Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Spencer Pratt (2026) - Cleaning Up the Cartel & A Vision for Los Angeles

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Spencer Pratt (2026) - Cleaning Up the Cartel & A Vision for Los Angeles · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
• 0:03
  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
• 0:05
  our latest episodes in your feed.
• 0:08
  Imagine raising $100 million for victims who literally just watch
• 0:15
  their homes burn to the ground in a catastrophic wildfire.
• 0:19
  Right, A total disaster. Yeah, a massive disaster.
• 0:22
  And then discovering that fewer than ten of those people
• 0:25
  actually saw a single dime of that money.
• 0:27
  It is. Why?
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  It's completely mind blowing. So today we are doing a deep
• 0:31
  dive into the playbook of a reality television star, a guy
• 0:35
  who basically used his fame and, you know, an army of
• 0:39
  whistleblowers sliding into his social media DMS to stumble onto
• 0:42
  what he claims is the biggest, most lucrative political cartel
• 0:46
  in the city of Los Angeles. Yeah, but before we really get
• 0:48
  into this deep dive, we absolutely need to establish
• 0:51
  some ground rules for you, the listener.
• 0:52
  Very true. Because the source material
• 0:54
  we're unpacking today, which is Spencer Pratt's recent
• 0:56
  appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, is highly, highly
• 1:00
  volatile and intensely political.
• 1:02
  I mean, he levels some massive accusations against current city
• 1:06
  officials, specific NGO's, and even left wing political groups
• 1:10
  like the Democratic Socialists of America.
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  He does not hold back. He really doesn't.
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  So we want to make it super clear we are not taking a side
• 1:16
  here. We are not endorsing Pratt's
• 1:19
  viewpoints, and, you know, we aren't independently verifying
• 1:22
  his factual claims either. Exactly.
• 1:24
  We're just analyzing the material.
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  Right. Our mission is purely to dissect
• 1:28
  the mechanics of his arguments. We are mapping out the
• 1:31
  overarching narrative that Pratt presents just so you can
• 1:34
  understand the platform of this pop culture personality who is
• 1:37
  suddenly pivoted to running for mayor of Los Angeles.
• 1:40
  Which is such a crazy pivot. I mean, we are looking at how a
• 1:44
  guy who is best known for like selling healing crystals
• 1:48
  suddenly became this self appointed municipal
• 1:51
  whistleblower, right? And to really understand that
• 1:53
  evolution, you have to start with the spark.
• 1:57
  Like literally the devastating Palisades fire.
• 1:59
  The Catalyst for everything. Exactly.
• 2:02
  According to Pratt, this inferno burned down his house, his
• 2:06
  parents house and ultimately something like 7000 homes across
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  the area. That is just massive
• 2:12
  devastation. It is, and you know when you
• 2:15
  lose everything like that, it either completely breaks you or
• 2:18
  it sends you down a rabbit hole. And for Pratt, it was very
• 2:21
  clearly the rabbit hole. Definitely.
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  And what stands out immediately when you listen to him is his
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  total rejection of the official narrative surrounding that
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  disaster. Yeah, he wasn't buying it.
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  Not at all. I mean, the standard explanation
• 2:34
  provided by public officials at the time was that climate change
• 2:37
  and these unprecedented hurricane force winds fueled the
• 2:41
  destruction. Which sounds plausible on the
• 2:43
  surface. Sure, but Pratt actually started
• 2:46
  pulling the real meteorological data, and he points out that the
• 2:49
  initial winds were only between like 27 and 40 mph.
• 2:53
  Which is, I mean, that's barely a stiff breeze in some parts of
• 2:56
  the country. Right.
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  Furthermore, he argues that fire season is just a historical
• 3:01
  annual norm in Southern California.
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  Yeah, it. Happens every year.
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  Exactly. It's an environmental baseline.
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  It is not some sudden anomaly that just appeared in the last
• 3:10
  two decades. He even interviewed a former US
• 3:14
  Forest Service Fire Chief who confirmed the agencies knew the
• 3:17
  fire conditions were critical well in advance.
