Curtis Sliwa and Antonio Villaraigosa

00:00:00
Speaker 1: And we continue at two five in the afternoon on the John Phillips Show, Mister Randy Wangs in Culver City.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: John, There's a lot of things that have been discussed on today's show, but if there's one thing you need to take away, one thought that you should be thinking about all weekend, it's this.

00:00:15
Speaker 3: We're to big ass crisis.

00:00:21
Speaker 1: Tom Steyer, Ladies and gentlemen, who also was a singer in the nineties.

00:00:31
Speaker 3: I liked big Asklah.

00:00:35
Speaker 1: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is jellphone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. Former Los Angeles mayor and candidate for governor Antonio via Gosa joins us later on in the hour.

00:00:48
Speaker 3: Right now, it is.

00:00:49
Speaker 1: Our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He is a New York based radio talk show host who used to be on these very airwaves right here in Los Angeles. He's also the founder of The Guardian Angels was a candidate for mayor in New York City. You can get him online at Sliwa for NYC dot com and follow him on x at Kurtisliwa Curtis Sliwa.

00:01:12
Speaker 4: Welcome, Oh My Hands across America once again, from the lunaca of the East Coast and the lunacy of the West Coast.

00:01:22
Speaker 1: What's the temperature like over there today, because it is a scorcher over here in California this weekend.

00:01:29
Speaker 4: Now, we're just above freezing. So were they in the forties and fifties. Uh. I don't think we're ready for that kind of weather here yet. But you see, I believe in global warming and climate change, and I think we've gotten a fair share of that on both coasts in the past year.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: I'll say, I'm definitely going to have to bring out the SPF fifty this weekend because it's going to be hot. I think it's going to be over one hundred degrees so.

00:01:57
Speaker 4: Anyway, one hundred Greece, Yeah.

00:02:01
Speaker 1: Kitty, No, No, it's like one hundred and five right now, one hundred and six where I am.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: I'm in Riverside County. Wow.

00:02:11
Speaker 4: I'm telling you, those who disparage people who talk about global warming and climate change, I don't know how you explain the extreme weather we've had in New York in the extreme weather you're having right then.

00:02:22
Speaker 1: Now, all right, I want to get your take on this because We have a mayoral election coming up in Los Angeles, and I feel like you could be the guy that could give some really good advice to Spencer Pratt. Spencer Pratt is a candidate who lived in the Pacific Palisades. He made television shows with his wife, Heidi. They did reality TV. The Hills was the program, and then one day his home burns down in the Pacific Palisades fire. As we have since learned, that fire that burned down his house was a fire that should have been put out. The fire department said that the fire was not fully extinguished. The city got into a fight with the state. The state said, we have jurisdiction, go home. The firefighter said, it's not fully extinguished yet. The politicians that run the city and the politicians run the state got into a fight, and eventually they decided, all right, it's state land.

00:03:24
Speaker 3: We're going to let it be.

00:03:25
Speaker 1: And that was the fire that reignited that took out the Pacific Palisades. So the people of the Pacific Palisades are understandably very upset. Spencer Pratt is one of those people. I think not only did his home burn down, his parents' home burned down, The schools, burned down, all of their grocery stores burned down. Everything in their community is gone. So he's really upset. And the more that he digs into it, the more that he realized that the city failed him at every opportunity. So now he's running against the incumbent mayor, Karen Benn, who once another four years. In addition to Karen Bass, we have a socialist candidate on the ballot who is a candidate in good standing with the Democratic Party, who she affiliates with Nitthia Raman. The problem for the power structure in Los Angeles right now is that Spencer Pratt is doing much better than anyone expected him to do. Right now, he's polling in second place, and that poses a massive threat to the people that run the city, the power structure at city Hall, the unions, many of the stakeholders. He came in studio yesterday and sat down for an hour answering questions, and I think the worst thing that could have happened to him happened to him yesterday, which is that he came off as someone who was well read, who has thought things through, who.

00:04:51
Speaker 3: Has things he can contribute to make things.

00:04:54
Speaker 1: Better, and certainly looks like a polished candidate, like someone who is not to embarrass himself, not going to embarrass the people that support him, which makes him look like even more of a threat to the power structure in the city. And in the last segment, I told him, and I was speaking figuratively here, not literally, I told him, I hope you're ready for what's coming, because they're going to try to kill you. They're going to try to kill your reputation. They are going to try to make you seem like the worst person on planet Earth. They did it to Larry Elder when Larry Elder ran for governor, they called him the black face of white supremacy. They did it to you when you ran for mayor of New York City, called you every name in the book, put all kinds of pressure on you to get out of the race. And I feel like they're going to do it to him next.

