The Audacity of Pope

22:43It's crazy. She's like a real boomer with just the TV on constantly when you walk into the house. I also just like, the idea that like the Iranian regime is posting these sort of like Confucius-like sayings about revenge, like lowering their head and saying, before embarking on a campaign of revenge, dig two graves. It's more than I can take from these people. I will say that.

23:05Jon Favreau:Along with some Lego movies. Yeah, they got us with the Lego movies. Fire. Got us. That was tough. That was tough for sure. Great lyrics. I was talking to someone today who works in an organization that does a ton of polling and research on Trump and U.S. politics and whatever. And they have consistently like on a weekly basis. And he said, this is the first time Trump's approval has moved significantly in years, literally. It was like, as we've all seen public polls, rock solid at like 43 % approval always. Right. It moved a little around Butler, moved a little around Alex Pretty shooting. Now it is in a straight line that is going down.

23:41Jon Favreau:And it looks like Joe Biden's approval a month after the Afghanistan withdrawal, which we all remember, essentially ended his presidency. And so maybe it'll come back. But it just seems like the energy shock is just getting started. Oil prices are back up. And Trump seems to think, as you said earlier, he seems to think that he's like, whatever, we drill our own oil. We'll be fine here. It's a global market. And then the Financial Times today had a report out where it said that U.S. crude exports will be up about a third this month. And demand from Asia is also increasing. So that's going to put upward pressure on all the prices here.

24:16Jon Favreau:It's like it's going to hurt. It's already hurting. It has not like the real pain hasn't hit yet. And all of the energy analysts keep saying this. And we're getting very close to that point where it's like you can look at the oil futures all you want. But like the actual physical manifestation of the oil futures is about to hit. And I remember when we were in the White House, David Plouffe would always say gas prices are a hit to the entire enterprise. Yeah. Like the whole thing could collapse, like the whole political project could collapse on gas prices. And that's when they went up like, I don't know, a dime, five cents here and there.

24:51This is I mean, you know, the the parliament speaker, Galabaugh, that negotiated with J.D. Vance. he said soon you'll be nostalgic for four to five dollar gas uh as he's been saying also on the

25:05Jon Favreau:iranian point i know something i was talking to today reminded me that iran um prepared for this by taking a bunch of oil and placed it in tankers outside of the straight or her moves they have something like 130 million barrels kind of sitting in anchor in various places so at current prices that is 18 billion dollars uh so that's a nice little cushion for them what's funny about that is that they prepared for this yeah but um the united states which is the one that launched the war on its own timetable its own decision making uh did not refill the strategic petroleum reserve ahead of uh trump launch is only 60 percent full it's almost as if bb and pete hegseth persuaded trump that this would be faster and easier than it actually was yeah if it's like because van we were watching vanser before we came in here and he made he said you know look obviously gas prices being up is bad but we were we had such a low benchmark you know we were doing so good and it's not nearly as bad as it was under Biden and it is true there was a moment during the Biden administration where gas prices shot up to higher than they are now I think five dollars on average so higher in more expensive places and that I think actually was the rising of prices including gas prices into the Afghan withdrawal that probably were the one two punch that kept Biden below in the low approval for the rest of his presidency but right now today today, gas prices are higher than they ever were after that peak right now.

26:22And there's no hope that they're going to or at least we don't expect them to go down between now and the election. So it's just not true. Voters historically more sensitive to price increases than they are even to job losses. And within the realm of price increases, there is nothing that people are more sensitive to than gas. And they have eyeballs and they see them everywhere.

26:41Jon Favreau:They are posted.

26:51pod save america is brought to you by uplift desk you know john tommy and i share an office and we all switch to uplift desk and i'll be honest i was skeptical i thought oh are we going to use this up standing up sitting down it seems so silly it's not it's great we genuinely love it we use it all the time we're always in and out of the studio we're up and down and up and down but you know look if you're going to be working at a desk you're going to be sitting still And sure, we're getting up and running into the studio and going to meetings. But there's plenty of time where we're just all, you know, cranking away, grinding in the content minds at our desks and being able to just say like, you know what, I'm standing up.

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29:31So Trump was also asked, with DoorDash Grandma by his side, whether he regretted the Holy War he's decided to launch against the Catholic Church, the world's largest Christian denomination that includes more than 50 million Americans. The background here is that Pope Leo has been speaking out with increasing frequency about the church's opposition to Trump's brutal treatment of immigrants and his war of choice in Iran, which reportedly led to a meeting where a Pentagon official allegedly berated the Pope's outgoing ambassador to the U.S. Always a good thing. It also led to a 60-minute segment Sunday night where the three most powerful American cardinals, who were close with the American Pope, spoke bluntly about the church's issues with Trump on war and immigration.

30:10The president was watching 60 Minutes because right afterwards he posted a lengthy tirade that read in part, quote, Pope Leo is weak on crime is a sentence that I will think about. It was like I was shocked, but I also couldn't stop laughing thinking about it.

30:26Jon Favreau:Me too. It's like it's like they're on some debate stage in Iowa and he's like, you are soft on crime. You are soft on nukes. Also, Pope Leo. You met with David Axelrod. probably a weak weak on crime weak on nuclear weapons and and wrong for America and friends with David Axelrod that was David Axelrod mentioned my name yeah I just talked to Axe today but it was wild it's like you meet with the Pope and then suddenly it's a like a you know a rabbi and a a rabbi and a priest walk into a bar in Chicago you know have you ever had ham no have you ever had sex no oh you gotta try ham you know I did ask asked if he brought the Pope manis as an interfaith offering.

31:08Oh, that's nice. But I guess they didn't meet in Chicago. They didn't meet in Chicago. Anyway, Trump also warned the Holy Father to, quote, get his act together. And he took credit for Leo's selection as the supreme pontiff of the Universal Church. That is Trump's doing. Spot the lie. For good measure, Trump also posted an AI image of himself as Jesus healing the sick. Truly, like, did you just say, like, no. But yes, he really did. It's, I mean, I would love to just, we should have done a whole, we could do like a whole video on just going through the actual, the images, the actual image because it is, it's an AI slop image for sure.

31:51There's a lot in there. There's a lot in there. There's a lot of confusing things in there. But what you really need to know, Trump, Jesus, healing a sick man in bed who could pass for Joe Biden. or Jeffrey Epstein could also maybe yeah mention maybe even more Jeffrey Epstein I thought it was Jeffrey Epstein I just didn't look a divorced slob it also looks like there's like a demon behind him and maybe some G.I. Joes I thought he saw

32:11Jon Favreau:a ninja turtle maybe yeah like a ninja definitely anyway so the pontiff was asked about all of this on Sunday night here's what he said I have no fear neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loud about the message in the gospel and that's what I believe I am called to do what the church is called to do. Blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political or politician. I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. Too many innocent people are refilled. And I think someone has to stand up and say, there's a better way to put this.

32:54The Pope was also asked directly about the post, and he did say that Truth Social was an ironic name for the platform. Not wrong. I love just a Pope in just Chicago English. It's so strange. The first American Pope, truly American. Yeah, it's awesome. Do you think he flies business? I was about to say, what kind of, oh, he cares about the least among us. What's he flying? It's a nice looking plane. What's he flying? Just kidding. Him and Hussar. He was Marxist Marxist Pope Pope's in Exoson Piker and in Delta one Bernie right behind him Here's what Trump had to say for himself when he was with door dash grandma Which is what he calls him on here.

