Rick Caruso: How Broken Is Los Angeles Anyway? Fires, Riots, Protests, and Immigration | Tom Bilyeu

What happens when your city burns and the people in charge pour gasoline instead of water? America is in danger of unraveling politically, economically, and socially. This is literally one of the most volatile moments in modern history. Riots in our biggest cities, a trade war with our biggest partner, and a government seized by division. The extremes are pulling harder than ever and real leadership feels non-existent. But disruption always creates opportunity, and today I'm joined by a man who ran to fix the second largest city in America and got a front row seat to how broken the system really is. Billionaire developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso joins me today to break down what he saw during the LA riots, why political leadership is failing, and what it will actually take to rebuild trust, safety, and the American dream. If you're tired of empty outrage and want an actual clear path forward, this is the episode for you. I feel like right now we are in one of the most precarious moments in modern history, for sure, with the political divisiveness that we have. LA is certainly going through a microcosm of what we're experiencing on the national level. Yeah. What would you have done if you'd been in charge during the recent LA riots? I think you've got to have a culture change in the city of Los Angeles. So, you know, go back before the riots. You you have a culture in this city of a lot of elected officials going to jail. Um a lot of elected officials skirting the law, quite frankly. Mhm. I think the the culture in the city uh is corrupt to some extent. It's certainly not a culture that demands excellence, that demands everybody sitting up a little bit taller, and serving the best interests of the public over yourself. And then part of that culture is that we don't tolerate breaking the law in the city of Los Angeles, right? We support LAPD to be good stewards of the law and not only to respond to a criminal act, but more importantly, a good police force is designed to help prevent criminal activity. You don't just want to respond to it after the fact. But what have we done in this city? We've defunded the police, we've defunded the fire department. You look at the current budget, we're a billion dollars in a deficit. We have declining revenues and there's more cuts to LAPD. We will have probably the lowest police force of any major city per capita by a factor of two. Not just by a couple, by a factor of two. So then you get to the riots. Well, look back what happened to COVID. COVID was a time that you couldn't even call it a riot, even though they were destroying property, including mine. You had to call it a protest, Uh-huh. right? So at least we've gotten to the point you can call it a riot now. But it was a riot back then, but what did we do back in COVID? We allowed them to do it. There were stand down orders. Don't incite them, don't get involved. And at the Grove, they came through, if you remember, and started breaking windows And watch it burn, the little police station inside the Grove that they lit on fire, yeah. Yeah. Can see it now. my proudest moments was one of my senior executives climbing up and grabbing the American flag on the coban and saving it. It was to me it was just so beautifully symbolic so that it didn't burn. And what was happening then, and I called Garcetti at the time as mayor, and I just said, "What are you doing? Why are you allowing this to happen? You need to put a police line out. You know, you need to guide them in another direction." Why don't they? Like do they have a reason? I think they're better or not. I think the reason is, Tom, is quite frankly, they're weak. I think they feel that there's um some kind of protocol into not aggravating them. Um when I was the police commissioner you used to literally have to pull a permit in order to walk the streets, protest, whatever you want to call it, right? There was there was a set of laws and protocols that were required. We need to go back to being a lawful city. And that's the culture. So, what would I have done in the riots? In the very beginning you don't tolerate property being destroyed. Our mayor spent 2 days allowing it to happen. And I don't know if you're right. Now we have a $20 million bill because of damage to LAPD of all the damn things. They raided LAPD headquarters. I didn't hear about that. Oh, and they stood down. So I think what we have to do in our city, in any city, is you got to say we want people to respect the law. Um we're going to hold people that break the law accountable. We're going to police communities in the best of ways, certainly never take advantage of communities. And make sure our police are absolutely well trained. But go back to things that Bill Bratton and I brought in years ago. Senior lead officers, a cop walking a beat knowing business people, knowing neighborhoods understanding the mood. That's all the prevention side of it, right? Um and we got crime down to levels not seen since 1950. Hm. And in a very respectful way. And this was post Rodney King. Yeah, no, I was here for it. Yeah, scary. I remember, well, take I wasn't here for Rodney King, but I was here for the time where you guys were rebuilding right after. Okay. Um you've talked about culture, you've talked about mood. Those feel like the right places to start. Um if So, you laid out what's broken about the culture, but talk to me about the mood. What is the mood right now? How much of what we saw during the riots was uh paid agitators and how much is on the ground people are fed up with something. Yeah. Well, people being fed up with something and wanting to take to the streets in a peaceful way, I completely applaud. Do you feel that mood? Like where where are we? Is it I love all these policies let's go harder blue, let's be more hands-off or is it no, we need law and order like I honestly don't have a great read on You talking about the mood of the elected officials in charge of the mood of Let's get to the people on the street I I don't I don't like and I've been very open about this and public about it. I don't like saying people that are here although illegally that have worked hard and are good and haven't