Spencer Pratt on Fixing LA: Wildfires, Homelessness, Corruption & the Fight to Take It Back

Spencer Pratt, welcome to the All-In podcast.

Thank you for having me.

You had an unbelievable debate performance the other night. I have so many friends who were texting, and people were obviously tweeting about it. Let's start with that. How are you feeling after the debate?

I just wish it had been 2 or 3 hours because the list of their failures that we didn't even get to touch on is unbelievable. It was the most fun I've had in years because what people don't realize is that they're pathological liars. When somebody gets to be onstage with only facts and the truth, that's why there's been this incredible response: Everybody who watches these lying politicians knows they're lying, and nobody gets to yell, “They're lying.”

It was very hard to be respectful, though, because all the lovely Democratic moms who love me and want to keep supporting me asked me to please stay calm, cool, and collected. The whole time, I was doing my best behavior not to interrupt the lying. If I hadn't been tasked with that mission, I would have been like, “Liar, liar.”

A lot of people said they weren't expecting such a great performance. You were so well-prepped and so well-versed on a lot of the facts and the actions you were going to take. How did you get ready for the debate? Did you do any work to prepare for it?

Thankfully, people argue with me all day long in every single media hit I've done for months because they don't want me to get into the machine. Every interview I do, unlike these politicians, is opposition. It's arguing, arguing, arguing.

When Mayor Bass or Councilwoman Raman talks to the media, they can just lie, and then the media people say, “Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mayor Bass. Thank you, Councilwoman.” If I say anything, I've got to have who was there, what they were wearing, and what they had for breakfast. I have to have my information so fact-based and be bulletproof to beat this machine. I debate people all day long.

You're held to a higher standard.

Exactly. I'm challenged all day long, and all I live in is facts and the truth. I called my lawyer, who is representing me in the case against the city, the state, and LADWP. He's one of the most famous lawyers in the world. I said, “Peter, how do you stay so calm when you're arguing with these liars?”

He said, “Spencer, I always have the truth.” I was like, “Ooh. Okay, I got that.”

Good strategy.

Yeah, so that was a great message I took into the debate. For people who don't know your story, I want to give you a couple of minutes to tell it. Let's go back to the fires. Where were you, and where were your family, your wife, and your kids when these fires kicked off? Where were you guys, and how did you end up evacuating? What was that evening like?

Let's even rewind to before the fires. It just shows you that our emergency situation is not at the level it needs to be because I didn't even know there was this crazy wind event. My son had pneumonia, so I was up every night checking his temperature. I'm on my phone a lot—I'm a phone person—and I didn't even know that this was extra-dangerous, dry weather. That just shows you that, if you rewind, we weren't even informed at the level we clearly should have been.

The morning of January 7, I was doing my normal routine, making my espresso, and about to dance to “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift on Snapchat, which I've done since the Reputation album dropped. All of a sudden, I see our nanny running down the street. She comes in with our 2-year-old at the time and says, “The workers up the street said there's a fire on the hill.”

Again, this isn't crazy. Mayor Bass is like, “We never knew,” but we're well aware that fires happen. There had just been the Getty Fire that everyone ran out of their houses for.

I grew up in L.A.

I've been through the fires. They've been going on for 30 years. Three weeks before, all my friends fought a fire in Malibu. I was even planning on starting my own fire brigade, like my friends had, and I was talking to Heidi: “We need to get a hose. We need to get a truck.”

I was well aware of fires, no matter what anybody says. This wasn't a shock. We also know about Santa Ana winds.

I ran up the hill where we've hiked every day for the last 9 years, and I saw the smoke coming from the Highlands area, which is where the Lachman Fire was. We now know the fire was really from 7 days earlier and had been smoldering for a week. I FaceTimed my wife and said, “Yeah, maybe pack and go down to my parents' house just to be safe.”

My parents live in the Palisades. I grew up in the Palisades. It's the opposite side of where we are. We're at the top of the hill next to the state park, by the bluffs and next to the ocean. You would think that would be safe.

She loaded up just diapers and kids' clothes and went to my mom's house. I stayed up there, FaceTiming everyone locally and asking what was going on. I was very confident because I assumed that, since I've been paying—I don't have any money because all my money goes to taxes—all that tax money meant firefighters were coming. It had to be going somewhere.

I was very naive. I also live next door. Again, in the debate, Mayor Bass said I was lying, or that wasn't true. She said there was only 1 reservoir that was empty. “Ma'am, Mayor Bass, I live next to the one you don't know existed: the Palisades Reservoir, with 5 million gallons next door to my house.”

The fire department would do almost—not weekly, but biweekly—drills there. They would connect up, and they would make me move cars if they needed to bring the hoses. I was always saying to my wife, “Well, this is annoying, but gosh, we're set. They have a thing where the helicopter could dip in there.”

I'm not talking about the San Andreas Reservoir that she was referencing and lied about, saying it was for drinking water. If you Google it, the L.A. Times will show you that when it was made, it was for wildfire protection. That's why it has cisterns, and that's why it has helicopter dip sites.

I was very confident. I have a video of myself saying, “Can't wait till the helicopters get here,” not realizing that LADWP drained that reservoir in June 2024. I must have been away when they were emptying it or whatever.

I was very confident that, in 2025, in Pacific Palisades—which probably pays almost a quarter of the taxes for the whole city—I would guess that, at this point, they were not going to let the entire town burn to the ground. I didn't pack anything. I didn't prepare for our house to burn down.

I called the fire department directly because I have their number. I said, “Hey, we just see 1 truck up here because, if the fire comes around, there's just this 1 place of dead brush, and if you put water on it, it won't come and hit all these houses.”

They said, “We have no assets available.”

I was like, “Whoa.” That was scary. My dad came up, and we got the hose and he was hosing a hillside. Finally, I said, “Dad, let's get out of here. The firefighters are probably coming.”

And your wife and kids are gone at this point?

They're at my dad's house. Then the fire came from Temescal Canyon and crossed over. My older sister called and said, “What are your kids doing there? They better get out of there.” I was like, “What is happening?”

You know what? This is insane. It's like a bad movie. I never heard any sirens. Real locals will tell you, if you talk to them, there were no sirens.

I've heard this from a lot of friends in the past.

If I had heard sirens, I would have started packing things, maybe stayed, but you don't feel scared if you don't hear sirens. There were no sheriffs, LAPD, or emergency vehicles coming up the street telling everybody to get out, like in a movie. There was no movie stuff. You always think everything is like a movie, but nothing was like a movie.

I stayed until the fire came down the hill at 5 or 6 p.m. Again, when Mayor Bass was talking about the wind, I'm standing at the top of the Palisades, connected to the state park. There was no scary wind. It did not go past 40 miles per hour.

Now even CBS News has done a great debunking post, with a journalist who was up there, showing that I was correct and wasn't lying in the debate.

And there were planes flying.

Yeah, it moved. It was windy, but it wasn't scary.

I talked to Chief Bobby Garcia at the U.S. Forest Service about what he thought went sideways that day. We don't know, because the after-action report has been edited multiple times by Mayor Bass, which she denies, but the L.A. Times stands by its reporting.

He said the initial fire wasn't made skinny. You're supposed to attack the fire on both sides, and that did not happen. Ready for this? You know what Mayor Bass brought up? “Oh, there were no planes.”

No, Mayor Bass, you never called in fixed-wing support. She never did. You know why? She was in Africa. And you know who was supposed to do it? Her deputy mayor, but he was under house arrest. L.A. City never even called in fixed-wing air support to drop water.