33:37I think he's very weak on crime and Other things so I'm not I mean he but he went public. I'm just responding to Pope Leo. There's nothing to apologize for he's wrong And the other thing is he didn't like what we're doing with respect to Iran that picture of yourself depicted as jesus christ well it wasn't a picture it was me i've i did post it and i thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with red cross as a red cross worker there which we support i just heard about it and i said how did they come up with that it's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better and i do make people better i make people a lot better that's

34:17Jon Favreau:such a funny lie so many doctors just a health care provider dressed as jesus a humble it's one of those lies i'm like why why does anyone even spend time on it anyone with eyes knows that it's even jd jd vance was asked about it when we were watching pox just now what what a couple answers from him on this first of all he said um the whole thing was not newsworthy uh the president united states picks a very public fight attacking the pope the bishop of rome as weak on crime and weak on nuclear and warns him to get his act together jd vance says it wasn't newsworthy uh he said that of the ai jesus trump was just joking so it wasn't it wasn't meant to be a doctor no he's joking about being jesus and people don't get trump's sense of humor and it's good that he posts his own stuff on social media and then it doesn't go through a filter of you know press assistants and people who work for him and everything else because it's good that he speaks directly to people he also said that uh the vatican should stick to matters of morality Yeah, not like war.

35:17Not the policies of the most powerful nation on earth as it retains to war, which is like, I guess you mean like what? Like just no divorces in the rhythm method? Like it's just basically all that they want. That's what they want. It's so revealing that he said that. And I was like, I was thinking about this even before he said that is to J.D. Vance and to a lot of the right-wing Catholics and especially evangelical Christians in this country, issues of morality are issues of personal morality. And so that is why for so long They have been focused on abortion and sexual orientation. And what Pope Leo and Pope Francis before him have revealed is that the core of Catholic social teaching is about matters of war and peace, is about preferential option for the poor, is about treating immigrants with dignity and respect and valuing life.

36:07And I think that is all more explicitly mentioned in the Bible and the New Testament and from Jesus' mouth than anything related to abortion or sexual orientation or any of the other personal morality issues that have become political in the United States.

36:24Jon Favreau:Look, it's Thomas Aquinas over here. Look at this guy. Thomas Aquinas. Actually, he knows what he's talking about. I'm like, yeah, I bad. Yeah. I'm Protestant. Not since Henry VIII has a divorced slob. Felt that the Pope had overstepped his bound. But at least Henry VIII did bury Anne Boleyn on a golf course. You know what I'm saying?

36:53What do you think? Smart fight to pick? Let me tell you. We've talked about Trump picking fight with Muslims, which he has. Obviously, there was the whole Muslim. Muslim ban in the United, you know, also in the United States. He's viciously attacked Muslims in the United States. He has talked about dual loyalty and has said plenty of anti-Semitic things about Jews in the United States. There's 20, 20 % of the country are Catholic in the United States of America. Is it that much? Yes, it is. There's over 50 million Catholics in the United States. So there's a lot of Catholics.

37:28Jon Favreau:There's a lot of Catholics. It does politically, this feels worse. I mean, remember, this is not his first big fight with a pope. Remember, he tweeted about Pope Francis. If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which, as everyone knows, is ISIS's ultimate trophy. Oh, my God. I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened. Remember that one? I forgot about that. That's a wild one. This one feels bad, though, politically. First of all, it's like mood music. Things are a little rocky for Trump, especially with his far-right followers.

37:57Jon Favreau:I don't know if you and Dan covered the op-ed length screed attacking Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones from last week. I read it aloud. Yeah, so Trump's biggest supporters are not in the mood to defend him. And it also comes right after the Easter tweet where he offended a lot more Christians by tweeting, close the fucking straight and praise Allah on Easter. Yeah, he offended Christians and Muslims in one tweet. All over the, I started a little holy war there. And then, you know, it is an American pope. It's just like, what are you doing, dude? Yeah, he posted a picture of himself as the Pope in May of last year.

38:31And I do think that like he's said, he's done, like you said with Francis, he's done this before. I actually think he's just doing it at a time in which he actually no longer seems kind of tough and blustery, but it just seems sort of sweaty. And so he's getting attacked from like people that would previously have never said a word about something like this and would have done what Vance did and say, oh, he was just kidding around. That's our president. That's our big boy. But instead, they're actually saying what they think about it.

38:55Jon Favreau:Yeah, if you guys listen to the full 45 minute Tucker Carlson monologue attacking the Easter tweet that led into a broader Iran critique, it actually started by pointing out that Trump did not put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn into office. I hadn't realized that. I didn't realize that either. I don't know how I missed that. And it really, it built to an argument basically that Trump thinks he's God and thinks he has Godlike powers and that that is wrong and evil. And it's also, it's kind of like kicking up a debate again about whether Trump is mentally well. I mean, he was asked this at a press event the other day.

39:23Jon Favreau:Like, people, hey, sir, people think you're crazy. What do you think? And my view on that is he's been like this forever. Yeah, I just, I listen. It didn't make sense when I saw it as a kid, but as I get older, stupid is as stupid does. You know? I think watching the 60 Minutes segment is what, obviously, that is what set him off. And there's been reporting on this. But it is worth watching, everyone. Nora O'Donnell does a pretty great job talking to the three cardinals, the Archbishop of Washington, Chicago and New York. And I mean, they they accused the White House of gamification of warfare, calling the administration's videos, the snuff videos, a sickening quote where Cardinal Kubitsch were dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people in the killing of children and our own soldiers in their entertainment.

40:10um Cardinal Tobin called ICE a lawless organizations they hide their identities to terrify people I mean it was just it went on and on and on and I think that for Trump when he hears that he's like oh this is a personal attack and I get to I get to hit back just like anything else but it's like what they are revealing is that it's not just Trump's own personal morality but like his entire political agenda is incompatible with not just Christian Christianity and Catholic social teaching, but like most of the world's major religions because it is like based in like because they are based in empathy and compassion and grace and and banning abortion, which he kind of already gave them.

40:46So we're on the other side. He gave him a pretty big win. And now they're turning on him.

40:51Jon Favreau:The side note, not as important. Interesting that 60 Minutes aired that piece, given all the concern that Barry Weiss would be spiking anything kind of critical of Trump. So I guess good that that made it through. And Free Price broke the story. Yes. They broke the story about them saying that they're going to get the papacy back to Avignon. Yeah. So like on the politics of this, I mean, I don't know if it'll do lasting damage. Like a lot of Catholics might be like, yeah, it was weird. He deleted it, but he overturned Roe versus Wade. So like we're good. But it is interesting, I think, that once again, the anger and the criticism falls into the character values bucket.

41:26Jon Favreau:This isn't like he didn't give us the tax credit or let us like be mean to the, you know the cake artist who won't make an lgbt like wedding cake or whatever it was like there's people on true social saying this is desecration trump is the antichrist trump thinks he's god i've heard from people who who like they have mag relatives who are like this was it they were done this was because it's it's the the the extremely political types who like their first issue even more than their catholicism is abortion is one thing like you were saying but i think for most catholics when you start attacking the Pope like that and then you put yourself as AI Jesus, like that is a pretty, it's pretty blasphemous.

42:07Yeah. You know, and it is, it's very Trump too because with Islam and Judaism, like there's like, Catholicism has a head of the church. And so there is someone, there is like a person who can be a threat to Donald Trump who is a moral leader around the world. He's not used to that. He's used to just being like, see that politician, like they're just as bad as everyone else. We're all the same, we're all bad. And so it's - Look, not the first leader also just to think that, like, oh, what could the Pope do? He doesn't have any armies or anything. I do wonder if maybe Trump could maybe like go on the road to Kenosa and then walk all the way to the castle and then take his shoes off and then beat on the doors for a few days until the Pope lets him in and then he can apologize and then the Pope would absolve him and then he could go back to leading the Holy Roman Empire.