broken the law being scooped up, separated from their families and shipped off. I don't like that. We have enough people in this country, in this region that have broken the law, that are illegal. Let's go after them and let's find a pathway for good hardworking people to become a citizen, to earn that right to be here. I feel very strongly about that. So I Give specifics on that. Like what's the line in the sand? 5 years, 10 years, 9 days? Let's let's sit down in a bipartisan way. This is a really great bipartisan thing to do. Because Tom, one is a matter of fairness. The second is a matter of sheer reality that our economy needs hardworking people. Now more than ever by the way. When you talk about rebuilding Altadena, rebuilding the Palisades, rebuilding Malibu, you need workers. And a lot of these workers also, and I don't know the number worked in Malibu, worked in Palisades, maybe worked and lived in Altadena. They lost everything. They lost their jobs or maybe they lost their home. And now we got people running around picking them up. I I just don't like that. And so, let's say if somebody's worked here for 5 years and goes to school, learns the history of the country, you know, qualifies to be a citizen, whatever that may be, doesn't have a criminal record. My God, let that man or woman continue to contribute to our economy. Let's get the bad people out. For sure, get the bad people out. We have gangs running around the city that are really, really bad people. Let's go around them up, you know, for sure, that are selling drugs on the streets, that are create uh committing violent crimes. Let's go do that. But, um so I understand that people want to take the streets that are angry about that. I also understand, quite frankly, that the way it was done was done, I think, in a very cruel way. It didn't have up, you mean? Yeah, it didn't have to be the running in and the it it just has such a hardness to it. Do you think it's a shock and awe thing, or is this like where they're actually trying to make a statement, or is this just Trump's personality and he doesn't think about it? I think it's I think it's Trump's personality. I don't know the man, but I think there's a lot of different ways that you can accomplish things in life. I know when we were fighting crime at LAPD with Bill, um listen, you have to make some tough decisions, and you got some bad people out there, and you better be really prepared to deal with the bad people. This isn't what they were doing. They weren't going rounding up bad people. They were rounding up people that were working at a car wash. A guy that was selling fruit at the corner. I mean, you don't need to bring in the military officers to do that, right? With all the gear and everything. But, that's just my take on it. So, I think there's a lot of ways we can accomplish things. So, I understand where were were on the street, and they were upset. But I also have zero tolerance for any kind of violence on the street. And zero tolerance for destroying any property. We have to have really bright lines in the city in order to protect our communities, protect our businesses, protect our families. I don't think it's that complicated, by the way. Do you tin foil hat up at all? Like, do you think that there were like paid agitators? Like, since COVID there was. Yeah, okay. there was. Who and why? was. There's they get People get joy. These are odd, weird people. They get joy out of rioting and destroying somebody else's property. I mean, you just you look at some of the film that was coming out of LA and running into the Nike store or the Adidas store or LAPD. I mean, who are these people? How do you get off on that? But I would say though that's pretty different than if somebody behind the scenes is paying people Well, that's even sicker. You're right. Do you think that's happening? I believe so. I do believe so. of what the agenda would be? Like, is it just tear the system down or You've got organizations in this city that have a violent bent to them, and they coexist and they're in our streets. Are we talking cartels? What what do we You're talking more political organizations that just want to create anarchy. That that want to uh completely mess with the system. And and terrorize people. Absolutely. Not to put you on the spot, but are there names? Like, what kind of organizations? Are there specific organizations or you can just sort of feel them at the edges? There's something picking at specific organizations, but I don't want to name names. But um LAPD knows who they are. Most people who are involved know who they are. There was a number of those organizations that really tried to make my life miserable during the campaign. Um Because you're a one order focused kind of person or something else? Because, uh, yeah, that and probably an easy target. I don't fit their mold. You know, these are people also that go to the real extreme. They want no cops. They want the prisons opened up. You know, uh, there's some people out there that really do believe in things that would be terrible for the city. Mhm. And we saw it play out, if you remember. We saw it play out in city council chambers. When that whole tape was released, if you remember that. With Gil Cedillo and and everybody. And the tape came out and there was groups of people that kept uh, interfering and interrupting with council meetings. And it got it got pretty heated. It got some punches thrown. There was organized groups of people that were doing that on a daily basis. And here's the thing that should have happened. This goes back to culture. Shut the chamber doors and don't let them in. Mhm. They don't have a right to be there. No. They don't. But we need to we need to change, to your point, like when you have wins, you need to change that trajectory. And you actually don't have to change it very much. Because just like in sailing, distance will make a lot of changes for you. Yeah, but the distance is measured in time. Yeah. So, uh, man, you're way more comfortable with that than I am. So, I have the good or bad fortune. I moved here in '94. So, this is right as Yeah, you guys were starting to get it all together and I watched Hollywood go from If you went to Hollywood and Vine, you were there to pick up a prostitute. I mean, it was crazy