Thankfully, LA County, Cal Fire, and the U.S. Forest Service showed up. But that's how out of the loop Mayor Bass was on this.

So when did you find out your house was gone?

I watched it burn on my security cameras. I watched my son's bed burn in the shape of a heart, which is the most spiritual, crazy shape—a heart coming through the bottom of his bed. Then I watched each room until—

You're watching on the cameras?

On my phone, in gridlock traffic, where the 10 goes to the 405, that one ramp. I'm just stuck in traffic watching it. But thank God, as I'm watching it, I can't reach my dad, who I'm thinking is dying trying to save his house on the bluffs.

I'm calling 911. I've been trying to get these audio calls posted, and they say they don't have them. I'm calling 911 to find out if my dad is okay, if he tripped, if—so even though I'm watching my house burn down, I can't reach my dad. That's taking away the material—

Connection.

I'm like, "My dad mattered more to me than my house burning." So I get on 911. They're like, "What's the address?" I'm like, "Oh, no emergency personnel can go there."

Your dad lives on the bluffs. So you're losing your mind at that point.

There are 12 ways to get to my parents' house.

So this idea that there's no emergency personnel—

—and I'm telling them my dad could be burning up. These 12 people who burned alive, I know firsthand that if one of their family members, relatives, or neighbors was calling 911, they were told no emergency personnel could go help them.

Thank God my dad obviously lived and he got out. I was like, "Dad, could you get out?" He's like, "Yeah, I drove. You could drive anywhere." So they didn't even brutal.

So in the aftermath, this hits you. It must have hollowed you, wrecked you. How were the next couple of weeks, trying to put everything back together? At what point were you like, "Man, I'm going to try and figure this out"? Was it an immediate call to action for you, or was there a period of time when you were trying to put everything together?

My wife and I, when we were very successful in 2009, spent millions of dollars on her pop music album with all the most famous music producers and writers in the world. We didn't have the money to promote it, so nobody ever heard it, but we did that.

The 15-year anniversary of that album happened to be January 10. The house burned down on January 7. I have zero money now because everything I ever put into this house for my sons—all everything I own—was in this house. I'm like, "Oh my God, we have no money. We're done."

I'm getting emails because January 10 is this anniversary date, 15 years of her album. So I go on TikTok Live and say, "Anybody, please, I have no money right now. Our house just burned down. Please stream my wife's album. Buy it." Thank God, Planet Earth got behind me. I think maybe 12 countries put it at number one. Everyone streamed it. It was the first time an album from 15 years ago went to number one on the Billboard charts.

That was taking me out of the dark trauma because I'm focusing right away on pivoting into, like, "We're going to rebuild." I was naive to think streaming music could get you a house back. Thank God I did make, like, $150,000, but if this was 2006, we would have made millions of dollars.

So it took my mind off it. Obviously, my wife is trying to get our kids into new schools. She's not even connecting to this. "This is so positive, honey. Everyone's supporting you." When that wears down, I realize, "Oh my God, this is not enough money to build anything."

We were stuck with the California FAIR Plan because we were dropped by Farmers after paying for 8 years, and we had no money to rebuild. I started questioning, "Why did our house burn down? It shouldn't have burned down."

I called up my friend, whose wedding I had just been a groomsman in, and whose dad had just fought Edison in the Camp Fire—I'm pretty sure it was the Camp Fire in Paradise—and he beat Edison. So I called him and said, "Can you represent me? I want to sue the city. I want to sue the state. I want to sue L.A.—"

So you're a fighter. You go after it.

I'm just done. Case by case.

Fast-forward a little bit: 5,000 homes burned.

7,000.

7,000 structures. Yeah, 7,000 homes, whatever it is. Why are you the guy who comes out of the fire and says, "I'm going to fight, I'm going to do something about it, and I'm going to change it"?

Thankfully, I had this experience of already being a hated media personality. When you put yourself out there, especially when you're fighting machines like Gavin Newsom and his social team, they're calling you a conspiracy theorist, and the L.A. Times is calling you a conspiracy theorist because they're saying this is climate change. There's nothing that could happen.

Well, guess what? The day of the debate, the judges overruled the appeal by the state and the city of L.A. Guess why? Because of the negligence that caused the Palisades Fire. It's moving forward. Discovery is open.

This idea that I was this conspiracy-theory, climate-change wingnut—if a normal person were attacked by the governor of California on social media, most people would back down. You burn my house down. You burn my parents out.

You've been through it. You've been in the public eye. You've been a fighter in public. You've got this character that allows you to stand up. You have this capacity, and you have a bit of a platform going into it.

So it was, yeah. Once I got the truth, all the LAFD whistleblowers were coming to me, telling me that they were told to leave the smoldering Lachman Fire on January 1. They told me that Mayor Bass was fighting the battalion chief. They're editing the after-action report—obstruction of justice.

They're telling me that the chief fought her for that $17 million and warned her that Angelenos would not be safe. So I'm getting all this information, and I don't feel like just this fringe social media voice. Man, I'm not crazy.

So you fast-forward a little bit. The campaign's up and running now.

Well, let's rewind. When I saw that no one was running against her, I reached out to Rick Caruso. I called him and said, "Are you going to run against Mayor Bass? She's guaranteed to win on June 2 with 51%. Totally. I cannot accept this as a human being at this point."

He said, "Go after Bass," implying he wasn't going after Bass. So, game on.

No one else was stepping up. He told you to do it.

Yes, but I was already doing it. If he was going to do it, obviously I wasn't going to go against—

Totally.

Yeah. I was like, "Okay, are you going to do it?" And he said, "Go after Bass."

So how's the campaign going after this debate this week? I want to talk about the campaign ads, because the ads have almost elevated you to what I'm hearing from a lot of people is almost like a historic campaign. The ads are cutting through in a way that people have never seen before.

Are those your ads, or are they being produced by a third party and put out there? I've heard from some folks that there's a guy, Charlie Curran, who might be involved, or other people who might be separate from your campaign putting these out there. They're breaking through the mold. Everyone's like, "This isn't a political campaign. This is almost emotional. It's a movement." People want to get behind you, and they don't even live in L.A.

The ad that blew up like crazy was when I showed Bass's house, Nithya Raman's multimillion-dollar mansion, and then my Airstream. That one broke every ad record in history.

If it has my name on it, it's legally mine. Anything like these incredible grassroots ads—if I don't put my name on them, they're legally not mine.

So there are people out there creating these ads, not in your campaign—

Correct. Because people feel the common sense.

They feel the emotion. Totally. It's connecting.

I keep trying to tell everyone that they try to put me in a box. I didn't run for a political party. I didn't run to be a politician. I ran because I experienced what city leadership failure at the ultimate level is. That's why I stepped up. That's what cuts through.

The media and everyone want to jump on and be like, "Oh, Spencer is our guy." No. I'm the citizen. I'm the angry taxpayer. You can be a Democrat and love me. You can be a Republican and love me. The only people who don't love me are communists and socialists, and I don't want them to love me.

There was a saying from John Adams in 1776: "Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue," implying that citizenship involves sacrificing your personal interest for the greater public good. Thomas Jefferson also spoke at length about taking a turn in providing civic duty. Everyone has a civic responsibility to support society at large.

But if you're going to go into government, if you're going to go into politics, you do a tour of duty. It's not a career. It was never meant to be a career. At the local, state, and national levels, there's an entire industry of people who have built a career in politics.

Then you come along. I would think Donald Trump has come along as well. He's another one of these enigmas that came out, and it resonated with people—that you're actually standing up and saying, "I'm the guy who's on the other side of the problem with all of this, and this is why this needs to change." It seems to be creating a movement.