42:56Yeah, that's good idea. Empire, what about that? I think that's a good idea. That's really good. Did you see the other interesting thing before we move off on the CBS, on the 60 Minutes thing is that the Pope has decided to spend the 4th of July in Lampedusa, which is the Italian island where tens of thousands of migrants have landed on their way to Europe. And Nora asked if that was symbolic. And they're like, yeah, of course. He's like, no, no, they have great spritzes there. It's the Admiral. it's beautiful because it's on the coast it's on the waters the waters really chill on that side

43:29Jon Favreau:yeah your hair doesn't get curly and it's like what a contrast with you know Donald Trump celebrating July 4th with what he's gonna do his bacchanal of like literal violence like UFC matches and he's meanwhile welcoming migrants to the shore which is what you know as one of the cardinals said which is what the Statue of Liberty is supposed to represent also tough for Vance's I Became Catholic book tour yeah big time yeah my like I said my road what is it called like the road home it's taking the long road back to Catholicism so I only know about Catholicism up to the Reformation that's where the end of my memory of AP European history cuts off it's going to really ruin the book tour for J.D.

44:08Vance it's what is it called communion communion finding my way back to faith he found his way back

44:16Jon Favreau:how many books about himself is that guy going to write Jesus Christ too many already VP bud

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46:45All right, let's get to the big development here in the California governor's race. Eric Swalwell, who was one of the leading candidates, has dropped out after four women accused the congressman of sexual misconduct, including a former staffer who has offered a detailed and corroborated account of Swalwell raping her in a New York hotel room after a night of heavy drinking in 2024. The women spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN, and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has now opened a criminal investigation into the allegations. Swalwell was initially defiant, but after losing most of his endorsements, he ended his campaign on Sunday night, writing in a statement on X that he was, quote, deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment, and that he, quote, will fight the serious false allegations that have been made.

47:28Just before we recorded, Swalwell also resigned from Congress. What are your reactions to both the news and, in general, it's secondary, but just the audacity to run for governor knowing that this was out there?

47:41Jon Favreau:Yeah, I mean, it was shocking. I mean, I think there were a lot of rumors about Eric Swalwell kind of being one of the younger members of Congress who would go to bars, get too drunk, hang out with staffers, maybe fraternize with them in inappropriate ways. But nothing. I had never heard anything like this. No. So I read that CNN story and I thought he should drop out of the race. He should resign from Congress. then he should hire a criminal defense attorney because there's a damn good chance that guy gets prosecuted and could see jail time. And then shortly after the Manhattan district attorney announced an investigation.

48:12Jon Favreau:So, you know, it's horrible. I'm glad the Democratic Party moved quickly to to push him out. It's a nice it's a contrast with how the Republicans operate and the Tony Gonzalez to Trump to many in between. But it's despicable. Yeah, it was at first Swalwell was issuing these denials that sort of referenced to mistakes in judgment, but that, oh, he'd never done NDAs and had never been members of staff. And then those were, I think, disproven, or at least there was reporting that showed that those weren't true. So then those statements sort of changed. Hard to get into the mind of somebody that would have this in their past and think that they could run for governor because you can't even say, oh, he, because it's like this is not um like i don't know what stories people tell themselves but he's not the first person uh to have terrible skeletons in their closet and still believe that they could do whatever they want and keep rising and be brazen and be brazenly ambitious and right up to the end like the video he recorded uh reportedly at some billionaire donors home uh in beverly hills like his staff wasn't around um where he like refused to drop out and said he was gonna stay in it it's like the the woman who came forward on this she if you read the CNN story in the San Francisco Chronicle story like she has text messages to a friend saying that she was sexually assaulted by Eric Swalwell saying exactly what happened like right after it happened in 2024 she had told multiple family members her partner at the time and then you have three other women having similar saying similar things.

49:47The woman who alleges the sexual assault also like got tested for, had a pregnancy test and tested for STDs and had the person at the lab send her a note that said like, you're a survivor, hang in there. I mean, just like there's, there's so much. A lot of it. A lot of it. And to like read that story as Eric Swalwell and to like see the other ones and just be like, I'm going to film a video being like, fuck it. I'm hanging in here. And then his lawyer gave this insane attacking the victims interview with Alex Michelson on CNN, and Alex did a great job, but it was just like, it was so hard to watch because he just was like sitting there not giving any answers on anything.

50:23It's like, why did you even go on TV? Yeah, we've seen like a lot. I also just like, there's a story I think people tell themselves that, oh, like I've been, you know, I've looked, I've stepped outside of my marriage and I've had been unfaithful, but I've never done anything. Like I've never been hurt anybody. I've never, I mean, it's always consensual, always consensual. And then these stories come out, whether it's, we've seen over and over the powerful men that they truly like cannot either they are in denial of themselves or just lie in perpetuity but they cannot accept that what they've done is not just been unfaithful but actually been like sexually assaulted people yeah and there was a story in i think it was the times about you know it's indicative like this whole thing was indicative of how um what a shit show the california governor's race has been and people were like clamoring to get behind some kind of candidate because kamala didn't run and padilla didn't run and so swell well comes and then they're all like okay this is our guy this is our guy just starting and there were rumors some of the rumors like that you were just saying to me that like you know maybe he'd been inappropriate and people kept going to him and saying like any truth to this and they said that his denials and his categorical denials even in private like one-on-one before endorsements were like so intense that they were like okay i guess he's he's saying absolutely not nothing's gonna come out you know mag has been after me for a while wouldn't they have surfaced this already like well there was also this thing where you know there was a report that cash patel was going to put the you know

51:43Jon Favreau:eye of sauron from the fbi on swalwell and like inappropriately release investigative files so i think there was there was also i think legitimate concern that maybe like the trump administration was going to use the power of the government in some inappropriate way to target him which right like i think it led to maybe more second chances for him but then also i was thinking back to that weird video he released with his wife where they're like walking in Santa Monica and it's like his wife like endorses his candidacy and we're like, what is this? What is the context? And it's just like so clear that that was front running these controversies.

52:18Jon Favreau:By the way, as we were recording, CNN and some others reporting that in battle, GOP rep Tony Gonzalez announces he's stepping down from Congress. So this is another absolute scumbag on the Republican side. Yeah, so people know like the Swalwell thing brought up these other House members who they all thought that they maybe would try to expel together. So there was Swalwell, Gonzalez, who had had an affair with the staffer who later committed suicide. Democrat Sheila Cheerful is McCormick, who the House Ethics Committee found guilty of stealing COVID relief funds for her campaign. Republican Corey Mills, who's under investigation for committing campaign fraud and sexual misconduct and domestic violence.

52:57That guy is awful. And so now Swalwell has resigned. Gonzalez has said he's going to resign or retire tomorrow. And so now I don't know if the vote will go forward on Cherfellis, McCormick, and Mills or if the whole thing will get dropped. But wow. So there's a lot about the house just to kind of - Yeah, what are we doing? It's like, oh, someone did something bad? Let's get them all together. Let's expel them all. Yeah, there's such a - Because Santos was basically the first person expelled since what, like Reconstruction? Yeah. And with that, it was like, oh, well, it's so obvious that you should have this person removed because it's just so brazen and there's so many examples.

53:32But yeah, dude, There's something so like, look, I'm glad Swalwell's resigning. All these other people should be resigned and expelled. But there's something so ugly about like, oh, we have to do it in pairs because we're only going to enforce our ethics in a bipartisan way, which tells you that actually what you need is some kind of a standard or process at the end of which there's a way in which you say, all right, this standard has been met. We will vote to expel. That won't be kind of abused or politicized or ignored by either side. Yeah. And it is why I get why when sometimes people face these expulsion votes, they say like, Like, well, we need either the House Ethics Committee to have completed an investigation and fine the person guilty through the House Ethics Committee or like an actual criminal conviction outside.

54:11Some kind of legal determination. Right, because you do want that because otherwise then everyone's going to start saying, oh, you did this, you did this, expelled, right? Evidentiary standards. And by the way, like, I'm glad, too, that there was like genuine reporting that dug in. Like, because there were like random posts on social media. Like, oh, Swalwell's a creep. And someone like, this is just a hit piece. This is by the opponents. And it's impossible to know. It's hard to tell. We're just trying. We don't know. You can't go by that. Right. And so I'm - Thankfully, someone, these women came forward.