in broad daylight. I was like, as a kid from Tacoma, I was like, what is happening? And then I watched it get turned around and like really become this beautiful, incredible place. And I've watched it decline again. Yeah. And so, culture has consequences, but culture also moves so slowly. It's all leadership, Tom. It is all leadership, and you can move culture very quickly, and I've done it a number of times. With the right people with you doing it. We moved LAPD really very quickly. Mhm. Um you know, when I became chair of, you know, University of Southern California, which I didn't I wasn't seeking that job. It was a crisis at USC. It was probably was this? Um this was probably 5, 6 years ago now. Okay. That's where I went. Okay. So, this is the Dr. Tindall crisis. You know, thousands of students female students were taken advantage of. Woah. The cover-up Oh, yeah. I mean, it was terrible. I was on the board. Um cover-up on it. It was a management implosion. They came to me and said, "Would you be the chair and lead us out of this?" And actually, as a side note, my daughter was just starting school that year. And I said, "I I'm going to go home and talk to my daughter because I don't think anybody wants to have their dad as the chair of the university they're going at in the middle of a crisis." But God bless my daughter, she said, "Pop, let's do it, and we'll be on campus together." You know, and it was great. But that was a massive culture change. I had to remove the president of the university. I wouldn't let him come back on the campus. Woah. I had to change the governance of the board. I had to size down the board. Um change the rules of engagement and what got approved by us. The whole structure. I would say it took about a year. A lot of infighting uh to get it done. But we came through it um brilliantly thanks to a lot of really talented people working alongside of me. So, basically, you're saying um culture is downstream of your leadership. Change your leadership, you can have a different culture and have it very rapidly. You just got to make sure you're bringing everybody with you. What does that mean? That means, you know, sort of the cheesy line that I always use that if you're a leader and nobody's following you, you're just somebody going for a walk. It means that good leaders know that you're walking with people, you're explaining to them where you're going, why you're going to go there, how important they're going to be a part of this culture change, what the rewards are going to be, the payoff is going to be, meaning we're going to change people's lives. We're going to keep them safer. We're going to reopen these parks and kids are going to have a better quality of life. Whatever that goal is, good leaders always know to bring people with you. And and inspire them and bring people around you, frankly, that are smarter and as passionate, if not more passionate, than you. And draft off of them. I teach entrepreneurship and one of the things that I try to get people to understand is, listen, you'll look at a Steve Jobs, you'll look at an Elon Musk and there'll be plenty of people that will criticize them because they didn't actually do the coding or Elon isn't actually the one building the rocket engine. And it's like, but hold on, the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur is get the right team, point them in a direction and get them all moving at pace. And so, this is exactly what these guys that we look at and revere based on their accomplishments was they're able to attract and orient talent. Um what is it that allows you to do that? Well, I think part of it is DNA. You know, it's how you're wired. I always use Walt Disney as a great example. I'm a big fan of Walt Disney. And I tell people Walt Disney as a profession, he was a cartoonist. And he was a really good cartoonist. But if he would have just remained a cartoonist, none of us would have ever known who Walt Disney is. And then he started the Walt Disney Company, and he became a businessman. And the combination of the cartoonist and the businessman, he made some interesting films, but again, nobody would have ever remembered him really, or certainly wouldn't be as relevant today as as he was many years ago. But what he really was was this visionary that had the ability to see around a corner. And to take his talents and marry it with his vision, and then get people excited about it. And that's a really unique thing to do, right? And and bring, you know, constantly absorbing talent to take you to the next level. Nobody can do it alone. I would imagine that Elon has some of the most brilliant people in the world around him that he's inspiring every day. But all Elon has to do is be the visionary that sees around the corner and realizes, I've got to populate this idea with really talented, passionate people. Steve Jobs, I always think about. I met him when we were doing one of the first Apple stores at The Grove. He built and took down his space three times. Woah. Wasn't happy with it. And I finally said to him, "Steve, we got to get open. You know, I can't have you keep tearing down." But he was such a perfectionist. He had his vision so tight. It was wild, right? But when you think about Steve Jobs, one of the most brilliant guys ever, he never really invented anything new. He reinvented something and made it to the point that you couldn't live without it. I mean, it was just genius, right? We had cell phones, but it didn't compare to the iPhone. And so, we had cars, but it doesn't compare to a Tesla. We have rocket ships, but it doesn't compare to SpaceX. Yeah. So, I don't know. I just I I really admire people that have these exceptional brilliance, but really tied to vision, and then the courage to just completely be over your skis. We'll get back to the show in just a second, but first I want to talk about something that will kill your productivity, and that's wasting time. You can lose 3 hours creating a presentation that should have only taken 20 minutes. You spend forever hunting for documents that should be instant. You're drowning in busy work that adds zero value to the bottom line, but that ends right now. Context is an AI workspace that does the work for you. Tell it to create a presentation and it delivers it in minutes, not