#2542 - Steve Hilton

30:07I think in that book, the 2015 book, More Human, I had this idea based on what you're talking about, which is actually for a lot of people, things like the minimum wage, for example, is just you can't live on it, especially like in California now. But in a lot of places, it's so low, the costs are so high, you can't live on it. And there's a lot of people working really hard, like not lazy on the couch playing video, seriously hardworking people, often two jobs, who can't live on what they make. It's like really wrong, I think. If you work so hard, you should be able to live on it. So I had this idea, which was the business-friendly living wage.

30:43and the idea was you increase the minimum wage to a living wage which is calculated what do you think that would be well in in cal it's by area it's different everywhere you know in in california and a lot of places would be incredibly high you know 34 you know a lot of really high level 30 or 40 an hour because you've got now in certain counties in california more than i think it goes up the whole time the official government level for low income is a hundred thousand dollars a year low income isn't that crazy crazy because costs when I was a kid if you made a hundred thousand bucks you were killing it I know like my dad makes a hundred grand like whoa okay so when I in my campaign I had this like one of my first things was no state income tax under a hundred grand I grew the working-class tax a lot of people nationally said that's so high why are you rewarding rich people actually the feedback we got in the primary was that's too low and there's a ton of people in california making 120 that sort of thing who can barely live because everything's so expensive you're in la or somewhere expensive so we've raised it to 150 tax-free but going back to the living wage thing that's obviously really tough for a business to pay that kind of level i used to run i ran a restaurant you know you'd be killed by that kind of high thing.

32:05But at the same time as you've got businesses paying people for full-time work that they can't live on, the businesses are also paying taxes, payroll tax, all this stuff. They're paying to the government. And then the government is taking it and handing it back to the workers in benefits and welfare. So my thing was, why don't you just cut out the middleman and have the businesses pay the workers, not the government? And then the net effect for business is about the same. Well, that would be the goal. So they're paying their workers more Is it the same amount? Like are they litter that doesn't make any sense because like what is minimum wage in California right now?

32:45Well, it's just it's just gone up. It depends what where you're looking so so $15 no 16 and a bit and then for fast food. It's 20 and they wanted it for That was a recent thing right and a lot of people push back against that and it wound up they wound up cutting a lot of jobs. Yeah, that went through. So it was$20 for fast food workers. And then it immediately cut a bunch of jobs. Exactly. And put in automation. I feel like there's got to be some jobs that are entry-level jobs for kids. Yes. And that's really important. They used to be. You're not supposed to make a living off of that. You're supposed to be a kid that's learning how to work.

33:21You show up on time. You know, you get your paycheck. You realize the taxes get cut out of it. You're like, what? Exactly. All that stuff. Like it's good for kids to have. But once you get past entry level jobs, then OK, like if someone's a landscaper or someone's like doing this is a job, you work 40 hours a week. Paying someone$15 an hour to work 40 hours a week is kind of brutal. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's horrible. Exactly. You barely can get by. But because we've built all of this bureaucracy, certainly all I really know is California. and just the level of the government in all its forms is so big, you're paying all these taxes.

34:02And the taxes are coming out in all these hidden ways. Gas taxes, housing taxes, that they don't call a housing tax, but it's the... Everywhere you look, they've got these things that they're charging you. Right. But which makes everything more expensive. And what do you get for it? This bloated bureaucratic government that's not actually helping it. It's actually making it harder to run a business, harder to build anything. And so I think that's – and this is – I used to call it this doom loop that the Democrats who are in charge, even they get it, right? They get that people are really struggling.

34:37People can't afford stuff. So what's their response? Oh, we've got to, you know, give them more welfare, Bennett. We've got to put taxes up in order to get more money to redistribute. But that just makes everything more expensive. They never think about, well, why don't we just cut the costs? Why don't we just reduce the amount that we're taking so that people can have more? Yeah, but then they would have to cut out their slush fund because that's really what it is. It's a big ass slush fund. One of the things that we pointed out was that the number of people that are moving to California and even living in California, it shrank, but government doubled.

35:16Yes. There's so many insane facts like that. Right. Well, they say, oh, we've created so many jobs. Like, really? Have you? Have you really created an actual job? Or have you figured out another way to increase the government and make more taxes work for whatever the NGO you have or nonprofit you have? or like someone pointed out that there's this guy this guy these really funny reels on instagram and how much things cost versus like what you could get for and you know he was talking about like some new uh thing they're doing for the convention center it's like a five billion dollar renovation and he was like listing all the different things and one of them that you could give like every single person on on skid row some fucking preposterous amount of money and it's you just realize like oh they don't want to fix any of this like the people that are working for the homeless he was talking about the average salary was like eight hundred thousand dollars there was just one last week uh this woman runs a homeless non-profit 1.6 million dollar salary homeless non-profit exactly that's and she's killing it exactly there's another one she's a millionaire there's another one yesterday he's like i don't know some business like but it's again it's a nonprofit 2.6 million a year you know it's just and here's the most important thing the homelessness only got worse like if in the private sector imagine if you were a CEO of a company that was just losing insane amounts of money and never completing its tasks never doing I know set out to do this is the main thing I think it's like the more I look at it the more insane it is and everyone just looks at it and I don't know what's ever pointed this stuff out like they They all just – the government just makes everything so expensive in California.

37:09Everyone says, oh, it's so expensive. What are we going to do? We'd better give them more welfare benefits because we made it – Well, we better have a billionaire wealth tax. Billionaire wealth tax. Steal money from the richest people without addressing fraud and waste at all. But by the way, the richest people already pay about half the income tax, the top 1%. Yes. So there's a small number of people in California alone that are responsible for an extraordinary amount of the tax base. Yeah. Just a very small number of people. And you're scaring them away. But they just – they don't have that mentality of cutting costs.

37:47Because they get paid no matter what. Exactly. This is what I said during COVID. I said I think the mayor should get paid dependent upon the GDP of the city. Yeah. So like if the city like if you lose 70 % of the restaurants which like Los Angeles did during yes Garcetti should have lost 70 % of his paycheck You should if you lose like 70 % of businesses You should lose 70 % of your income and I guarantee you they would be more friendly to business if that happened But this but exactly and they don't care and this is what happens I think when you've got this one party rule thing that's been going on for 16 years now they've run everything they don't care because they think they'll be in power forever and it just doesn't matter and it seems like they will like look what they did to spencer pratt i know it's crazy and what they did spencer pratt was so transparent that even democrats admit there's something weird about the fact that nithya raman all of a sudden got way more votes than karen bass way in the in the mail-ins and people voted for an increase in taxes i know it's just that doesn't make any sense nobody votes for an increase and actually in recent years in california anything like that has been voted down right and just in the last few years only the mail-in ballots that turned it well they this is the i always say fucking dirty people well people bring it up the whole time and I say, yeah, whatever.

39:22They've made it legal, right? This is not illegal. And the scam is so bad. We've looked into a few of these. We were just, you know, through the year, we've been following some of this money. It's just everywhere you look. So cannabis, right? They legalize cannabis, Prop 64 in California. And there's a tax. And the tax, part of selling it to the public was, We're going to have the tax and it's going to pay for substance abuse prevention. Isn't that nice? So we looked into it. $350 million of that goes to this nonprofit with some nice sounding name about health. And then you actually track the money.

40:05They give out these little grants, a million each, a million here,$750 ,000 there, to 500 or so other nonprofits. And then you look at what they do. Voter registration, ballot harvesting, all of this shit. I mean, this is what they do. Stealing money. And we're paying for it. And there's so many examples. We've just found a few of them. I mean, remember, they've doubled the budget of California, more than doubled, in the last 10 years. These are the numbers. This year, the budget is just over$350 billion, the total budget. Ten years ago, it was$170. And everything's worse. Crazy. It's so bad. My other favorite example is that, I mean, there's so many.

40:46I just every day you learn about these crazy things. Prisons, they've been shutting the prisons, which I totally disagree with because whatever, that's a different story. But in the time they basically cut the prison population, it's not quite half, but nearly. The budget has doubled.

41:09Well, I mean, it's so transparent. Like, look what they did in Los Angeles with the fire relief money. Yes. Yeah, fire aid. That was disgusting. So disgusting. You had people, good-hearted people, wanting to help their own money. That's supposed to be charity. Yes. And it's going into this political slush fund. It went all of it into nonprofits. Yeah. And not just one nonprofit, like 200 different nonprofits. Exactly. Spencer Pratt laid it all out, like how they do it and what they do. And no money went to anybody who lost their home. None. Which should be illegal. That's not fire aid. They legalized all of this.

41:46That's the point. And so I always say, yeah, we've got this system, but there's only one answer in advance of being able to get in power and do something about it is we just got to get every vote. We've got to get every vote. And I know people look at this race and say, well, you're never going to win. It's hopeless. I don't think that's true. I think that actually people are really pissed off if you give them a sense that we can really this is not a hopeless cause. And I think we're showing that we've just got to put, I mean, he's, I've got this guy running against me who's just a complete joke.

42:17I mean, he's who is it? He's called Javier Becerra. He was Biden's health secretary. He was, I mean, I want to say one thing before I say the most important thing about him. But since we've been just been having a go at him, telling the truth about what he did as Biden's health secretary, his score has been coming down with not that much effort from us. and we don't have money. We're a scrappy startup, right? They've got this big machine. The government unions, they just, you know, roll on. He's like the first poll that came out in the race was just after the primary. It looks, it's over. What's the point?

42:57You know, 61, 36. He had 61. I had 36. The next one is like 55. This is just the other week. 55. I think I had 37. There's one we just heard about where the gap's under 10%. So no one wants this to go on in California. There's a majority who want to get rid of this. But it's just been this sense that it's impossible and we just have to put up with it or leave. And I think we got it. If we change that attitude, I think people are going to vote this regime out. It's so bad. Well, we've seen the map, the electoral map that they put out from 2020 versus 2024. And the difference being you look at all the counties that went red.

43:43Yeah. That used to be blue, where people are freaked out. The problem is these high population urban areas where people live in these liberal bubbles, which is Los Angeles, is the craziest version of that. And Los Angeles County is 23 % of the vote in all of California. Let's put this into perplexity. Ask perplexity how many people in Los Angeles are on SSRIs. Okay. I didn't think that's where you were going. I would like to know. Okay. Well, I think there's a lot of people that are, they're medicated. And it's part of what helps them agree to this nonsense is that they're in this zombie catatonic state from antidepressants and antipsychotics and anti this and anti that and anxiety medication.

44:32And they're fucking cloudy. They don't see things. And they're surrounded by this echo chamber of people that only agree with them. No reliable public count of current SSRI users, specifically in Los Angeles. But a reasonable rough estimate for Los Angeles County is on the order of 500 ,000 to 700 ,000 adults. Not a precise headcount. Now, how many people are in Los Angeles? There's 10 million in the county. Okay. I think that's way low. I think that's way low. I bet it's 10 times that. I bet it's everyone. I think no no all bullshit aside I bet there's a few million Los Angeles County has roughly 7.8 to 8 million adults If about 11 to 17 percent take antidepressants roughly 60 to 70 percent of antidepressant users taste take an SSRI the implied range is 530 to 950 so maybe a million.

45:28I think it's probably a few million I know a lot of people that are on a man a lot I think it's like more represented in Los Angeles. And there's also this idea that you need a medication because you have an imbalance. You need medication. It's over medication. It's really bad. Well, also the imbalance thing has been disproven. It's not real. It's not what it is. And then there's also, there's a reality of your physical being. Okay. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, you eat terrible food. Your physical body is going to feel like shit and you're not going to be happy. That's just how it works as a human being.

46:04Totally right. That's it. It's like if you're feeling down or pissed off, literally do some exercise. My friend Hassan Ahmad, you'll see him tonight at the Mothership, hilarious comedian. He has a great bit about the people that are in these commercials that are playing basketball. They take the medication and now they're playing basketball and drinking water and having fun. He goes, yeah, that's the actual solution to depression. Yes. It's not taking the anti-depression. No, it's totally right. It's fucking do something athletic. Yes. Get active. Have a community that you enjoy hanging out with like that's what keeps people from being depressed And they've been sold this bill of goods that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain Well that that narrative completely was never supported by science and has now been completely dismissed.

46:47Yeah, that's not true We're just doing it still. I mean finally enough That was what I one of the chapters in that book 2015 but more human was about health and it was all that That's what I wrote about, which is this is crazy. We've got an impact when I was in 10 Downing Street. You know you I was that senior advisor of the prime minister and you're getting a mainly I focused on domestic policy. That's what I focused on and you're there. You're at you know in 10 Downing Street. You get meeting people. You can have meetings with kind of everyone will come in and have a meeting and I was really focused.

47:21We got the National Health Service, which is what the left want here. The Medicare for the single payer health care, whatever. that's what there is in the UK and it's funded by the government by taxpayers 100 % and so it's part of the budget which is one of the problems it's always competing for money against everything else and so there's a real reason to try and get the cost down because you're funding it out of the budget for everything else and so health promotion is or should be a really big part of it and I wanted to really do much more on that that you should actually use the national health service try and make people healthy instead of all the sickness stuff so i had all these meetings um trying to understand you know the royal college of this the royal college of that all the cancer people oh they all came in it was so hilarious after kind of months of these meetings of like what do we need to do to make people healthy it's the simple basic things in the end what you just said it's like diet nutrition exactly eat healthy take exercise sleep enough um water exactly yeah all of those things like all these geniuses of science and whatever i said honestly it's so basic um but then and i was just seeing today there's this awful story about the mother who killed the children.

48:44Awful story. The mother and she had really bad depression of the postpartum depression and was asking for help and all this. And they just kept giving her this medication. And she was saying, I think there are texts to her mother saying this new medication they've got me on is really making me feel even more anxiety. And I don't know what's going on. Help, help, help. And they showed all the medication she was on in the run-up to this. It's shocking, like so shocking, just the amount of stuff they're loading her up with that must have sent her over the edge. 100%. It's just terrible. When you look at the commercials for these things and then you see the possible side effects, like who in their right mind would take something for depression which has side effects which causes suicidal ideation what i thought you were curing depression your side effect is i might want to kill myself like it's like this is a cure for depression to blow your brains out no more depression yeah like it's uh it's a cartel it's a cartel in the united states i mean it is a sanctioned tax it's a it's publicly traded it's a fucking cartel and they buy off politicians and they pass through regulations i see not just on this but on on everything again it's just an I kind of suspected it.