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  So they knew it was coming. Yeah, he said.
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  Everything was bright red on their maps.
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  And that brings us to the operational failures he
• 3:26
  uncovered, which, honestly, they sound like a dark comedy.
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  They really do. So he found out that this
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  massive local water source, the Santa Anez Reservoir, was
• 3:35
  drained entirely empty. We are talking about millions of
• 3:39
  gallons of water just gone and. The reason why is just.
• 3:42
  It's infuriating. It's ridiculous.
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  It was because of a tear in the lining that would have cost like
• 3:48
  maybe $120,000 to fix. A drop in the bucket for a city
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  budget. Exactly, but instead of
• 3:54
  repairing it, the city just drained it and left it empty for
• 3:58
  over a year. And you have to look at the
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  operational domino effect of that single administrative
• 4:03
  decision. That is staggering.
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  Oh, completely. Think about the logistics of
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  fighting a massive brush fire. Helicopters rely on a very rapid
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  cycle. They scoop water, drop it,
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  circle back. It needs to be fast.
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  Right when that reservoir was full, local helicopters could
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  make a quick 32nd trip to dip their buckets. 30 seconds.
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  Wow. But because it was empty, those
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  same helicopters had to fly 30 minutes away to Malibu or Encino
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  just to find a water source. That is a massive difference.
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  Huge. They were spending 2/3 of their
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  critical flight time just in transit, which obviously allowed
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  the fire to spread exponentially while they were just commuting
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  back and. Forth that is, yeah, that's
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  unbelievable. But the detail that really threw
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  me, the one that made my jaw drop, was the text messages.
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  Oh, the texts. Yeah, Pratt and some other
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  plaintiffs in a lawsuit actually obtained text messages exchanged
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  between Park Rangers and fire officials.
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  This was during a smaller fire on New Year's Eve, just a few
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  days before the massive January 7th place.
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  And in these texts, officials were allegedly joking about
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  intentionally holding back bulldozers.
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  Which are essential for fighting fires?
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  Right. They literally refused to dig a
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  basic fire break, which is just, you know, a 300 foot clear dirt
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  zone that gives firefighters A Moat to stop the flames.
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  Basic protocol. And the reason they held the
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  dozers back? They didn't want to disturb a
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  plant called the milk. Vetch.
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  Yeah, milk vetch. I mean, to understand how a
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  single plant stops a bulldozer during a literal emergency, you
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  have to look at the mechanics of local environmental regulations.
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  OK, break that down for us. Well, in California, the
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  environmental codes are incredibly strict.
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  They often dictate that disturbing the habitat of an
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  endangered or protected species like this milk vetch requires
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  massive bureaucratic clearance. Like endless paperwork.
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  Exactly huge impact reports. So Pratt is alleging that the
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  ideological priority of protecting a local weed
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  basically superseded the practical, immediate necessity
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  of preventing A catastrophic wildfire.
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  Yeah, the officials were more terrified of violating an
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  environmental ordinance than they were of the fire spreading
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  into residential neighborhoods. OK, let's unpack this for a
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  second. Because blaming climate change
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  for the fire damage when the local reservoir is completely
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  empty and you legally refuse to dig a basic dirt fire break,
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  right? That is like blaming the rain
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  for your ruined living room when you intentionally removed the
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  roof off your house. That is a perfect way to.
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  Put it, It just completely shifts the blame from human
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  mismanagement to like an act of God.
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  Yeah, So is this the moment Pratt realizes the system isn't
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  just incompetent, but actively covering its tracks?
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  I think so, yeah. The physical mismanagement of
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  the fire perfectly primed him to look at the financial
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  mismanagement of its aftermath. Money Trail.
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  Exactly. He witnessed the physical
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  destruction first hand, but it was the recovery effort that
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  truly radicalized his perspective.
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  How so? Well, the failure to contain the
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  fire led to a massive, highly publicized charity drive.
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  And analyzing the mechanics of that charity drive, that's what
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  opened his eyes to how disaster capitalism functions on a
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  municipal level. Because over $100 million was
• 7:15
  raised for the victims of the Palisades fire, and Pratt
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  assumed, you know, rationally, that families who lost their
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  entire livelihoods would see some of that money.