hours. Request data analysis and Context handles it while you grab coffee. Search for any document and Context finds it instantly. Context replaces your entire workflow. Presentations, spreadsheets, documents, research, all in one place. All powered by AI that actually works. Stop wasting time on work that machines should be doing. Sign up for free at context.ai and reclaim your most valuable asset. And now, back to the show. I fully understand that it's one thing to want to get things done, and it's a completely other thing to actually get them done. Right. And I find that politicians tend to fall into the camp of I'm trying to get elected. I'm not necessarily optimized as a an actor in the world to get things done. I'm optimized to get elected. Right. I think that's very true. It's usually the top priority. I really enjoyed serving the public cuz I, as you know, I served under three mayors in this city. And I really saw different leadership styles. Um I served under Tom Bradley, Dick Riordan, and Jim Hahn. All very tough assignments, which I enjoy. And I was very convinced when I ran a couple of years ago that the problems could be solved. And that I, along with the team of people I would pull together, we could solve them. And I still believe that way. Because it's based on and this is where I think things start to fall apart. It's based on, frankly, a track record and a history of getting things done. And having tough assignments and you learn from each time that you do it, right? So, I was grateful that I had an opportunity to bring that to the table to help the city out. When you take a look at our current mayor and the mayor before that, by the way, um there was no history of accomplishment, of getting things done. They were legislative accomplishments, maybe at best, and not really great ones, by the way. But there was no history of running an organization and making tough decisions and understanding management and understanding staffing and governance and all the things a CEO has to deal with, right? Setting the course, as you're talking about. And then making sure you're bringing people along with you. Um and so it was predictable that she was going to fail because there's a lack of competence, but more importantly or equally important, there's a lack of experience that would give you any indication that she could have pulled off managing a very, very complex organization like the city of Los Angeles. Companies are good at that. They're good at finding those leaders are often times a leader just creates the company. Yeah. But when you have to deal with politicians, um I, to put my jaded hat on for a second, I worry that the reality is politics is downstream of culture and that what you're describing will work inside of a company, but the odds of you being able to do it at the political level when people have to get reelected, um right now, there's just so much political division Mhm. and I I'm not sure how we get the voting public on board with voting for competence. Do you have a take like how do we get the public to make that their criteria? Thomas, it's a great question. I I'm hopeful that the fire woke people up to the point that they said, "You know what? Ideology is now not the most important priority." Um the most important priority is competence. Because we just saw what happens when you have lack of competence. You have 700,000 acres burn and hundreds of thousands of people being impacted um because they didn't do their job or couldn't do their job, quite frankly. So, I I hope there's a wake-up call to that. Um and I think if we can get somebody in the office in a office, whether it's me or somebody else, and quite frankly, I'd love to have the opportunity to do it, they can prove that you can be compassionate and passionate, you can create safety nets for people cuz you care about the quality of life, but you can also change the direction of a city in a way that people feel proud to live here, safe to live here, excited to build a business here, excited to raise a family here, uh wanting to be here, not moving away, wanting to come here. Let's get back to the state and the city should be leading the nation. We shouldn't be like tucking our head in our hands because we're sort of embarrassed of the last thing that we just did. Literally, that's how I feel now. Right. I keep asking myself why I have not left. Yeah. Uh And why? Just The real answer is my wife has friends here. Yeah. Like if it weren't for that on left to my own devices, man, like when I look at the size of the problem, it's so daunting because there's a really famous Thomas Sowell quote, and I believe that this sums up where we are in California for sure, and there's so much of this across the country uh that this is a paraphrase, but it's very, very close. The last 30 years are marked by exchanging what works for what sounds good. Mhm. And I think that Mhm. people they're voting for policies that sound good, but I'm like, look at what's happening. It isn't working. Right. So, why do we keep voting for the same thing? And Right. uh it's just like the the odds of that changing strike me as so low. And in fact, I'm I'm going to ask you a very pointed question. hopeful. I I know Maybe I'm You have heard the phrase many times. yeah. Hope is not a strategy, and it's like, I want a strategy. Yeah. So, uh you waved people off the Karen Bass recall. Yeah. Why? At the like peak anger Yep. Um why is because it would have been a terrible strain on the city. It would have cost the city $30 million that we don't have. And more importantly the recall vote would have been only months before the June primary. Mhm. People are going to get a chance to fire her or rehire her Yeah. in June. And so to have a special recall vote let's say April, May March and then you go into a primary, it was so tight, it's not going to accomplish anything. And the other thing quite frankly is very difficult to get 800,000 signatures. That's what you need for a recall. And you need somebody to fund it. And I think the funding on that was estimated to be about $10 million. Yo. So, who's going to do it? And then if it didn't get the signatures, then you're handing her a victory. Mhm. And then she gets to say, "See, people don't want me recalled. They couldn't even get enough people