50:17But when you see just how cynical it is, this kind of corrupt, I don't know what you want to call it, machine politics, I don't know, in Sacramento, where they literally buy what they want. They buy the legislators that pass the bills that help their interest, whatever it is. And that's why nothing really changes. And no one knows what's going on. No one follows it. There's all these laws they pass that end up with things happening in the real world that normal person would say, how the fuck did that happen? Exactly. Well, three years ago, someone put in a bill that was probably written by the lobbyist for whoever it was.

51:03Even the legislator who put their name on it probably never read it. And then suddenly it's the law and all these bad things happen. And that's what's going on. Now, what could you do differently if you get in office? Like how much of this crazy entangled machine can you unwind? Not all of it. Yeah, yeah, not all of it. Let's imagine people wake up, they go, Steve Hilton's making a lot of sense. Let's vote him in. And then even the liberals like secretly run out and vote you in. It's got to be too big to rig because that's the thing. Yes, exactly. Because the mail-in ballots. By the way, can you believe, and we'll get into it, But did you see Kamala Harris the other day?

51:42No. She was at some conference or whatever doing her sort of, maybe I'll run for president again. Yeah, good luck. I know. The last one was pretty successful for only spending$1.4 billion. I know. She's very good candidate. She lost every single swing state. It's very funny. I sort of talk about it a lot because my guy, Becerra, he was asked the same question that she was asked. Do you remember when she went on The View? Right, right. And it was like, what would you do different? She said, oh, nothing comes to mind. Really? You haven't thought? So he was asked, but Sarah, my opponent, and he was on CNN, and the guy says, look, it's obvious things aren't going well.

52:28To be fair, the interviewer said, look, we got the highest, I can't remember, he listed a few of the things, highest unemployment rate in America, which, by the way, no one can believe it, we have the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states, highest poverty rate, cost of living is a nightmare. You know, what would you have done differently? He says, well, it can't be that bad because people are still coming to Disneyland and the beaches. That's what he said. And then he says, well, so no policy changes? No. Anyway, Kamala was at this thing the other day and she starts talking about the election and how and I don't know if she wasn't aware that Trump and MAGA had this slogan that was a massive part of their thing too big to rig so she starts saying it as if it was a completely new thing she said it the other day you know the thing that we have to do is make sure we get a really you know we got to get everybody well you know to coin a phrase we have to make it too big to rig like she said no way she said it no way yeah so she's alleging that it was rigged the last time I have no idea what she's talking about.

53:37Like, I don't know what amount of election fraud there is, but it's not zero. It's not zero. It's never been zero. And the real weird one for me was how many more votes Biden got in 2020 than any other president ever. We have a lot of work to do because, you know, these folks are cheating. They're trying to rig the system. They're trying to draw maps, all of it. What? You mean stuff that the Democrats have already done? Exactly. It's so hilarious. This is crazy. We have to make it too big to rig. We have to turn out in big numbers, jump all over these obstacles they're trying to throw our way.

54:15We have to make it too big to rig. What are you saying? Like, how are they cheating? Like, how is she alleging they're cheating? The idea that that's the best they can do is so insane. It's so wild. It's so wild. And it's because if you want to run for politician, they will – if you don't follow their narrative and their plan to a fucking T, they're going to come for you. And they're going to destroy you. And it's usually some creepy sexual thing. They're going to find someone who says that you did something to them in college or high school or whatever it is. And they'll come up with as many things and throw them your ways, as many things as they can find.

54:59And they get rid of you. And they get rid of all of them. Well, I mean, lucky they don't think I've got any chance of winning. I think that's why they haven't done that. But just on that, though, it's interesting. It makes me think this whole system, this corrupt thing that I've encountered. And I don't want to lose your question about what I would do. I've thought about that a lot. But it just it's sort of amazing, but not amazing. I knew it was like this, but to see it is something else. The scale of it. Yes. So even things you might not imagine like, okay, a couple of you. So there's the Chamber of Commerce, right?

55:38It's called Cal Chamber in California, and it's all the big businesses. And running a business in California is an absolute nightmare. That's why they're all leaving. That's why Elon left. That's why so many companies left. Fuck, they lost In-N-Out. And every day there's a new one that's announced. And then every day I meet business owners, big, small, medium, all who say, we're just hanging on to see if you can make it. And if you don't, we're out. Right. Every day. Chief Executive Magazine has an annual survey of business conditions. But like yet, I think it was out in April, California, 50th out of 50 states.

56:20OK. And I think it's been like that for 12, 13 years. So it's like a disaster that what's going on. And the Becerra who's running against you takes for business climate. So Alaska's better. Every state in America is better. North Dakota, South Dakota, Florida, Tennessee. All right. So you would think that when you've got a choice between two people, right, one of whom explicitly says, I'm not going to change anything. That's Becerra. And me, who's someone with business, most of my career has been in business. when you do the ballot you're allowed three words to describe yourself i actually wanted to do it fairly because i've done a bunch of different things and so i went through every year since i left oxford 1990s 36 years and the majority of my career has been in business and most of those years running my own businesses so i i put small business owner that's the three words small business owner and like in a choice between that you would think the california chamber of commerce which represents business, would obviously want the guy who's pro-business instead of the guy who's going to keep up this.

57:35Anyway, we have this. The money's still there for now, and they're getting that money. Well, this is what it is. It's all of that crowd, right? And we have these endorsement meetings, and then they pick him. They endorse the other guy, and then they say, we think their statement was so full of shit it was like oh we it's time for unifying blah blah some completely bullshit political thing now of course because i went in there and i said we got to change direction the policies are hurting business whatever i just said what i think and they went for him because they all they actually care about is the power and they think he's going to win and so they want to be in with him yeah and then the other one that was like that that was in a way even more shocking was the police.

58:23So the police, whatever it's called, PORAC, the Police Officers Association, something, their union. That same kind of thing. You go to them and you try and get their endorsement. By the way, I said at the beginning of this whole process, it's a waste of time because they will only care about their thing that they want to get more money for whatever it is. and so I don't want to give them that because that's wrong and so they won't endorse me I'm just telling you sure enough we have this meeting and I'm completely on the side of the law and order thing it's gone crazy the defund the police the insanity of how they deal with crime we got to reverse all that prison closures all these things and he's not said anything about that He's just more of the same insanity.

59:17They endorse him and then they told us why because he promised to deliver on the one thing they really cared about which is some bill that would increase their pensions Why don't you agree to that bill because we the the the pension one of the reasons that the taxes are so high and And and the everything is like for example you look at schools everywhere I go parents are saying what's going on we pay the highest taxes anywhere like state income tax property tax all these taxes and then we we have to pay the schools are asking us to pay for basic supplies like paper books like cleaning materials and and the lottery money is supposed to go to schools as well and they're saying what is going on parents really furious about it.

1:00:13One of the reasons is because of the way they've done the pensions for the teachers. You know, you want people to have good retirement, that's true, but like a fifth, I think it's about a fifth of the money before it's even spent in the schools goes to the pensions. It's a really really bad situation. I'm torn because I think they deserve pensions, particularly the police. And I think I'd like to know what percentage of the budget, I mean, think about listen, let's talk about money that's gone to places where it vanished, like the homeless. $24 billion. Yeah, at least. At least. And even though they've tried to get an audit of it, Newsom vetoed that, stopped them from getting it.

1:00:54He vetoed it, exactly. Twice, right? And in LA, there was a parallel in LA. There was a lawsuit that ended up with a judge demanding a similar audit. And the estimate was just for LA. It was$2 billion. and Karen Bass vetoed the order in LA. Let's imagine that$2 billion instead went to fund the police. Yes. Better training, you know, better conditions, better morale, better pensions, higher quality of people that you're hiring. Totally agree with that. We need to massively increase the numbers of police. Right. Now imagine what an impact that would have on the encampments, on enforcing these laws.

1:01:34You already have laws. They're just not enforcing. 100%. You're not supposed to. The homeless and campers are illegal. They're illegal. That's what I was saying. My first point on my plan is enforce the law. They're illegal. Well, imagine what it's done to real estate in downtown. It was the downtown real estate group, business group, that filed that lawsuit that I was talking about for LA. Exactly. Los Angeles is the only place in the country that has a useless downtown. It's amazing. One of the biggest cities. and I forgive I mean forgive me if you have a great business in downtown and you love the funky aspect of being there's wonderful restaurants in downtown I've traveled to them but it's fucking sketchy I took my kids once to get donuts in downtown and we were walking on the street and like every step of the way you're like uh is this guy gonna attack us is that guy crazy I literally had it the other night we got in from somewhere we're staying downtown right by City Hall and got in quite late.

1:02:34I wanted something to eat. The hotel didn't have anything, whatever. And so I just walk around trying to find it. It's a Saturday night, but it's not super late. It's like 8, 9 p.m. It's just unbelievable. Zombies. Zombies, the stink of like shit and piss. I mean, it's disgusting. Shit and piss everywhere. And it's a public health problem. And you walk around and you think, how is this possible? It's the second city of America with the richest country in the world. This is and we're the richest state I mean you're being ripped off like that and and this is what we end up with Let's talk about just but I agree with you on the on the police The I mean LAPD is saying that by the time the Olympics is two years away They will have half the number of officers that they should have half And yet our taxes are the highest in the country.

1:03:24That's crazy. They've just increased the taxes in LA. Local sales tax gone up. What I was getting to was imagine Skid Row. So Skid Row is roughly 50-something blocks. Right? Yeah. So 50 blocks where no one wants to buy a building. 50 blocks where no one wants to put up a business. No one wants to lease a building for 10 years if you've got encampments right in front of it. You can't even clean them up. You can't tell them to move. You can't ask them to not shit on your porch. It's just unbelievable. There's nothing you could do. So just think about all the tax revenue that's being lost, all the business being lost, and all of those areas in downtown that is completely unsafe and contaminated.

1:04:03It's just unbelievable. The last time I went, I've been a few times, we went with this. They've destroyed the word nonprofit now. I don't even want to say that. Like an actual charity. Like a really nice. A real one. A real one. Who've done beautiful work. Like it started off, they were trying to save the dogs. And what they're doing with the dogs is just unbelievable. Using the dogs to test their drugs. They use the dogs to make sure the drugs don't have friends at all. It's just disgusting. Anyway, so they started off with that. It was just a woman who was driving by and saw a dog in distress.

1:04:32This was a few years ago. And around that has built this beautiful charity. It's going there. We were there on a Sunday. They're giving out clothes and stuff trying to help people. And she knows all the people. But this time, for some reason, I was even more infuriated than before. because it's like if you're the mayor of LA or the governor of California and this is going on, what are you doing? How can you do anything else before cleaning this up? It's so disgraceful. Well, it was there when they got there and it's sort of accepted that Skid Row in particular is always going to be there. It's so bad.

1:05:04It's been bad for a long time. You know, I did Fear Factor in downtown LA. We filmed a lot of our episodes in downtown LA because there was a lot of abandoned buildings because it's kid row that's a big part of it but also los angeles lost a lot of its manufacturing just kind of like evaporated for whatever reasons so uh one time i was driving home and i took the wrong turn and i was like what the fuck is this and it was just an entire street filled with people in cardboard boxes and tents and garbage everywhere just piles everywhere i was like this is great and this was like 2004 yeah 2005 maybe yeah it was bad back then it's just tucked away into this old place yeah we looked at it um there was a documentary about the cecil hotel because there was a woman who drowned in one of the tanks and apparently they thought that she was murdered but then when they got the surveillance footage it seems like she had a schizophrenic episode she stopped taking her medication and she jumped into the tank and drown in there so it was this whole thing of what the cecil hotel used to be like and that these people that come from other countries they go oh we're gonna rent this hotel in downtown la must be nice it's a historic hotel it's been around since 1835 or whatever the fuck it is like oh this should be great and then you get there you're like holy fuck you're in the middle of skid row and it was part of the documentary was explaining how bad this area got it's so bad and and it's also there's something about the the just the squalor the filth the the just this total disrespect they have medieval diseases that are emerging yeah we haven't seen in like a hundred years it's unbelievable and i just think that it's amazing to me it's truly amazing that that this just rolls on and like nothing happens.

1:07:03Right, it's not a state and national emergency. Yes, it's a scandal of the highest proportion. But no one goes there. That's the thing. As long as it stays contained. This was what this documentary was alleging, is that the practice of moving people to Skid Row started a long time ago. And what it was is to clean up Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. They'd find vagrants. They'd grab them, bring them to downtown, drop them off there. No, that's how it got started. And then they kept them there. They literally contained them there. Not anymore. I mean, you see it everywhere. Well, they don't have to because now they know this is the place where you can go and you can get drugs and you can get food.

1:07:40And you get drugs from the government. I mean, that's the point. The government gives them drugs? Yes, they do. From what's called harm reduction, they call it. What do they give them? What drugs? They give opioids. They give them opioids as a substitute for fentanyl. So what kind of opioids? I don't know exactly. Are they giving them like methadone? which is not really technically an opiate. I can't remember. We went there. They wouldn't let us in, actually. We tried to film inside. There's a guy just did get inside, Christopher Rufo from Manhattan Institute, and he got in. He made a film about the crack pipes they're giving out or whatever.

1:08:13They give out crack pipes? Yeah, he did a little... I mean, I don't know if that was a... He made a... I don't know. I didn't see it myself. Caring for those people. But it's just ridiculous. You've got... But it's everywhere. It's not just skidding. That's the thing that's so... Like this man. I'm on the road the whole time. I see the whole state like probably not many people do And just there's something about the degradation The squalor in so many places not everywhere. Of course, it's beautiful. I love California It's gorgeous still still a lot of places. Yeah, but there's a whole lot more breaking and entering exactly a whole lot more home invasions The home invasion is a huge thing.