Yeah. I feel like I connect more with Cincinnatus, this guy who was a farmer and—

I actually have Cincinnatus written down right now.

I was going to mention it, but I thought it might be too esoteric.

Oh, no. That’s who I connect to, because I’m like, this guy went and fought this battle. They wanted to give him all the power, and he was like, “No, I want to go back to my family.” Initially, when I ran, I would say, “I want to do my 4 years and then go back.” I realize I need to do the 8 years. Lock this in, get L.A. the number-one city in the world, and then I can go back to my family. So I’m prepared to do the 8. That’s my tour of duty.

When people say, “Oh, this is your house,” I go, “No, that’s my forward operating base,” because this is a battle against good and evil. They let 7 people die in the street every day with our billions of dollars in tax money, and they say they need no new beds. It’s a drug problem. Ninety percent of these people are drug addicts. We need to get these people mandatory treatment.

Then we can get them beds, and they don’t have to have a bed on the Westside or next to people’s houses or in San Pedro, right next to schools. They can have beds in facilities that we build out. My friend Matt Hess has an incredible facility in Bentonville that he built for veterans. I’ve been talking with him about how veterans come there and have all these services. It’s beautiful. I’m like, how do we build this incredible compound with beautiful possibilities? I guess in Italy, some billionaire did this for addicts. That’s my vision, where we have all of this.

Take care of people the right way.

Exactly. All the services that you’ll ever need in a beautiful setting, not in a cement-brick building that looks like a prison. When an addict is getting off drugs, they don’t want to be in a 250-square-foot little cell with no services. We put them out in nature. We’re spending $25 billion-plus. We have enough money where it’s actually cheaper to build the most incredible facility out in nature and bring these services that provide for these addicts.

You separate people. Everybody doesn’t go in 1 building like they do right now. If you’re a veteran, you go over here. Single mothers with their kids and families go over here. Somebody who’s just a hardened-criminal drug addict goes over here, on this side of the hill. We need to build this out, and we have the money. But guess who doesn’t make money if I do that? The NGOs that are stealing all of our tax money to increase profit, giving these people pipes, giving them needles, giving them the Narcan, and letting them overdose 14 times a night.

Let me just hit on the NGO point. What is the corruption there? Help people understand, because a lot of people think this is a MAGA talking point. I hear this thrown about all the time. People use “MAGA” as a term to dismiss when someone says something that is factually jarring to them. I’ve noticed this when someone comes along and points out something, and it’s like, “Oh, that’s a MAGA talking point,” as a way of just dismissing it instead of actually listening to what the person is saying.

Can you explain what goes on with these NGOs? How do NGOs create a system where the more we spend—and in the last 10 years, the city of Los Angeles, I think, has increased homeless spending by 10×, and the homeless population has doubled, and clearly it’s gotten a lot worse? Why is that relationship there, and what role do the NGOs actually play in this? I promise not to call you a MAGA guy for telling me.

Well, first off, when you said homelessness has doubled, the count for homelessness—when Mayor Bass, in the debate, was like, “It’s down 17%”—these are the most cooked numbers. Even the RAND Corporation says what they’re saying is a 30% increase. But they just drive around and go, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.” They’re not going into these encampments and bridges and bushes, unzipping these tents, and going into the sewer. So we don’t even know the count.

But let me tell you my first experience with NGOs after the Palisades, when $100 million was raised. Every single person I talked to who was messaging me said, “No one’s getting this money. No one’s seeing a dollar.” I went to Washington and asked senators to investigate this. We opened up the case. Now, all of a sudden, FireAid puts out a legal letter to defend themselves. In their own legal letter from the law firm, they say several of these NGOs gave directly to fire victims.

The list for the $100 million is 200-plus. Google “several.” It’s under 10. So even in their defense, they’re telling you—and again, I don’t believe 1 of those 10 gave directly. The people that they said did were like, “We gave gift cards.” Who’d you give gift cards to? You don’t think 1 fire victim who’s messaging me all day long said, “Hey, I got a $500 gift card”? That’s when I learned firsthand that these NGOs will take $100 million and, right in your face, just steal it.

Back to it being a MAGA thing: The person who really exposed the details to me is this incredible Democratic mom, Samantha from the Integrity Project. She made her own little charity nonprofit because she’s now tapped out of her own money in her neighborhood in Westwood. She and her husband are both lawyers. Homeless housing went up on their block. It was for senior citizens. They kicked the senior citizens out, and it’s Weingart. Their audit is late. Let’s just put it that way.

They’re making hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the best part: The building goes on the market for $11 million. 6 days later, the city, with our tax money, gives Weingart $29 million—$28 million—to buy this same building that was $11 million. Nobody has been housed in this to this day, years later. Weingart has developers paying $750 a square foot. When I’ve talked to developers and contractors, this should be $250 a square foot.

So they make this money with these developer kickbacks. They have all these shell companies. “Oh, this is our developer,” which has nothing to do with it. Here’s one of my favorite parts about that $30 million: Who do you think owns that building in Westwood? Not the taxpayers. Weingart.

This is the Shelby House. I just went to San Pedro, right across the street from a school, 600 feet away, across from this beautiful little community with old people. They’re kicking senior citizens out of one in San Pedro, and they’re going to put hardened criminals in. Same thing. This one is about $80 million.

What they do is take our tax money, take grants, take fake federal and state grants, and cook up a little plan: “Here’s this. We’re going to house 80 people.” Yet they don’t tell us that’s $700,000 a person. But everyone’s making money. People at these NGOs get million-dollar salaries. The people below them get $500,000. Nobody’s actually helping anyone, because, ready for this, there’s no requirement to house people.

And then, in the state of California, this is the craziest part with the Homekey rules: The state won’t give the city a lot of the money if you require the people to be off drugs. If you say, “You can’t do drugs in this housing,” then you can’t get access to this money.

That’s unbelievable. Just to be clear, what an NGO is legally is a 501(c)(3) organization. Anyone can set one up. Anyone can file the IRS form and create this entity. Once you’ve created the entity, you’ve legally created it. You’ve got an IRS form. It costs a couple hundred bucks to do it.

Theoretically, someone who might want to be, I don’t know, a crony or a thief—a criminal, as you might call them, or whatever you want to call them—can now use this entity that they’ve created to basically get access to all this money from governments that aren’t necessarily keeping a good eye on the money.

How do the politicians who are allowing it to happen, or the bureaucrats in the government who are allowing that to happen, benefit? Why would they do this? Why would they let this money flow out to these NGOs in a way that’s clearly not in the taxpayers’ best interest?

Well, you can go the conspiracy route, or you can just look at all these things we’re doing. There are 2 ways to look at it. They get to say, “Oh, we have this housing and these services.” These people just bring them this easy out, like they’re trying to fix something while still looking good: “Oh, that’s this NGO. Oh, they’re criminals. They got caught.”

Then you go the conspiracy route, and you could say, “Well, are these people helping campaigns? Do they have PACs?” So, is money going there? Are they helping? That’s more conspiracy; that’s fringe. But in the simplest sense, it’s an easy way out: “Oh, we’re solving this. We’re working on this.” There are 2 ways you can look at it.

I think they’re all criminals. Thankfully, I’ve talked to Justice Department sources, and city officials are going to go down.

They are complicit. Here’s the hard part about catching these people: They’re literally taking money in poker chips, goods, and services. Criminals are smart now. They’re not just saying, “Zelle me the money,” right?