to sign a petition." Yeah, fair. And then you have her walking into the primary as a victor. I just it wasn't thought through and I was talking to the people that were pushing the recall and I get the visceral reaction and the need to do that. And had there been 3 years left on her term or 2 years left on her term, that's what you want to do, go do it. But it was actually, in my opinion, going to have the opposite effect. Mhm. And I know people were very upset with me, but I I firmly believe it was the right thing to do for the city. Miraculously, your properties survived the fire. Walk me through how you ended up with the plans from how you built the buildings to all the things you did to make sure your property stood through it. Sure. Well, we we learned when we built um the hotel that I have, the resort up in Montecito in Santa Barbara. So, we were building the hotel, the resort was about 6 months ahead of um starting construction on the Palisades, but there was the Thomas fire. And we were just structurally in wood was going up. And as that Thomas fire was raging up in Santa Barbara, I called the head of our security who does special operations for us, and I said, "Banyon, you got to come up with a plan to save the property because the fire department, rightfully so, was going to be protecting homes up before commercial spaces." And so, he's the one that developed the plan that brought in private firefighters, water tanks, trucks, and the retardant. So, we learned a lot from that. When we were designing Palisades, we knew we were designing in a area with high fire risk. I mean, the amount of fires that happened around Malibu and that whole area over the last 50 years, right? It's not rocket science. And so, we designed the Palisades with no combustible materials. We designed the Palisades with no open vents, so that embers couldn't get to the inside of a building cuz most of the homes that burnt in the Palisades and Altadena burnt from inside in inside out. experts that tell you that kind of stuff like that? When I heard that one, I was like, "What What?" Yeah. No, we hire experts, you know. How do you design something to give you the highest likelihood of it not burning down? So, you know, things that like buildings that look like wood shingle buildings were actually concrete that were poured to look like wood. And so, one is it was built right, and the second is when these warnings were coming out, you got a warning, right? Yeah. I think the only person in LA that didn't get a warning was Mayor Bass. As these warnings were coming out, 2 days before, um Banyan takes the manual off the shelf and goes into the plan if there's a major fire. And 2 days before we had the private firefighters there, the water trucks there, and the retardant there. And um we were ready. And listen, I've said this a million times. It's so true. What is predictable is preventable. And we we wanted to be prepared, and we were. And not only did we save all of our structures, we saved all of our neighbors and everything across the street. And we were loaning equipment to the fire department. I mean, the way this city has been managed is insane that they were so underfunded and that you can run out of water. So, that night, cuz we had to evacuate also, so my wife and I and our four kids, we all evacuated. We live in Brentwood. We left, too. My daughter lost her house. My son lost his house. But, the night we got the call on January 7th of my daughter losing her house from Bannon, who was embedded in the command post, I couldn't believe the words. He said, "Rick, your daughter's house is burning because the fire department ran out of water. They're standing there with their hoses and they're dry." I said, "Bannon, it's an impossibility. This is the second largest city in the nation. I ran LADWP. It doesn't run out of water." But, what did we find out? They had an empty reservoir. Months and months before this. Still makes me mad. What even should make you madder, the head of DWP's never been fired. Never been held accountable. It's crazy. Crazy. The fire department was never pre-deployed. They could have put out I will debate with anybody that that fire should could have never happened. Mhm. They usually pre-deploy. If they had pre-deployed, they would have put out that spot fire and it wouldn't have happened. What did you think when people were um like voters, average people in the public were saying, "No, it makes sense that this was uh empty and I totally understand. Like, who could have predicted?" Like, the number of people I saw defending incompetence was That's the part that that when I look at that, I'm just like, I don't I don't know what to do. Like, if people are going to defend it rather than say this is not the outcome we wanted, therefore we should have done something differently. Uh I don't know what to do. Yeah, listen, I think that what I saw, you know, there was also a bunch of people online that were criticizing me for saving the village. Right? That's nuts. It's nuts. Of course, it's nuts. But, that conversation started to change over time. And then people realizing, you know what? Thank God he did. Cuz now there's a place that's going to be the center of town that can help that town get reborn. Mhm. And it did show everybody you actually can protect these structures if you do your job right. Fire department, you know, the city, everybody just failed miserably. So you start Steadfast LA with the idea of uh I assume combating what you knew was going to be a lot of red tape and everything grinding to a halt. Right. Uh how's it going? It's going actually pretty well. I saw an op-ed that you wrote recently that uh would lead one to believe that you might be encountering some said pretty well. Well, listen, we're encountering, you know, pushback and we're encountering uh incompetence and we're encountering, for the most part, inability to make a decision, which is just crazy. But we're also making progress. And, you know, we we have our deal with Summa Homes. We're going to be bringing in these small homes for people who are very low income to get them back on their property and get them back in the community. We're excited about that. We developed, along with Amazon and Alquistar, the plan check process through AI that allows somebody's