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  You would think so, yeah. But he and an investigative
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  journalist started tracking the actual bank transfers, and they
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  discovered that almost none of that money reached the people
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  standing in the ashes. Right.
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  And the legal architecture of that distribution is where the
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  story gets incredibly dark. Oh, it really does.
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  Because when confronted, the charity's own lawyers drafted a
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  response to defend their actions.
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  And in that document they literally stated that quote UN
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  quote, several victims received money directly.
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  Several. Yes, and in legal and practical
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  terms, Pratt points out that several means less than 10.
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  Less than 10 people. Out of $100 million raised,
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  under 10 individual victims received direct financial
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  assistance. That is insane.
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  So where does $100 million go if not to the victims?
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  Well, it was distributed to over 200 nongovernmental
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  organizations. The NGO's.
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  Exactly. And the bulk of those funds were
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  categorized as overhead, administrative costs and
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  capacity building. Capacity building that is such a
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  corporate buzzword. It really is.
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  It didn't rebuild homes. It funded the salaries, the
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  offices and the operational budgets of the nonprofit sector.
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  You know, if they are willing to siphon money away from families
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  whose houses just burned down, they will absolutely apply that
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  same model to Los Angeles's $24 billion homelessness budget.
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  Yes, and that is the exact leap Pratt makes.
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  He doesn't call homelessness a crisis anymore.
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  He frames it as a cartel. A.
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  Literal cartel. Yeah.
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  And he backs it up with a specific real estate transaction
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  that just, it blew my mind. The Cheviot Hills property.
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  Yes. An NGO named Wert purchased a
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  senior citizen home in Cheviot Hills for $11.2 million.
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  OK. And then six days later, that
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  exact same property was appraised and sold for $27.3
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  million. Let's really breakdown how a
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  $16,000,000 markup happens in six days using public funds,
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  because the bureaucratic loopholes here are fascinating.
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  Please do because it makes no sense to me.
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  OK, so the city issues a taxpayer funded grant to an NGO
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  to acquire property for homeless housing.
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  They do this because the city wants to offload the liability
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  and the operational burden. Right, they don't want to run it
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  themselves. Exactly but.
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  It is. Here's where it gets really
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  interesting. If an Ng, OS funding and real
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  estate portfolio depend entirely on the existence of the crisis,
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  aren't we basically paying a pest control company $1,000,000
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  for every bug they release into the house?
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  That is exactly the incentive structure.
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  Where is the financial incentive to actually fix the problem?
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  There isn't 1. When you are incentivized by the
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  scale of the problem, fixing the problem becomes disastrous for
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  your business model. You'd put yourself out of
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  business. Right.
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  Pratt is highlighting A systemic flaw where the oversight metrics
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  are tied to money spent rather than people cured or people
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  housed. That makes so much sense.
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  And this financial structure perfectly explains the massive
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  disconnect that residents see every day.
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  The budget keeps ballooning into the 10s of billions while the
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  reality on the streets continues to deteriorate at a terrifying
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  pace. Wait, so if billions of dollars
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  are just vanishing into real estate flips and administrative
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  overhead for these NGOs, what does the actual St. look like
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  while this invisible economy is just humming along?
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  Well, the statistics he brings to the table are grim, extremely
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  grim. We're looking at six people
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  dying every single day on the streets of Los Angeles.
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  Six people a day. Yes, Pratt actually spoke
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  directly with firefighters at a station near MacArthur Park, and
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  they reported handling 17 fatal or near fatal overdoses in a
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  single night. 17 in one night at 1 station.
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  At 1 station. Further, furthermore, he heavily
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  references a statistic attributed to the DEA stating
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  that 90% of the homeless population has a severe
• 11:15
  substance abuse problem. Wow.
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  And, you know, he aggressively rejects the mainstream political
• 11:20
  narrative that this is an affordable housing crisis.