But from my sources, we are going to see actual city officials go down. Not quickly enough, because they’ve got to frame these people up. But again, how does Spencer stop this when he’s mayor? I’ve met with the criminal investigation team at the IRS 6 times. The first week in office, you bring all of them in. We audit every NGO and every document that hasn’t been shredded.

Some insiders at City Hall have told me they’re shredding these documents. I have more faith in my criminal investigation team. They’ll be able to figure it out without the documents, even if they’re shredded. But that’s what’s happening: They’re shredding the documents.

So, let me ask about Karen Bass. A lot of people, you would assume, would feel like she failed the city with the fire. Why is she still able to stay in office? Why is she in the lead in the polls for running for mayor? Why are people still voting for her?

She’s the lowest in the history of the polls for an incumbent. So she has 20%.

So 80% of LA do not believe that. The polls are confusing. She's got the worst record in the history of the city, so 80% of people do not think she's doing a good job. Twenty percent is crazy bad.

That's why Councilwoman Raman jumped into the race 1 hour before the closing, because she saw I was going to beat Mayor Bass and her DSA team. For people who don't know, the Democratic Socialists of America—that she co-governs with as a city council member—were like, "Get in. You can be the fake Democrat, and Spencer will take out Bass, and then you'll get in."

She endorsed Mayor Bass 2 weeks before she jumped into the race. They worked together on all these things. Mayor Bass door-knocked to get Councilwoman Raman, who was about to lose her council seat. She door-knocked with her to get her in and backed her.

Nobody backs Mayor Bass, and any of the media that's trapped in these lies are on her side. It's not Mayor Bass's fault. It was high winds. It's an unprecedented disaster. It's not true. It's precedent. We had the Bel Air fire when Mayor Bass was alive. We had the Mandeville Canyon fire when Mayor Bass was alive. It's not unprecedented.

So the polls mean nothing. Everyone who's voting for me is not taking a spam call. First off, they're not talking to a stranger on the street because they already feel so unsafe. They're not letting a random person approach them. Period.

You know, it's interesting. Both candidates, Raman and Bass, are—I don't know if Bass is a self-declared socialist, but obviously she spent time with Castro's organization in Cuba.

She's a Venceremos Brigade member. She spent 20 times going to Cuba. So when they say Spencer doesn't have any experience—look, he was a reality star in The Hills. No, I wasn't training with terrorists that would later bomb the Capitol. That's who Mayor Bass is, who only denounced anything communist when they were trying to make her the vice president.

But my point is, we have a self-declared socialist mayor in Seattle and now in New York. What is going on in cities where people are standing up and raising their hand or filing a ballot saying, "I want a socialist to be my mayor"? Now we're seeing this emerge on a national basis.

I've talked about this a lot. I've got my own perspective on it, but what do you think is going on with people on the street as you meet with them and get to talk to them? Why do they want that persona? Why do they want that socialist policy?

I don't even think they're aware of it. I think we have such tribal politics that people who are against me just think, "Oh, he's not with us. It's gang gang." They don't even realize who they're with and what these people represent. They just think, "Oh, it's not that group."

That's the problem when you nationalize politics. We should be a city. We should all be together, making sure the streets are safe, the lights are on, there are no potholes, and the sidewalks are there. It's that basic.

But we've gotten to this nationalized politics where they don't even care who. They just think, "Oh, they're not that person. They're not connected to that party."

They also tell these people, "We're going to make things more affordable. We're going to give you free money." This idea that that works—I had this guy Rafa, who manages a bunch of the Dodgers. He's Venezuelan, and he came up to me at an event recently. He's like, "I felt like I was in a scene from Braveheart. It was so intense. It was like William Wallace in my face." Big Venezuelan dude.

He's like, "I fled Venezuela because of socialism, and I fought everything for my family. I will not let my kids have this socialism in LA. I know what—" And I was like, "I know, bro. We're good. Join the team. You're with me. Let's go door-knock."

But people who know what this idea of giving you money does know that it does not work. It's a fake lie. What people forget is they can't lower the cost of goods. The only thing you can do to make things more affordable as mayor, which I will be able to do, is put more money in people's pockets.

We need to put more revenue in the city. They're always asking me, "How are you going to balance this budget, Spencer? There's going to be no money to do this." We should be the number 1 city in the world. We should have money shooting out of ATMs. We're Los Angeles. There will be plenty of money when we let the systems work, when we let business work.

How can you let business work if you have drug addicts going number 2 and number 1 in front of every café? We lost over 100 restaurants in LA—not because they didn't have good food, but because you have drug addicts scaring people from going out. That's why they're ordering Uber Eats. They're using DoorDash.

I talked to a mom the other day who works downtown as a lawyer. I know her because of her friend, and her kids are my friends' kids. She said, "Spencer, we're not allowed to leave the office building. Our food has to be delivered in."

That's why restaurants are closing around downtown LA, because the workers who are still trying to work can't go outside of their buildings because it's unsafe. The number 1 thing in a functioning city that we don't have is safety.

If you don't have a safe city, Mayor Bass will tell you, and Councilwoman Raman will tell you, "Crime's down." They'll say the murder rate's down. Well, that's a national trend. Please don't try to take credit for that.

Crime's down because people have given up calling 911. I talked to a guy today at lunch. He said he watched a lady the other day on Wilshire Boulevard, right in front of the federal building, the FBI building—a nice Latina woman—get punched in the chest by a crazy drug addict.

He pulled over his car, tried to be a Batman hero, jumped out, and said, "Stop that." The lady was so used to it, she was like, "Thank you," and got on the bus and left.

He watches this guy get a PVC pipe and start banging on cars. He calls 911, and they just act like it's no big deal. It's just normal LA. Finally, the guy starts ripping a bike off a bus. He calls 911 and says, "He's ripping the bike."

No big deal. Now the guy's coming at him. He says, "He's coming after me," and they're like, "Okay, somebody's coming. The police are coming." He's like, "Arrest this guy." They're like, "Well, nobody's here, and there are no witnesses." He's like, "Arrest this guy." He's arguing with the cops.

Every cop I talk to wants to enforce the law, but they can't because of the powers behind them. They're not taking any of these citations seriously because it's culturally insensitive to cite and ticket someone without an address.

That's why the dogs are being abused, tortured, mutilated, and raped on the side of the streets. People are filming this. They know what's happening. But even Staycee Dains, or whatever her name was—she was head of Animal Control, or whatever, Animal Services—she said, "Oh, we can't."

The mayor's office said, "Culturally insensitive. Don't. We can't go after people without addresses."

Dude, that's unbelievable. It makes me so angry.

That's the problem. They keep calling me the angry white guy. They don't get it: every race, every gender, however you identify—if you live in LA and you're paying your taxes, you are angry.

But most people don't see it, which is the other thing. Most people aren't in Skid Row all the time. We host our All-In Summit in downtown LA. It's our last year—we're doing it in September. It's a really big event, but we're not coming back.

Most people I know don't get down there. We have people from all over the world—60 countries—come to our event. They're like, "What the hell is this place? We can't be down here." When you see it, you're like, "What?"

Well, here's the problem. We keep talking about Skid Row in LA, but this is all over the Valley. This is in Westwood. This is in Hollywood. This is everywhere.

Before my house burned down, in front of Palisades Elementary School, across the street from my son's Methodist preschool—where I went to preschool—there was a lady cleaning her private parts in front of kids almost every morning at 7:45 a.m.

We'd call the LAPD. They'd come and say, "Ma'am, no more." She'd walk down the street and go number 2 in front of Joe's Barber Shop. So it was coming to the Palisades. It's coming everywhere.