54:34Yeah. So it sort of like was a combination of people kind of drumming this up online, including people sort of outside of traditional journalism, and then it getting kind of a kind of, you know, journalistic outlets sort of putting in the resources to go and kind of run these things down, which ultimately I think is why it was able to successfully make the story breakthrough and get him to resign. So let's talk about what happens now in the California governor's race. We can do, you know, J.D. Vance, good news, bad news. Bad news is this. Bad news is that guy. good news is I feel like the lockout fears are over at this point

55:04Jon Favreau:I don't know I kind of revived them we can get to that but yeah well let's talk about it because I think I think now that Trump has Trump has jumped in to endorse Steve Hilton Swalwell's out so now you have California's roughly 60-40 state Democrats Republicans so you have two Republicans splitting the 40 but one endorsed by Donald Trump and then now you have Tom Steyer, Katie Porter, and then I guess Matt Mahan is the mayor of San Jose, Javier Becerra, former AG and Biden administration cabinet member, and Antonio Viragosa, former mayor of LA, sort of vying for the third spot. What do you guys think?

55:54Jon Favreau:So most of the people I've talked to in the California political world since the Swalwell News think that this race will go down to, on the Democratic side, Steyer versus Katie Porter. Katie Porter's campaign has said, I think, to Politico today that they, in their internal polls, they get half of Swalwell's vote. Steyer's team, I think, said they get a quarter of Swalwell's vote. So we'll see. The problem for Katie Porter is no matter how much she raises or how hard she campaigns in the next couple of weeks, it's going to be impossible to match the$120 million that Steyer has already spent. And the problem for Steyer is he spent$120 million and he's still kind of stuck in this heat.

56:29He was spending millions attacking Swalwell, which at this point means that money was just wasted.

56:35Jon Favreau:Yeah. And so most of the candidates, as you said, are polling significantly lower than those two. The X factor seems to be Matt Mahan, who may get like a ton of money from a bunch of tech industry. Billionaires already has, but may get a ton more. And maybe that'll move the needle. The problem for him is that like California is so big. We have, what, 10 media markets. They're all expensive. Even spending 20 million is like not going to get you that much. So, you know, that's the assumption of where this will set you at. Now, the good news for all of us is everyone's in the field right now with polls, like campaigns, media organizations, PACs.

57:08Jon Favreau:Hopefully, we'll get some new data. I think the scary scenario is a situation where you have Mahan, Porter and Steyer all splitting the Dem vote. Then you could see a Steve Hilton, Chad Bianco lockout scenario. It is very unlikely. It is more likely, I think, that the Democratic Party comes in or the DGA comes in and elevates Steve Hilton further in some way to ensure that it's a Republican Democrat general election. But we'll see. Yeah, and the reason that it seems unlikely that there's going to be a lockout now is if you've got, so Becerra, Viragosa, and Mahan have like maybe in one or two polls, one of them has hit five.

57:48No one's gotten more than five, right? So say you generously give all the candidates who aren't Porter and Steyer 15%. That still is 45 % between Steyer and Porter. and divided by two is as long as they're over 20, neither Chad Bianco or Steve Hilton is getting over 20 % because it's 40 % of the voters are Republicans in California. Yeah, the argument for this kind of all redounding to Porter is Steyer has spent whatever it is, over$100 million. He's gotten to wherever he's gotten. He's gotten billions of impressions and he's sort of stuck where he is. Katie Porter hasn't really spent anything.

58:28She's spent very little on ads. And I hope that this would be an opportunity to go spend that money. And so before you even get to where the voters go, like where does Swalwell money go? It doesn't make sense for Dakota Tom Steyer. He's a fucking billionaire. So like Matt Mahan, maybe, maybe, but or like some of them, some of them. But like because he's Matt Mahan is like very like a lot of the a lot of the tech focused people, you know, so he's got a lot of money to rank on that campaign. Now, again, he's got some similar issue with Steyer. He's jumped in the race later, but a lot of money spent and still sitting around four or five percent.

59:00I feel like I don't know. Maybe we'll see. but like the idea that there's a bunch of people that were behind Eric Swalwell are now suddenly gonna go to them. We're kind of like, they're not gonna go to the other traditional them in the race. I don't know. We'll see. But it does seem like it's a moment for Katie Porter to like spend some money and try to figure out how to like kind of bump herself up. I'm sure she's been waiting because she's so outgunned by Steyer. It's also, it's like at some point in this environment where attention matters most and people barely watch ads, like I do think finding a moment to capture attention is more important in some ways as Tom Steyer has found out, and then spending a whole bunch of money.

59:34And it's a challenge in a statewide race, especially a state as big as California, because you have a huge state, so you have a huge fucking audience, but everyone's talking about national politics all the time. And we have a couple of big debates coming up. And do we think California voters are all going to be tuning into those debates? You'd hope so, but I don't know. Because we have a forum tomorrow night, which will be the first time I think they've all been together and to comment on Swalwell. And I do think that will be a newsmaking thing and we'll see something coming out there. Luckily, there's lots of better news for Democrats to focus on.

1:00:02On Monday, the Cook Political Report shifted its outlook for several key Senate races in Democrats' direction. North Carolina and Georgia, this is wild, from toss-up to lean Democrat. Ohio from lean Republican to toss-up. And Nebraska from solid Republican to lean Republican. In Iowa, a survey commissioned by a Democratic group gave Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand an eight-point lead in the governor's race, while the same poll has Republicans holding only a narrow lead in the Senate race. where there are two strong Democrats in a tough primary. Over in Alaska, Mary Peltola raised almost$9 million in the first three months of the year, quadrupled the amount raised by Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan, probably the most money ever raised in that state.

1:00:42Do you guys think the Democrats' chance of taking back the Senate has been underrated? I feel like it might have been underrated by now. It might have been underrated. Yeah, I'm just sort of picturing an Ayatollah coming to the microphone the day after the election and saying, we didn't set out to change the American regime, but the regime did change. it's interesting to think about yeah i don't know if it's underrated other than it was rated correctly and then we launched a war and and like gas prices are through the roof and now it needs to be rated according to what's happened it's been overtaken by events like it was maybe a toss-up when gas was three dollars a gallon if it's five or six dollars a gallon suddenly the senate is not just in play but like we have a real real chance of taking it yeah i mean i've long felt pretty

1:01:23Jon Favreau:optimistic about North Carolina and Georgia, just because like those are great candidates in states that are genuinely swingy. Ohio and Iowa, tough states in 2024. I think Trump won Ohio by 11 points, won Iowa by 13 points, some big headwinds. But Ohio, we had Sherrod Brown, he's probably the best candidate we could ask for. He's a winner primary, but he's going to win the primary. And then in Iowa, we will not have a candidate until June 2nd. I interviewed Josh Turek a couple weeks ago. Folks want to listen to that. We're out to Zach Walls to try to get him on soon too. but Iowa Democrats have a really strong candidate at the top of the ticket and Rob Sand who is reportedly up eight points.

1:01:57Jon Favreau:Randy Feenstra is his opponent. He's not that popular. He got a lot of baggage. And between like high gas prices, high fertilizer prices, and then tariffs, Trump has done everything he can to piss off farmers and fuck over Iowa's economy. So there's just like, there's just a lot of, you know, tailwinds for these candidates. We should know that Cook in the same is moving those races also still doesn't think the Democrats are favored to win the Senate because they basically think we'll pick up one to three. We need four. And so there must be counting Maine, North Carolina, and then either Ohio or Alaska or Iowa and not two of the three.