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  Yeah, he does not buy that at. All his argument is brutal, but
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  honestly it's straightforward. He says if you are heavily
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  addicted to fentanyl, you don't care about $1,000,000 apartment
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  with a nice kitchen, you just want to get high, right?
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  And because of this, he is pushing for mandatory treatment,
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  heavily citing California's SD 43 law.
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  What exactly does that law do? So SB43 is a recent update to
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  California's conservatorship laws.
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  Historically, to put someone on an involuntary psychiatric hold,
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  you had to prove they were a direct danger to themselves or
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  others, which legally is a very high bar to clear.
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  It's hard to prove. Very hard, but SB43 expands the
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  definition of gravely disabled to include severe substance use.
• 12:08
  Oh I see. Yeah.
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  It legally allows the state to strip an individual of their
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  agency and force them into treatment if their addiction
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  prevents them from providing basic personal needs like food,
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  clothing or shelter. I mean, taking away someone's
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  autonomy on the street is a massively controversial move.
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  Huge. But Pratt points out that the
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  streets themselves are controversial by design.
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  Yeah, he actually brought up a historical reference about Skid
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  Row that I had never heard before.
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  The engineered zone. Yeah, it isn't just a symptom of
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  organic urban decay. Kid Row, which is now this
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  sprawling 50 block zone of misery, was historically
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  engineered by the city. It's a crucial piece of
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  municipal history. Back in the 1970s, city planners
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  and officials actually implemented a policy of
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  containment. Yes, they would round up
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  vagrants from wealthier commercial areas, places like
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  Beverly Hills and Hollywood, and transport them downtown near the
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  Jerome Hotel and intentionally just leave them there.
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  Just drop them off. Exactly.
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  They concentrated the charitable services, the soup kitchens and
• 13:07
  the shelters in that specific grid, and the goal was to keep
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  the population isolated from the tourist and high income tax
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  bases. So they literally manufactured A
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  containment zone, and now, 50 years later, that intentional
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  engineering has metastasized into an unmanageable
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  humanitarian disaster. That's exactly his point.
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  But you know, listening to Pride talk about it, his rhetoric is
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  incredibly harsh. Very abrasive.
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  He repeatedly uses the term zombies to describe fentanyl
• 13:37
  addicts. Yeah.
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  He tells stories of parents driving their kids to school and
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  handing them iPads in the backseat just so the kids don't
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  look out the window and see, you know, open drug use or naked
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  people on the sidewalk. Yeah, it's visceral.
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  So what does this all mean for his electability?
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  By talking like that, does he risk alienating voters who view
• 13:54
  this as a humanitarian issue? Well, that tension is the
• 13:58
  absolute core of his campaign strategy.
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  Really. Pratt is betting everything on
• 14:03
  the assumption that the exhaustion of the average
• 14:05
  taxpayer has finally eclipsed their desire for polite,
• 14:09
  sanitized political rhetoric. Oh, that makes sense.
• 14:12
  He is intentionally positioning himself as the anti politician.
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  He refuses to use the bureaucratic language of the
• 14:18
  current administration because he firmly believes that
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  sanitized language terms like unhoused neighbors or capacity
• 14:26
  building is exactly what masks the corruption and the real
• 14:30
  world danger. But how does an entire city
• 14:32
  government allow a system like this to sustain itself?
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  Because to protect a cartel where billions vanish and the
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  streets look like a dystopian movie, you need a very specific
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  political environment. You do.
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  And Pratt argues the current city government isn't just
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  turning a blind eye. He says they're ideologically
• 14:49
  captured. Yes, and he directs a massive
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  amount of his fire at the Democratic Socialists of
• 14:54
  America, or the DSA, right? Pratt claims that DSA back City
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  Council members are actually required to sign contracts
• 15:01
  agreeing to Co govern with the organization.
• 15:03
  Wait, what does Co governing actually mean in a legal or
• 15:06
  functional sense? That sounds weird.
• 15:08
  Functionally, it means a candidate pledges to align their
• 15:11
  voting record and their policy initiatives with the platform of
• 15:15
  the DSA okay, rather than strictly representing the
• 15:18
  diverse, immediate needs of the constituents in their specific
• 15:22
  geographic district. So you aren't voting for a local
• 15:25
  leader? Pratt argues it's a total
• 15:27
  subversion of representative democracy.
