team three times in LA, twice in Washington, DC, and they are so excited for me to be mayor because all they need is one document from each of these NGOs and these grants, and they can open these investigations on fraud. Right now they know the fraud and the, and the crimes are happening, but if the city doesn't hand over the document and the NGO doesn't, they say they can't just open up these cases without that one document. So first week-

    5. JR

      Sorry. No, I didn't know.

    6. SP

      So for s- first week as mayor, I'm bringing in the criminal investigation team of the IRS. Here's all the NGOs we're working with. I guarantee you 95% of them are already just calling like, "Oh, Mayor Pratt, well, we're good. We're actually going to Seattle. We don't wanna work here." Once they know someone's coming to stop the cookie jar stealing. And then, well, people are like, "Oh, LA has no money. How are you gonna do all this stuff?"LA has plenty of money that we're just letting our tax money just be stolen and to increase a problem. Homeless since our current mayor, Karen Bass, has, has joined the city power, she's increased homeless. They referenced numbers, they referenced numbers that, that she'll be like, "Oh, we removed fifteen hundred people this year." But she doesn't say, "Oh, fifteen hundred were removed into the cemetery because they OD'd." Not to mention how much tax money we're spending on just keeping zombies alive. I met with s- firefighters a few days ago at the Hollywood Station, and they were telling me the amount of Narcan they go through. So in one night in the, at the-- I talked to a, um, Mc- MacArthur Park, their fire station. He did seventeen overdoses in one night.

    7. JR

      Jeez.

    8. SP

      So if we-- they're not there, given the Narcan, we're-- the, the amount of people dying is even more insane. Right now, six people are dying a day in the street, and then they say, "Oh, this is compassionate. These people have rights." No, these people do not have rights for, to just die. We need to protect these people as humans. And again, that's why my whole thing is enforce the law. It is illegal to just be doing fentanyl on the street. So if we come in and we give you mandatory treatment, not jail, if you're not... You know, some of these people are just straight going to jail for animal abuse. They're torturing animals all day long on Skid Row. The videos that I get sent, once you see them, you can't unsee them. Not to mention now I'm working with all the rescue ones. The ones, they text me, and they're just like, "Spencer, we have to stop this." And the city knows. They call the cops all day long. The cops come and they say-- I mean, LAPD's hands are tied. If the mayor and the city attorney, they don't have the, like, enforce the law, they just get away with it. So we're in Mad Max life in Los Angeles, and people like to say, "Oh, it's not..." It's-- I'm from LA. I've grown up, and I keep saying I'm fighting to get LA back to what I grew up. It was beautiful. It's why I wanted to be on a TV show and be famous and be part of Hollywood. It was magical. Not even mention Hollywood is now gone. The fact that Hollywood Boulevard should be the greatest tourist attraction in the world, you couldn't pay me right now to go on Hollywood Boulevard, step on human feces, the smell of pee, inhaling fent. They're just, everyone can just smoke fentanyl on the streets now. It's psycho. So again, why did I-- Once you start digging in and you spend all your life now exposing this, because again, they burned my house down. They burned my mom's house down. I have to-- They put me in the game, and once you, the bubble's gone, I just, all I have is this energy to stop this. Not to mention now the amount of thousands of messages I get every day from every part of the city sending me photos. There's parents that when they drive to school all across city, this is not just one unique area, they have to have their kids in the backseat staring at an iPad not to look out the window because meth addicts will just be having sex on the side of the street. There's just naked people everywhere now. And when I say people, naked zombies. And the DEA will tell you ninety percent of these homeless people have a drug problem. We have a drug addict problem. These aren't people that just, like, missed a paycheck and we need to get them help and give back.

    9. JR

      Right.

    10. SP

      This is a drug problem that needs mandatory treatment, not handing people needles and pipes and saying, "Oh, here's a million dollar bed." If you're a fentanyl zombie hanging upside down, you don't care about a million dollar empty bed because you're just high. You sober up and you go get high again. But what were we talking about?

    11. JR

      [laughs]

    12. SP

      You got me pumped up. You got me pumped up.

    13. JR

      Well, it's good. It's good to be pumped up. I mean, there's no other explanation other than extensive fraud. There's no way they could be getting that much money from our taxes and have this big of a problem with crime and with homelessness. And it's almost like they want everybody to feel helpless. They want you to feel like there's nothing you could do so that it justifies throwing more money at the problem. Pull that article up again.

    14. SP

      Yeah.

  5. 16:28 – 23:43

    A case study in alleged corruption: the Cheviot Hills senior housing deal

    1. JR

      So, uh, so here it is. This is, uh, this is in the LAist. Homelessness deal now under federal investigation. Um, so even in LA's famously overheated real estate market, the profit and quick turnaround on senior housing complex and what's that word? Chev, Cheviot? Cheviot? How do you say that word?

    2. SP

      Cheviot Hills.

    3. JR

      Cheviot Hills. Do you know where that is?

    4. SP

      Uh-huh.

    5. JR

      Uh, neighborhood seems extraordinary. Man at the center of the deal since identified by federal prosecutors as Brentwood landlord and developer Steven Taylor bought the property on Shelby Drive in twenty twenty-three for eleven point two million purchase record shows. Okay, so this is, th- this is exactly what you're talking about.

    6. SP

      Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      Twenty-seven point three million to pay for that acquisition came from taxpayer grant funds authorized by city and state officials, according to grant documentations. LA Mayor Ka- Karen Bass and Governor Newsom touted the purchase as a key tool in the fight against homelessness. The fight against homelessness that they're losing. Um, the deal called for Taylor's involvement to be kept secret according to a confidentiality clause included in the purchase contract obtained through a public records request. That changed last month when federal authorities announced criminal charges against Taylor. He's accused of submitting fraudulent documents to borrow money for private lender, from private lenders when he bought this and/or, and other properties. So, uh, news conference, region's top federal prosecutor, Bill, uh, As- As-

    8. SP

      Asayli.

    9. JR

      Asayli. Asayli, said the investigation is ongoing. Taylor was arrested in August when the case was under seal and pleaded not guilty, court records show. It's the first of the two known criminal cases brought so far by the federal task force Asayli assembled in April to investigate fraud and corruption around the use of billions of dollars earmarked to combat homelessness in Southern California. So these people are just buccaneers. They're just buccaneers. This is a, a--Just a, a, a gigantic criminal enterprise that exists under this guise of b- you know, b- being kind. Like-

    10. SP

      So that case only exists because of that mom, Samantha, spent, did 7,500 of her own public records requests on that senior citizen home. That... And then the FBI came. She started posting it, and the FBI knocked on her door and said, "Can we meet with you?" And she gave them all of her files. So it's back to what I was saying. The feds wouldn't even got that story if this woman, Samantha, from The Integrity Project, didn't do 7,000 public records requests and build this case on her own, because she was, "What's going on in my next-door neighbor?"