1:08:52I mean, that's why we one of the things again We're just trying to make a difference here. You know, you've got one particular thing with these home invasions they're all wearing masks now it's like a really big part which didn't used to be the case and so we've been working on a plan that if you get enhancements for your sentencing just for covering yourself up because we've got to try and they're just like they're no there's no interest in trying to not only that there seems to be an interest in letting people out of jail who've committed violent crimes which i would only do if I wanted to destroy a city.

1:09:28It's crazy. If you wanted to destroy a city, you would do it exactly the way they're doing it. And then the other thing is the people who... You would hire the most progressive DAs who are willing to let people out no matter what, and then you use a bunch of words like racism, systemic racism, whatever, discrimination. This is the reason why Mike has robbed 99 people over the last 12 years. Well, the one thing that's good news, though, is the new DA is pretty good, Nathan Lockman. Oh, that's good. He's good. He's good. I supported him. He's I saw him the other night So he's really doing a good job shows that you can make a change actually, right?

1:10:04I mean look he's up against a whole system in the political System, which is still captured by that kind of insane ideology and so much of what you see going wrong in California is exactly that his ideology over Anything that's practical. Yes. Yeah, and it's also you have to adhere to the narrative Yes. Or you will be punished. And so everyone's scared. So they say a bunch of things that they, you know, they think make sense. There was a really unbelievable example of it. There was a Democrat state legislator, I think somewhere like Santa Cruz, somewhere like that, this was a couple of years ago, who voted the wrong way on a bill that one of the government unions was pushing.

1:10:52I can't remember the details, but it was that he'd like offended the you maybe was the university teachers something like that a Democrat and then they then Funded the campaign of the Republican Just to teach them not to step out of line It's amazing just the well, there's a bunch of Republicans that you know, they like to call rhinos You know that right, you know Republican in name only there's a lot of those folks that it's they're basically Trojan horses you know look i i think we have a real problem in this country where there's only two parties you know i i just i i think it's crazy there's so many people like me for instance that agree with a lot of the things that the left pushes and agree with many of the things that the right pushes but things that some of the things the right pushes are fucking ridiculous and some of the things the left pushes are fucking ridiculous but you have two choices yeah and And you're defined by the worst members of each party.

1:11:50You're defined by the dumbest MAGA people versus the fucking, you know, the Portland people. It's like these are your options. You have to be completely ridiculous people who believe in non-binary folk. And then you have people that are, you know, think this is a Christian nation and we should kick out all the Muslims. Yeah. So it's interesting because I thought about this when, not that, I didn't think about it that much. But there are a few people, because I think for what I'm about to say, it doesn't work. But a few people say, oh, you should run as an independent. You shouldn't run as a Republican.

1:12:23Yeah. And, you know, I am independent minded and I've never run for office. I'm not part of this machine. I don't I'll just say what I think, especially because no one thinks I'm going to win. I might as well just go for it. Say what I think. But I exactly right. You won't win. Yeah, you won't win. There's just no way. Like when Bobby Kennedy was telling me that he was going to run as an independent. I was like, yeah. Michael Schellenberger you fucking can't win do you know Michael Schellenberger he's fantastic yeah he's great and he ran for governor twice as an independent yeah and I remember I tried to help I put him on my shirt I think he knew he wasn't going to win do you think that was the best yeah I mean he's you know it's good for his career oh okay and it gives him an opportunity to speak his mind he says a lot of very interesting and intelligent things yes he's great yeah I mean he's great at exposing a lot of horse shit yeah You know, he's really good at that.

1:13:14And he's very meticulous. He's a good journalist. No, I'm really doing it because I don't laugh. I really believe that I can win. For real. Well, you might be able to because California is that fucked. California is that fucked that I think there's a lot of – look. We lived in a very liberal area when I lived in California. Everyone was very liberal. And it was normal. It was like it was normal liberal, like what it used to mean. Like you believed in gay rights. You believed in women's rights. You believed in civil rights. Normal stuff. You believed in a social safety net. Normal stuff. Like that was what it used to mean to be a liberal.

1:13:48Bill Clinton liberal. That's right. From like the 90s. If you listen to Bill Clinton talk today, he sounds like he's running for a Republican. And on immigration, have you seen these clicks that people like? He's more MAGA. Hillary Clinton was the most MAGA. All right. There's one the other day where she was – that I hadn't seen before, which was so – it's like we can't have all these illegal immigrants. And we have to, and it was about the health care. We can't be giving free health care to illegal immigrants because we cannot have incentives for more illegal immigrants to come. Republican talking point.

1:14:23Amazing. Crazy. But it just shows you it's all bullshit. It's not real. Like this idea that if you're on the left, you're supporting science. You're supporting civil rights. You're supporting. They're telling you that to get your vote so they can steal money. That's all it is. As soon as you accept that, you realize like, oh, both parties are completely full of shit. They just fuck you in different ways. There's definitely one thing I've noticed. There's in. Yeah. In the most of in Sacramento, in the legislature, they've I think they're just I don't know. Either they don't believe it or they've just been beaten down.

1:15:01And so you've had this just gone along with it. But actually now you've got a few Republicans in California and they're friends of mine and we're working together. You won't have heard of any of people like Carl DeMaio, David Tangipa, Ali Macedo, the new leader in the assembly, really actually have got this. You know, we're real kind of friends and allies in fighting back against the corruption. that's the big thing I think that you learn is the interest groups the big business the big unions they've just completely captured the government and I think it's fair to say the Republicans have been part of that but there's a group of us now who really don't buy it and we're fighting back I think we can make a big difference they've got a two thirds majority in the legislature they call it a super majority It's been like that for more than 10 years.

1:15:57So they can do whatever they want, the Democrats. And the Republicans have been kind of irrelevant. If we can just, you know, win a few more seats so they don't have a super majority. And if I can get elected and then we can start to chip away at it for sure. I think it's important to not let either party have complete and total control. That's exactly right. And I don't think it's right. I don't think this is just the Democrats. I think if the Republicans are in the same position, we have another unique set of corruption and problems that would be similar. They'd be finding other ways to steal money.

1:16:32I mean, this is the fundamental – 100 percent agree. I mean, that's what I say to Democrats. And we can see it in some of the numbers. I'm doing well with independents. We're getting Democrats come to my events. And one of the things I say is like it's just not healthy to have one party running everything. And for the last 16 years, in California, they've had all the statewide elected positions, governor and the other ones, attorney general, whatever, two-thirds majority in both legislative chambers, every big city, every big county, the state supreme court, 6-1 Democrat appointees. They just rub a stamp whatever they want.

1:17:11And it's just not healthy. And it gets into this mentality of arrogance where they just feel they can do whatever they want and no one's ever going to stop them. Yeah. That's where we're at. And again, if the Republicans were in the same position of power, you'd have another different set of problems that was probably very similar. Because it's just how people operate when they have control. Yeah. When they have complete – it's just like if you have an authoritarian government. Yes. That's exactly right. It's similar kind of a situation. You have no one's challenging your position of power. And you get to do whatever you want to do.

1:17:48And then you have a bunch of people that funded your campaign and giving you a bunch of money. And then they're helping you out with this and business deals to your uncle and this and that. Yeah. And the Republicans do the same shit. You saw it just now in Hungary with Viktor Orban. So I know Hungary well because my family still live there. And finally, for 16 years, he was in power. same amount of time as the Democrats in California. And by the end, it's all exactly what you're talking about. Like, just unbelievable levels of corruption. Yeah. And it's always, if they have total control, they're going to be corrupt.

1:18:21Especially if they don't have any oversight. If they can just get away with it. Like this homeless thing where they've lost the$24 billion and the governor can say, nope, don't look into that stamp. You can veto that? How is that legal? How is it legal that you could veto something? And actually, the amazing thing about that is that it was even the Democrat supermajority that did that. So the process was the state auditor. It was a Republican legislator that asked the state auditor to look at it. So it was initiated by a Republican. State auditor publishes the report, 24 billion missing. The legislature as a whole, which is two-thirds Democrat run, said, we need a proper audit.

1:19:02It was these guys. It was the Democrats. Yes, it was everyone. It's crazy. Yeah, because those Democrats weren't completely corrupt. It's amazing. You know, you'd have to be completely corrupt to not look into that. I know. It's amazing. And then the bullshit excuse that they come out. Oh, it's not necessary because of like, oh, it's not necessary to look at where$24 billion went. And not just didn't work, but homelessness increased by substantial margin. Well, because the money, the answer to the question is very obvious. When we say that term, homeless industrial complex, what is it? You look at it.

1:19:38It's basically got two parts to it. You've got the nonprofits, like we talked about, that just keep getting the money. They've actually made it illegal to solve the problem. So they've – no, I'm not joking. It's illegal for state money to go to any of these organizations that require any kind of response from the homeless person. So you can't require addiction treatment, recovery, anything like that, job training, nothing. It's illegal. It's called housing first. So like obviously when you've got 80 % and the fentanyl is a really big part. The idea that it's a housing issue is so preposterous too.

1:20:19So you've got the nonprofits, but then the other part of it, which is where actually the bulk of the money is going, are these crony developers. there's a very small group of developers house builders that build these apartment units they called it permanent supportive housing the other you know shelter and they're they're charging up to i mean a lowball estimate was about 600 000 there are some in l.a in the bay area that are 900 000 a million dollars per unit to build right i've got a friend that builds apartments in the Bay Area, you know, he said, without all the government bullshit that goes around it, the layers of nonsense that they put in if it's taxpayer money, the union contracts that you've got to use this kind of material, the environmental, all this stuff.

1:21:08You could build it for a quarter, like$250 ,000 per door, they call it, four times as much. That's where the money's going. And then you get the unit, whatever, they put the homeless person in there who's still addicted to fentanyl. And as I went again with a real charity in Venice, we went around a guy who's a recovered addict, recovering addict and 23 years clean. And he's actually trying to help people. He actually hired, you know, he rents Airbnbs and he does group recovery and they have a recovery program they do together. He says, like, these guys that are getting the permanent supportive housing, it's like a second home because they're going back to the street to buy drugs, deal drugs.

1:21:53because they're addicts. Yeah. And you're not changing the behavior. They're addicts and they're mentally ill. And so there's a massive influx of homeless people during the Reagan administration where they kind of like open the doors of the mental institutions and say, well, we're not going to fund this anymore, which is for public health and safety. That is a fucking terrible idea. Yeah. And they, but then the other thing about that, I completely agree is that they, then that's been incorporated. That idea that you can't have, mental institutions, insane asylum. There's this kind of general sense that that's barbaric and you don't want people in these institutions and it's better to have them cared in the community.

1:22:34So that's incorporated into Medicaid. And so often with government, you've got to look at the money flows. And one of the things that's still there is this rule called IMD, Institutions of Mental disease and the imd rule is that there's no reimbursement from federal medicaid to any treatment that happens in a facility with more than 16 beds it's a very specific limit 16 beds because they don't it's all based on this philosophy of we don't want big mental institutions okay so that means that there's no incentive to have modern large-scale mental health care because that's all these small things because you don't get any money back if you're the state.

1:23:20I think people are also rightly suspicious of the potential for a medical health industrial complex. Definitely. And then think of how many people. Imagine if they could just, like, have you ever seen that video of there's a guy who gets pulled over and the cops on the spot tell him that he's been evaluated as being mentally unwell and he needs to come in? And the guy is completely calm and rational when he's talking to him. And he's like, well, make an appointment and I'll go and get evaluated. And he's like, no, we're going to bring you in. He's like, what are you saying? Well, you've been deemed unwell.

1:23:55He's like, by who? I don't have – there's no ruling against me. It's really interesting. So apparently there's more to it. And this video went viral. Apparently there have been some videos of this guy where he posted online where he's acting kind of loony. I saw a couple of them. I was like, yeah, that's a little problem, a little problematic, but could also be he's acting out on camera. I don't know if he's doing this in real life, like just because someone's doing it in videos. So like a lot of people act out in video just for attention or maybe that's how he blows off steam, says wild shit.

1:24:28Like, you know, we need to eat the earth or I don't know what the fuck he's saying. So there's – but the video is very disturbing because in that moment, if these police officers in Canada are supposed to be evaluating someone who doesn't have an official psych evaluation where he's been brought in and they just said, you know, you have to be institutionalized. So that hasn't happened. And so they're pulling this guy over. And based on his interaction with them, he is completely calm and rational. In fact, like charitably so because they're saying something fucking totally preposterous and he's not yelling.

1:25:05He doesn't raise his voice. He's coherent. He's articulate. I want you to watch it because it's kind of crazy. Yeah, that's terrifying. Jamie, I'm sure you can find it. Yeah, I was trying to find the update though. That's really terrifying. But let's just look at the actual video itself because the video itself is bizarre because without any context, and again, I think there is some context. There have been some videos where he acted nutty and this guy might just be manic depressive where he's capable of keeping it together Like to pretend he's normal when the cops are there But then as soon as he's on his own as no one's watching me goes insane that is possible But what were they did they have any prior knowledge of him?

1:25:38What was that based on? Someone had told them that he's off the rails so they went in to go get him, but the thing is Shouldn't there be like some sort of an official? psychiatric evaluation. Conservative influencer. Ah, he's a conservative influencer. Being held captive in Canadian... I don't know if that's real or not. I just was trying to wait until I could get to the video here. Okay. Well, let's watch the video. Put your headphones on because the video is kind of kooky. And this is Dr. Emery. He's a resident psychiatrist, senior resident. He's on a rotation with the CAR 87. We're part of a program that includes Vancouver Coastal Health and the Vancouver Police.

1:26:22And what we do is we go to people when there's different reasons that come up. Every case is a little different, and we go to people to see them where they are, especially if there's been issues with trying to find them and talk to them. So in your case, I think you were certified under the Mental Health Act just, I don't know how long ago, but like maybe three weeks ago or four weeks ago, Were you aware that Dr. Taylor saw you in a cafe? She didn't certify you. I think you filmed part of it. Okay. And this is Dr. Emery. He's a writer. And then she spoke with your family, got some more information.