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  You are no longer voting for a local representative, you are
• 15:33
  voting for a proxy of an outside political organization.
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  And Pratt claims the Dsa's ultimate agenda is to
• 15:40
  intentionally let the capitalist system buckle under the weight
• 15:43
  of crime and vagrancy so they can rebuild a socialist utopia
• 15:47
  in its place. That is his assertion, yeah.
• 15:49
  And to back this up, he points some baffling budget priorities
• 15:52
  under Mayor Karen Bass. He alleges that she cut $17
• 15:55
  million from the fire departments budget.
• 15:57
  Which is wild. Right, forcing firefighters to
• 15:59
  pay out of pocket for basic station maintenance like toilet
• 16:02
  paper and paint. Meanwhile, the city is sitting
• 16:05
  on $400 million in unspent homeless funds.
• 16:09
  The contrast he draws there between the fire department and
• 16:12
  the homeless services sector is deliberate.
• 16:14
  And it's really illuminating. How so?
• 16:17
  Well, a fire department is arguably a pure, highly
• 16:20
  functional form of socialized resources.
• 16:22
  True, everyone benefits. Exactly.
• 16:25
  Everyone pools their tax money to ensure collective safety, but
• 16:28
  Pratt suggests that because a fire department has strict
• 16:31
  accounting, it has tangible assets like trucks.
• 16:34
  Yeah, you can see the trucks. Right, and clear, undeniable
• 16:37
  metrics for success, meaning the fire is either out or it isn't.
• 16:42
  Because of that, it is nearly impossible for politicians to
• 16:46
  siphon money out of it. Oh wow.
• 16:48
  That makes a lot of sense. But the homeless budget, on the
• 16:50
  other hand, deals in totally opaque metrics, things like
• 16:54
  outreach and consulting. Capacity building.
• 16:56
  Exactly, making it highly lucrative for the NGOs operating
• 16:59
  within it. And while the city cuts funding
• 17:02
  for the people putting out the fires, they are simultaneously
• 17:05
  trying to pass state laws to punish the people exposing the
• 17:09
  fraud. Pratt mentions this proposed
• 17:12
  state bill that would impose a $10,000 fine on independent
• 17:16
  journalists and citizens who film and expose suspicious
• 17:19
  activities or encampment abuses. Instead of rewarding
• 17:23
  whistleblowers, the system is threatening them with financial
• 17:26
  ruin. So what is his solution?
• 17:29
  Well, because Pratt views the entire internal structure as
• 17:32
  corrupt, his proposed mayoral playbook relies entirely on
• 17:37
  massive, aggressive outside intervention.
• 17:39
  Outside intervention. Yeah, he believes internal
• 17:41
  reform is mathematically impossible at this stage.
• 17:44
  Which is why he lays out a day one agenda that honestly sounds
• 17:47
  like a military operation. It really does.
• 17:50
  First, he plans to invite the IRS Criminal Investigation Team
• 17:53
  directly into City Hall, right? He claims he has already met
• 17:57
  with federal agencies and they simply need the mayor to hand
• 18:00
  over specific unredacted grant documents from these NGO's to
• 18:04
  trigger sweeping federal fraud indictments.
• 18:06
  Just open the books for the feds.
• 18:08
  Exactly. Second, he wants to bring in the
• 18:10
  CDC to swab the street encampments for medieval
• 18:13
  diseases like typhoid and tuberculosis.
• 18:15
  Which is a crazy visual. It is, but he believes that
• 18:19
  mathematically proving a severe public health crisis will
• 18:22
  legally force the federal government to step in and
• 18:25
  mandate emergency cleanups. Bypassing the City Council
• 18:28
  entirely. And furthermore, he plans to
• 18:31
  leverage the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics.
• 18:33
  Oh yeah, the Olympics. He argues that the current state
• 18:36
  of the encampments poses an unsecured terrorism risk, which
• 18:40
  would allow him to utilize Homeland Security and DEA
• 18:43
  resources to sweep the streets, effectively using federal
• 18:46
  Olympic funding to clean up the city.