    11. JR

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    12. SP

      So-

    13. JR

      Well, this has gotta be just one-

    14. SP

      Oh, oh-

    15. JR

      ... piece of the puzzle. This-

    16. SP

      That's 30 million-

    17. JR

      Yeah

    18. SP

      ... of 25-plus billion dollars.

    19. JR

      This is, so this is an extensive coordinated effort to, to siphon money.

    20. SP

      100%. And again, there's plenty of money to stop homelessness. Karen Bass will tell you, let's use her low number, made-up number. They go around and they count, they dri- This is a real thing. They drive around and they do the homeless count. You can volunteer, and you just count, like, oh, one, two. So that count-

    21. JR

      That's how they do it?

    22. SP

      Yes. [laughs] They just had a count recently. So the count supposedly is, I, let's say 45,000. The RAND Corporation will say that count is 30% low. I'll say that count's 100% low. But even so, let's say there's 100,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. $20 billion? Okay, that's California. Let's bring it down to in the last year to a couple billion dollars. We can't get people off the street with that much money? Just today, this DSA city council member was doing a video. She's bragging about, "Oh, I just secured $16 million grant." I love the way they use the grant. I just got $16 million more of our tax money, and she is putting in little tiny homes next to somebody's... Like, just next to a normal street where, again, this shouldn't be where that is, and it's housing approximately, they say 60 people or whatever. I did the... It was a quarter million dollars per person that they're bragging about. $250,000 a person can get anybody sober a nice little condo or apartment for a year, potentially whatever job tools you need. So this idea that takes a quarter million dollars to put a tiny h- It's everyone's getting a cut. It's like, again, it's like the mafia. Who's getting-

    23. JR

      So there's a bunch of things going on. There's a bunch of employees that are getting paid, so, and get- getting paid substantial amounts of money. You know, my friend Colion Noir found this out about San Francisco. So he went up to San Francisco. He saw all this homelessness, and he, he's a lawyer, but he's also... He, he doesn't know what's going on over there. He's like, "Wow, what's going on? Do they need more money?" He's like, "No. No, no, no, no, no, no. What's going on is they're actually incentivized to have more homeless people, 'cause the more homeless people, the bigger the bureaucracy grows, the bigger you can have your homeless foundation, your homeless task force, whatever it is." And these people are making quarter million dollars a year plus. And, which is insane. And he, he showed the list of the salaries of all these people. Like, how are you getting paid when the problem keeps getting worse, and all you're doing is hiring more people, and they're getting paid more money, and more projects, and more grants, and more homelessness? And it's not getting any better, but the money keeps coming in, so you're incentivized to keep the problem.

    24. SP

      Of... And increase it.

    25. JR

      Yes.

    26. SP

      [laughs] More money. It's a business.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. SP

      And, you know, people always talk, I grew up and I had, was well aware of the military industrial complex, but even with that, they track the bombs-

    29. JR

      Right

    30. SP

      ... and the fighter jets. This, it's even cr- It's even crazier because there's no... I think we, we serve. They use the word serve and cared for. They don't track results. They say, "Oh, we house 1,400 people." For a night? Two nights?

  6. 23:43 – 28:23

    Enforcement vs. ‘housing-first’: mandatory treatment, SB 43, and public safety

    1. SP

      So again, I keep saying, as mayor, I'll enforce the laws, because you cannot be a crazed drug addict zombie just running amok naked on the street. That is why, thank God, our amazing Democrats in California made this year SB 43, and that means if you can't manage your own mental state, you can come in and have a hold, a psych hold for 72 hours. And if it seems like, oh, this person needs real treatment, it can go to 45 days, and then it can go up to a year conservatorship. And as mayor, what I keep telling people is once you start enforcing the law, first off, people who just wanna do drugs and live on the streets, they will leave LA because they'll see, oh- [chuckles] This mayor's not playing around. We need to go somewhere else, or they're so crazy and we're gonna help them get medical treatment, or they're one of these dog-abusing type people, and I'm gonna put them under the jail to the point where once they get from under the jail somehow, if they ever get out, they will never come back to LA 'cause now they're been under the jail and they're gonna go under two times more till they end up in prison. Because if you abuse animals, once-- Again, once you see what I've seen, we're talking they're stapling dogs' eyes closed, lighting-

    2. JR

      I don't even... I can't even-

    3. SP

      Yeah

    4. JR

      ... yeah.

    5. SP

      It's, it's, it's insane. The shelters alone, where it's the city is doing mass murder because they're not giving these people enough funding, and I'm convinced now they must make money off of euthanizing j- so there's the street issue with the, with the zombies abusing dogs, and then the city just mass murdering dogs because they're not getting the proper funding and facilities, and they're not spaying and neutering and enforcing all the laws to keep, you know, street breeders from just flooding the streets with the dogs. So-

    6. JR

      [sighs]

    7. SP

      ... back to you enforce the law, and this isn't impossible. I've, I've met with a lot of people that have real estate in Los Angeles, and they have real estate in San Francisco. And Mayor Lurie came in, and he started enforcing the law and just saying, "You can't do this." And he has c- cleaned up the city pretty well. You know, there's obviously people that say he's not doing enough, and again-

    8. JR

      I'm sorry, what city is this?

    9. SP

      San Francisco.

    10. JR

      San Francisco. All right.

    11. SP

      And so he, he took the call from the feds, and he said, "I'm gonna do this," and he's doing a, a solid job. Again, I'm going whole next level because I'm not concerned about optics. I'm not concerned about, oh, Spencer's doing this. He's so mean. No, what's mean is letting people live on the street in human poop and dying on the street. And these people I run against, they're all the same. They go, "Oh, we need more housing. We need more affordable housing. We need more beds. This isn't working. We..." They just keep doubling down.

    12. JR

      Well, that's a false narrative.

    13. SP

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      Everybody knows it's not a housing problem. It's not... That's not what it is. It's a drug abuse and mental health problem. That's all it is. It's not a housing problem. That's a flat-out lie, and anybody who says that should be shamed. When they say we need more affordable housing, well, you're fucking lying, and you're a part of the problem. If you're saying it's just an affordable housing problem, that means either you are a part of the propaganda narrative and you've been told to say this, or you're in on it.