1:27:03And, you know, you're going to have to turn that off. So just one sec. What the officer just told me is that, you know, you and I can set up a meeting and we can chat then. So why don't we do that, okay? Yeah. I'm not turning the camera off. I have a legal right to keep the camera on. If you don't want to make the appointment now, we can do it at another time. But that's what the officer just asked that we do. So why don't we do that? So I'm going to certify you under the Mental Health Act. We're going to bring you to the hospital, do testing on you. And you're going to talk to a psychiatrist in a controlled environment because we don't believe that you're going to attend an appointment.

1:27:36I've never been given a chance to attend an appointment. So he's certified. I've never been given a chance to attend an appointment. What is going on? I was never given a psyche vow or nothing. He just looked at me and said, you're certified. Okay, so I don't know why, but it's up to the doctor. But no, he didn't even give me a vow. He just looked at me and said, I'm certified. I get that. Please consider what you're doing, and please think about the fact that I'm more than happy to come in for an appointment. I'm happy to go through and do everything properly. Okay, I've been completely compliant with everything.

1:28:09Yes, you've been really good with me, Nicholas, but listen, that's his call, and unfortunately, we can't go back. He hasn't talked to me. You're interacting with me at a very regular... I've never been given a chance. So I had some eggs and stuff for breakfast this morning. Yeah, they didn't put drapes. So I had to tape this up because my window didn't have drapes. And so all night, there's just light beaming into my room. So I couldn't sleep last night. So I demanded that they give me tape and stuff to put on my window so that I could sleep tonight. I'm like one of the only rooms that has no drapes.

1:28:52Shangri-La, baby. How fucking strange. This is crazy. Strange. So here's the thing. Like this doctor ran into him somewhere and said, I'm certifying you. Based on what? That's insane. And is he really a conservative influencer or is that a narrative? Like, I don't understand what that means. Like, if you are, quote unquote, conservative and you have a thousand people on your Instagram and you rant and rave, you know, in a manic depressive manner, is that are you a conservative influencer now? Or is that like rage bait to get them to say like. But here's the thing, like Canada has socialized medicine and they also have insane government ovaries.

1:29:32Exactly and if there was someone who was a rabble rouser online and that person happened to be acting a little kooky Wouldn't that be a great time? But meanwhile how many fucking liberal this is Vancouver, which is like Portland on steroids like how many? Kooky fucking people on the left are being pulled into mental Hospitals and making these similar videos fucking zero which is a little odd But it doesn't mean that this guy's not a little off the rails because the videos that I saw see if you can find some videos of him off They might have been pulled from the internet, but a bunch of people were saying hold on There's more to this and they were showing some of them.

1:30:11Here's the other problem I don't know if those videos are real those videos could be AI, you know in this day and age It's almost impossible to tell you could say you have video of this guy You'd say have this guy screaming shit stuff about what you need of a vagina in the middle of his back You could have anything. You could say anything. But this is why you've got to be so careful about authoritarianism creeping into government. Yes. It really is. That right there. First of all, I don't like his backseat. All that shit. Boxes and stuff. Exactly. That looks a little kooky. Like that fits that he might be losing his marbles if he's got stacks of stuff.

1:30:48Unless he's like leaving an office and moving stuff and putting it in his backseat temporarily. It's a weird sign when the entire backseat is filled with boxes and trash. You might be losing your marbles. But he did sound like there's no, in my eyes, listening to him talk, there's no indication that this guy's a threat to himself and he must be institutionalized. That guy's more than capable of speaking in a very rational manner. So even if he's nuts, he's not that nuts. There's a lot of nutty people. Yes, much more dangerous. to me this is very like we were talking earlier about the medicalization and everything and there's a trend here of this inhumanity that is really really dark I mean did you see the I don't know if you followed the back and forth with the AI guys on

1:31:47regulating AI and whether AI is positive or negative that whole debate. Which, which... Did you see Amadei, the anthropic guy? What did he say? Just in the last few days, there was this, he, he, it was, I think it was on, on one of the other, on All In, that's right, someone, someone was talking about him wanting to have government, like hyping up the doom scenario from, from, from AI. These guys that are hyping up the doom of AI are the actual people that were working on it. This is, Daria Amadei, who's the CEO and the founder of Anthropic. And he replied. And so the argument was he's hyping it up because he wants regulation, government regulation, that will protect the kind of big incumbents against competition.

1:32:36That was the argument. And then he replied to the argument by saying he's had some stuff about regulation. He did long posts on X. And the first one was about the regulation. The second one was about actually I'm not that I'm not Mr. Doom when it comes to AI. I've always said it can be really positive. And one of the things he pointed to was this essay that he wrote called Machines of Love and Grace. 14 ,000 words. And that was his response to like being characterized as Mr. Negative. When you look at this thing, it's so dark. like he's going on about well there'll be no um we can foresee a time when human beings can't make useful contributions to the economy um and the people won't have much to do and then they can play video games and then at one point there's what the thing that made me think of it um when he was raising well what a kid's gonna do and there's anything he starts going about we have things like Ritalin and we know how to medicate people when they're depressed so it's fine if they don't have a sense of Ritalin.

1:33:44Are you kidding me? If they don't have a sense of worth will numb them. Literally that's what he wrote and that's what he pointed to as him being Mr. Positive. It's just terrifying. So this is recently? This is within the last week. Okay and what is his position in the company? His CEO is the founder of Anthropic. The big two The programmers, though, are the ones that are leaving and writing poetry. They're giving up on society and they're hiding and waiting. You know, you hear about there's one lead programmer that read. He wrote some like basically a statement as he was leaving, explaining the impending doom that is coming to civilization.

1:34:26And how he's checking out and he's going to write it out and see what happens. But he left the United States. I think he went to Ireland or somewhere like that. Okay, they say he's gonna write poetry. Okay, like okay, like I mean this is an existential crisis This guy's happening having while he's working on it working on this thing and realizing this thing is conscious Well, that's one of the things that I feel is so odd about the the two that have been most negative are Amadei Dario Amadei's anthropic and Sam Altman open AI, you know, they're the most negative or have been and if you believe half the things they're saying they're like well why are you doing it then if you think this is the end of the human whatever i know they have dialed it back a bit but why would you keep building something did you see when peter teal got asked without the human race should survive what did he say he paused for like fucking 15 seconds like um um i didn't read this but he says that the mention of a riddle Ritalin is like a good thing.

1:35:31Like we figured out how to improve ourselves with things like Ritalin and using AI could potentially make it even better. I mean, come on. That AI will make Ritalin even better? No, no, no. So we'll just be on awesome drugs? No. Yeah, that we'll find better versions of drugs that are better than Ritalin. So instead of people finding meaning and purpose in life, it's just not how it's being talked about. Well, what is he saying then? Why is he using the metaphor? Ritalin is not in the nothing to do and work and meaning discussion. It appears that speculation is just about the future of neuroscience.

1:35:58Oh, I see what you're saying. So what they're saying, they're talking about increasing the potency or making these things more effective for mental health interventions using AI. Okay, so he argues that AI-driven biology could enable much greater cognitive and mental health interventions than those available today. That's really wonderful if true. I personally know people that have been saved by SSRIs. I'm not a blanket. SSRIs are bad. I have a friend that was severely depressed and suicidal and I got him a psychiatrist and he got him on and he Eventually got his life back in gear weaned himself off him now.

1:36:36He's great So like who knows that guy could have made a hasty decision and taken his own life And if he was in Canada, they might have probably fucking encouraged it, right? So he's fine now It's just the problem is they're ridiculously over prescribed. Yeah, and there's another solution The other solution is a natural human solution exactly doesn't involve medication involves exercise and nutrition and community. And we can all encourage that for free. You know, you can fucking do push-ups and bodyweight squats. It doesn't cost you a nickel. You don't have to go to a pharmacy. Like, all these things are already here.

1:37:09Like, why are we developing addictive chemical solutions? Because they're all addictive. Every one of them. I have a good buddy right now who got off of him. He was doing great. And now he's back on him again. Because he's fucked. His system's fucked. Because he's been on him for 20 years. And it's scary because I know people that have been on them that have done rash things. And they don't feel like they are themselves anymore. And then there's also the weird sexual side effects, the numbness of the generals, inability to have orgasms. There's a lot of fucking weird shit attached to it when there's another solution.

1:37:47That's what's so— Here's some interesting context. According to Snopes, that guy was arrested after he posted this. Oh, the Vancouver thing. After he posted what? This document. This is not solicitation. If you find this document unattended, do not remove it from the property where it was placed. Unless you're the owner of said property, removing this document would be criminally liable for indictable offense, carrying a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. So what is this document? It's on Google Docs. It's just the brief explanation. It's talking about how China and Canada are corrupt and making a dictator a police state.

1:38:20It says China and the corrupt Canadian government are trying to turn Vancouver into a dictatorship police state. China has been classified as high-risk adversary by all long-term democratic security alliances, NATO, NORAD, the Five Eyes Alliance, the Canadian Center for Cybersecurity, even Carney himself during elections. Carney has committed treason via secret Chinese policing and law enforcement, MOU, illegal Chinese police stations in Vancouver, selling Vancouver to China via the Aboriginal People's Undrip. Well, is he right? So that's right. I have no idea if he's right or not, but that's it was saying he was not maybe an influencer, but a commentator.

1:38:56He had like 67 ,000 followers on Instagram. Oh, and this could be why they're saying he's nuts. Right, I guess. Because he's he's uncovering some shit that's probably going on. I was going to say, this is not exactly out of the mainstream to be. Listen, the fucking mayor of Arcadia in California, they just found out was a Chinese spy. the mayor of a city in California. Well, just today there was more about Swalwell and Fang Fang, the Chinese boy. The guy wanted to be governor. He's like shacked up with a spy. I wanted to make the joke. So the very first debate, the very first TV debate, you know, you're kind of getting ready.

1:39:38And I really wanted to make a sort of Fang Fang Bang Bang joke. Fang Fang Gang Bang. You know, it's an obvious joke, right? So he admitted to physical relations Yeah, but he denied it for years So just today he admitted it? I think it's just in the news today Well, was he trying to make a comeback? No, no, no Bang the spy, whoopsies But anyway, I really wanted to make this joke About, you know, the fang fang It's just so, you can't resist it, right? It's a funny name Exactly, fang fang, bang, whatever Anyway, and then he didn't show up And I think, well, he denied that it's – can I really say that?

1:40:19You know, you've got to be – you've got to try and be accurate. Good for you. But then he didn't show up to the debate because he claimed that there was – I don't know. He had some vote or whatever. So I never got to debate him. The idea that this kid in Canada is being brought into – for mental health evaluation in prison because he's uncovering that, that's not unprecedented. That's believable. I don't know if it's true. He might also have been a little kooky. Again, I don't know if the videos that I saw are real. But the videos that I, again, especially considering what we're talking about now.

1:40:57If you were trying to make someone look insane, that was uncovering some real serious corruption with a foreign government. Right. Which is possible. Of course it's possible. And also it's America, right? We're in a huge country. It's like beautifully crazy in many ways. Yes. People can think, well, then they've got the internet. And you get people will, you know, honestly, all the time, people are giving me things. You know, they shove things in my hand or an envelope, whatever. And I open it up every single time because half the time, it's something that's, you know, something conspiratorial that isn't right or doesn't seem right.

1:41:34And other times it's like really good ideas. But the point is that they're actually useful or they'll make me think about something in a different way. But the point is that, yes, there's lots of people out there with somewhat crazy ideas. You can't lock them all up. It's not just that. There's lots of real corruption. Yes, exactly. And if this guy posts this, and has there been an investigation? Do we know whether or not this is an act? Has it been completely debunked? Because if it has, oh, well, then maybe you're right. Maybe he's crazy. Or if it turns out that everything he's saying is true, maybe he's a slightly crazy person who's also uncovering the truth.

1:42:08Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes it takes obsessive people. That was the premise of that Mel Gibson movie. Remember? Yeah. He was crazy, but he was actually right. No, which one? I think it was called Conspiracy Theory. Yep. Yeah, was that with Julia Roberts? Yeah. It was fun. That's great. Yeah. I haven't seen it. He was like a nutty dude who was on to things. He's basically like Alex Jones. That sounds really interesting. It was a good movie. I love that. You know, for the time. A little dated. You go watch it today, you'll be like, eh. What did we do? One of the things, we're on the road the whole time.

1:42:38like long drives it's California and so I find some of these every now and again you just want something you know so the there's a lot of movies it turns out that are big parts of American culture that I haven't seen we watched what was it the other night Superbad I'd never seen it I'd never seen it it's so good it's one of the best comedies of all time it was so good and I've never seen it I unfortunately tried watching with my kids when they were 10 and 12 I'm like here sit down and watch this and we shut it off after three minutes like this is sorry i forgot good yeah brilliant right i mean it's not brilliant like funny and a kind of slapstick with a bit of that but it was just really clever to see where the kids just sitting in class drawing dicks it's so funny by the way could not make that movie today and the people that's what we were saying would not make that movie today we were literally so my friend eric who you just he's on my team we've become good friends he's um you met him earlier like that's exactly what we're saying like you couldn't make it they got captured that's the problem with being on the team of the left they got captured by an ideology that destroyed comedy in in their world right they cannot do that kind of comedy anymore that kind of nobody believes that you support all the things these people are saying it's just showing a ridiculous human being who's saying some crazy shit and it makes you laugh.

1:44:05It's not changing the fucking world. It's not altering anybody's opinions. And it's not going to force people to do anything that they wouldn't have ordinarily do. No good person is going to watch that movie and want to go out and do bad things. That's not how it works. It's just a piece of art. It's just like, you know, Bob Marley didn't really shoot the sheriff. Okay. It's a fucking piece of art. It's a piece of art. And it's a piece of art that we have fucked up. It's particularly movies because movies are attached to Hollywood. And then stand-up comedy, fortunately, has an out. And because of the internet, we don't need Hollywood anymore.

1:44:39But because of that, we now get labeled right-wing, especially stand-up comedy that's not adherent. And I don't want to call it anti-woke because that's silly because it's not anti-woke. It's just comedy. It's just like woke doesn't allow certain subjects. It should be anti-establishment. And when the establishment is taken over by an ideology, it happens to be that. But you go the other way when it's the people in power. It's supposed to be against the people in power. It's supposed to be what is funny. What is funny, fair enough. What is funny. Yeah. Across the board. Yeah. And as soon as you say, no, you can't make fun of this anymore.