1:02:40Now, I think Texas is a good chance too, but they don't rate Texas as... I think Texas is still lean Republican in their ranking, if I'm remembering correctly. I would also like to see part of this, too. Like, who does gas prices hit? Obviously, geographically, it's going to hit states where people are driving a longer distance or driving bigger cars. Like, I would bet if you looked at, like, who are the kinds of people that were kind of soft Trump voters and are now open to voting for a Democrat? It's going to be people that they're not driving Teslas. They're driving SUVs and they find Democrats talking about these issues pretty annoying, but they're pretty fucking pissed about how expensive gas is because we went to war in Iran.

1:03:19Yeah. And it's not just gas. It'll be supply shortages and the cost of other... I mean,

1:03:24Jon Favreau:inflation is still a problem. It's going to be a big problem. And the argument that why are we spending X billions on bombs to drop on schools in Iran when we could be spending on anything else here pulls through the roof and everyone's going to be able to use that. Wait till we find out how much this blockade is going to cost us a day. Billions. Trump was, Trump, right before the election in Hungary, was promising like economic help for Hungary if they elect Viktor Orban. Which he's done so many times. Like remember the beef, the Argentinian beef. Argentinian bailout. Like he keeps doing that.

1:03:53Jon Favreau:It's insane. Brazen election interference. Then J.D. Vance goes over there and is like, the bureaucrats in Brussels tried to interfere in your election. I won't, but also vote for Viktor Orban, but I'm not here to say, like, what are you doing, you absolute loser? It's insane. He wasn't doing it to win. He was doing it because they're friends. That's right. He was doing it to help a friend. All right. If you don't love J.D. Vance at his Victor Orban, you don't deserve him. Just the most corrupt person ever. Victor Orban. Finally, before we get to Love It's interview with Nithya Raman, one more quick item for you.

1:04:24Well, plenty of political leaders from liberal democracies all over the world posted statements celebrating Victor Orban's defeat over the weekend. one in particular caught our eye from former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau not because of what he posted but where he seemingly posted it from Coachella where the 54 year old was spotted in a backwards hat with girlfriend Katy Perry in a series of viral photos which drew this comment from Twitter user at the departed rat quote when you're faded and need to squint one eye to type but you're trying to tweet about Hungarian politics the screen is vibrating there it there it is this picture is enraging this picture is enraging to me he looks so vital young and happy he looks he looks he looks half his age look maybe there's hope for 54 i i guess i just like i for me all coachella is is a great weekend where the traffic is less in la and like there's the former prime minister just living his best fucking life i like

1:05:23Jon Favreau:that there's like also a video that's come up too on the screen yeah he's like what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing um i was talking to a canadian friend today who said trudeau is getting shit in canada i have friends in canada too do you have friends canada yeah go on or something up there go from the camp uh because he pushed i'm from canada he pushed for a plastic cup ban in canada and as you can see there he's got a red solo cup that's why he was getting shit that's one of the reasons people are also making fun of him for wearing like relaxed clothes.

1:05:50Jon Favreau:Do you expect him to be in like a blue suit? Yeah, like a suit. What are we talking about here? I feel like the backwards hat. Enjoying some Chinese food and a nice person. I guess I like Trudeau. He was on Pod Save the World. Check out Pod Save the World. Subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. I guess my advice to him would be like post about Coachella or post about the Hungarian elections. Don't do both. I'm sorry. And you think he needs your advice. Yes, he absolutely does. He is dating a pop star at Coachella. We're fucking here. He's crushing it. He's living the most divorced dad life.

1:06:23He's doing great. He's posting about Victor Orban throwing back a ketamine lozenge. He's crushing it. It is a very relatable situation. We've all been there. Oh no, we gotta do some work. We're looking at Twitter. Here we are in a fun time. Drafted a convention speech from Vegas. Done it all. Was he just there to see Bieber?

1:06:42Jon Favreau:Or is that just a coincidence? A lot of the reporting connected them because they're both Canadian. I mean, she's there, so I'm sure she was just there to see everyone and got all the, you know. She's Katy Perry. She's Katy Perry. Yeah. Imagine you're tripping balls waiting for a port-a-potty. You're like, Justin Trudeau? I bet he has artist passes. I bet he has the good passes. Oh, definitely. But he's still got to pee. He's got to pee. And that's the thing. We all got to pee. Bernie was at Coachella last year, right? But he spoke. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah, I think it was he opened for Skrillex.

1:07:14Is that the right? God, my references are getting so old.

1:07:17Jon Favreau:Wow. sold nice good it was a bare naked ladies show we'll be seeing you we'll be seeing you at 54 with your hat backwards who was a fuel concert not Wilco just Ari wheeling you around was we yeah

1:07:34Jon Favreau:hey buddy old man stagecoach is down the road no no that's next weekend they actually she actually started out with a band called No Doubt

1:07:46Jon Favreau:alright It looked fun. I wish I was there. Me too. We're just jealous. For sure. For sure. For sure. Anyway, when we come back, Lovett talks to Nithya Raman about her race for LA mayor.

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1:09:51Joining me in studio, she's a city council member and candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. Nithya Raman, welcome to Pod Save America. Thank you so much for having me. We have a lot to get through. I'm going to go pretty quickly. I also do want to disclose that I've been a supporter of yours for a long time, but I was really excited to see you jump in the race, not just because you're you, but because I thought Los Angeles deserved a big, contentious, hard-fought mayoral campaign, and we were about to not have one. You had endorsed Karen Bass for mayor. Yes. She was a political ally of yours. Then literally in the hours before the noon deadline, you decided to run.

1:10:28What happened in the month between endorsing your former political ally and deciding to run against her? Well, the endorsement request had come months prior. So I just want to be very clear about that. It wasn't like an overnight change of heart. But I will say that I had been getting really frustrated with the way that things had been going in the city and in the way that things had been going in City Hall. On so many of the issues that I really cared about, on housing and housing production and the cost of housing, the extraordinary cost of housing here in Los Angeles, I felt like the city was actually fighting against state mandates to build housing.

1:11:04The city was fighting affordable housing. And we didn't have any clear direction or urgency around the issue at all on issues like homelessness, where people were demanding accountability. That is possible, absolutely possible to deliver things that I have actually made progress on in my own district and in my limited way as the chair of the committee. We were just not doing on a system wide level and we didn't feel any urgency around it. And I feel like that lack of urgency was everywhere in every issue that I cared about. And I kept trying to push back against it and kept hitting a wall. And I think I got increasingly frustrated.

1:11:39And I'm not a traditional politician in that this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I actually didn't even really think that I would ever run for office. But I really care about Los Angeles. And the idea, exactly like you said, of having a mayoral election where we weren't even talking about the fact that L.A. is struggling right now, that a lot of people feel like it's moving in the wrong direction, that the city hall needs to be doing things differently in order to address our biggest problems, that we weren't even going to have that conversation. I mean, it made me crazy. It made me absolutely crazy.

1:12:11And so finally, in the last couple of days, I seriously considered running. And then on the very last day, threw my hat in the ring. So let's talk about what's wrong with Los Angeles, which would be too long of a conversation to have. But stepping back, the city of LA has a budget of around$14 billion. Yet we can't fix sidewalks, repave streets. We don't plant trees. We can't replace the bulbs in our street lamps. Why in the richest state in the country, in the fourth largest economy in the world, is Los Angeles such a basket case? You know, I think a lot of it has to do with really poor fiscal management here at the city.

1:12:51We are making decisions that undermine our capacity to be able to deliver basic essential services for our residents. And I think that's a shame because it is, again, it's completely possible to do it. We last year had a billion-dollar budget deficit that definitely had some kind of impacts from the fires the year prior and from, or a few months prior, and from heightened liability claims that are impacting a lot of municipalities across the country. But the biggest issue was that we signed unsustainably large contracts, beginning with the police union, which is one of the biggest players in local politics.