When I went to USC, it was Skid Row. So we have this issue in LA and in San Francisco, where I live, and Mayor Lurie came in. I don't know if you followed what he's done. He's an unbelievable guy, an old friend of mine, and he's done an incredible job.

He arrests people. He puts them in jail. The crime has stopped. Car break-ins are down 87% in the city—87%. You no longer have hordes of people walking into stores, stealing everything, and walking out. As soon as you just enforce the law that's already in place, boom, you're 90% of the way there.

It doesn't take a miracle. It just takes a will and someone who can actually manage and organize to get the stuff done. Give them the votes. Get them there.

I met with Victor Coleman, who owns most of these studios and a lot of real estate in LA, and he talked to me about Mayor Lurie in San Francisco. He said, "Spencer, when they tell you you have no experience, you just tell them Mayor Lurie didn't have any experience running a city."

What he did was come in and enforce the law. He said, "My portfolio in San Francisco is booming again. My portfolio in Los Angeles isn't doing as well, let's say." And he said, "You just need to enforce the laws that exist."

A lot of people always say this to me. They go, "What are you going to do with all these people?" A famous police chief told me, "Once you start putting handcuffs on people, watch how many people leave."

One hundred percent.

This idea that everyone—if you let everyone do drugs and do whatever they want, and let the criminals make the outside a slum with no guards—if you let them do that, they're going to do that.

So when I’m mayor, my plan is: in the first 3 weeks, put signs up across the city—no more nakedness, no more drug use, no more robbing. The clock’s ticking, and we’re going to go around warning everybody: “Hey, you’ve got 3 more weeks of this.” Just keep telling everyone, so the people who are aware are like, “Oh, wow, there’s a new mayor in town.” They may start leaving.

Then, when the 3 weeks are up—or maybe we’ll even do 2 weeks; maybe people will want it faster—once we start enforcing the laws, boom, the streets will be back. You know who else I’m going to bring in? The CDC, because there are medieval diseases in these encampments. They’re not swabbing these encampments, and they’re not swabbing the streets.

People are just living in feces, using drugs, burning dogs, and leaving bodies around. We need these streets cleaned.

No more burning dogs in the street.

No more dog abuse. Put it on every sign, on every billboard. We’re going to go around and warn everybody.

What about building the team to execute? You’re looking to sit in this executive role. Have you ever had a role where you’ve overseen tens of thousands of employees before? I’m assuming not. I’ve read your bio, but how do you execute? Who do you bring in under you who actually knows how to manage the system, manage the people, and deliver the message?

You can form strategy and set objectives and so on, but walk us through how you’re actually going to deliver as mayor operationally when you step in on day 1.

The great news about running for mayor of LA is that everyone wants to save LA. Everyone wants LA to be number 1. The meetings I’m taking every week now—the lunches, brunches, and dinners with beyond-successful people who are willing to work for $1 a year and pause their companies to come in—are with people telling me that, with algorithms alone, we can 100x the bureaucracy of the city in building and development.

There are so many cranes in the city because we’re going to be rebuilding. Just last week, I probably met with 10 billionaires who are ready to come in and build LA up to be the number 1 city in the world. So when they say, “Oh, you have no experience,” what I do have is humility. I’m humble. I know I have never run the 2nd-largest city.

I know smart people who have done it. We need to bring in CEOs who have run the biggest corporations in the world to come in and work with us, because they’ll tell you, “No, you need to know the city at a certain level.” You bring those people in. The people who execute multibillion-dollar budgets exist.

They say, “Oh my gosh, Spencer, this is a $15 billion budget.” There are people I’m meeting with who have $50 billion budgets. These people exist, and I will surround myself with them.

I already have a deputy mayor, but I can’t say who because of fear of retaliation in the city of LA. That person will help me enforce the law, and that’s the priority. When we enforce the law, all these creative ideas on execution work. But if you don’t enforce the law, Mayor Bass could bring in all the same people I’m meeting with, but she won’t enforce the law.

Councilwoman Raman can bring in all the same people I’m meeting with. It won’t work if you don’t enforce the law. No one is putting money into the city of LA until they know there’s a mayor who’s going to make sure the streets are safe for all the moms, the kids, the dads—everyone who just wants to be a normal human being who pays their taxes, goes to the park, and goes to dinner.

Until you do that part, all this talk about who’s going to be on the team is irrelevant.

For sure, because I hear it from a lot of executives I’m friends with. They’re like, “Man, this message resonates. People want to get involved. They want to step up.” Like I said, people who aren’t from LA want to step up.

Outside of keeping the streets safe and building reasonable fire-suppression infrastructure—getting back to basics—what about education? LAUSD spends $23,000 per student, and the average teacher salary is $101,000. It’s number 1 in the country. But LAUSD, as a school district, ranks 170th in the state of California, and only 46% of students are meeting or exceeding standards in English and 37% in math.

What is there to do about education in the city to give the next generation the opportunity to progress, realize their potential, and not fall into the traps of socialism and communism because they’re despondent and don’t have opportunity in front of them? How do we get that generation to succeed?

From my own experience with my son, who was in LAUSD—and it was even a charter with Pali—this is supposed to be the best version at all times. Every parent is just trying to fundraise for books, for learning, for teachers, and for an extra teacher, and it’s like, “What is going on?” If I’m going to spend this much money, I’m going to put my kid in a private school.

First off, we’ve got to get back to auditing. The biggest issue I’ve learned with the city of LA is that, whether it’s the school system or anything else, everyone needs to be audited. Where is all this money going? First off, look at the fire department and the police department, and the waste of this taxpayer money.

Let’s figure out first where the money is going, because if it costs this much for each student, yet as a dad I’m always trying to donate and have fundraisers, we’ve got to track the money. And that’s another thing: when we talk about what Mayor Pratt stands for, it’s accountability and transparency.

Every dollar of tax money in the city of LA needs to be on very easy, CliffsNotes-level dashboards so we can track it and get results on where all of our tax money is going. But back to how we make kids know that socialism and communism don’t work: we give their parents hope again, and we make the parents demand it.

I have parents right now who are pulling their kids out of a public school that my kids are in because of that messaging. There’s no more Pledge of Allegiance. There’s no more “America’s good.” We need to get back to having pride in being Americans.

We’ve gotten so far off from just saying, “America’s awesome,” because everyone’s fighting politically. It’s like, “Oh, the American flag? I can’t put that up.” We need to get back to the basics of where our grandparents were when they were fighting in World War II and had pride in being Americans.

But to me, it’s the money. Where’s the money going? If you want things to be better, we’ve got to stop wasting money. The fire stations I meet with are charging $250,000 for doors and $50,000 for refrigerators. So I think tracking money is the source of all of this.

I have a buddy whose house burned down, unfortunately, as well. So I said, “I’m going to meet with Spencer Pratt. Any questions?” He said, “What about this stupid-ass $3 billion expansion of the convention center?”

My favorite part about the convention center is that, less than a month ago, there was just a dead body in the bushes in front of it. The idea that we’re going to put billions of dollars into something that has dead bodies in the bushes in front of it—why aren’t we putting those billions of dollars into getting dead bodies off the streets every day?

I don’t want to say that initially I was like, “Stop that,” but now I’m in this mindset that LA’s got to be the number 1 city in the world. So maybe we don’t need to use LA money, but let’s do a private partnership. Who’s going to come in with money to do something we can’t afford right now?