home to be plan checked in a matter of hours versus months. Woah. Awesome. So, you know, Steadfast What Steadfast is is a nonprofit that I'm funding. We got a full-time staff. Its goal is to bring people back to their home in a community as safely and quickly as possible. Altadena, Palisades, and Malibu. And I asked a team of people, best in the brightest in the industries, the Parsons folks in terms of engineering, Ezra folks in terms of information technology, um architects, lawyers. We got about a dozen people take a problem, unbundle it, fix it, hand it off to the government agency. The problems are too big for the government alone to fix them, even if you had a competent government, which we don't. Hey. So, what we're doing is we're handing them the solutions. How do you underground the power lines? Don't tell me it can't be done, cuz it can be done. We gave them a plan and they adopted it. That's a really big deal to get these power lines underground in Altadena and Palisades and Malibu. So, we're making a lot of progress. There's a lot of progress we need to do more of. You know, we announced rebuilding the park up in the Palisades, had a meeting this morning about that. We've got some great ideas in Altadena to help revive their downtown and support the merchants there to get them back on their feet, which we need to do, get people working again and being able to be prosperous again. So, I'm spending probably 90% of my time on steadfast matters. Wow. I'm assuming you wrote the article to get attention for all of the sort of lunacy of the problems that you're running into, but so you just talked about the AI that will do plan checks, which is incredible and exactly the kind of thing that I'd want to see AI used for. Yeah. However, they haven't implemented it. No. So, and your op-ed says, "I don't even know when they're going to implement this." So, this is the kind of stuff that um honestly I've thought to myself like 10 times since we've been talking uh would he ever start his own podcast? I'd like to believe that if people hear over and over and over the things that could be happening followed by the things that are the roadblocks this and this is something Elon Musk is really good at because he owns one of the largest media distribution platforms on planet Earth. But like when they forced him to kidnap a seal, put headphones on it to see how it would react to the sound of rockets, just like suddenly people like, "Wait a second, what is happening?" So, there's a I think a huge benefit to people becoming aware in a real-time basis, like real-time, the unrelenting nature of like, we are trying to do this. This is a roadblock we're running into. Now, we've tried to do this. Roadblock we're running into. Hey, here's a counter. We called Karen Bass and said this, and this is how many days that she has not called us back. I really feel like, to your point, that this, if you're going to get people to finally wake up, because already we're far in, and it's only like four or five months since the fires, but we're already far enough that people don't have that visceral anger anymore, I don't think. And I think that getting them to vote in their best interest for somebody that can actually get this stuff done, they they just have to see day after day after day, like, here's what we're trying to do. You would agree this is in your best interest. Here's the response, like, and then here's the solution. You've said, don't bring me a problem unless you have the solution. Right. I don't know. How's it sound? You going to start a podcast? I don't know if I'm I would be a good Who do I pitch this to? We've got people here. Maybe I'll just be on yours more often if I could. Listen, I I agree with that. Um and what we've done, quite frankly, and maybe I'm sure we could do a better job, I could do a better job at it, is I've told the team we will walk with the elected official, around the elected official, or through the elected official. Oh, now you're just flirting. Like, yes, please. But I will tell you that everything we've been able to accomplish has been accomplished in spite of the elected official. Mhm. We have had to literally go around them, and sometimes get ahead of them, so they had to adopt it. Uh Karen Bass was very, very resistant on the AI. We built it, raised $2 million around it, so there was no cost to the city, and handed it off. And if she doesn't implement it quickly, I will be vocal about it. I'm trying to give her a chance to do the right thing. The park, she was very resistant to it until the very literally until the press conference. And now she's come around to be supportive of it. Okay, great. I'll take that. I don't care who gets the win. We just want the wins. And so, I'm focused on it. I don't want to be completely argumentative every day with everybody. Because it's not your personality, or you think it's not effective? Because I think it's not the right time yet. I'm I I want to get some successes, and I frankly want to see elected officials feel that success, and hopefully they want to build off of it, rather than be paralyzed by the scope of the problem. And that's what we have now. We have paralysis on decision-making because we've got leaders, including the mayor, that have never had to make a big decision. So, she doesn't know how to do it. She doesn't know how to rely She doesn't know how to hire the right people or rely on the right people to help make a decision, and she's not wired to take risk. When you've been in Congress for 10 years, and the only bill that you've passed is to name rename a library, that tells you everything you need to know. So, hopefully, now that she's seen that there can be more movement, we'll get more movement. But, I do worry about it's frankly not her priority. And I do worry about that. And it needs to be a priority. But, she's got a whole bunch of problems going on because the way that they've managed the city, it's all coming back to haunt them. They got major budget problems they don't know how to solve. They've got the problem in the streets in downtown. They did a terrible job managing. And she's got to go rebuild the city, frankly. It's 300,000 acres. She's not qualified to do that. But she still hasn't hired the {quote} {unquote} czar. Right? Mhm. So, it's just paralysis. And at at some point in time, we'll be much more vocal about it. And we're getting close to that point in time. We'll get back to the show in a moment, but first, let's talk about some standards. Most guys think underwear is just underwear. Just grab whatever's on sale and call it a day. 