    15. SP

      100%.

    16. JR

      That's it.

    17. SP

      And what they do-

    18. JR

      At this point, it's fucking nuts.

    19. SP

      N-

    20. JR

      Skid Row is 50 blocks.

    21. SP

      It's, it can't even be called Skid Row anymore. It's called Los Angeles, where every community.

    22. JR

      Right.

    23. SP

      Before my house burned down in the Palisades, my wife was ready to move because every morning in front of Palisades Elementary, that then burned down, and across the street at my son's preschool at Methodist, there was a lady cleaning her private parts in front of kids at 7:45 in the morning. You call LAPD, they pull up, and they go, "You don't know why," 'cause they can't enforce the law. She'd go around the corner, and she'd go number two in front of Joe's Barber Shop. C- I would know, uh, 'cause I had to step over the number two 'cause I'd always park right near Joe's Barber Shop. So it's not Skid Row. It's everywhere. It's-

    24. JR

      So the police are told not to do anything about it? Is that what it is?

    25. SP

      If you don't enforce the law, what are they gonna do?

    26. JR

      Right. So i- this comes down from the mayor.

    27. SP

      Of course. And then the mayor-

    28. JR

      So the mayor-

    29. SP

      ... and the city attorney, if the mayor is not telling the city attorney to prosecute all these misdemeanors, put these people in mandatory ho- if you're cleaning your private parts in front of kids and you're a normal citizen, you are going to jail.

    30. JR

      Right.

  7. 28:23 – 34:31

    Skid Row’s evolution and LA’s broader decline: crime, tourism, and everyday life

    1. JR

      It's so weird to see, you know, uh, 'cause I lived in LA for so long, and when I first moved there in the '90s, there was nothing like this. It was, uh, it was nice, you know? I mean, there was a lot of traffic, but that was it. There was some crime, but it wasn't that bad, and everything just keeps getting worse and worse and worse, and it, it didn't seem really bad until... Well, Skid Row was always bad, and Skid Row was bad on purpose. So for people that don't know, and we, we looked into this because we w- uh, well, I found out about Skid Row, I knew it existed, but I found out about it when we were filming Fear Factor. So one day, 'cause we filmed a lot in downtown LA in a lot of these abandoned warehouses and buildings, and we were in one of these warehouses, and we left the set, and I drove home, and I took a wrong turn [chuckles] and, uh, I went down near the outskirts of Skid Row. And it's hard to believe that it's real if you haven't seen it. When you're talking just blocks and blocks and blocks where there's nothing but homeless people, just people on the streets, camped out, wandering through the streets. There's no cars driving whatsoever, garbage everywhere, and the idea that that's never been cleaned up is fucking insane. So what we found out is that that was an area a long time ago where they started moving people. I don't know when was this. This was the Jerome Hotel, right? That's what we talked about?

    2. SP

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      That's what it was. So there was a documentary around the Jerome Hotel, and when we looked into it, it turns out that what w- they would do is they would find vagrants, which is what the old school term for it, and they would find them in Beverly Hills or Hollywood, and they would just move them to downtown LA to Skid Row and leave them there and keep them there. The idea was to keep them there. They had food there for them. They had kitchens, they let them k-Camp out on the street, just stay here. And it ruined all Cecil-

    4. SP

      Cecil.

    5. JR

      The Cecil Hotel, that's right. So, uh, this is where they... So Cecil Hotel was, like, this beautiful hotel that existed in downtown LA, and now it's just, like, it's in Zombieland.

    6. SP

      Huh.

    7. JR

      And the whole area is filled with fucking, just everything around it is homeless. Like, the, the sheer volume of it is impossible to describe unless you go there and see it. And the fact that that's never been addressed, that no one does anything about it, and it's emer- it's gotten to 50 entire blocks of nothing but homeless people. No businesses, no nothing. Nothing's functioning. It's all just taken over by zombies.

    8. SP

      I went to USC, and I lived in a loft on Skid Row at the top of the Old Bank District. So in 2003, that was my street that I would pull in and park. Very good deal. That's why I was like, "This is-

    9. JR

      [laughs]

    10. SP

      I got a entire penthouse. Why," you know, "I didn't get, you know, a 20. Why-

    11. JR

      Right

    12. SP

      ... it was so cheap?" But, so I've seen the progression to the point where it's insane. And again, this is fixable.

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. SP

      There's so much money. We're already paying for it.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. SP

      These people in charge don't wanna fix it. It's clear.

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. SP

      And they'll continue doubling down. They need somebody to come and say, "Oh, we're done with this." And that's why I'm excited to actually be a mayor that's in these streets. And the... Here's what they keep saying, "Oh, you can't do this," 'cause the city council, they're all in on it, m- you know, 90% of them, 'cause they have four of these socialist DSA members on the city council that actually wanna destroy our way of life in Los Angeles.

    19. JR

      Why do you think they wanna do that?

    20. SP

      Because they're socialists. Go on the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America's website, and they're not Democrats. They hate Democrats. They use the word to hide their true agenda of socialism. So they wanna keep taking as much of our tax money. And exact- the main lady I was talking about with that 60 million, she's one of these DSA people. She's bragging about taking $16 million of our tax money to give 40-plus people or 50 people 250,000 each to live in a tiny home. That is not a working solution. We need to have a f- a plan to get these people back into society, not bankroll an entire existence of Los Angeles where we're like, "Oh, you can just be a drug addict, and we're gonna pay for you because-"

    21. JR

      Yeah, this is the problem with that narrative that the rich people aren't paying enough, and this is one of the things that I, I've, I've seen progressive podcasters talk about the wealth tax, and they were talking about imposing a wealth tax on billionaires. And they're like, "Stop being greedy. Pay your fair share." Like, what is your fair share, and where is it going? Like, if you could show me that an increase in taxes would fix all the problems... I said this when I lived there. I wouldn't mind paying more taxes if they fixed everything. But it doesn't seem like it fixes anything. Not one thing gets fixed, and they keep asking for more money, which is crazy. The solution is cut it all off. One of the things that Texas has: no state taxes. There's no state taxes. There's... You don't pay state taxes in Texas. In California, you pay 14%. So they're incentivized to take that money and do with it whatever they want. And so the more they can come up with, like building tiny homes or whatever the fuck it is, the... It's just incentives for them to siphon money.