1:45:17Yeah. Like, why? Yeah. Why? It's a religion. It's basically like it's blasphemy to make fun of whatever you decide it is. Yeah. And that killed that kind of movie. yeah yeah those fucking movies were everywhere yeah the hangover there was always a movie like that fucking there's so many of them but a lot of them I haven't seen we were just talking about it the other night yeah the the Ace Ventura Pet Detective the whole premise was about a transgender woman and you find out she's transgender and everybody throws up do you remember no I haven't seen I've honestly you never saw Ace Ventura Pet Detective no I know you we got to do list for the road I'm too busy watching Monty Hall over there.

1:46:00Fucking Benny Hill reruns. My favorite Benny Hill thing. Benny Hill was like. So I'm not saying this, but I couldn't. There's a friend of mine at Fox. She's called Kennedy. She's very funny. And she used to always. Do you remember Janet Yellen? Yes. She always called her Benny Hill. And then the minute I saw that, that I saw a picture of her the next time, I just couldn't get it. Kennedy was an MTV VJ. She's great. And then she became a Republican talking head on Fox. I was like, that's nuts. She's a real libertarian, though. But isn't it interesting? Yeah. Like someone's like on MTV with like a girl with glasses on.

1:46:41You're like, oh, progressive for sure. And then winds up on. But she's cool. She's libertarian. She seems very smart. She's great. Very funny. She does Freedom Fest. She's like that. She's a big part of that. the libertarian thing. Oh, okay. She's great. How'd she go from being a VJ? I don't know. Here's the next fucking, you know. Well, she's from LA. She's very young. She's great. She's a good child. Yeah, I'm Benny Hill. That's funny. But I love, no, the comedy thing, like, that's another joy, actually. So I used to really, so Eric's really into Louis C.K., so I'd seen a bit of him, obviously, but I've watched a lot now.

1:47:21He's so great. I mean, we've really enjoyed that. Brilliant comedian. Brilliant. Brilliant. And yeah, it did some fucking ridiculous weird shit. But the way they described it was so different than the actual acts themselves. Also, his response to it was brilliant. That show where he addressed it was so good. He had a weird kink where he wanted people to watch him jerk off and he would ask them. And if they said yes, he would do it. Look, I don't think you should do that. I think it seems crazy to be standing in front of a couple of girls and jerking off in front of them, but I'm not him. And I also didn't say, if I said, no, open the door, let me out, and then you wouldn't let me out, that's a different story.

1:48:01But that's not what anybody was alleging. It's just kind of gross and weird, and I think he would probably admit to that. But, you know. He did, and he had a very funny, I thought it was brilliant, I can't remember exactly, But the first big show he did after that, when he sort of returned from being away from it. His art, though, is like, you've got to judge what is he, as long as he's not done, did what Bill Cosby did. That's a completely different thing. Yeah, it didn't seem that it was a kind of systematic, really machine-like predatory thing that was just ongoing. It was a weird kink. Yeah.

1:48:41He had a weird kink he wanted to jerk off in front of people. Like, okay.

1:48:48So, look, I get that people would be upset, and if you don't want to watch this comedy more, I get that too. That's fine. That's your prerogative. But, like, the comedy itself is some of the best comedy that's ever been written. It's exactly. Ever been done. He's one of the best to ever do it. I mean, if you have a top whatever group of comedians. Is he in your kind of gang here? How do you, like, do you? Well, he's in New York, but he actually helped me design the club. Okay, cool. He came when it was bare bones, and we went over the club, and he gave me a bunch of great suggestions, and I implemented all of them.

1:49:25Our rooms are named after the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So it's Fat Man and Little Boy are our rooms. There's a reason for that. The reason is actually that because it's the comedy mothership. It's a UFO-based comedy club. So the UFOs really started showing up in America after the nuclear bomb. So once the nuclear weapons program was implemented in the 1940s, the amount of UFO sightings went through the roof. And the real big ones were like Roswell, New Mexico, which is 47. So right after the war. So this is like part of UFO folklore. So that's why we did it. That's why we named them after the nuclear bomb.

1:50:03Not making light of people dying in horrific nuclear bombs. So he told me to make the stage smaller in the little room. It was a great idea. I was like, right, why is the stage so big? It's a small room. And then he also said, it was already a low ceiling. He's like, can you lower it more? I'm like, we can lower it right to the top of that door. It's like, you should do that. And he gave me some advice on sound deadening in the room and what to do and how to make the sound crystal clear and just great, awesome advice. And the beautiful thing about that club is I took advice from every comedian that was in town, I'd bring them there.

1:50:37I'd go, tell me what you think. What would you want? Like, if you wanted to design a comedy club, I'll literally let you. Like, just tell me what you think. And we ran it through a vote. So there's a whole group of us. And it was like me and Brian Simpson and Ron White and Tony Hinchcliffe and all these guys that were good friends of mine that we performed with all the time. We all just sat around. None of the ideas were like, I think we should do this. I didn't do that with any of them. I said, tell me what you guys want to do. And they were like, you should have this. Like, okay, we'll do that.

1:51:06Great. We should have monitors in the green room. We should see the guy on stage. Okay, let's do that. What else? And everything anybody said, we did. We should have free mental health services for all the employees. So we did that. So free availability for counseling, psychiatry, we have that. Or the psychologists, they can all go to counselors. So that's free. Health care, take care of everything. Give the comedians way more money than any other club does. We did that we just like what do we what do we need? What was everybody perfect club? What does everybody look like? Let's do it and let's do it in a way where we're just trying to make the best thing possible We're not doing it.

1:51:43Like let's make the most money. Yeah, we're just trying to not lose money So let's just do it that way and it worked and it worked because of People like Louis CK. Yeah, and all these people that came by and gave us advice and told us, you know what they think Fantastic. So yeah, I know Louie's great. I love him. He's fucking really smart guy But like a lot of smart guys, he's fucking weird. You know, a lot of people... I think that about these AI people. You want to be a great comedian? You have to be a fucking weirdo. You know, they're all just weird in different ways. Chappelle's weird in his way.

1:52:14You know, Chris Rock's weird in his way. Hinchcliffe's weird in his way. They're all weird. Shane's weird. Everyone's weird. It's an incredible thing to do, honestly. Just, it's like really, in a tiny way, I'm not even comparing it, but I'm comparing this in terms of what I'm doing, which is you've got to go there and you've got, I don't know, just in the last few days, you've got hundreds of people and you've got to entertain them. Now, I'm mainly talking about politics, which is much easier because you've got material that's just obvious and out there. But you've got to keep them entertained.

1:52:53You can't be boring. You've got to give a good show. Yes. And so the thought of doing that and being funny for all of it instead of what I do, which is throw in the odd joke, you know, political joke or something or self-deprecating joke, you know. But that's just – That's nothing. But you're not focusing on that. If you focus on that, you could do it. No, but I'm just saying I now really appreciate how hard it is. Just the – It is and it isn't. Joey Diaz has the greatest saying. It goes it's the fucking hardest easiest thing you'll ever do okay because when you're flowing it's easy You know when you're up there and you're killing it's so easy.

1:53:36It's hard Constructing the material I was gonna say a lot of preparation There's a lot of preparation and there's a lot of time you have to spend alone thinking And then you have to spend a lot of time bullshitting with your friends because sometimes like the green room conversations Yeah, some of us like Brian Simpson said something the other day and we're like write that down Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great each other like right dude. That's a bit that's a hundred percent a bit And he started doing it on stage and it's killing like that happens too And it's like the camaraderie and the fun like being together like a bruise comedy Yeah, but you also need time in front of the fucking computer or the notebook You need you need to be sitting there going over your stuff If you don't do that You're not gonna come up with new material and then you have to try it out and you have to be willing to like trot it out there You have this idea.

1:54:21It's only existed in your head And you're kind of convinced that there's something there, but you're not totally sure. You're like, what do you think about this? And you just throw it out there. And sometimes it's great. And it's like 50-50. Sometimes it's dog shit. And it's 50-50 to what I bring to the stage, whether it's even got life. But writing it down, it's like not even. It's like, you know, it's like the Canadian health care system for MAID. It's like one out of 20. One out of 20 is any good. I think it's just really – no, I think it's – well, I totally appreciate what you're saying. But it's very – I mean to me it seems the ultimate – you're just putting yourself out there.

1:55:05You're definitely putting yourself out there. But you're also doing it this way too. Like when you're having conversations, maybe you're putting yourself out there even more because you're actually putting out your opinions. And some of them you had no idea you were going to discuss. Right. So you're just trotting it out there, thinking out loud in front of millions of people like we're doing right now. When you're doing stand-up, like I know these, by the time anyone sees me perform at a club where they're paying money, most of those bits I've been doing. So I've been like, I'm just trying to add to them and hone them and say them the right way and move the order around.

1:55:43That's why I love about it because I really do love it. And that's why I've really enjoyed, like I said, Eric really into it. And he's shown me a lot of comedians I didn't know about. And I love words and language anyway. You know, I've written, but in completely different. I've written books and whatever, TV scripts when I did my show, that kind of thing. So I really appreciate language. And I love just how changing the order of a word or whatever can just make something work or not work. Oh, yeah. It's brilliant. Changing the order of a word, changing the way you do it. Sometimes you do a joke.

1:56:18Like, Louis used to do that, where he would, like, reverse a joke, like, turn it around, and then maybe he would, like, take it and do his best joke and open with it so that his jokes afterwards had to get better to follow his best joke. Yeah, it's a constant little fucking laboratory up there, and you need the audience in order to find the life in whatever the hell you're doing. Do you see their faces? Oh, yeah. Can you see, or the light's too much in your face? You can see most of the first few rows. Right, because that's important, must be. It helps. It definitely helps. It's not just listening to the volume of laughs, is it?

1:56:56Like, what is it? There's both things, but obviously they're there to have a good time. But my job's easier because I'm going on after they're already laughing. So there's been a few people on before me. Everybody's having a good time. and then you're basically just connecting with them. You find them, what's up, how are you? You let them get comfortable, you connect with them, and then you're just doing the material. You're just finding the reality. You have to be like whatever you're saying, you have to be 100 % thinking about that thing only. You can't be thinking, and then I'm going to say it like that.

1:57:33No, you have to be thinking about the thing. And that's it. That's the primary thought. You know the pacing of it. You know what's coming next, but you don't think about what's coming next. You think about the thing. That's where preparation is important. You have to make sure that you have a set list, an order. But you also have to be flexible because there's going to be moments where you want to dive out of that set order and something might happen in the audience or something might come up and you have another thing, another take. And you're like, this would go better right here. So I'll shove this in here.

1:58:00And then you have to remember your order and go, I didn't do this. I'll put that later. It's so funny. It's not the same, but there's a similarity because, you know, I do all these things and you've got bits really, which is my thing on high speed rail. And, you know, and sometimes and there's a long version of it and a short version. Yeah, it's a bit. And like and then suddenly you'll find yourself doing it, even though I hadn't intended to. Right. And then, oh, shit, that's like really long and I've got to finish. What am I going to cut? So it's very sort of. I mean, it's not the same, but it's similar.

1:58:35It's similar. And I definitely find... Trump does bits. Oh, yeah. And he goes on for so long. I'm never doing that long. Remember when he just did this impromptu bit about Biden losing himself on stage, just wandering around not knowing where he was? It's like he's doing stand-up. Like everyone's laughing. Exactly. But I find it much better. I much prefer it when you're closer to the people. Oh, yeah. Musically, when you're not on some stage miles away, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, comedy club's the way to do it. That's the real way. However, there's something very intimate about doing an arena in the round.

1:59:13Okay. So I've done a bunch of those where you're standing on a circular stage in the center of the people. And what's intimate about that is all the people over here are looking at all the people over here. Everybody sees everybody. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. You see each other. It's the right way to do it. Because that way, everybody's seeing everybody else having fun. And they're a lot closer than you think they are. They're all right there. There's a lot of them. But the comedy sprays out to the outer edges. But the center hive all around the stage, which is thousands of people in a 16 ,000-seat arena, you're looking in the eyes of 6 ,000 people plus.

1:59:50And it's like they're all seeing each other. It's very intimate, oddly. Great. It's fun. As opposed to like a big arena when you're standing on a very high stage and the people are all out there. Yeah. That feels crazy. Yeah. That feels very detached. That's a different. That's not my favorite. That's my least favorite is an arena where it's just a flat stage and you're not like surrounded by them. Yeah. I agree. It feels like you're just delivering something rather than connecting. Exactly. But a theater can be pretty intimate, too. Like especially when you're used to doing arenas of if I do like a 3 ,000 seat theater.

2:00:31It's kind of intimate It's like it's all what you're comfortable with too. That's a part of it too It's like are you comfortable with all these people staring at you? Well, I never you see that's the weird thing. I would never have Suddenly I'm doing I've never done it before right and suddenly you have all these You know and it's a mate. I mean I love The response but it's it is weird because I've gone from nothing to this and you go in a room there's like hundreds of people cheering what's the biggest crowd you've had to speak in front of probably when I did Megyn Kelly's show when Megyn Kelly was here not here in California I did I did a spot there I did the announcements it was in an arena in Bakersfield the announcement for the UFC weigh-ins I emceed the weigh-ins at the Ellipse on the White House.

2:01:23Oh. So it was 80 ,000 people. That was fucking nuts. That was the most people I've ever talked to. Right. And that was a very different way of talking because all I'm doing is reading people's names in their official way. It's very easy. Yeah. You know, it's just hyping it up, getting everybody pumped up. Yeah. You know, like, ladies and gentlemen, Ilya Topourian. It comes out and everybody goes crazy. It's easy, but the vibe, the feeling of 80 ,000 people is fucking nuts. Yeah. It's a weird feeling. Shane Gillis, my buddy, just did stand-up. He sold 76 ,000 tickets. In Philadelphia, right? Yeah.