I don’t want to be the one who’s now like, “We don’t want to stop building.” I actually like the idea of having a convention center, because the LA that I’m about to build—when I destroy 40 blocks of drugged-out zombies who are taking over all these empty buildings—will bring in so much business and commerce that we’re probably going to need that convention center.

Currently, it makes no sense with the current administration. Mayor Bass being elected is the dumbest thing you ever heard. If Councilwoman Raman is elected, that’s the dumbest thing. Mayor Pratt goes in, and we’re putting billions of dollars back into LA. Restaurants are back. We’re probably going to need that convention center.

Initially, when I was first fighting this fight, my message was, “Let’s get back to the LA I grew up in.” Then I started taking meetings with billionaires who were ready to give me $500 million. I met with an anonymous billionaire who agreed to be the funder. He said, “My family gave $300 million to New York for a project. We’ll give you $500 million to bring fun back to Los Angeles.”

I said, “Can I tell people about you?” He said, “No, no, I’ll be anonymous.” This person is for real. So when I hear there’s $2 billion for the convention center, if I make it a little bit more fun and I have $500 million, then we can make it the fun convention center, and I just cut that cost in half.

Have you met with union leaders?

No, they all back Mayor Bass. They’re all going to love me because everyone’s going to have more revenue, and everyone’s going to have jobs. LA’s going to boom.

When they say, “You’re not going to win because you don’t have the unions,” I say, “I don’t need the unions to win. I have the moms. I have the animal lovers.” That’s more than any union. You can’t get that endorsement: moms across the city of LA.

Not just moms in the Valley. Not just moms in San Pedro. Not just moms in South Central. Not just moms in East LA. Not just moms in Boyle Heights. Not just moms in Eagle Rock. Everywhere, moms don’t feel safe.

The city is unsafe. No matter what the crime statistics say, the feeling of being unsafe is resonating. My message—that I will be the guy fighting to get safety back—is going to get me elected.

And I keep telling people, “I’m going to win on June 2nd with 51% of the vote.” November is their fight for November. I win June 2nd.

But the unions—obviously, people think it’s this big issue. When you win, when your city is amazing—

How are you going to work with them? So you win on June 2nd. All the union leaders call up your deputy mayor and say, “I want a meeting with Mayor Pratt.” They come into your office one at a time. They sit down across a table from you. What’s the message?

The message is, “We’re going to work with you to make sure you get these benefits that you want, but they need to make sense right now for our trajectory.” We’re going to get to where what you need to feel comfortable in your city role is great, but there may be a minute here where we’ve got to tighten things up.

I’m going to find all these homeless NGO billions that are being laundered, but we need to get real accounting. Right now, we don’t have outside budget advocates. We don’t look at whether we’re increasing a union’s salary by 10% even though everybody else in the private industry isn’t getting an increase. We need to have a balance. We need to make sense for all Angelenos.

You can’t have everything just for this small percentage because they’re cooking votes. But don’t get me wrong: unions, I’m going to make so much money in this city that we’re going to have plenty of money for you to be paid what you’re supposed to be paid. Law enforcement is going to get paid what they’re supposed to get paid.

We cannot lose law enforcement because they’re getting paid more in Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, or Orange County. So we can’t risk losing them. We’re already losing too many law enforcement officers. We’re losing too many firefighters. We cannot make it so they don’t want to work.

A lot of the issues where people see these salaries that are so crazy are overtime. But if you don’t get hiring up to speed, then you have to pay these crazy salaries in overtime. And even those people who do get paid these crazy amounts you read about on Google—it’s a niche amount of people, and they’ve sacrificed their families. They’re working 32-hour shifts. These people are crazy. They’ve given everything they have to be that firefighter or whatever. So, again—

The unions aren’t your enemy. You’re going to find a path to working with them. Even though they’re not here for you right now, they work for Mayor Bass. You’re there for them.

They’re still hardworking people. I meet with them. I’ve gone to a lot of fire stations. LAFD’s union for sure endorses me; they’re just scared to do it publicly for fear of retaliation. LAPD—for sure, the members all endorse me. I promise you. The interaction, who’s messaging me, who’s calling me, who’s texting me—the union powers—they, Mayor Bass, currently write their deals and their checks. That’s real. I don’t judge them for that. It’s the system they’re in.

But the membership, they want to feel safe. Most of the firefighters can’t even live in California anymore. Sixty percent of these guys fly in. And I say, “Well, why don’t you guys live here?” They say, “It’s not safe for our families.” I want them to move back. I want that tax money.

One of the other stories about LA over the last decade or two—you know, I grew up here. I have a lot of friends who grew up in Hollywood, in the industry, and it’s been gutted. There’s no business in LA anymore, and that’s a huge employer for so many Angelenos working in Hollywood and all of the ancillary supporting industries.

Do we rebuild Hollywood in LA? Is Hollywood done because of AI and YouTube and independent production, and studios don’t matter anymore? No one does broadcast. What’s the future of Hollywood? Is there a future for Hollywood in LA, and what do you do about it?

When I was 20 years old, I sold the first reality show to Fox as the youngest executive producer ever. I sold it to Peter Chernin when he was the co-chair of News Corp. It was with David Foster, who’s actually hosting my fundraiser on Monday. Full circle. Shout-out David Foster, legend.

But I called Peter Chernin a few weeks ago. I said, “Mr. Chernin, PDC, how do I save LA?” He’s one of the smartest human beings on Earth. He said, “Spencer, as mayor, you’re not going to be able to change the bigger picture of Hollywood. That’s more governor—you know, uncap. What you can do to really bring back jobs, bring back Hollywood, is bring back independent filmmakers, independent production, and independent artists. You prioritize the indies, you could have Hollywood booming in a tier that people didn’t see coming.”

All my friends who haven’t given up, who are still fighting—I grew up in LA. I went to Crossroads. All my friends are creators. They’re artists. They’re still fighting. They’re not giving up. When I talk to them, they’ve all doubled down on the indie route. They say, “This is what we need to hear. We want to make this work.”

And you work with them. Mayor Bass brags, like, “Oh, now you can film at the Griffith Observatory. Instead of $70,000, it’s $30,000.” No. When I’m mayor, I’m going to help you produce these freaking movies. We’re going to have whole blocks, and we’re going to use the restaurants to keep them alive. We’re going to use the crews. We’re going to eat out of there. We’re going to use all the city resources to almost be in production with the indies, but making money together—not like a communist or socialist, but bringing the city in to enable them, give them the support, get rid of these fees and the clearance, and make it easy.

Right now, like I said in the debate, I talked to producers. If you want to film on the streets of LA, it’s so unsafe, you’ve got to pay gang members off to get through. We’re going to have it so safe that an indie crew can pop out with all their cameras and gear and not get stolen.

So again, someone like Peter Chernin—I said, “Peter, when I’m mayor, can I keep calling you?” His exact quote was, “I’m always here to make you smarter, Spencer.”

So these are the type of people, when they say, “Oh, you have no experience,” these are the people that are going to make LA number one.

But that is the future. I mean, everyone is all about independent production. If you work for a big studio or work for Netflix, you’re getting paid cost plus 10%. You’re better off producing on your own. There’s definitely a flourishing happening; it’s just happening everywhere else. It’s not happening in LA.

And obviously, I’ve reached out to David Ellison’s team. I’ve reached out to Ted Sarandos. I’ve reached out to everyone because I don’t just want to be the indie guy. I want to figure out how I go fight whoever the new governor is. Get uncap. Get post-production uncapped. Nobody should be going to the UK. Nobody should be going to Canada. With respect to these countries—I love you guys—but we’re not sending our filmmakers there anymore.