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We'll get back to the show in a moment, but first, I want to talk about a big reason many businesses fail to get off the ground. Real CEOs don't do everything themselves. Thank God, we can delegate, and that's the point. And now, thanks to Shopify's AI, you can finally delegate like you, even if you're by yourself, have a full team. Shopify's AI writes your product descriptions faster than any copywriter. It enhances your product photos like you hired a professional photographer. It creates email and social campaigns like you have a full marketing department. This is not some startup over-promising AI magic. This is Shopify and Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US. Companies like Mattel and Gymshark trust Shopify to run their operations. Stop pretending to be busy and start being profitable. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/ impact. And now, let's get back to the show. What about safety? For LA to be the place like and this used to be the place as a guy running a podcast. The first of all, I came here for Hollywood and Hollywood is now evaporated. Yeah. Uh then I became a podcaster 10 years ago. This used to be the place. I could guarantee people were going to come through LA. Uh now that's Austin. Uh so it's another thing that's going away. And when you talk to the people that leave, it's taxes and safety. I mean, that's just like the thing. Uh this again is feels cultural to me. This feels like people that like they want to be compassionate or something. Uh there's I think a bill put forward that says if somebody breaks into your house, you're supposed to flee. I don't know if it's passed or not, but that that is absurd. If you break into my house, I'm shooting you in the face. You were going to be graveyard dead. Like that or like what's the alternative? Like that's so insane. I cannot even be a part of that. Uh you were a big part of the uh movement. You talked about this earlier where you replaced the police chief commissioner. Police chief. And then started turning that around. How do we make LA safe again? You make it a priority, which it's not a priority now. You make it a priority, it's got to start with the budget and you got to hire more officers. And you got to fill up the academy. And so right now, like I said earlier, we are going to have about I think 2.5 officers per capita and we've got that's two times less than the next city. So, Washington, New York, I think even San Francisco has double the amount of officers. We are at an all-time low. I mean, when I was the police commissioner and Bratton was the chief, I think we had over 9,000 officers. We're probably now at 7,000 officers. We literally cannot um protect the streets. What about prosecutions, though? Are people even if we pick them up, if they just get re-released, the bail issues that we have, like how far does the reform go? So, that's a That's a good example. So, we changed leadership. We got rid of the district attorney. We brought in a great district attorney. Who's the DA now? Nate Nate Nathan Hochman. He's He's doing a great job. He's holding people accountable. Um and and we're seeing some real change. Now, here Here's the issue with that. In order to make a city safer, you have to have a very close partnership between a police force and the district attorney. They go hand in hand. LA County has 88 I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but LA County has 88 cities, one of which is LA City. If LA City, if the leadership, if Karen Bass is not of the same culture, policies as the district attorney's office, it doesn't work as well as it should. You go to other cities like Beverly Hills that is being very tight on crime right now, Culver City, Glendale, the cities around us that are doing very well, by the way. Um we've got to make sure that the policies that are in LA that LAPD has to live with are always very respectful of human rights, but hold people accountable and punish people if they if they commit a crime. Mhm. Plain and simple. But Nathan has done a great job as a district attorney. So, there is a big change. We changed the bail law that overwhelmingly got approved in the state in spite of Gavin Newsom coming out against it. So, that's good. So, change can happen, Tom. It's got to give you a little bit of hope. Fingers crossed. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. One thing though that concerns me, and I know you're a Democrat, but do you at all worry that the current Democratic Party functions like a cartel where no matter what, their guy is going to be out front and in charge? Yeah, listen, I think the Democratic Party right now is dysfunctional. And it's got to get cleaned up. I mean, one of the things that excites me is that I can be helpful on giving it a purpose, giving it a mission, having some real priorities that line up with what people want. Um it's not functional at all, and I don't even know who the leader of the party is. I don't think anybody does. Right? And so, it are they a closed loop? Do they not want ins outsiders inside the tent? Yeah, right? We got to bust that up and change that. And encourage young, smart people to think out of the box to run for office. How do you think California became a one-party state? I don't know, that's a good question. I'm not a I'm not a good enough history major to I don't know, but California runs, you know, sort of middle of the road in a in a in a big way. More moderate. You've got you've got your Republican base, you've got your far left base, but the majority are in the middle. Majority are moderate Democrats and independents. And if they mobilize and get out and vote, if they have a candidate that they can mobilize around that inspires them, um you could change the direction of the state, for sure. Do you know Schwarzenegger at all? I do. One thing I found interesting, and I have quoted him a gazillion times, is that it took him a while, but he finally realized that