2:01:59A fucking football stadium. That had to be insanity. Well, you could do that easy if you wanted to. You'd get the people. It's a crazy thing to do. I don't know if I could do that easy. It's not easy. He broke the world record. And Shane is huge. And he's really funny. He's like one of the funniest guys ever. Yeah, that's a good example. I'd never seen him before. Maybe I'd get him to come down tonight. I don't know if he's there. He did the Fox News dad one. That was the first thing I saw. Oh, he's got so many good bits. Have you ever seen his bit about George Washington's museum? I don't think so.

2:02:28Oh, my God. I would request it from him all the time. I'm like, please do that bit. It's so funny about George Washington's false teeth being made out of lead. It's such a crazy bit. It's so good. He's a great comedian. Yeah. And that's all he cares about. That's what he loves. And he's like all in. And just an awesome guy, too. When you're around him, he's just so fun. And, like, everyone always smiles. You're around him. He's, like, he's contagious. You know, he's a contagious party. Great. Fun guy. But, like, we're really lucky that there's a lot of those guys here now. You know, this is a giant hive of them now.

2:03:08Well, you've built that. Well, we all did. You know, we all came. No, I hear what you're saying. They contributed. Well, they had to be here for me to be able to do it. It's not a thing that I could have ever done and said, hey, everybody move here now. It would have never worked. They had to already be here. Everybody moved here before I even had a club. A lot of them did. Yeah, like Segura moved here before I had a club. Was that a pandemic thing? Yes. Like getting out of places was ridiculous. Yeah, getting out of places and going to a place where you can actually perform. We're all addicts.

2:03:41You know, stand-up comedy is a very, very addictive thing. and if there's a place where you can go where you can do it and your friends already live there and for me it was ron white and it was also there's a thing about the freeness of this city like the freeness of texas the freedom that you had here to to be able to go to a restaurant your businesses could stay open they didn't put the same kind of restrictions they had a small lockdown for a short amount of time and they went okay let's get back to work and they did and california's like we're gonna die fucking i know still driving around their cars with the mark i know it's so crazy i remember it's so funny thinking about because all this i was reminded of all this because of the fauci stuff the other day yeah the fauci stuff is wild because i was really honestly i mean i'm you know i did this show on fox news i'm would never say i'm a journalist right ever um it was an opinion show i just said what i thought but i did do some i would like one piece of journalism, like actual journalism, which is the Fauci stuff.

2:04:44It's infuriating, you know, the origin of the virus. I really did, you know, lay that all out in a way that no one else did because I had these people I knew at Stanford. I taught at Stanford. So a lot of that information about Fauci and the origin and all of that I had and people helped me piece it together. And it's just infuriating that he's still skating. Well, the most infuriating to me thing was that he knew about the miscarriages during the first trimester. He knew about that. And he was still promoting it for pregnant women. Like how many women listened to him and got vaccinated and then had a miscarriage?

2:05:21We don't even know what the numbers are, right? Because those are never reported as vaccine injuries. We have no idea. I mean, I was listening to who did you have on the other week? That lady who wrote the book. You got into it with her. She had a book you're talking about. I can't remember. She's like an investigative. Annie Jacobson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. About the germ warfare? About biological warfare? So I was just listening to that. And then I did, like you were talking about. We didn't really get into it. A little bit. We didn't argue. A little bit. Just on the origins and the gain of function and all of that.

2:05:52Oh. Well, she just probably was trying to be politically correct. And probably not. Well, anyway. Probably still trying to sell books or something. I don't know. All I remember thinking is that it's still not, I don't think, understood how directly Fauci was implicated. Like, it's still you hear this language of, oh, he funded the gain of function. No, he pushed it. This was his thing. He really, really was the main global champion of gain of function. Not only that, he enforced the narrative that this was not a lab leak and that talking about it as a lab leak was racist. Yes. I remember when I first laid that out, and it's still on my Wikipedia.

2:06:43I pushed the conspiracy theory that Fauci did the virus. I always try and show people when they say, well, why would he do something like that? He was really the main advocate. There's a piece he wrote. I will start with this, which is, I think it's December 2011. Because gain of function had been around a few years. They started with the ferrets or whatever, and they had this new technique. Ralph Baric and all of that. And then it became very controversial in the scientific community. You had a whole bunch of scientists saying, this is crazy. This is going to lead to a pandemic. You have people saying that.

2:07:23And Fauci argued back, and he wrote this piece. At the end of 2011, with the other guy, Francis Collins, who ran the NIH, saying that engineering, I think it's almost exactly engineering, a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory is a risk worth taking. He wrote that like he was pushing this stuff. And like the thing that everyone. It was his initiative. It wasn't he like passively funded this thing that some other minions were doing. This was his big thing. Yeah. It's just outrageous that it hasn't been. And he broke the rules. That's the other part that people forget that Obama in 2014 put a moratorium on it.

2:08:09Yes. Which included stuff that was already entrained, which included the project that led to COVID. And then again, people often say, well, Trump lifted the moratorium. He did, but he put back a new thing, which was it was called the potential pandemic pathogens thing protocol, which said that when you renew a project, it should go to independent review. He broke that as well. So he broke the rules to push this. And he's like still not really had to pay any price for it unless you say his reputation. Well, the reputation. But he's also so old that he's not working anymore anyway. But the thing about it was that pardon that gave him a pardon for crimes that he had not been convicted for, which had never happened before.

2:08:52A preemptive pardon for and also for 10 whole years for everything he did. He could have been eating babies for 10 years and like, no, pardon. Fine. And then when you have a pardon, you're not supposed to be able to plead the fifth. And yet he pleads the fifth with everything, including the color of his fucking tie. It's just disgusting. He's a strange guy and the fact that he was a hero really shows how sick people were in 2020 looking for some sort of a solution. They didn't know his history. They didn't know what he did during the AIDS crisis. He's a scary person. Yeah, and the arrogance of it.

2:09:28And the thing that I'm also really get really pissed off about still is when you hear the conversation around this on that going back now to the lockdowns and all of that and the school closures that was such a disaster business as churches. And people say, well, we didn't really know. And it was early and we were just being we did know it's not true. I did a piece March 2020. Like right. It was in the before the end of 15 days to slow the spread right at the beginning. Because I got to know through Stanford, Jay Bhattacharya, John Iannidis, all these guys that were speaking out. They did a blood, whatever you call it, seroprevalence thing in Santa Clara County where this whole thing started.

2:10:11Proving everything that we now knew. And including what Fauci now we know from whatever his diary knew as well. Though Santa Clara County, is this the two doctors that they went public with this and then they lost their license and they were shamed? This is Jay and John Ioannidis. I know about Jay. And the crazy thing about him was that he was one of the people that was kicked off of Twitter, correct? Yes. Yeah. Which is... And worse than that, kicked off, really persecuted by Stanford. They need to be held accountable. That was a crazy thing. So the first lockdown in the country was Santa Clara County, one of the Bay Area counties.

2:10:56Then the next day, the other Bay Area counties did it. And then after that, Gavin did statewide. That's where it started. And the woman who pushed it was the public health. God, I haven't talked about this for ages. The public health director or whatever of Santa Clara County, Sarah Cody. And she was married to the head of Stanford Medicine. And Jay spoke out against what was going on with actual data. They did a study of what was happening in the community that proved that the case fatality rate was far lower than what they're saying. Well, it was also in the leaked emails. All of this. He was aware that it was far lower and he was still promoting it.

2:11:38Exactly. But the point is that this is, again, corruption because he was speaking out against the lockdowns that were pushed by this woman, Sarah Cody. her husband, who was head of Stanford Medicine, persecuted Jay. He was treated so badly. They suspended him. They accused him of having some bullshit investigation into him. Outrageous. No one's ever done anything about that, as far as I can tell, with Stanford. No, it's creepy to watch that top-down power in action when you know that they're lying. And when you're seeing these text messages and emails. Yeah. The Fauci thing is very creepy. It just shows you why he was pushing for that pardon.

2:12:20But then there's the question of whether or not that pardon is even legitimate because it's all auto pen stuff. Yeah. And Biden was out of his fucking mind. I know. But the thing I always think is also this – the state level. It's a federal pardon. Right. So states are going to – but then there's this immunity if you're doing stuff in your public role. You can't be sued for that or something. I don't know. Well, I mean, he lives in hell. I mean, he knows. But I think he's a bit of a sociopath. I think there's something about him. Like when he was prescribing people AZT for AIDS, he's a doctor.

2:12:56He's well aware that AZT was pulled as a cancer medication because it was killing people quicker than cancer. They were using it as chemotherapy. And people were dying faster. And so they already had this FDA-approved drug. And so this new gay cancer, I mean, they literally were calling it the gay cancer at first. They just started giving it to them. Like, well, we have a medication for it. And Fauci is on record saying the reason why we prescribe AZT is because it's the only medicine that's both safe and effective. Effective at what? Effective at killing asymptomatic people? They were also using the same playbook that they used during COVID by using these testing methods that had an enormous amount of false positives.

2:13:36Like Kerry Mullis himself was – there's a video of him. He's the guy who invented PCR testing. He's talking about Fauci. Fauci doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. he's like he's a bureaucrat the guy's full of shit he doesn't know that you should never use a pcr to determine whether or not someone is ill he's like it's not how it works because if you ramp up the cycles enough you could find anything and that's what they did during covid they felt like it's 80 something percent false positives fortunately a lot of those people weren't forced to take azt but there's a lot of people that turned positive for hiv that probably didn't have it at all they gave them azt and they were fucking dead and this is the he's the villain in The Dallas Buyers Club, that movie with Matthew McConaughey.

2:14:17That's all about people who have AIDS seeking alternative treatments and being denied them. Because he was trying to find a vaccine for it, even back then. They were testing the vaccine for it on fucking foster kids and killing them in New York. It's all in RFK Jr.'s book. And again, if his book lies, how come he hasn't been sued? it's really amazing how it's they're able to get away with stuff that's truly evil truly evil yeah I mean testing the AIDS vaccine on foster kids is crazy and them dying it's crazy but there's just the AZT thing is crazy I don't know how you know what determines you know when the sort of the media mindset towards something or whatever that means that this story gets attention and and massive oh it's really simple it's really simple pharmaceutical drug commercials all that would change if they're not allowed to advertise we're one of two countries in the fucking world that allow pharmaceutical drugs to advertise on television one of them is new zealand and they're far more restrictive than us and because of that You have ads that you see that are playing on CNN that are not even for a drug that's commonly used, for some weird condition that very few people have.

2:15:47You know, persuade you, you've got the condition. That's what they're really doing is not selling drugs. What they're really doing is making sure that CNN does never talk shit about the pharmaceutical drug companies and doesn't do any stories on the adverse side effects. and doesn't do any stories about how many of them get pulled by the FDA that initially get approved and they find such horrific side effects, they have to pull them because it's a large percentage. It's fucking nuts, man. Who was it that brought it up that was explaining how he had figured out a long time ago that the reason why they spend so much money on advertising is not because they're trying to sell drugs.

2:16:24They're trying to buy these networks. What makes sense. It's an enormous part of their ad budget, right? And they spend so much money on television. And who the fuck is watching CNN at this stage of the game? You know, what are their numbers? Their numbers are pretty piss poor. They are. For the amount of money that these drug companies are spending. And then you see so many ads. So many for this. And everyone's always at a barbecue. I know. They're always having fun. They're having fun. and like there was a brilliant parody that Nicole Shanahan did when she was with Bobby running she did a brilliant one for TDS do you suffer from TDS?

2:17:06Trump derangement syndrome she did it like a pharma ad oh that's funny it was really really great that's so crazy but the thing I was thinking of when you like the you know when you got really dark human consequences so like you know obviously I'm focused on it because he's my opponent but the story of Becerra and the kids, the migrant kids. It's a story. I bring it up to people and a lot of people have never heard about it. Like literally no idea. What is the story? He had Bobby's job and Bobby County's job at HHS secretary. And you had, it was during the four years that you had the open border and the way it works is that millions of people come across the open border.

2:17:47We don't know exactly how many, but the unaccompanied kids are the responsibility of HHS. That's how the system works. So he was responsible for them. And the total number, we know because it's recorded, 479 ,000 kids. Unaccompanied. Unaccompanied. Kids without parents. It's an amazing number in the four years of the Biden administration. All of those kids were Javier Becerra's responsibility. So they were overwhelmed. They set up these camps. Do you not know any of this? they have these camps they set up to process the kids in Florida, Texas there were three in California and the point was to try and get the kids to a safe sponsor, relative, someone who'd look after them and they had so many, they were overwhelmed and there's really bad stuff going on in the camps, there were reports of sexual abuse, the older kids some of the older kids were like 17 year old, rough you know some were gang members whatever so there was all this shit going on in the camps sexual abuse physical abuse it was bad and it was like pictures of you know like we went to one then pomona one of the exhibition halls like 150 kids on cots it's bad and so becerra wants these kids out because it looks bad and they'd gone on and on about kids in cages with trump and so he basically, we've now got these whistleblowers coming forward.

2:19:20And the New York Times reported it. The New York Times broke this story. But it's just basically not gone anywhere. They did it in 2023. He dismantled the vetting that was supposed to put the kids with a safe place. And so they lost track of thousands of kids. And many went to child sex traffickers, slave labor, child labor traffickers just horrific stories you had what was the rationale for because they were too they weren't moving them out of the camps quickly enough so we had a whistleblower come to us because these people said how can he be governor um who said we were supposed to connect the kids with the responsible adult, check their identity, ID checks, home visits, all this.

2:20:13But the instruction was, it's going too slowly. We got to get the kids out. She said, speed over safety. And so when they raised flags about it, like 200 kids sent to an address that turned out to be a container lot, like not a real address. It's just a front for traffickers. a kid sent to a woman who was wanted by Interpol, like a gang member, like just crazy. When they raised those stories, they were fired. Like it's really terrible what happened. And still, I mean, HHS just published them because they were still responsible. Numbers from, I think it was two weeks ago, there's 330 ,000 that they're still missing.