So whatever I can do as a mayor—you know, the other night in the debate, they’re like, “We’re going to do it.” You guys have had 10 years combined. You haven’t done anything. I love fighting these people. I’ve been fighting Sacramento since my house burned down. You get me bodyguards to fight these people, trust me, we are going to a whole new level of fight.

So again, I don’t want to not have studios come back. We have all these empty lots. I would love big productions to come back, but initially, as mayor, I can fight for indies. But don’t get me wrong: I want Hollywood to be Top Gun 3 right here, taking off from LAX.

Tell me how you address transportation in LA. There’s always a new scheme or a new system being developed. What’s your view on what’s wrong about transportation in LA? How much are we wasting on things that don’t really matter that we could recoup and reinvest elsewhere? What are those kinds of priorities for you?

I just went to the new opening of the D Line today, just to troll, to get some YIMBYs to yell at me. The funniest part about transportation to me is, it’s a beautiful idea when there’s no human urine, human poop, or a drug addict’s butt hanging out.

People forget: every single person in LA sends me their photos. I’m now 311. I see what LA looks like. These people go, “How do you know all this information?” My phone—I can’t even open it anymore because it’s just naked drug addicts. It’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen.

Who cares how many lines the Metro connects to, or where it could connect to the moon right now, if drug addicts are smoking fentanyl next to your kid? You’re not going to the moon on it. So, first off, it’s back to safety. We need these Metro lines, the subway, whatever you want to ride. Bicycles aren’t even safe. The YIMBYs want more bicycles. You couldn’t even pay me to get on a bicycle. A drug-addict zombie will hit me with a crowbar when I’m riding by.

We need to get safety back. And of course, I love these transportation ideas. I hate sitting in traffic, but I’ve grown up in LA. I’m aware that traffic is a part of it. So yes, we need this, but we also need the money for it. We need to build LA up.

Right now, I think 15% of the budget goes to the Metro, if 5% of people use it. Again, I feel like if I made it safe, I could get 15% to use it, and we could even that out. We’ve got to make sure that nobody’s hopping any turnstile. We need to make sure you’re paying to be on it so that there are safe people on it.

Again, when I clear downtown LA for you, you can drive for 40 blocks. When I clear all these abandoned buildings that the drug addicts are burning down and using all our firefighters’ resources and risking their lives, when we clear that all out and we use this 3D printing—

I talked to an architect today, one of the most famous architects in the world. He has a crew of about 12 architects. They already did all these designs for these buildings that nobody listened to. They met with Newsom. They met with Bass. Of course, I’m like, “Let’s do it. Send me the decks.”

We're going to have LA so beautiful. No more of these high-density SB 79 prison-like structures. We need to bring Art Deco back. All the architects who moved out of here because it was so hard to build—it takes 8 years—are going to be moving back because we're going to speed up building. It's not going to take 8 years.

We need LA to have the most beautiful architecture in the world. I don't want to go to Venice. I don't want to go look at Venice; I want to go to Venice in downtown LA. I'm going to have a canal, and then the YIMBY people can have all their bike lanes going through the sky, through tunnels, and things. We need to get creative with LA.

Can you address the regulatory and permitting problem with construction and building in the city? As mayor, do you have enough authority to do this? Can you talk a little bit about the actions you would take to unleash this kind of wave of building that you want to see happen, that everyone talks about wanting to see happen in LA, but there just seem to be so many layers of permitting, so many processes, so much approval?

It's statutory. It's written into the law of the city. Do you have the authority as mayor to actually go in and address that and unleash this without getting these folks who are the Assembly people and whatnot to work with you?

So, I had lunch today with someone who volunteered to be the new head of LA Building and Safety. I said, “Well, you're the first person to volunteer who does this at the highest level in private business in Los Angeles and knows everything.” We'll add him to the website. The goal here is to put the whole team together and list their bios.

He said, “Spencer, we could do this so easily. We can fix all these things. I know all the errors, because private businesses are the ones fighting this city all the time. They know where all the stops are.” I met with this affordable-housing developer, Carlos, on Monday. He said when Mayor Bass announced her initiative, she was going to rush it 6 months. He's at 2 and 1/2 years in the permit process.

He said, “Spencer, we can fix this so easily and build beautiful affordable housing.” He said they're getting these tax incentives to build cells for people. Cells. He said they get more incentives to put more people in the building. We need to change that. He's saying he can do a nice 2-bedroom for $250 a square foot versus $750 a square foot. These other developers are using the tax incentives, charging the city, and then putting more bodies in there.

So, yes, we can do all this stuff when we take these people out. Perfect example: my Airstream. It took weeks—weeks—for LADWP to put 1 wire to my Airstream from a pole across the street. That's the cut-the-red-tape town. That's the fastest—

Operationally, you can address that. But all of the permits that are required, design review, like AI—I know people don't like AI, but even Caruso, initially, he had this whole thing. He put the money up, was steadfast, and offered this AI program to Mayor Bass. Certain zoning situations, if it meets all this, boom, you're right.

Right now, it's like something out of a bad movie. Some guy comes in, he misses 3, and he has to do 1 checkbox. He's like, “Oh, I'll come back and do that.” It's out of a bad movie. If you go there, nobody's even in these offices. You have to set an appointment; you can't just go into these places. They all work remotely.

Yeah, they work 3 days a week, don't they?

We're in crazy land. So, again, all these meetings I keep having with very successful heads of companies tell me, “Spencer, when people say you don't have experience, tell them these are people who have multiple companies.” They say, “I'm never the most experienced person in any of the rooms of my companies, but everyone in my company is the most experienced person in what they need to do in that role.”

I'm well aware I don't know any of this stuff, but I know I want LA to be the number 1 safest and most beautiful. How do we get there? Who are you? What's your résumé? What's your background? Oh, wow. Okay, come on.

Keep in mind Janisse Quiñones, who was the CEO of LADWP, drained 2 reservoirs leading into a known year of the driest fire-weather season. She took out the water with no plan, no backups, no tankers. She was getting paid $750,000 a year plus her benefits.

There are people across the United States running water and power in functioning cities that we can go recruit and say, “Hey, come to LA. It's going to be safe and clean, and we're going to get you a nice place. You take over.” People want to live in LA. I'm not trying to give people jobs with respect to Antarctica. Hello. We have talent that will come here.

You know, they don't have the beach. You're going to be able to swim without poop in the water. It's going to be incredible.

Well, I grew up in the Valley, and you go down Ventura Boulevard; it's all strip malls. These are all small businesses owned by families. They have typically been there for 1, 2, or 3 generations—Armenian, Persian, and Hispanic populations, folks who grew up in the Valley.

Small business, I think, is the lifeblood of this city. It's such an important part of the city. We've never had major corporations that everyone works for. There's a couple of them, but generally, it's a small-business town.

How much have you looked at the regulatory permitting, all the nonsense that goes into opening a nail salon, starting a coffee shop, getting the permits required to open a new store, and what can be done there to accelerate, to fast-track, to enable all these folks—many of them first- or second-generation immigrants—who want to come here and build, who want to start businesses, who want to have their own company?

How do we get them? Because the complaint is it's just so freaking hard today. It's so expensive. It takes so long. Have you gone through this and figured out what are the things you can just delete as mayor and what are the things you can just fast-track as mayor to make it so much easier for people to start and run small businesses in the city?

So, my friend in Venice—his neighbor just bought the local bodega that's been there forever. He was telling me they're about to give up. It's been a year. He said they're not even selling alcohol. There's no food. It was just going to be this basic bodega.