    22. SP

      And again, as mayor, I wanna have full accountability and transparency where that's what everybody that's paying. If there's a lot of good people that are fine with paying as much tax as they want, if you're helping people-

    23. JR

      Right

    24. SP

      ... get off the street, if the lights work, if the streets work-

    25. JR

      If there's less crime-

    26. SP

      If all-

    27. JR

      ... if it's safe-

    28. SP

      All this

    29. JR

      ... if it's nice, if it's clean.

    30. SP

      So we need to track every single dollar and make sure that there's no waste and abuse. And with that type of live dashboard, and not track it with these weird data. I'm talking anyone can understand this money goes here, and it-

  8. 34:31 – 40:13

    Politics and power: city council resistance, DSA influence, and ‘co-govern’ contracts

    1. JR

      Well, so let's talk real-world practical application. So you get into office. Now you have all these council members that, these Democratic socialist people. How do you handle that? What do you do? How do you keep them from blocking all these things you're trying to do?

    2. SP

      N- so that is what excites me because there's never been a mayor that comes in and literally goes to each of their constituents of these districts. For instance, this DSA member wants to keep giving the fentanyl needles and the pipes. Then I go to that district, I have a press conference, I bring everybody, I say, "This so-and-so wants to keep these zombies going number two and having sex in front of your kids," and put the heat on the city council members. Right now they care about their jobs. They get 238,000 a year salary. They get, not even including their entourage. Then they get, you know, our grants and our tax money for all their little scams they're running. So they actually want those jobs. If a mayor comes in and is like, "Oh, we're g- I'm gonna put the heat on each one of you." 'Cause right now, the mayor, Karen Bass, isn't calling out each district and their failures. These, these constituents, the taxpayers need somebody to come in and expose each of these districts and go into their communities and be like, "This is what you're voting for." So at least at the next election, they're out. So then once they start feeling the pressure of somebody on their neck, they're gonna start, be like, "Oh, I don't want... I wanna keep my job. I like this power."

    3. JR

      Well, well there's been a concerted effort to put those people into government, right? And you know, a lot of people point to George Soros, and he's one of them, and his Open Society Foundation is one of the people that likes to do that, particularly for very progressive prosecutors and DAs.But it's, there's more than just him. There's a, there's a whole machine behind it, and this is what I don't understand. Because if you wanted to destroy a city, if you wanted to destroy society, you would do it exactly the way they're doing it. So like what is their incentive, and why are they doing it this way?

    4. SP

      Well, they wanna destroy it to then rebuild it in their vision. The second my town burned down and it's all dirt, who's coming in with the ideas? "Oh, we got 100 million for affordable housing. We're gonna do this." They have a plan. They have a vision that's not gonna work, but they have their utopia that they would love to then rebuild-

    5. JR

      Well, how do you, how do you say it's not gonna work? Like what's gonna stop them-

    6. SP

      Because so-

    7. JR

      ... from doing that in the Palisades?

    8. SP

      'Cause socialism has failed everywhere. I'm saying-

    9. JR

      Well, it's certainly gonna fail.

    10. SP

      Oh, oh.

    11. JR

      But what's to stop them from ruining the Palisades?

    12. SP

      Well, I did. I stopped them. They can say that SB79 or whatever their, you know, housing thing was never gonna apply to Palisades, but after me attacking it all day for weeks, they added like 13 notes and made the Palisades a fire hazard area where you couldn't build high density. Because what they do, there's a new state law that just got passed, and if you're... Again, these aren't exact. All the YIMBYs are gonna go nuts I'm saying it wrong.

    13. JR

      What's a YIMBY?

    14. SP

      Your... Something about your backyard, not my... I'll-

    15. JR

      [laughs]

    16. SP

      Who knows? I don't... You know, they're... I have to block them usually on, on social media. But I- they have a vision that everything in California and Los Angeles should be high density, how... Then we need to build these seven, nine story structures to have more affordable housing, so they wanna get rid of single family homes and put seven story buildings on. So the NIMBYs, not in, not in my backyard, they, they fight these people on, on X. So, you know, to be honest, I'm not either of them. They try to... I'm fine with more housing, but I also want people to have single family homes, and I think the fact that we lost the idea where we can't fight for the, the California dream to have a front yard with grass, and it's be- gotten so expensive and impossible, that should be the problem. Not that, "Oh, we've given up. Nobody should ever get that. We need to build these seven story prison-like structures and give anyone who can't afford just a box to live in." Let's fight to get the California where people had a front yard and grass and-

    17. JR

      Well, it's also insane to try to do that with the Palisades 'cause the Palisades has always been a wealthy neighborhood where people with a lot of money spent a lot of money and also s- paid a lot of money in taxes and had these beautiful homes. And the idea that you're gonna take that over with low-income housing, well, those people are gonna move out of there, and there goes the tax money from those people. Not only that, those people lost their homes. Their homes were taken from them by the fire, and that's not fair. It's, it's not fair at all that you would just do that. It doesn't make any sense.

    18. SP

      I like to use the word stolen. Uh, the houses were stolen from Malibu. A misconception though, 'cause I'm from the Palisades and I grew up, the Palisades just became this wealthier, wealthier, you know, famous people in the last, let's say 10 years. But growing up-

    19. JR

      That's it? Really?

    20. SP

      Yeah. Like when-

    21. JR

      10 years?

    22. SP

      Where it's, we're talking big, you know, $40 million type big houses. Like when I grew up-

    23. JR

      I thought it was always like that.

    24. SP

      No.

    25. JR

      I thought it wa- it was always nice.

    26. SP

      It was nice, but you know, lawyers and doctor- you know, not Silicon Valley and movie star.

    27. JR

      Got it.

    28. SP

      You know?

    29. JR

      Right. Right.

    30. SP

      Hardworking people passed these houses down generations, so-

  9. 40:13 – 44:16

    Deep dive on the Palisades fire origin: New Year’s Eve ignition and alleged rekindle

    1. SP

      So let's go back. Let's do the fire 'cause that, that's a great... We haven't even... You know, we just touched on it, but nobody's really talked about what happened, how this fire started, you know, why we're on the fire. So people would think about the Palisades fire and they go, "Oh, January 7th." Well, what happened, the fire for January 7th actually started on New Year's Eve. So there's a case right now, it's kinda fallen through the cracks. It, it, it may not go forward. There's a arson case. So supposedly, allegedly, this guy lit a fire at New Year's Eve with a lighter or a cigarette, and there was a eight-acre fire. Now, according to witness testimonies, about 30 people had saw fireworks go into this site called, uh, Lockman, Skull Rock. So at New Year's Eve, eight-acre fire starts, LAFD responds, but the issue what people don't understand, when they respond, they can't come up there with heavy dozers. So a dozer, like a bulldozer, has a rake-type s- thing on the front, and they clear around the fire, and they make a fire break even when the fire's going. Ideally, you'd want the fire break before, which because of California state parks and plant over people policies, we don't have fire breaks. So dead fuels, dead brush has been growing around lots of communities for 50, 60 years.