2:21:00They don't know where they are. 40 kids died like it's really bad and yet it's like Fauci's like he's the candidate for governor no one's really calling him out on it it's amazing to me

2:21:17it's really bad Joe honestly you've got that is crazy you've got to be responsible for that many kids and say speed over safety so there's a story again whistleblower we've put about the videos I mean some people you know this woman said she was a case worker at Pomona and Becerra actually visited that camp visited did a photo or whatever and he's going on about how we're doing a good job of finding safe places whatever and then the interviewer I was at the taping it was she didn't she's in a job where she doesn't want retaliation so I was there for the two hours we taped the conversation and the interviewer asks her did anything change after Becerra's visit?

2:22:03She said, yeah, everything had to speed up. And they had strike teams that were set up to tell us, don't check, you know, when she would say, this ID is obviously a fake ID for this person. Like the photos, like a selfie, it's obviously fake. Don't worry, just send them quick, get them out. Jesus Christ. and this even the New York Times story had a boy who she had a few examples because she tracked them down she won a Pulitzer Prize for it a kid who ended up in a I don't know meat packing plant 13 14 year old had his arm ripped off in our girl one of those she came forward as a whistleblower she a victim she was on camera she said she's telling the story she was like put on a plane and they said, you know, what happens?

2:22:56They didn't let her take her stuff. She was met at the other end. She said, there's three guys. She has no idea who these people are. She's from, I think, Guatemala. It was El Salvador. Gets in a car with three guys, no idea. Taken to a house. She has to work 20 hours a day, sleep on the floor with four guys in a room. She's a girl from, you know, it's just, And there's so many of these stories. Bobby, the way Bobby puts it is that Becerra turned HHS into the largest child trafficking operation in history. Holy fuck. Yeah, exactly. And this guy's running for governor of California? I remember, honestly, Joe, like when we did these debates, you know, we did a lot.

2:23:50and not just debates, but forums and you meet. And I thought he's a nice, you know, I'd see him. We'd chat backstage or whatever. And I thought, you know, he's kind of nothing. He's a bureaucrat type person. Nice guy, perfectly nice smiley. He's a nice, amiable guy. And I just thought he's like an amiable non-entity. But the more you learn about this, it's like really bad. Because it's a classic thing with these career politicians. obviously all that mattered was, I don't want to look bad. We've got all these kids. They're in these camps. The media has access to them. It's really making me look bad.

2:24:32Get these kids out. It's just shocking. Oh, my God. It's shocking. That's so evil. Yeah, it is. And it's also really racist. All of them were Latino kids. Yeah, because think about it. If that was all kids from Norway, little young boys and girls from Norway do you think they would treat them the same way? So Pomona, where this camp was there were three in California Long Beach, San Diego and Pomona so the case worker who did the whistle she said there's a notorious child sex trafficking street area near there she said before this most of the girls were African American black girls after the camp suddenly it was all Latino girls like it was just so obvious that that was what was happening child sex trafficking well if if there's child sex traffickers and there's such an obvious vulnerability like hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied kids making across the border of course they're gonna sneak in exactly the whole thing was just one other thing yeah boy I mean they took away their some they had these papers that they would send them off with and it had a line that's information on it which included a hotline that they set up if the kids felt they were in danger It took on a trafficking hotline.

2:26:12There were 65 ,000 unanswered calls to the hotline. Just a bullshit-like thing that didn't work. And again, the people who pointed that out were fired. Oh, my God. It's really bad. It's like to me— The people that pointed it out were fired. It's just—this is, to me, I've been in and around politics, media, government, one way or another for a long time. I've never seen anything like this. And he's like, it doesn't even seem like it could be real. That's what I thought. The numbers are so crazy. It seems like some sort of a conspiracy theory that's easily disproven. Exactly. Well, in the first reporting of it was the New York Times.

2:26:552023. Holy shit. And, and, and, but everything that's coming out is it's worse even than that. What do you think was going on with the whole open border? I think that they believed that any kind of restriction on immigration was racist. And therefore, it was part of the ideology around that. That we can't put, people are coming and they're fleeing bad conditions. And you can't stop them because it's racist to put restrictions on immigration. I think that's what it was mainly. Okay. So that is a great way to justify flying people into swing states and then trying to turn them into citizens, which is what they were actively talking about doing.

2:27:51Pelosi talked about that. Schumer talked about that. They talk about getting these people citizenship, which means those people can vote. There's also moving them into these swing states. And if you move them into the swing states, the census doesn't count whether or not you're a citizen. The census counts whether or not you're a human being. And so it changes the number of congressional seats that are available. So there's that. And then there's also putting these people on free health care and giving them money and setting them up. And then if you can get those people to vote eventually, you've got a built-in voter.

2:28:24And you could change. So I never – I don't know about that. Whatever million people got in over the last four years, they're not going to vote for Trump. How many if you make those people vote if you can let those people vote How many of those people are going to vote for the Republicans that wanted to get rid of them with ice? And how many of them are gonna vote for the Democrats that wanted to fund them and help them get across the border? It's pretty simple. Even if you don't get all of them, you're gonna get most of them Do you think that I mean I hear that often this is what Elon thinks It seems to me that's so dark and cynical Well, if they wanted to do to the whole country what they've done to California and have complete and total control with one party, well, they've already done it in a state.

2:29:05Why not just implement it through the entire country? In California, you can't show ID to vote. It's illegal. That's crazy. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? There's only one reason. Yeah. You want to cheat. It's the only reason. And we've got voter ID on the ballot in November in California. Which is crazy that you have to ask for that. Exactly. and the Attorney General, this guy Bonta, I don't know if you've been following, he's doing the Paramount lawsuit. He's like a total political hack. All he ever does, like we've got out of control crime and all this shit, all he does, and the same with, by the way, Becerra, I keep coming, he's my opponent, he was Attorney General of California, appointed, he didn't get elected.

2:29:50All he talks about in terms of his record, and he was Attorney during the time when crime exploded is how many times he sued Trump but this guy Bonta now there was this ballot initiative there is a ballot initiative on November for voter ID he just changed the description did you see this no so we had a kind of accurate description of what it was you know this measure you know on the ballot and the voter information this measure will require people to show I did blah blah, blah, blah. And that was approved by the whole system. And just in time before they start printing them, he, because it's the Attorney General who decides, changed it to say, like the most negative possible thing.

2:30:42This, I mean, I haven't got the exact words, you can find it, but it was like, this measure prohibits voting unless you have, and it goes on to make it sound really good. It's like it's so cynical. This is just what they do. Yeah, well, they were trying to get people to look at it in terms of look at it through their ideological lens rather than through a practical lens. But it's also like it's so crazy that you have to have ID for almost everything else. It's crazy. And they say, oh, it's so discriminatory. Like, what are you talking? That's racist. Yeah. What about driving a car? You have to have a license to drive a car.

2:31:17What about, you know. Check into a hotel. I mean every night I'm at a different Hampton Inn that's where we stay ID yeah like you have to show ID to buy booze it's like IDs everywhere it's normal it's like we need to know that you're real it's a very when you watch them defend their opposition to it you it really I mean I'm generally not at all you know I really do try and see the best, you know, that's just their ideology or whatever, then it's not really cynical. But when you see the way they wriggle and squirm over voter ID, it's like, what other explanation is there? Exactly. It really, it's such a ridiculous thing to be opposed to.

2:32:02It's pretty clear. It's pretty clear that there's an advantage. And the advantage is definitely on the side of the Democrats, the voter ID advantage. It's just crazy. It's just we have lost our fucking collective minds. And, you know, it doesn't help when this administration is in this war with Iran that makes no fucking sense whatsoever. And everybody's like, oh. So you look at that. It just builds up the other side's argument that you have to vote them out no matter what. It's a perfect example. Massive thing in California for everyone is just gas prices. highest in the country by far. Higher than Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, even though we have abundant oil reserves in California.

2:32:52It's like so insane. They're literally shipping in. They're shutting down California oil production, shipping it in from halfway around the world. Like 80 % now is shipped from Iraq and the Amazon rainforest. Like Gavin goes to the Amazon rainforest to the climate conference to lecture everyone about climate. Because of his climate policies, oil drilling in the Amazon is now being increased to provide California's oil. Anyway, it's so crazy that they do all these things. Like right now, and it's all as a direct result of what they've done, right? The gas prices are so high. And it's regular working people who are screwed, like people who drive their cars and trucks every day.

2:33:37for where it's not the climate war is, you know, in their laptops in Marin County. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, the war is now their go-to response. So you make a point about gas prices. Oh, it's Trump's war. And of course, it's true that the war has increased gas prices everywhere, but it's still$2 higher in California than anywhere else. Yeah. But it lets them off the hook. Well, it's just indicative of the same problem that you're going to have whenever a single party is running a state for that long unchecked. Just like you were talking about Hungary. It's just like it could be anywhere.

2:34:19You could fill in the blank anywhere in the world where you get power and you get complete control. And then you can just tax the fuck out of people. And then you keep increasing government, which they keep doing. It's pretty wild. Would changing this law make it cheaper? Would that be even harder to do? California gas because it uses unique, strictly regulated, clean-burning boutique blend mandated by the California Air Resources Board to reduce smog and greenhouse gas emissions. Specialized fuel must be refined locally on an energy island because no pipelines connect the state to outside fuel networks.

2:34:51It's just more of the same. It's not just that. So this is important. So see that California Air Resources Board, CARB, that's the main agency that's driving the cost of everything high when it comes to energy, gas and electric. And actually now your earlier question, what can you do? There's basically four reasons that gas prices are the highest in the country. One is the gas tax, which is the highest in the country. That I can't do anything about as governor. That's the legislature. They just increased it. So you've got all these Democrats running around saying affordability. We have to do something about the affordability crisis.

2:35:30They just increased the gas tax in California. So just it's so ridiculous. But that's the first thing I can't do anything about directly. All the other things you can. It's partly that is the regulations on the refinery. But it's also these hidden taxes. Like you've got the low carbon fuels. They all sound good. The low carbon fuel standard cap and invest. They call it the cap and invest program. that's funding high-speed rail. These are basically taxes on gas that the energy industry is paying. Then you've got the fact that we're importing all this oil rather than producing it. So instead of producing it in California, in the cleanest regulated standards anywhere in the world, right, which is what we have because we've got all these regulations, and sending it in a nice pipeline just 100 or so miles from near Bakersfield, Kern County to the refineries in Long Beach and Torrance.

2:36:26We are, what I said earlier, shipping in, like that said, there's no pipeline from outside California, bringing on tankers from the number one in the Middle East is Iraq. Burning immense amounts of fuel all along the way. Because they run on bunker fuel, which is the most dirty form of oil. So they are, I'm not, this is an accurate statement. They are increasing carbon emissions in the name of climate. to make it look as if they're climate warriors fighting fossil fuels. It's just... Fucking crazy. Yeah, but it's the ideology. It's not even... It's so funny. I used to sort of talk about their climate policies.

2:37:07It's not even their climate policies. It's climate posturing. It's like they want to look as if they're doing something. Well, it's a part of the ideology, like you said. It's a part of the doctrine, the religious doctrine that is the left. You have to say that climate change is real. Science is science. You have to say a bunch of things. Love is love. You have to say a bunch of things. In this house, it's the thing. I always say that's literally virtue signaling. It's not just virtue signaling. It's kind of religious doctrine. It's ideology signaling. It's not such a catchy phrase, but that's what it is.

2:37:40And it's kind of religious. And like Mark Andreessen's talked about this. It's kind of like a cult. Like if you don't follow it, you are excommunicated. Yeah. I did a conference the other day in Sacramento where I went up. And there's something about it. It was the smugness was so – I normally try and be reasonable and just, you know, make my arguments. There was something about this. It was a kind of climate thing. Things I agree with. It was green energy. I'm all for that. Whatever. Great. Let's have innovation. I'm not against any of that. I am against the windmills, the insane windmills. Totally inefficient.

2:38:20Yeah. And then they have to go into landfills. And they only last a certain amount of years. Then you have to take them down and then bury them in the earth where they never degrade. And they catch fire. And it's a life scene. They kill birds. They fuck up whales. Have you heard the latest, though? This is the – it's actually one of my bits to go back to the thing because it's so crazy. Is the new plan for windmills is offshore windmills in California in two parts. Morro Bay off the central coast, Humboldt up in the north, including having them far out because the wind is more, but except also the ocean is deep there.

2:39:00So they're going to have floating windmills. Have you heard this one? No. Floating. And these windmills are, they're big. They're like a thousand feet. That's the height of the Eiffel Tower, pretty much. Floating. And one of the proposals is like 10 ,000. So 10 ,000 Eiffel Towers floating off the – it's insane. Trump's just stopped it. And now they're suing to reopen it. By the way, when – Clean energy. When we have in California today existing natural gas-fired power stations, which could provide more than all our electricity needs today, more than all. it's like something like 300 gigawatt hours a year we only use about 270 something like that but they're only they're running these natural gas power stations are like 10 like 20 of their capacity to use as backup for the windmills and for the solar farms if you ran them at full capacity what we've already got you don't have to build anything you could more than meet all our needs but no that's too sensible so we have the floating windmills and and of course we have the highest electric bills in the country, apart from Hawaii, double the national average.

2:40:18And the reason I got cross at this conference was that they were going, you want to reduce the renewable goals or something. No, I just want common sense. I'm all for it. If it makes sense, if you can make it pay, great. But the people who you're hurting with all of this is regular working people, not kind of elite people at a conference in sacramento just working class people who are just being crushed and i see it every day and the struggle you know literally they they the number one thing people say to me it's really striking when in all these you know i've really met a lot of people as i said hundreds of events thousands and thousands of people they say it's not like oh good luck i hope you it's like you have to win there's like this intensity it's really interesting well because they know it's slipping away they don't want to move and they're so it's hard gotten significantly worse over the last 10 years and they don't want to move yeah and it's so difficult and the fucking story but people just oh and it's not even it's so casual and cruel the way it's like yeah for our ideology will jack up your electric bills and your gas prices and you just have to suck it up because we want to make ourselves feel like we're leading on climb that's the other thing, as they were yelling at me from this conference.