1:13:34We signed an enormous contract with them that everybody at City Hall knew would lead to hundreds of millions of dollars of shortfall. And yet we signed it anyway because the mayor and many other City Hall leaders, I voted against it, many other City Hall leaders knew that the police union is the major player in local elections. They're the biggest funders of independent expenditure committees of campaign funding here in L.A. And so we signed that contract. We knew that we would be hundreds of millions of dollars in the hole as a result. And then exactly as everyone knew, we ended last year with a billion dollar budget deficit and 1 ,600 layoffs on the table.

1:14:12And because that happened, we are now in a situation where we have 30 ,000 streetlights off across the city of Los Angeles and an average repair time of a year. to fix a streetlight. We haven't paved a single mile of street this entire fiscal year because we don't have the money. We're filling fewer potholes because we have the trucks to fill potholes, but we can't pay for the drivers to fill potholes. We are doing everything worse than we could. And now we're going back to residents and asking them to pay more in order to deliver these essential services. So you would, if you were to become mayor, you would inherit these contracts.

1:14:49how do you fix it? How do we dig ourselves out of this hole? And how do you do it when it's not just the mayor that's kind of making these decisions, but also the city council and other people that feel beholden to these groups, even if they're supportive of making sure public employees receive good benefits and good pay? 100%. 100%. And I think you can offer, I think we can have a vision for Los Angeles where we are paying public sector employees what they deserve, giving them raises to be able to live in this city that is so extraordinarily expensive, but also negotiate adequately in order to make sure that we're also delivering basic services.

1:15:28And that inability to negotiate, that's what we're losing in a system which is so insular here in LA, where the people who are really constituents of city hall politics are a very small group, as opposed to all of the residents of the city of Los Angeles, for whom the decisions being made in City Hall really matter. Can you talk about what happened with the convention center? Yes. So I think this is a good example. Yeah. There was a proposal to expand the convention center. That's right. You just tell people what happened, how much it's going to cost, and what happened there. Yeah. So there's been a proposal being kicked around for actually a decade to expand the convention center.

1:16:07We have a convention center in downtown LA. It is pretty old. It's smaller than other convention centers. And there's been kind of a discussion to see whether we should expand it and brighten it up. Suddenly, just a few months after we had a billion-dollar budget deficit, the convention center was back on the table. And by this time, the costs had ballooned significantly. Now the cost of rebuilding that convention center with debt service were going to be close to$6 billion. dollars,$6 billion. That would mean that we were going to be paying out$100 million annually out of our general fund. Those are our discretionary dollars that we use for providing basic services here in LA, everything from public safety to streetlights.

1:16:49And that proposal was pushed through very, very quickly, despite the fact that we are in a fiscal crisis, despite the fact that we have the Olympics coming up, despite the fact that local and economic headwinds are very, very uncertain here in Los Angeles because a small cluster of downtown businesses who fund local elections really wanted to push it forward. And for me, I represent a district right now that is very vocal about their views. It's one of the relatively wealthier districts, and they know how to get in touch with City Hall when they care. I didn't hear from any of my constituents saying that they wanted this project to move forward.

1:17:30That's very unusual for big decisions in front of the city. How long would the project take to like how many years would it take to build this convention center? It's going to take a couple of years. And what is interesting about it is that we actually have Olympics events that are scheduled to happen at the convention center. And so in order to make sure that the Olympics events are happening, what we have to do is to move the project forward until it gets to Olympics readiness. It won't be done by the time the Olympics are happening, but we need to get to Olympics readiness. And then we're going to kind of put walls around the remaining parts of the convention that are there still under construction.

1:18:04Then we're going to have the events there. And then afterwards, we'll finish the project. And that's going to cost$6 billion. With debt service. With debt. So including all the costs plus the borrowing and all the rest is going to cost$36 billion. And how long would it take us to make back that$6 billion? I mean, we're going to be paying the debt for that for the next 30 years. And the revenues will never cover the costs. I mean, this is... Terrific. Love that for us. All right. I'm sorry. So how does it get to the point where a small group of people, Democrats or, you know, left associated people are all coming together to make these decisions?

1:18:40Not Republicans that are causing these problems. It's not Donald Trump. It's this is a problem generated by the only thing between us and solving these problems is Democrats. Right. And so for people that maybe aren't from Los Angeles and see this, what have you learned being in the city council about what it takes to get a group of people that are maybe ideologically aligned to care about just the basics of good governing? You know, I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you, because that is not what we have right now here in Los Angeles. So I don't know what the solution for actually caring about good governance is, except that I think it is absolutely necessary at this moment.

1:19:17To me here, to live in this city, to think about the fact that I have to look my constituents in the face and say to them, you trust me, I'm going to address really complex issues like affordability. I'm going to address really complex issues like homelessness, but I can't fix your streetlight for a year and just trust me, I got this. That felt unacceptable to me. That felt like an absurd situation to be in with my constituents. And that is really what pushed me into running at this time. I had actually been so frustrated with the way that things were going that I had started to lose hope in how things could get better here in Los Angeles.

1:20:02And I think in the context of a federal environment where I feel relatively helpless and hopeless as well, feeling that locally has also been really, really, you know, frustrating. But I will say that since I started the campaign and since I've been going out and talking to communities about these decisions and talking about how the city can do better, how we can achieve all of the goals that we want to set out to achieve if we're honest with our constituents, if we're open, if we're transparent. And if we really work towards good outcomes, I really do feel like people are excited by that message.

1:20:34People are getting enthusiastic. People are organizing their own meetings so that I can meet their friends. Like, it is a message that is getting a lot of positive reception, which is really exciting. So let's talk about one of the key challenges for LA, which is housing. I actually interviewed Zoran Mamdani about this when he was running in New York, that he had actually evolved as somebody that was associated with the DSA, the socialists, democratic socialists, that he had come to see the importance of not just like rent control and measures to control the cost of housing, public housing, but also market rate housing.

1:21:08I think you've had a similar evolution. can you talk about what is standing in the way right now of Los Angeles building enough housing supply to meet the need? Yeah I mean I think I definitely had that same movement I was very focused on affordable housing when I first started my first race building more affordable housing building more shelter making sure that we were building kind of what people talked about meeting here in LA. But as I was in office and I started getting calls from constituents who were struggling with their rents, I realized these were often people who would never qualify for affordable housing, but they had no choice but to live in a unit with a terrible landlord in terrible conditions because there was simply nothing else available to them here in Los Angeles.

1:21:58And LA is a city where there has been an active anti-housing movement that has shaped our local politics for decades. In the 80s, there was an anti-Manhattanization movement that downzoned, that reduced the capacity to build more housing along every major boulevard and thoroughfare, that reduced capacity to build multifamily housing across the entire city, leading to what estimates, what is an estimated shortfall of something like 500 ,000 units here in the city of Los Angeles right now. But I think we can actually fix it. There are ways in which the city of Los Angeles can build more. A huge change would be getting the city out of the way, rezoning so that we actually have capacity to build more housing, building more density, particularly near our major transit corridors, building more gentle density like duplexes and triplexes, even in some single family neighborhoods that can be more walkable that are near transit.

1:22:55I think that's a key change that we need to make. We need to get the city out of the way. We have enormous red tape standing between an application for a new housing unit coming in and when it is actually approved. And our timelines for approving housing are double, even triple, what other jurisdictions are, which leads to significantly less housing being produced and, by the way, more expensive housing being produced. Because the longer you have to sit and wait for your permits to come, the more expensive that housing becomes ultimately. And the fewer projects that get started because the people building those projects know they have to be able to make money on the end when there's going to be a huge delay.

1:23:31Yeah. I also wanted to say that we really have a culture in City Hall where delay and denial are kind of rewarded and saying yes is not. And I think we have to completely flip that around. We have to build a city where saying yes is the goal of our housing processes, not the opposite. And that is a culture shift that has to happen at every level of the bureaucracy. It has to be enabled and undergirded by technology that allows cooperation between departments. And it has to be rewarded at the highest levels of government. And that's really what I think needs to happen. Yeah, like after the fires in the Palisades and Altadena, there was this sense even from the mayor that like, we're going to make this process faster.