The list of things that it's taken in a year is so crazy. They'll make them put in 1 thing, and then they come in and say, “Oh, no, actually”—it's like a maze. We need to just streamline all these things. What I keep learning, whether it's transportation or sanitation, is there's no accountability. People get paid no matter if they're a failure. It's not results-based.

How many turns?

Yes. Nobody cares if you don't get this many permits. For instance, somebody called me yesterday. They go, “Why is FilmLA a nonprofit?” I was like, “What do you mean?” He's like, “This should be for-profit to incentivize bringing production.” So they're getting paid; they don't care. It's this idea that I'm getting paid no matter what. Nobody cares. There's no checks and balances.

The mayor is fine as long as she's driving to the airport to go to Ghana to have a cocktail party. There's nobody that cares, right? Because I met with this guy Juan from Clean LA, who cleans the streets of all the trash. He's from Ecuador. He came over here and said, “What is this, Spencer? I'm from a third-world country. It's so much more beautiful. I can't live here with my family.”

So he started cleaning trash on his own. I said, “Well, Juan, what's going on?” He's like, “Spencer, nobody cares. They don't care.” He says, “I watch these trash-truck things. They pick up the trash, and it just throws it out like a meme, and it just goes back on the street.” He says, “They're sleeping in the cars. There's no accountability. There's no responsibility.”

I said, “Juan, when I'm mayor, can I hire you?” He said, “Spencer, I will help run sanitation.” He goes, “It's supposed to be $1 billion. I could do it for easily $500 million.” So, I'm thinking, I just saved $500 million for taxpayers because Juan cares. And he says, “I'll bring in people that care.”

As mayor, you can probably auto-stamp a lot of stuff, too, that today they're just delegating down to people who take a long time getting things done, that you probably don't need to spend a lot of time looking at. Just auto-stamp the bodega license and let them run. You really need to have the guy go in and figure out where everything is?

This goes back to: if it meets these criteria, we need to—

Like, here's the auto green light.

LA needs to be annoying with how many cranes we see for the next 8 years. It needs to look like we're in China, where they're building these bridges in 2 weeks. We need all these cranes. There's no cranes. You can't even see a crane. My kids probably don't even know what a crane looks like.

If 1 of the other 2 candidates wins, what happens to LA?

Well, I will have to move to Bentonville or I'm done. People don't get that I want my sons to grow up in LA. You cannot grow up in LA.

You're done. You listen to them in the debate. They're talking about more beds. They don't even accept that LA is in a nightmare. Yes, I love LA. It has the potential to be the greatest place on planet Earth, but we need to acknowledge that we're in a scary part right now in LA.

The lights don't work on the streets. They don't fix roads within a year. They don't fix every pothole; every pothole is breaking everyone's tires. You can't get 311 to fix anything. We don't have enough cops to call 911. There aren't enough firefighters. Towns burn down.

Bel-Air is going to burn. Mandeville Canyon, Sunland-Tujunga, Hollywood Hills—all of these are going to burn. It's guaranteed. And like I said in the debate, I'm going to put these dip sites a mile from everyone's house. They're all going to connect. They're going to connect to private owners' swimming pools.

I'm going to work with the insurance companies so we can bring insurance back to California—first, LA—because we're going to show them the model. If they have these dip sites for these helicopters, we bring in more of these Chinooks that LA County uses to work with the Firehawks that we have with LA City and Cal Fire. We can bring insurance back, which is the biggest problem right now for people building.

We're going to get rid of Measure ULA. I know I can't do it myself, but I'm going to fight to make sure these communist-type things don't ever happen to development, so people can sell their properties and build housing. I'm going to stop letting these tenants be squatters and criminals, making it so landlords have to pay them $50,000 cash to leave, and then they go to a new landlord.

I'm going to stop the Section 8 scam so that the real people who deserve Section 8 get it—veterans, families that need it—not just drug-dealing criminals who are abusing the system with fraud. But yes, if I lose, we're done. I'm trying to tell people this is like out of a movie. This is Independence Day. The aliens have attacked. They got in. The invasion is here.

And then, as mayor, I have to fight all these DSA city council members to make sure they're never reelected. So not only do I have to do all that, but I have to fight to make sure that in my next 4 years there's never a DSA fake Democrat. They're not Democrats. Democrats love Spencer Pratt. All my friends are Democrats. All my supporters are Democrats. These people I'm up against use the word “Democrat” in front of the word “socialist.”

Go look at the Democratic Socialists of America website, people. Go look at it. That's not a Democrat. Bill Clinton was a Democrat.

It's not American.

Thank you. It's even worse. These aren't even Americans. And when you say that, people are like, “Oh my God, this country was founded because people fled tyranny in Europe and then everywhere else in the world.” This was the bastion where you could find hope and an opportunity to be free: to choose how you want to behave, what you want to do, how you want to pray, and to have freedom where the government doesn't tell you what to do and how to do it.

That tyranny existed all over the world, and that's why this country was started. Socialism is the most tyrannical form, the most tyrannical system, that humans have ever come up with. So you got the word “socialist” in there. You've already made the mistake because you've revealed yourself. That's my opinion. Sorry, I had to rant on my own show. I just took advantage of the opportunity.

I have very smart friends who are from LA, and I say they're DSA. They have foot soldiers, and they go, “What's a DSA?” So it's a sneak attack. It's like Ninja Turtles. They're in the sewers. They're like Shredder and Company.

So, fast-forward 8 years. You've been mayor for 8 years. It's a 4-year term, right? Two terms? You're sitting down with your sons, and they're saying, “Dad, what did you do to save LA?” What do you tell them? Tell me about that journey in retrospect.

I would say, “Thank God people voted for laws, son, and I enforced the laws that are there.” I did what everyone did before the current leadership. So I keep telling people, the experience—I don't need to invent anything. I don't need to come up with this utopia of how a city works.

You make a city safe, and people will put money into it. They'll want to live here. Commerce comes back. Families will be able to go to parks and go to the beach and not live in fear. So, to my sons, again, I'm showing them you can fight evil.

These people are evil. They let every innocent person who pays their taxes feel unsafe on the streets that they pay taxes for. A lot of people don't have money to do things because they pay all their taxes, like me, and then the city and the government fail them.

Whether your house burns down or you have a screaming drug addict in front of you—a naked drug addict in front of your kids, causing trauma—there are literally drug addicts having sex on meth in front of kids. Parents are telling me they have to have their kids glued to an iPad in the back seat of their cars, driving them to school. Some parents don't have cars. In other communities, they have to walk under these underpasses and walk past this.

So I'll be able to tell my sons, “Thank God America has laws,” and your dad said, “Hey, breaking news: let's enforce them.” And we did it, and it worked. Then people came in with tons of money, and we got businesses booming and more jobs.

Hollywood—we're making even better movies than we've made in 10 years because the independent creative artists are inspired again. They're feeling supported. The vision is so real. And that's my fight.

I go back to: if God is burning somebody's house down to fight these people, you're burning my house down, and then you burn my mom's house down, and you have me listening to my crying mom every day for 18 months. I don't do this to be a politician. I do this to fight evil, and this is evil that has taken this beautiful city that I loved.

I didn't even want to travel to visit my wife's family in Colorado because I'm like, “Can they come to LA?” That's how much of an LA person I am. These people that I'm running against aren't even LA people.

No.

So I'll tell them: “The law, son.”

Spencer Pratt, thank you for joining me on the All-In interview.

Thank you. What a blast.

That was awesome.

Thank you. I'm going all in.