much of politics is Kabuki theater and that it's uh What is Kabuki theater, man? Basically, people are pretending. They put on a face, they do uh Oh, I get that. a song and dance, and he was like, you know, at the end of the day it was There's nothing really there there. Yeah, like he was just trying to get things done, and people wanted to say a lot of words, they wanted to hold a lot of press conferences, but to your point about decision-making, they didn't seem to want to actually move the ball forward. Now, in a business, it the market is so ruthless, it just does not care about you. And so, you're like, well, if I'm going to make payroll, I've got to solve this problem. Mhm. One of the things, and I assume you know little about my background, but one of the things I've become obsessed with is tracking everything back to the economic cause. Like, what what is the foundation of our economic system that has led us to this? Right. Uh because I just the thing that made me a successful entrepreneur is tracking cause and effect. So, it was like, I don't care how I feel, my I have learned in life that my feelings will lead me astray because they're not married to the place that I'm trying to end up. And if I can state where I'm trying to get, then I can just follow cause and effect to get there. Okay. When I look at the economic drivers that are pushing us um where we're headed now, basically, I see a lot of the dysfunction really being born out of the what ends up happening is you get a massive divide of inequality between the haves and have-nots Mhm. that people think is happening at the level of politics, but is actually happening at the level of money. Um have you thought at all about like the growing political divide and how we get people back to the middle? Mhm. I I have. One is based on a lot of work that we've done, we think the majority is in the middle. And so, that's a good start. What would people, I believe, want, whether it's in the city or the state? They want it to be safe. They want the cost of living to come down. They want to be able to afford a home. They want to be able to grow their business, raise their family in safety. They don't want to pay three times more for gasoline than everybody else in the country pays for. They don't want to be over regulated, right? If we can do a bunch of simple things, in my opinion, I think you unleash the state. I mean, the fact that we're the fourth largest economy in the world, given all the over regulation, and given all the incompetency that we have at the state level, just shows you how powerful the economic drivers here. But then, in spite of that, what are we doing? We're pushing out the entertainment industry. You know, it's 30% more expensive. I was talking to a studio head the other day, Monday night was what? 30% more expensive to film in LA than to film in Atlanta. Why? LA, get off your rear end and change the structure. The state of California, change the structure. New Jersey is eating our lunch. Um Georgia is eating our lunch. London has massive tax credits for the entertainment industry. None of this stuff is that complicated. It takes backbone and will, and it takes something else that's really important, I think the most important. Making decisions where you're not worried about getting reelected. Yeah. And I I think that's the most empowering thing in the world. Say, I'm going to go do this cuz it's right. And if you don't want me to be your governor or your mayor anymore, great. That's fine. You go to the ballot box and you can fire me. But I'm going to do what I think is right. Yeah. Man, do I hope you get that chance. Uh I think we somehow culturally have to get people married and obsessed with outcomes uh to get them to think entrepreneurial and say, "Oh, we want to do this thing." And there going to be metrics along the way. This is why I really hope as a part of Steadfast LA uh that you do some variant of what I was talking about, where it's just a a if you're not going to do a podcast a ticker tape of It's a good point. We called, this is what happened, this is how long we've been waiting. Like let the rest of us then in the media go grab that feed and start blasting the stuff out on X and being like this is crazy. Uh I like that. We're going to be in June before you know it. I think there's a national divide you and I do not see that the same. I don't think people are in the middle. I think there's economic drivers that are shoving people as far apart as fast as humanly possible and because body is looking at the economics of this even to your point about we pushed the entertainment industry out. You Once you understand how the like how the flow of money works, that becomes self-evident because what ends up happening is people can people think the miracle is redistribution. And instead of realizing that what entrepreneurship is, whether you're running a studio or doing what you do, is you have done this incredibly difficult thing where you've created a system where you put inputs into it and the thing that comes out the other end is worth more than the inputs. That is so hard to do and a government sees the exact opposite. It just gets to take tax, take tax, take tax and somehow in California they got it in their heads that people will pay literally any price for the weather. And because money's free for the government, they just take take take take take and don't realize, oh I'm killing the very thing that generates my revenue. It's insane. I know I got to get you out of here. No, but you're very you're spot on. So thank you for that. Thank you for your time. I hope you do this. Where do you want people to engage with you? steadfastla.com would be great and send us ideas and information and also problems where we can help in these communities and um I'm really intent to make steadfast a really powerful force in this region. I love that. Keep going. Keep going. It's amazing. Thank you, Tom. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. you. Can't wait. Really appreciate it. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. Jeffrey Epstein's story was never about sex. It was an illusion. Like the dress some see as blue and others see as gold, intelligence agencies exploit the same trick. They shape what you notice and distort what it means.