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. SP

      So right now the Palisades burned down, but what's next is Brentwood, Hollywood, Hollywood Hills, uh, Sunland, Tujunga, um, what else? Bel Air. All these are going, they're... I'm sorry people who live here. They're all gonna burn down if we don't come in here, make fire breaks up 300 feet. Because when I met with Chief Bobby Garcia and I asked him about fire breaks, the purpose of the fire break is to give firefighters a chance to dig in, and when they drop the retardant, if there's not a 300-foot break, then, then all the retardant just falls through the different levels of the foliage and it doesn't make a moat. So when if you, you have a break, it creates a moat-type situation, and now the firefighters have a chance to get up there and respond. So back to January 1st. They couldn't bring their dozers up. We now have text messages because, again, I'm one of the lead plaintiffs suing the city of LA, LADWP, and the state of California State Parks. So I have all the text messages, public now. But we have the texts from the park rangers, the LAFD, and they're joking about, "Of course I'm not bringing any dozers. I know the rule. You know, protected plants." Keep in mind-I never knew about this plant. It's called milk vetch. Nobody respectfully cares about milk vetch, but somebody in the environmental world cares more about milk vetch than 12 people burning alive, 'cause the plant that was protected is the reason, pretty much, these people burned alive. So they do their best, you know, the LAFD puts it out, but now we know that the fire was still smoldering. We have hiking footage of the next day and the day after in the state park, Topanga State Park, hikers, tourists. We have a, a guy who lived down the street. Of course, he had his own drone that had... Not only a regular drone, he had a thermal in-imaging drone.

    4. JR

      Oh, wow.

    5. SP

      So the whole hillside is just smoking, and we now have a firefighter, Pike, on his subpoena video, he says that he clearly saw smoldering pockets of coal that he didn't even wanna touch, and he informed his chief, "Hey, we can't pull the hoses." And the chief said, "Pull the hoses." Not just Pike, multiple firefighters have now said that it was all smoking, but-

    6. JR

      Why would they pull the hoses?

    7. SP

      After meeting with so many firefighters since, I've realized the fire department is so understaffed, so underfunded. They're operating a fire department from the 1960s with 50% more calls now, 80% of them are for zombies, to overdoses. 30% of the fires are zombie encampment fires. So to me now, I'm trying to get in that chief... I spoke with that chief on the phone, and in my mind, it's a budget thing. Everything's

  10. 44:16 – 1:14:25

    Fire governance failures: budget cuts, empty reservoirs, and LADWP mismanagement claims

    1. SP

      just like, "Oh, we don't have, you know, clocks ticking in. We don't have the money to stay up here with the hoses." Because three years earlier, the same area in the Highlands, I think they left the hoses up in the Palisades for 18 months. You leave the hoses up 'cause it stays hot, and they have them up. They pulled them the next day. So I think it's a funding thing. I mean, the chief, Chief Crowley, who Mayor Bass fired in retaliation for telling the truth, seven weeks before the Palisades fire, she wrote a memo to Karen Bass and said, "I am dangerously underfunded. I cannot keep Angelenos safe." What does Mayor Bass do? Cuts another 17 million from the fire department. So in my mind, the chief's like, "I can't l- I don't have the money to leave guys up here. We gotta go."

    2. JR

      So has anyone asked her what was her justification for the cuts?

    3. SP

      Well, the city's broke. The city has no money.

    4. JR

      But how do they have so much money to buy homes and homeless shelters and spend all that money?

    5. SP

      Here's the best part. I've now found out since then, there was $400 million just in an account that they hadn't even touched for homeless in... Literally, at the time she cut the 17 million, there's 400 million that right now is still there that they haven't used, allocated 400 million. So it's, they got it for the zombies, not for the tax-paying citizens' public safety. Not to mention, back to the taxpayers, the Palisades probably is largely at, at the time of the fire, was probably the most money in taxes was going to the city from the Palisades.

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. SP

      So you don't... Back to, back to Lockman. So they leave because if you listen to their testimony, the state park rangers say, "Oh, we got this. We'll keep an eye on this," da, da, da, da, da. In the subpoenaed depositions, they ask one of the state park rangers, "Well, did you see the smoldering hill?" They say, "Uh, yeah." "What'd you do?" "Oh, I took a photo." "What'd you do with the photo?" "Nothing." "What do you mean?" "Well, I'm not a firefighter."

    8. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    9. SP

      So the state park's own manual says they're supposed to close this park, uh, to make sure it's not a dangerous condition, obviously, and to monitor it. Did they close the state park? No, worse. Guess what the state park m- rangers asked the firefighters to do? And there's photos. It's mind-boggling. They asked the firefighters to take dead brush and fuel, and they carry it, and they put it over the fire break from a day earlier around where they made the fire break, around that January 1st. They take the dead bushes, and they cover up the fire break. There's photos of it. It's the craziest thing you ever seen.

    10. JR

      What?

    11. SP

      Because they didn't want people to go on the wrong trails because they look like hiking trails now.

    12. JR

      Oh, my God.

    13. SP

      So they take-

    14. JR

      So if you wanted to be cynical, do you think that the, having this $400 million and keeping it in there and keeping, funneling money into homelessness and not into the fire department is simply because the fire department is not profitable? You can't siphon money off of the fire department. The fire department basically just goes to fight fires. It goes to equipment, people's salaries, maintaining the fire departments. It, it, you can't steal that money.

    15. SP

      You wanna know how sick it is right now? The fire department, LAFD, their union, all the members... Ha, get, like, choked up. I feel so... 'Cause I met with these, you know, I keep meeting with these guys, and you hear from their heart. You're like, "Oh, this is so heavy." They had to take their own money to get on a ballot measure, a million dollars. They all pooled it together to get a ballot measure this coming election to get a half cent on sales tax in LA so that they could have money to fund s- actual things they need to keep-

    16. JR

      A half a cent.