1:24:15We're going to make it work better. Of the 4 ,100 that have applied for permits to rebuild, fewer than half have been approved. Only 34 homes have been built. So even when there is impetus, even when there seems to be an understanding that we need to move faster, it's not happening. Is that a technical problem of the rules? Is that leadership? Is that the mayor not like what's happening? Well, I think it is leadership. I think it is a I think the mayor here in the city of Los Angeles has while it is a weaker mayor system than in other places, we the mayor has the capacity to hire and fire every department head.

1:24:53And that means that the mayor has the capacity to determine the priorities of every department. They're getting motions and legislative efforts from the council members to push them in a thousand different directions. The mayor is the one that departments respond to. And so it is up to the mayor to set housing production and permitting timelines as a priority. She can set deadlines for by when these things have to happen. You can appoint leadership that is responsive to those goals. You can create metrics through which you can hold department heads accountable. And if they meet those goals, you can reward them.

1:25:29And if they don't meet those goals, you should replace them. That is not happening here in the city of Los Angeles at all across all of the departments that are involved in the housing production process. Also, we haven't had a deputy mayor of housing for almost two years. In a city where the cost of housing and housing production and rebuilding are key issues for this city, we need a deputy mayor for housing. But, you know, that position has been left empty for, I think, an inexcusably long time. So we're in this crisis in housing. We've lost 54 ,000 people in the county. Now, Los Angeles passed something that's called ULA.

1:26:03It's the mansion tax. Yes. People would know it. Yeah. And I actually supported the mansion tax because I thought, OK, like I don't think it was it was written in a stupid way by people who seem honestly like mathematically illiterate. But it put a tax on houses over five million and then a bigger tax on houses, I believe, over 10 million. And I thought all things considered better to have it than not have it. I didn't understand when I voted for it, honestly, that it also applied to multifamily housing because that was so I wouldn't even have occurred to me that it would do something so fucking stupid.

1:26:31Truly, I feel stupid that I voted for. I would have voted no. You tried to fix it. And you say, hey, we'll keep the mansion tax, but we won't apply this to new multifamily housing because all the evidence says that multifamily housing is being stopped and this is counterproductive. And yet the council doesn't do it. Right. I what is the like it was enraging. I am mad sitting here. It doesn't. What is the logic of it? How do you how do you show up with these people and not like what is stopping them from doing that? Like sputtering to a stop. So fucking stupid. Why didn't they support what you were trying to do?

1:27:04Well, I mean, I think because people, A, people don't believe the evidence. So there's there. I mean, I was very convinced by the evidence. There were real differences in L.A. City versus L.A. County. L.A. County is producing more housing. We're producing less. San Diego, which is facing the same macroeconomic conditions that we are, is actually increasing permits while L.A. has seen a 25 percent drop in permits. I mean, to me, the evidence was very clear that this was impacting multifamily housing production. I think there's two things that are happening here that are preventing more robust action from being taken on issues that are obviously addressing housing production.

1:27:39One is that there is significant pushback from, again, those same kind of insider groups that have huge sway in City Hall, both the ULA coalition that I worked with very closely to try and negotiate a pathway forward. I was talking to them for many, many months to say, because I too was a supporter of ULA, I really value the money that it provides to the city for rent relief and other things. And so I worked very closely with them to say, hey, can we craft an exemption that allows for this much needed housing to be built here? Ultimately, we just were not able to come to an agreement on what that would look like.

1:28:13And I got extremely frustrated because to me, this is the single most important issue that is, you know, hampering our future resiliency, that is making Los Angeles into a place of less opportunity. Secondly, I think both labor groups that funded the effort also were not on board with making any changes. And so with nonprofits and with labor groups that had supported the effort not making any changes without a real push from the mayor and from other leadership to really move this forward, this effort died. It is now going through a committee process, but I'm not sure what is going to come from it.

1:28:50So I think more than half the council had already endorsed Karen Bass before you decided to run. They've, I think, all stuck with their endorsements. But I assume behind the scenes, others on the council are as frustrated as you are. You happen to have also been somebody that endorsed Karen Bass but was unhappy. Are you hearing from them privately that they actually want you to win, but they're afraid to say so publicly? Well, look, I don't want to betray my private conversations. I still have relationships with people on the council that I'm working with. And whatever happens in this election, either outcome, I will need to work with them going forward as well.

1:29:26But I will say that I interact with a lot of local political figures here, not just people on the council, but across the entire region. And I think there have been a lot of questions about kind of the lack of leadership on issues. And I think that's the most perplexing thing here in LA, which I think Angelenos can feel on the streets, which is just like a, there's a rudderlessness. There's just a lack of pushing. There's a lack of urgency on the things that I feel really urgent about and that I think residents of the city feel really urgent about. There's a lack of just kind of being out there and fighting.

1:30:09Like Angelinos need a fighter at a moment when things feel really bleak here. And to not have that fighter in City Hall, to not have that person really articulating a vision of how things could change, whether it's on the cost of housing, whether it's on our transit and safety infrastructure for our streets, whether it's on homelessness, whether it's on ICE, whatever it is. we're just missing that kind of that leadership here in the city. And this is an incredible place. This is an incredible place. It deserves that kind of leadership. It deserves that kind of vision. It deserves someone pushing with all of their might to push it in the right direction.

1:30:50And I just, I know I felt that absence and I don't think I'm the only one. I really don't. So I want to ask you about MacArthur Park. There's a beautiful park in the middle of the city. Yeah. If you go there right now, we drove there right now. It's the middle of the day. You would see basically an open air drug market. And the mayor and the police, they set up chain link fences on the sidewalks around the park. They're blocking off. They're not coordinating anything in. They are. It's it's hard to believe that this is the solution. They have built boxes of chain link fence to close the sidewalk so that people do not use those spaces to sell drugs.

1:31:31This was touted as a temporary solution. Years it has been devolving. There was a plan for like about 27 million dollars to try to beautify the park over a long period of time. You're the mayor of Los Angeles. How long does it take until MacArthur Park is a place that's safe for families? Is it a, I don't, I personally like, look, I can be told why I'm wrong, but the idea that it's a six month problem as opposed to a one month problem, two week problem to really kind of make the place safe again. Like what, what would you do and how long do you think it takes with real attention to make a place like that reflective of the kind of city we think Los Angeles should be?

1:32:09Yeah, I think, I think it would take six months to a year to change it because I think it takes repeated engagement and presence in that location to address longstanding issues. And I think you have to address both the homelessness crisis that is on the streets. You have to address the mental health issues that are out there. And you have to address very obvious criminal activity that's happening there, drug dealing and other kinds of things for which you need police presence there dealing with really ugly issues that are out there that require their attention, investigation and arrests. And I think if you do both of those things, if you are really, again, robustly engaged, pushing with all your might on that issue, I do think that you can make some real improvements there.

1:32:57I, you know, we have had in Council District 4 where I've been engaged, we don't have anything that resembles that scale of crisis. But we did have very large encampments, very, very large encampments, 30, 40 people that were there when I first got elected. And each of those, addressing each of those took that kind of effort. We were able to offer shelter, services, housing, and really push on the system to be able to address issues. There were cases where we had to work a much longer time to address people who had severe mental health issues, who, you know, despite repeated engagement, even arrests that came about from their own behavior would end up right back in the same place.

1:33:41That requires engaging with the Department of Mental Health. That requires engaging with mental health clinicians. It takes time. But again, with time and effort, progress can happen. And I think the key, the missing link here, the thing that I keep articulating over and over again, is that you have to put in the time and the urgency and the leadership and the focus on these things that can actually push things in the right direction. And it has to be sustained over time. Yeah, because what I'm hearing too is a lot of this is pushing back even at times on your own constituencies, whether it's a public employees Union or maybe advocates for the unhoused.