• 18:48
  It's definitely an unconventional playbook.
• 18:50
  But the most radical proposal is his counter to that law finding
• 18:54
  people for filming. Pratt wants to use the mayor's
• 18:57
  office to pay cash bounties to any citizen who films municipal
• 19:01
  fraud, NGO scams or city workers sleeping on the job.
• 19:04
  The bounty system. Right, But hold on paying
• 19:07
  citizens cash bounties for filming their neighbors.
• 19:10
  Doesn't that immediately turn Los Angeles into a paranoid
• 19:13
  surveillance state where everyone is just walking around
• 19:16
  hunting each other with smartphones for a quick buck?
• 19:18
  It is an incredibly volatile. Proposal.
• 19:20
  I mean, it sounds like it. It fundamentally alters the
• 19:22
  social contract of a municipality, right?
• 19:25
  It turns everyday residents into deputize auditors and bounty
• 19:28
  hunters. Exactly.
• 19:29
  However, Pratt's counter argument is that the current
• 19:32
  social contract is already dead. Oh wow.
• 19:35
  Yeah, when the traditional oversight mechanisms of a city,
• 19:39
  the auditors, the council members, the local press, when
• 19:42
  they completely fail, he believes radical crowdsourced
• 19:46
  transparency is the only remaining lever powerful enough
• 19:49
  to force accountability upon a cartel that operates in the
• 19:52
  shadows. Synthesizing everything we've
• 19:55
  walked through today, Pratt is running as the ultimate
• 19:58
  unfiltered outsider. Definitely.
• 20:00
  He isn't walking up to the podium saying the machine has a
• 20:02
  few squeaky gears that need oiling.
• 20:04
  No, he is aggressively claiming the machine is functioning
• 20:07
  exactly as it was designed to function, as a highly
• 20:10
  profitable, organized enterprise for a select few politicians and
• 20:14
  real estate NGOs. And it's at the direct expense
• 20:17
  of public safety, taxpayer dollars, and the lives of the
• 20:20
  addicts dying on the pavement. And his entire platform rests on
• 20:24
  the assertion that you cannot fix a corrupt machine by asking
• 20:29
  the gears to turn in a different direction, right?
• 20:31
  You have to dismantle the machine entirely and rebuild it
• 20:34
  under federal supervision. So for you listening, whether
• 20:37
  you live in Los Angeles, London, or, you know, a small town in
• 20:40
  the Midwest, this breakdown is just a master class in local
• 20:45
  government mechanics. It really.
• 20:46
  Is it forces you to look at the flow of your taxpayer money, how
• 20:50
  grants and NGOs actually operate behind the curtain, and the
• 20:53
  massive blind spots that occur when policies are enacted
• 20:56
  without strict accountability metrics.
• 20:58
  Because when a city's economy becomes reliant on managing a
• 21:02
  crisis rather than actually solving it, the crisis just
• 21:05
  becomes a permanent, necessary fixture of the landscape.
• 21:08
  Which is terrifying. It is.
• 21:09
  Which leaves us with one final, deeply provided talkative
• 21:12
  question based on the source material.
• 21:14
  What's that? Spencer Pratt, a former reality
• 21:16
  television star, managed to build this highly detailed
• 21:20
  forensic corruption narrative using entirely public records,
• 21:24
  text messages obtained in civil lawsuits, and whistleblowers
• 21:27
  sliding into his direct messages.
• 21:29
  Right. If an outsider with absolutely
• 21:31
  zero political experience can dig up this much verifiable data
• 21:36
  about empty reservoirs, fake environmental protocols, and
• 21:39
  $16,000,000 property flips, what does that say about the
• 21:43
  traditional investigative media and the official oversight
• 21:46
  structures we blindly rely on to keep our cities running?
• 21:50
  Wow, that is definitely something to think about the
• 21:52
  next time you see a headline about a billion dollar city
• 21:54
  budget. Thanks for taking this deep dive
• 21:56
  with us.