    17. SP

      A half a cent on all the... But the point is-

    18. JR

      That's it

    19. SP

      ... they need to go out of their own pocket to get a ballot measure because they know they will never get funded by the city to keep Angelenos safe, that they gotta go out of the, and make their own-

    20. JR

      But there's only one way to look at it. You g- you, you would look at it like, well, what would be the logical reason why they would allocate so much money towards homelessness and so little towards the fire department? When the fire department is... You know, I've said this before, but if you wanna talk about, like, socialism that works, the fire department is socialism that works. If you really care about socialism, and that's the thing that you really believe in, there's certain aspects of socialism that are applicable in a healthy community. One of them is the fire department, that your money should go, we should pool some of our taxes to go to make sure that we're all protected, and the fire department doesn't just protect the rich people, protects all people. Fires break out, the fire department comes in, regardless whether you have any money or not. We all pool our money together for the fire department. It makes sense. But if it's that-You can't steal that money, right? So there's no way you can fig- the homelessness is, it's vague, it's weird. You can hide it. It's like you, you're counting bodies on the street. Oh, one, two, three, let's write 5,000. Like, you don't have, like, real accounting these people because it's so chaotic. But fire department, you know the employees. You know the fire department. You know where the trucks are. You know where everything is. You can't steal that money. But that homeless budget, boy, there's a lot of wiggle room in that homeless budget. And if you wanted to be cynical, you would say that's why they fun- they fund the fire department so little and they fund the homeless so much.

    21. SP

      Well, also, these DSA socialists, they don't wanna fund the fire department. They don't wanna fund the, the police department. They want these type of entities to be defunded. They don't even want them to exist. It's on the-

    22. JR

      So what do they expect when fires happen?

    23. SP

      To let us... Right now they want things just to burn. Go... If you look around the city-

    24. JR

      How the fuck do these people get in office? Like, who's voting for them?

    25. SP

      They're tricky. They have these ground teams, and they go around, they got a real ground game, and they go knock on old people's doors and they say, "Oh, we're Democrats. We help the..." They have nice words and they got a strong... Like, in LA I think there's 5,000 at least members that can hit the street, whereas a normal, you know, for instance, Spencer Pratt running for mayor, I don't have 5,000 people on deck to go knock on doors. And not to mention, they're funded. They have 100,000-plus members across the US. They have outside entities that give them money. And again, they're sneaky. If you go watch on YouTube videos, they talk so much S-H-I-T about Democrats. Republi- they hate all these people, so they don't want either party. They want them. Here's the craziest part. This should be illegal. Like, right now, the one who's running against me, their Democrat, you know, socialist, Champagne Queen, she, when you sign up with the DSA, you sign a, like a, like a contract to co-govern with the DSA. How is it legal when you are-

    26. JR

      What?

    27. SP

      Yes.

    28. JR

      Wait a minute. Explain that.

    29. SP

      So when you become, you get a c- you're a DSA member. So right now she's a city council member.

    30. JR

      Uh-huh.

  11. 1:14:25 – 1:19:55

    Media, cover-ups, and City Hall chaos: Ghana trip, deputy mayor bomb threat, deleted texts

    1. SP

      Here's where the best part. Do you know when the mayor was in Ghana as everything was burning down?

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. SP

      Do you know who she left in charge? Her deputy mayor. Do you know where the deputy mayor was? The deputy mayor, Mayor Karen Bass' deputy mayor, was on house arrest because he was arrested for calling in a bomb threat to City Hall. This is real life.

    4. JR

      [laughs]

    5. SP

      This is, this is the person that's supposed to take the call because she's in Africa.

    6. JR

      Why did he call in a bomb threat to City Hall?

    7. SP

      Great question.

    8. JR

      [laughs]

    9. SP

      [laughs] I, I, I was... I, you know? So that's who-

    10. JR

      Ugh

    11. SP

      ... the type of people we're dealing with. So when they're like, "Oh, Spencer, you don't have the experience to be mayor," well, I promise my deputy mayors that I have on deck, they aren't calling in any bomb threats to City Hall. So we're already starting ahead of the curve. Also, I'm not going in to steal taxpayer money. I'm going in to stop all this. So again, I really believe there's enough common sense people that see that I'm not doing politics. I don't wanna g- do any of this. Politics are, it's a job. These people are career politicians. I never wanted to be a career politician. Before my house burned down, I was selling my healing crystals. [laughs] They, just to be clear, they have no magical powers. They all burned in my house. [laughs]

    12. JR

      [laughs]

    13. SP

      So anybody, you know, you're buying them, they, uh, you know, I thought they had protection energy. Uh, uh, they don't. So-

    14. JR

      [laughs]

    15. SP

      ... uh, [laughs] you know, and feeding hummingbirds. That, and, and taking my kids to school. That was my dream life, and they burned it down, and now they have their worst nightmare coming to just undo the whole thing.

    16. JR

      Former Los Angeles deputy, deputy mayor of public safety agrees to plead guilty to threatening to bomb LA City Hall last year. Now, what was the reason? Brian K. Williams, 61, of Pasadena, is charged in a single count information with threats regarding fire and explosives.

    17. SP

      It doesn't have a reason, but it says what he did.

    18. JR

      Hmm.

    19. SP

      You know, I don't think there's ever a good reason. [laughs]

    20. JR

      Well-

    21. SP

      Yeah

    22. JR

      ... I mean, I would like to hear his reason.

    23. SP

      It's the-

    24. JR

      Uh, bomb threat. "I received a call on my city cell phone at 10:48 this morning. The male caller stated that he was tired of the city's support of Israel, and he's decided to place a bomb in City Hall." So that's it. Uh, it might be in the rotunda. I immediately contacted the... So it was about Israel. Wow.

    25. SP

      I think, excuse me, he made it up. Up here it says that he used his Google Voice application on his personal cell phone-

    26. JR

      [gasps]

    27. SP

      ... to place a call to his city-issued cell phone.

    28. JR

      Wow.

    29. SP

      He then left the meeting and called the chief of staff up. Doesn't say why.

    30. JR

      What a fucking idiot.

  12. 1:19:55 – 1:35:47

    Crime, policing, and ‘no consequences’: home invasions, bail policies, and fear

    1. JR

      The, the crime in Los Angeles, when you talk to average people, like the people that I know that live there, they're fucking terrified. They say break-ins are just commonplace now, where they w- it used to be very rare. You get home invasions constantly. I mean, Ted Sarandos, his mother-in-law was killed in a home invasion, and they're, they're happening all the time. It's because there's no police response, and they know there's not gonna be a police response, so more people are hiring private security. Uh, it's very difficult to get a gun or at least a concealed carry permit. It's very difficult.