2:41:42And I said, you tell me, what is the impact of any of this on climate change? I said, I'll give you everything you're saying about climate change. Okay, let's I agree. Climate change, we got to fight climate change. What is this doing to fight climate change? What is the impact on global temperatures of any of this? and like nothing because the answer is zero it has zero impact on global temperatures which is the only thing that matters and then someone shouts out this is where they always go oh we're leading we have to have a leadership role we're leading that's it who's following no one because it's crazy it's hurting people all these countries are backing off it that's the one thing that china has an advantage in is that their government and their business work like that.

2:42:35Yeah. And the business works for the government and the government controls the businesses. It's not a good thing. But the one advantage that they have in there, they don't do anything stupid that's just going to lose money for virtue signaling. Exactly. They open coal-fired plants like crazy. Exactly. Which are, you know, part of the energy that's going into making the solar panels that are shipped across the ocean to make these people feel good. it's true it is true it's wild i mean it's just wow it's wild but i mean this is the problem with a government handling something versus the private sector if the private sector handled it it would have to be profitable it would have to make sense and they keep saying solar is really cheap you know i said great so why do we have the highest electric bills in the country apart from hawaii if it's also great i'm not again i'm not against it you want to have a solar panel a battery that's great you know i'm not against any of this but don't force it in a way that just raises the cost for regular working people well california just loves to regulate they love it it's part of the big government have you seen to just the tires the tires yeah oh you've seen yeah i saw it i was gonna bring that up yeah so what is the let's pull it up jamie the new california regulations on tires, restricting the kind of tires you can buy.

2:43:57I mean, it's just, they keep coming. They can't help themselves. They can't. That's exactly right. They need to justify all these jobs. There's so much government. But I just want to give you, this is a good example, which is all of these things. California regulators approved new rules limiting what replacement tires you can buy for your car. So what is the rationale behind this? Approved new rules that were restrict which tires you can buy when it's time to replace them. unanimous vote California Energy Commission voted to adopt new rules that will phase out the sale of replacement tires that don't meet certain energy efficiency standards ultimately about protecting consumers I see this as a sheltering the public from higher costs in the long term long long run excuse me tire manufacturers and the commission staff are at odds of whether this will add to the cost of living in the state it will both sides acknowledge this will no longer allow the sale of significant portion of the tires currently sold in California.

2:44:51By the way, that's 70%. So the center of this is a tire's rolling resistance, or how much energy a tire uses as it rolls down the road. Lower resistance means a vehicle uses less gas or electricity. New cars come with energy-efficient tires, but consumers typically replace those with higher rolling resistance tires. I wonder if that has anything to do with performance cars. so you know I would imagine rolling resistance so rolling resistance what would that mean does that mean friction yes basically for okay so friction is traction so you want more traction so you're basically making people buy performance tires no the other way around you really yeah the other way around so attraction is less resistance it's more resistance maximum resistance is traction.

2:45:41So if they want, they allow the sale of tires with a maximum rolling resistance of 9.1 newtons per kiloton, it lowers it to 7.2 starting in 2033. So, yeah, it's making it less traction. That's what it's saying, right? Rolling resistance. I'm not sure what it says. What they want is these... Energy efficient, ensure replacement tires sold in California are at least as energy efficient on average as the tires that come with the truck. So my perception is that a tire with more traction would be more efficient. No, for driving, yeah, but not for climate. Yeah, but when you go into the store to buy them, most people are going to buy the cheapest thing available.

2:46:27They're not going to ask, like, what's going to save me money over 10 years. The cheapest thing available would have less traction, correct? It would just be the cheapest thing available. Right. The thing about the cars' performance tires, they don't last as long. Because there's a softer rubber and the softer rubber grips better. And so like if you buy that's what they want to get rid of That's what they want to get rid of yeah, but that But those are the ones that have more traction. That's what I'm confused about That would seem to be more energy efficient in terms of the use of the car Well that that's what they're arguing it's for but they are You're gonna end up with these these little tires that don't I mean all the people that want to go off-road or whatever That's what you can't oh you can't buy off-road tires 70 % of the tires are going to be banned that are currently sold.

2:47:1270%. 70%. That was one of the reporters at KCRA, Ashley Zavala. She's really, on all these stories, very aggressive. She's really exposing a lot of this nonsense. And that was, I think, her number, 70%. Wouldn't they just make new off-road tires then? Yeah, but they wouldn't be as good. How often are you driving off-road in LA? Well, I'm not, but some people are. There's a bunch of people who love driving off-road. Why are we doing this? When we have the state is over, you've got homeless everywhere, the highest taxing country. Businesses are leaving every single day. It's a real economic emergency.

2:47:52We have the highest unemployment rate in the country. We have the highest poverty rate in the country, the highest cost of living. And this is what the government's focused on. I mean, we've got to wake up, right? This is insane that they're focused on this. They're churning out absolute nonsense. The regulations, the bureaucracy. This is totally unaccountable. This is some bureaucrat that's discovered a rule. Nancy Skinner, who used to represent Berkeley, found this thing in some obscure place that no one had noticed for 20 years. Suddenly, this bureaucratic agency decides to bring in this rule.

2:48:30No input from the voters. But here's my question. What is this impact going to have on the car market? If you sell a car that has a particular type of performance tire that no longer fits this. I don't know. Could we ask perplexity? Is this referring to tires with more traction or less traction? Energy.california.gov second sentence says, unfortunately, replacement tires are often less efficient. That's why your mileage drops the first time you replace your tires. And the efficiency gap between new car tires and replacement tires means California drivers are paying nearly a billion dollars in additional fuel costs.

2:49:13So are these inefficient tires less expensive? Is that what it is? Yeah. Makes sense, right? So the more expensive tires are more efficient, which means they would have better traction? Is that what it is? That makes sense, right? Because if the tire has less traction, that means it slips more. If it slips more, it's not as efficient. You wouldn't get as good a gas mileage. But they're doing this for climate. That's what they're saying. We need to lower emissions. That's what it's all about because of the use of the gas. The 70 % thing is crazy. Because if you have a – let's say if you buy a Chevy truck that's an off-road truck, those are not efficient tires.

2:49:55So what are you going to be able to get for them now? I don't know. I mean, it's just come out. So everyone's looking into this. And there's no recourse? Well, there will be when I'm there because I'm going to get rid of these people because this is going back to the question earlier. Okay. Benefits of the proposed regulation. Consumer savings. Proposed regulation would save nearly$1 billion per year in gasoline and electricity costs. Right. Air quality. By reducing fuel consumed, the proposed regulation would reduce CO2 emissions by 2.0 million metric tons per year, which is the equivalent of taking 400 ,000 gasoline cars off California roads.

2:50:33It would also reduce other criteria air pollutants such as nitric oxide and particulate matter. Reduced energy demand. The proposed regulation would reduce California demand for gasoline by 141 million gallons. Also reduced demand for electricity by 0.9 terawatts per hour each year. Okay, the following tires are excluded from the proposed regulation minimum performance standards. Competition tires used for motorsports, winter-type snow tires, all-season winter performance tires, used and retreaded tires, deep tread tires, tires designed for ATVs or other off-road vehicles. a large off-road tires for use up to 99 miles an hour motorcycle tires temporary spare tires small tires with 13 inch nominal rim diameter proposed limited production tires tires sold for use in an emergency vehicle high load index tires tires not capable of sustaining speeds over 50 miles per hour and space saver tires so it seems like there's a lot of caveats no this is But look at that, like that list again.

2:51:47Nobody believes that this is about saving money. No. It seems like they're just wanting. This is entirely their ideology for climate. This is some bullshit calculation. Is there a world where that makes sense, though, where they're right and it will reduce all that gasoline and it actually will be better for everybody? And you'll force people to make better tires? and they're churning out low-quality tires and this could be mitigated a long time ago? Well, I don't know. I think that the reaction to it is exactly the opposite, which is here they come again. Here they come again is real. Yeah, another thing.

2:52:26As I said, it's just been announced, so we've got to dig into it. But, I mean, it's just, to me, such a kind of crazy example of them endlessly micromanaging everything. Yeah, the market should decide. We've got these big, big problems. California's new tire rule could wipe out 70 % of what's on the shelf, and Sacramento sat on the law for 23 years.

2:52:52So Sacramento did invent a new law on Monday. It finally read one. It wrote in 2003. Okay. I mean, it's just infuriating to me. They love to tell you what to do. That's part of what California is. So we did a thing last year. Remember, this is the point about there's no checks. No one's stopping anything. In the last legislative session last year, not even the whole year, just a few months, they passed 1 ,118 bills. We counted them. We printed them out. It was double my height. Obviously, no one can read them. Newsom signs most of them, like the vast majority. He hasn't read them. It has stuff like this in it, and no one's paying attention.

2:53:42And the corrupt system, the interest groups that want what they want from the system, they get these bills written, and then they get passed. And then here you are 23 years later, something that's in some obscure law. That's how it all works. And the answer to the question, like what could you do about it, is basically captured in these two things. Like number one, all these agencies that are pushing out these rules, it's the executive branch. So as the governor, you control the executive branch. You can fire the people on these boards and you can replace them with people with some common sense.

2:54:20And you can actually merge them. You can reorganize them. You could cut them back. There's a whole bunch of things you could do on the bureaucracy because so much of this is coming out of the bureaucracy. Secondly, you can veto the legislation. and the point is always made if they have a two-thirds majority they can overturn a veto that's correct but the last time they overturned a veto from the governor was 1979 so they don't like doing it because suddenly they have to justify all this shit that they that goes through without any scrutiny if you veto it they have they can if they want to overturn it suddenly they have to make the argument and so much of what you get in california just goes through without anyone noticing.

2:55:02That's the real corruption in the system. Oy. And so the other thing I'd say is that you also write the budget. The governor writes the budget and sends it to the legislature. And then you have to negotiate. But again, you know, if you take out all this waste and, you know, we just announced last week Operation Zero Waste, cancel funding for high-speed rail, cancel free health care for illegal immigrants, all these things that we said we do how much has been spent on that high-speed rail so far total 15 billion oh that's a bargain so the total they've got a lot done though right okay so that was so it was 2008 it was supposed to be 30 billion the total budget and it's supposed to be open in 2020 and it was two and a half hours from san francisco to la so the latest is it's going to be open maybe if you're lucky by the end of 2030s.

2:56:01It's going to be the new budget from 30 billion is now 230 billion, right? The plan, as they laughably call it, is the first bit is San Francisco to Merced at the top of the Central Valley on the regular train line that's already there. And then Then Merced to Bakersfield is the high-speed rail. And then Bakersfield to L.A., a bus. Bus. Have you heard that? That's real? It's real. That drive from Bakersfield to L.A., which I've done a lot, is through the great— It's already congested as fuck. Right. That can take two and a half hours if you're unlucky. So this is what—and it's so crazy. $230 billion for that?

2:56:49$230 billion. And then Becerra, my opponent, he went to Fresno the other week. He announced that he would finish it on time and on budget. On time was six years ago. On budget. It was$120 million ago. The budget was$30 million. They've spent$15 million, and they've not laid any tracks at all. Gavin, it's classic Gavin. It's almost my favorite. he did an event because obviously he's running for president he doesn't this is embarrassing he wants to sort of shape the narrative so he did this press conference somewhere there with trains in the background to make it look like this is a real thing and they haven't laid any track and there's no plans to lay any track but he was standing by tracks to sort of i think make people think there's tracks but even he the the phrase that he used was to announce that we are now entering the track laying phase phase that could be another 10 years it's so ridiculous and then you're gonna have to get a bus and the bus it's real that is the plan and then so why is that because the just logistics they can't get the train through the mountains yeah that's it so you have to have a bus yeah i mean oh they they i don't actually know what the long-term plan i can't believe that's the whole idea i think that's just what's going to be available says it's just like the most tunneling has to happen on that part, so maybe they're just waiting.

2:58:19I think it's a long... It's not their eventual plan. So they'll do some more tunnels? It's crazy. It says it would require the most tunneling of the mountain crossings with four separate tunnels totaling 28 miles in length. How much of the nature... They have to go across the San Andreas Fault, which is the biggest problem. Oh, even better. They're going to cause an earthquake. How much of nature is going to get destroyed in the production of that? But who even wants this? Tunneling through mountains. The other thing is... So I spoke to someone who works with Elon. where you can check with Elon.

2:58:46So he said that you could do the boring couple, I could do a tunnel, the whole thing for$5 billion. Now, I don't know if that's true, but this is such a monument to the whole thing, right? Yeah. Take the money, waste it, spend it on nothing, endlessly delay. How come Gavin's not running again? He can't. He can't. Oh, he did two terms. Yeah, yeah. It's so crazy. And you've got this pretend. This is what's really, there was just a video that someone found of him talking in 2015 when he was lieutenant governor about what a joke the whole thing was. Yeah. Speaking very honestly about it. Yeah. And it's kind of funny and ridiculous.

2:59:32Oh, look at that. He says that then. Now he says, but it's actually infuriating because they're still taking the money to pay for it. They're still pretending and they're taking money out of people. the funding, like I said, comes from this thing called cap and invest, which is the gas tax. It's just insane. Steve, I hope you win. We've got to wrap this up and bring it home, but I hope you win. It would be funny. It would be hilarious if you win. Great. What job do you want, Joe? I don't want a job. We'll have you do something. I don't even like going back to California. Well, okay. The only reason I'm doing it is that you've moved back.

3:00:10I'm never going to move back. I know. It's too good here. Yeah, I love it here. I love it here. I can see that. I really hope you win. Thank you, man. I think you have a chance. I really do. I mean, you make a lot of sense, and that's a lot in this day and age. It's a lot. You're also actually a good guy. Like, I know you. You're an actual good guy. You're not, like, some weird lizard person. You know what I mean? Like, there's some fake people. Yes, I do. I've met a lot in Sacramento. You are who you are. You are really you. I can attest to that. I know you. Like, I've known you before. You had any political aspirations.

3:00:44You're the exact same person. There's a lot of these people that are just skin suits. They're skin suits over lizards. There's lizards in there. Whether metaphorically or physically, they're fucking lizard people. And that's a real thing. So I hope you win. You can come to my inauguration. I will. Just that. Commit to that. Yeah, I'll come. If you win, I'll come. All right. All right. Bye, everybody.

3:01:20Thank you.