1:34:20You know, Gavin Newsom, it's almost taken as a given in some quarters that Gavin Newsom was performatively cruel in the way that he wanted to clear encampments. But at the same time, I imagine most even Democrats in California would say, oh, that's what I want. I want someone who's going to be aggressive about doing that. Like is part of the job of mayor making decisions that are humane, that are reflective of like our values as progressives. But at the same time, like sometimes the advocates are going to be out there protesting if you do need to clear an encampment or sometimes you are going to have to go against a labor union, even if you broadly support unions.

1:34:58I think that for me, like on the issue of encampments or the issue of homelessness overall, to me I think it is, and actually let me take a step back, whatever issue that we're talking about here in the city of Los Angeles, I think the issue for me as a person who is deeply progressive, as someone who believes in the power of government to do good things and to make our lives better. My goal is to ensure that you as a resident of Los Angeles and every resident of Los Angeles feels like the government is working for them and that they can they can palpably feel the positive presence of government in their lives.

1:35:39And I think you have to do what it takes in order to deliver those results on homelessness. I happen to believe that for the for kind of the encampments that I've dealt with in my district, housing, shelter, services focused work has been what has reduced homelessness significantly in street homelessness significantly in my district at almost every encampment that we've worked in. And that is the work that I would be doing is create that system of sustained effort to generate results on reducing street homelessness, on addressing mental health issues, on making our streets safer, cleaner, brighter, fixing streetlights, whatever it is.

1:36:24you have to push on these issues. And I think that is really, I think, for me, my governing principle as an elected representative and as someone who is a very proud progressive is like, I want people to feel like the government is working for them. When you were on the council, you supported what would become Mayor Bass's signature policy to address homelessness. It was a$300 million program to get people off the streets. the city spent about about 259 thousand dollars per person housed uh 40 of the participants more than 2 000 people ended up back on the streets what went wrong uh uh with that program and like what does it tell you about how you do it differently so initially i thought the kind of the emergency response uh of the inside safe program was necessary for la there we had a we I also supported declaring a state of emergency on homelessness.

1:37:21I think street homelessness is a crisis. It is an emergency, and we should respond to it at that scale. And the kind of effort that it was where you, again, it was renting hotel and motel rooms and using those as shelter to go to encampments and offer that shelter and then moving an entire encampment off the streets. That's called encampment resolution. It's not unique to Inside Safe. It's something that I've done in my district. In fact, we did it, you know, years before the mayor came into office. We've done it in Venice. It's been pioneered across the city, and it's very effective by really focusing encampment by encampment and offering real shelter to people that we're able to actually move people indoors and then clear those encampments and then those areas stay clear because you've actually addressed the reason why people are on the street in the first place.

1:38:09So to me, that kind of an encampment resolution focused response is really important. The issue becomes when the intervention that you're using is enormously expensive and you're not doing the work to ensure that you are making it into a fiscally sustainable response. So inside safe motel rooms cost an average of over$80 ,000 per person or per room per person per year. And people are staying in them for an average of a year. And sometimes they're costing as much as$100 ,000 per person per year. That is an enormously expensive intervention that I think was appropriate as an emergency intervention, but needs to be made into a real fiscally sustainable system that actually can respond to the crisis on our streets with the dollars that we have because this is not sustainable.

1:38:59And so to me, I want to build that system. I've actually, in the city, generated data about the performance of our homelessness investments for the first time, working with LASA that shows us where beds are vacant, where our permanent supportive housing units are available. And through that work, I've actually brought people into these beds, filled every bed, filled every unit. We need to be building a system which is cost less per person but is actually working better at actually bringing people indoors, filling every bed, filling every resource, and then doing the work when they're in those units and those shelter beds to get them the case management they need to transition to whatever is their next step, whether it's reunification with family, whether it is moving into a permanent supportive housing unit, whether it is coming into self-sufficiency, getting a job, being able to actually live independently.

1:39:49These are all things that the system can do, but you have to design that system. You need to make sure that there is leadership there and resources to create that system, to make sure that people are moving through it into safety and to permanent housing appropriately. But that kind of work is not happening right now, despite pushing within the city to create oversight, to create responsibility here. All right. A couple final questions. Look, I realize that as mayor of L.A., the Middle East has very little to do with your portfolio. But you've been hit from the left for not speaking out enough about Gaza.

1:40:30You also would be running to be the mayor of a city with a very big Jewish population that is deeply concerned about the way in which anti-Zionism bleeds into anti-Semitism. What do you view your role is in speaking about this issue? And what do you think people in Los Angeles should know about how you feel about it? Well, you know, I have spoken up about the issue in the past. I called for a ceasefire, introduced a ceasefire resolution in city council. I've called what's happening there, which is incredibly horrific to witness what's happening in Gaza. I've called it a genocide. And, you know, I've been deeply disturbed by what I have seen.

1:41:08At the same time, in my role as city council member and what I imagine in my role as mayor would be the impacts on people here and kind of the knock-on effects from what's happening in the Middle East, I think have to be also the focus of our work here in the city. So in my district, we've had increases in really horrifying incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. And I've had to respond to both of those. And as mayor, I would need to do more of that. I would need to ensure that this city is a place where people are able to express their political opinions freely, where people are able to express their First Amendment rights, but that they are not victims of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

1:41:56And when those happen, we have to speak up about it. We have to make sure that this is a place that's safe for everyone. I want to talk about the film industry briefly. There's so much to talk about. I know. So, L.A., we had only 19 ,000 on-location film and TV production days. That's a 16 % decrease from 2024. That's the lowest number of production days ever recorded outside of COVID. What would you do as mayor to bring production jobs back to this city that Mayor Bass hasn't been able to do? Yeah, you know, one of the big things that I think we need to be doing is making it easier to film here.

1:42:30And there have been some efforts that are making their way through the council around kind of reducing restrictions on how production happens, on reducing costs for production, how improving how film la works these have been moving i think all too slowly yeah um there's no reason why through executive directive these fixes can't be made immediately and that the bureaucracy that's standing in the way of people producing here actually making films here um cannot be eased more quickly by a mayor who is deeply focused on this issue but i think there's more that can be done um you know last year we had a conversation about a tax credit that increased You know, I wanted to see more advocacy from our mayor for a tax credit that would have no cap and that would be guaranteed a decade into the future.

1:43:18Right. That's the kind of system that studios are looking for as they're thinking about where to invest. and LA should be the loudest advocate. The leadership of LA should be the loudest advocate for the kind of tax credit system that other states are putting into place and actually getting production moving there, like in New Jersey. We should be advocating for that same system here. Okay, Sacramento may not listen, but the leadership of Los Angeles should be fighting as hard as they can to make sure that that tax credit system is put into place. I would also say that, you know, I think we need to be really engaging with studios.

1:43:51We need to be engaging with companies that are headquartered here and saying to them, what do we need to do to make sure that you're shooting here? What do we need to do to make sure that we are having production stay here? How can we make sure that this industry, which is so central to Los Angeles, so central to Los Angeles, stays in Los Angeles? How can we make sure that the incredible talent that we have across this city can work here, a place that they moved to, to build their dreams, to work in the film industry? And I think that's the kind of engagement that I want to see. I haven't been seeing that kind of engagement happening.

1:44:22that's what I would want to do if I were mayor. Oh, and then can you reopen the ArcLight? Oh, I don't know if I can. I would love to figure out why it's closed for so long. What's going on with the ArcLight? I don't know. It's nuts. Yeah, let's go talk to that property owner. Okay. All right. Made some progress today. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Nithya Raman, thank you so much for being here. Good luck in your race. I hope we get the ArcLight open. All right. We're done. Thank you. Thank you.

1:44:49That's our show for today. Thanks to Nithya Raman for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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