    2. SP

      In defense of LA County Sheriff and LAPD, they have gotten better-

    3. JR

      Yes

    4. SP

      ... at CCWs now because of the s- the laws-

    5. JR

      But because of the crime

    6. SP

      ... 'cause of the law.

    7. JR

      I mean, but the, it's not the sheriff's fault. The sheriff wants it.

    8. SP

      Yeah, and they don't have the staff even to-

    9. JR

      Exactly

    10. SP

      ... process it, so it just takes up to a year. But I know they all... That's the thing. I talk to so many sheriffs, so many LAPD, so many firefighters. Everybody is just broken. Their spirits are broken. Why are we doing this? Why don't we just go to Newport Beach-

    11. JR

      Right

    12. SP

      ... or Huntington Beach?

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. SP

      There's-

    15. JR

      Or Florida.

    16. SP

      Or any... You can just-

    17. JR

      Yeah. Just leave the state.

    18. SP

      What am I doing? They k- they keep saying, and-

    19. JR

      Well, this is the thing that Newsom always chimes in about how much money b- uh, California brings in, how much, many venture capitalists are in California, how much money in tech is in California. Right. But it has nothing to do with your government. It has in spite of your government they're doing that.

    20. SP

      And they're leaving.

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. SP

      Hollywood was the greatest thing. The amount of money Hollywood made for Los Angeles, from the grips, to the camera operators, to the glam people-

    23. JR

      Yeah

    24. SP

      ... to the costume-

    25. JR

      Sure.

    26. SP

      People don't understand, like, you know, people hate, like, oh, like, Hollywood, you know, stupid movie stars are so rich. They forget about the ecosystem that connects to that-

    27. JR

      Yes

    28. SP

      ... say, Tom Cruise that makes some-

    29. JR

      Yes.

    30. SP

      The amount of money is gone. And for instance, just last week, they finally got Baywatch to come back to LA. Baywatch starts shooting for, like, two days, and then they kick 'em off the beach. There's all these permit problems. So I write a Substack calling this out, calling out the mayor. Next thing you know, they come back, and the mayor makes a deal. What's the funniest thing right now is whatever I post and do, the mayor is now do- Like I said the other day, I'm getting rid of the whole fire commission. This fire commission has been there for, like, 10 years, I think. After I do this post or whatever, boom, four out of five of the fire commission resign. So they're trying to just st- get ahead of-

  13. 1:35:47 – 1:43:57

    Pratt’s ‘Day One’ agenda: enforcement surge, federal support, dashboards, and rebuilding LA

    1. JR

      So let's, let's-

    2. SP

      We haven't even talked jujitsu too.

    3. JR

      [laughs]

    4. SP

      Are we gonna put on gis or what?

    5. JR

      Let's talk about day one. So day one, realistically, what can you do, and how do you implement all these ideas that you have?

    6. SP

      So right now what I've learned is all the smartest, brightest people would never wanna come work in LA 'cause they know any of their ideas are not gonna be used. The system is in play. The amount of private industry... I, like for instance, a CEO's house burned down who sold his company to Warren Buffett. We're talking big, legit CEO. He said, "I'll come in. I'll work for a dollar a year." You know, there's people like this that wanna get LA back-

    7. JR

      Right

    8. SP

      ... that I'm gonna surround myself. People like Rick Caruso. He wants to get building. You lean on these people that they talk about it. They just don't wanna go into this toxic environment that you can't... It's a cartel. They know there's only so much they can do unless there's a mayor like me that's gonna let them do it. I've al- I just got off the phone with Steve Mosko. He was the president of multiple studios, Sony. I'm gonna bring him in within a, like an Avengers team for Hollywood, how we clean up all these permit issues and get Hollywood back and make the incentives, make it... My idea is literally not charge. You wanna shoot in LA, there's no p- we needWe're gonna charge you? No-

    9. JR

      We need work

    10. SP

      ... we need work.

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. SP

      And then we can, in six years, we can come back and worry about that, but bring the business back. So meeting with the Ted Sarandos, putting these actual commissions. Not to mention, I already met with the, there's the community budget advocates. They're like LA budget experts. They presented seven budget initiatives to Mayor Bass. She didn't do one. I'm gonna do all seven. These type of budget things where you don't just increase all these payments to city unions or whatever with- if the budget doesn't have the money. There's gonna be a commission that looks everything publicly for 30 days. Right now it's just her CAO. It's like having your accountant and, and check your taxes, like, from the IRS.

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. SP

      It's all... We need to have outside, independent people ch- checking all this stuff. So it's more of, again, I'm talking with Chief Garcia, who's retiring, who's the GOAT firefighter, to be one of my deputy, to be one of my deputy mayors of fire and public safety, not a deputy mayor that calls bomb threats into the city.

    15. JR

      [laughs]

    16. SP

      So just using experienced people that wanna get LA and surrounding myself. One thing I know I have is common sense. Now all the things that I need, the professionals, you bring them in, and they'll wanna work with me because they know, they hear my message, "Oh, he's gonna undo all this." You're telling me for $750,000 I couldn't find a better LADWP CEO to make sure there's waters in the reservoir, figure out how to get rates down? We have plenty of money. We're paying these jobs. We're clearly not getting the proper talent, obviously. Look at the city. So it's-

    17. JR

      You're getting talent that's ideologically aligned.

    18. SP

      That's... Yeah, exactly.

    19. JR

      And it's a part of this whole cartel.

    20. SP

      Exactly. So-

    21. JR

      Yeah, and they know what they're doing. They know the game. They play the game. They listen to whatever the top dogs say, and they follow business as usual, and the money keeps getting moved around.

    22. SP

      To the point where I could poach talent from other major cities that are successful at these jobs. I can pay them more, clearly, than other... But it'd be like, "Wow, you did this here? Come out to LA. Don't worry, the zombies will be gone by the time you get here." But there are these people, there's tons of cities around America that don't look like LA. This is not some rocket science I have to figure out.

    23. JR

      You're in one of them right now.

    24. SP

      There we go.

    25. JR

      Yeah, drive around Austin. There's a homeless problem, but it's minor. It's very small in comparison to Los Angeles.

    26. SP

      Again, there will be homeless problems always.

    27. JR

      Everywhere.

    28. SP

      Everywhere.

    29. JR

      Always.

    30. SP

      But the drug addiction crime where they run the streets, that's a problem that can be fixed.

  14. 1:43:57 – 2:00:22

    Elections, opposition tactics, and closing pitch: polls, hit pieces, ballot concerns

    1. JR

      Have you thought about a timeline of how all these ideas that you have, like, how long it'll take to actually implement them?

    2. SP

      F- Once you start enforcing the law, things are gonna move quick. It, it's, it's as simple as, okay, I'm mayor of LA. I got my new, my new deputy mayors. We have my new police commissions. We're going around and we're just arresting people, and the people that aren't getting arrested, we're getting to mandatory medical treatment, and we're just gonna start clearing the streets, clearing the encampments. And then from that, it just, everything's gonna come to... First off, imagine the communities, like, the, how pumped people are gonna be in these neighborhoods when I come in and I'm like, "This is done." People are-

    3. JR

      What is this other person, this Democratic socialist lady, what, what is her solution to all these problems? Crime, homelessness, all these things. What is she saying? She, is she admitting that there are issues, and does she have a solution that she's proposing?

    4. SP

      [laughs] She just posted it yesterday. I didn't read it. Somebody just tagged it. It was so funny. One of the quotes was, "We're gonna have a street medical team." A street medical team? We already have that. It's called the LAFD, and they're spending 80% of their calls responding to these overdoses, and we're also paying for that. And are gonna... No. They, they, 'cause they're so deep in it, they can't say mandatory treatment.

    5. JR

      Mm.

    6. SP

      Because these people have rights to die on the sidewalk. They have rights to attack. So we need more housing. This is a... These beds aren't working. We need to get more beds. So yes, she needs more affordable beds, more... It's not working as she's running it.

    7. JR

      As she's running it.

    8. SP

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      So she just wants to keep business as usual, just with more funds.

    10. SP

      No. She wasn't even running until three hours before the last, where you have to fill it out. But when everyone saw I was gonna win and be the mayor, they... So the real conspiracy is, it's my conspiracy, I don't know if it's real, that Karen Bass and Nithya are working together just to block me to make sure, because it's a jungle runoff. So June 2nd, the top two numbers go to November. I was one billion percent going to November, until one hour before, she just pops up, after she'd already endorsed Mayor Bass. They were doing photo ops together a week before. They're close. Mayor Bass endorsed this Nithya lady. They're like a team. So two hours before the last minute where you have to sign to, where they announce the final candidates, she's had a year to run for mayor, or plus, you could've announced. It's just to block me from going to November. But what they don't understand is, people that will vote for me would never vote for her or Karen Bass. They're actually picking off their own stats. If anything, what they're doing is making me the mayor on June 2nd, because if you have 51% of the vote, I just become the mayor on June 2nd, and I think they're in for a big surprise, and they're underestimating how angry everybody is in the city of LA, and I think I become mayor June 2nd, and it won't even go to November.

    11. JR

      I think they really are underestimating how angry everybody is, because, uh, there's people that I talk to that used to be just hardcore Democrats, hardcore leftist progressives that are really saying, like, in hush tones, "We really need a Republican. We really need, like, some no-nonsense Rudy Giuliani person. I hate to say that. I hate to say it, but that's what we need. We need someone who's gonna be really tough on crime and clean everything up and stop all these people from having tents on the street." There's so many people like that, that are just quiet about it. They don't wanna talk about it openly and publicly because they're afraid of being shamed.

    12. SP

      I grew up in Palisades. I went to Crossroads High School. I don't think I've ever met a, a Republican.

    13. JR

      [laughs]

    14. SP

      No, I mean, for real. Like-

    15. JR

      Right

    16. SP

      ... all the people I know, all my family and friend, everybody I know is a Democrat.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. SP

      And all the people that are supporting me, all the people I talk to, they're Democrats. We're... This is not the Democrat Party that's running LA. The other day, I posted the, like, the, the commandment list of, I think it was 1996, Bill Clinton's Democratic Party. It looks like what I would say right now.

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. SP

      That's the Demo- No, this is socialism. This is communist. This is cartel. This is mafia.

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. SP

      This is not... Democrats love me. They w- they want all the same things. They wanna feel safe. They-

    23. JR

      It's really amazing how they can hide it by just pretending to be compassionate.

    24. SP

      And, and-

    25. JR

      They, they can hide all this money that they're just siphoning off, 'cause it really is just organized crime.

    26. SP

      Well, they say to people, "There's nothing we can do."

    27. JR

      [laughs]

    28. SP

      That's, that's, that's... People will be in my comments section being like, "There's nothing you can do." It's like, they are so good at just keeping this, "These people have rights." First off, it is illegal, just, this will blow people's mind, it's illegal to live on the sidewalk.

    29. JR

      Right.

    30. SP

      It's, it's a, that's a Democrat law. All the laws I wanna enforce are Democrat laws. I am the Democrat law enforcer mayor. [laughs] I should be every... [laughs] It's, I'm actually excited, 'cause I, I finally feel like there's, like, hope, 'cause when your house burns down and your mom's crying 'cause her house burnt down, every single day, everyone you know's house burnt down, you go through a dark, just, all my tax money. Like, I should be a millionaire. The am- you know, 'cause I got some big checks. People always say, "Oh, he burned all of his money." They don't understand. Living in LA in the entertainment business with a manager, an agent, a business manager, your taxes in LAYour state taxes, it's very hard to keep all that money. So they're like, "Oh, he burned the..." No, I, regardless, the amount of money I put in to the city of LA and the state, my house should still be here. So it's very sad moment, and then it, then you start uncovering, oh, no, this is almost strategic. This is, this... You know, a lot of people reached out after with the Lahaina, and they're like, "Oh, they Lahaina'd you. This is a land grab." And I was like, "No, no." And then you start going down, you're like, I'm not even argue with these people anymore because of how the writing was so on the wall. It's so on the wall, the entire insurance industry dropped everyone in the Palisades leading up to the fire. It was that flagrant. There was 70-year-old people, 70-year-old plus, I talked to 80-year-olds that got dropped by their insurance January 1st, been paying 40-plus years, didn't even get to re-up, lost everything, no insurance. If all the insurance companies are dropping an area, it's very clear that they know what's about to happen. So your city leaders, your mayor, everybody, your state, they should be getting ready or saying, "Oh, wow, everyone's dropping this?"

Episode duration: 2:00:23

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