00:05:45
Speaker 4: There is no doubt. And I've been following the campaign very intentionally because I remember he rose up. He represented the interests of all those people who got screwed by government. Both your governor who's too busy traveling the world trying to become our next president, and your Maya bashed the foreign congresswoman who I thought was a radical and a liberal until the DSA candidate came along. And now they're they're fighting all the way to the left, which is fine, which opens up a lane for him. People are angry all over this country and they're not necessarily looking at your party affiliation. So he has a tremendous opportunity if he can remain as you pointed out, cool, come and collected. They make questions where you don't have the experience, you know, how do we know you're going to be able to deal what do you mean to deal with it? There's been chaos from all the professional politicians in Sacramento and Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County? Could you do any worse?

00:06:47
Speaker 5: And he could.

00:06:48
Speaker 4: Actually pull this pull this election out simply because of the rage and anger that he has channeled in terms of making a difference. And this is what people love. They love this is like, oh, man, mister Smith goes to Washington. You have a candidate who is starting to fit into that mode.

00:07:09
Speaker 1: What is your advice to him when he gets into the eye of the storm, Because you can tell now that he's palling well he's not at one percent, he's not at two percent. He is now a player, and the storm is going to come to try to.

00:07:22
Speaker 3: Wipe him out.

00:07:23
Speaker 1: What is your advice to him when he's right in the eye of that storm.

00:07:28
Speaker 4: Well, in all the politics, it's negative research. A lot of the money that you may donate to the candidate of your choice immediately goes to finding out everything this guy has done, allegations, issues that may never have been resolved, and now with a I and because of the vast sort of our quality underbelly of the internet, he cannot overreact. So they're going to try to slime him, there's no doubt about that. And he's got to be able to stay cool, common collected above the prey, because if all of a sudden he gets caught up in all of that he said, she said kind of thing, he will begin to lose a lot of steam and he has to consistently say, well, you see, this is what they do when you rise up, not based on a political background, but out of a concern that people had the government had failed them, and now they don't like to sound in the message, so they want to destroy the messenger.

00:08:30
Speaker 5: If he use that people could.

00:08:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're damn right. That makes a lot of sense, because he has become the messenger. They don't like the sound of the message, so they want to kill rhetorically the messenger.

00:08:44
Speaker 1: In your experience, do you feel that the press gave you any professional courtesy because you came from that world? You had the top rated morning show for many years, top rated AM talk show in all of New York City. You dominated the airway, You dominated it as a morning show, you dominated it at night. Do you feel that they gave you They cut you and he's slack because of that, or do you think they just came at you harder.

00:09:11
Speaker 4: No, they came in me harder because here in New York City, when you have an R in front of your name, they expect you to go into the back room and drink the hemlock. You know, do it to yourself before we do it to you. You can't escape having an R in front of your name. Whereas, I think with this guy, the way he's emerged, he doesn't have a political background at all. I don't know what his party affiliation is, but I don't think people think of him as having a party affiliation, Whereas they always associated me because my mentor was Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor, and a lot of people knew that we worked side by side. So in New York City now, I mean, let's face it, you're going going gone as a Republican, whereas I think this guy his emergence, you know, he's not sort of based in a political background, They'll have a much better chance of surviving that. But my colleagues in the media here despised me, loaths me hated me, and I think it was because I was getting a lot of attention, and like a lot of people nowadays, I sidetracked the mainstream media, you know, just doing what you have to do, Instagram, TikTok, you know, Facebook, just getting your message out there without having to directly depend on them, which you don't have to do, and you can really energize a lot of new potential voters who are just as angry as most voters are.

00:10:38
Speaker 1: Who do you think was tougher on you, the news media or your opponents on the ballot?

00:10:45
Speaker 4: Andrew evilized Cuombo was so nefarious. He's dystopian. He comes from an area an era in which you completely attack your opponent and you basically, he leaves him in a state in which every day when you wake up and you come out the door, you're facing an allegation or a suggestion with me as you got to drop out, you got to drop out, and I will be perfectly honest with you.

00:11:14
Speaker 3: In the end.

00:11:15
Speaker 4: In the last month, I had the trifecta detroit of the trinity of the most powerful men in the world.

00:11:22
Speaker 3: I'll call them the.

00:11:22
Speaker 4: Masters of the universe. There was President Donald Trump who was saying with his tweeting and his social networking and his interviews. Vote A vote for Curtis Lee is a vote for the socialist Johan Mandami. Vote by Andrew evil iis CMO. You don't cross the line, mister president. I'm the Republican. I've proven that time and time again. And then Elon Musk came in, you know, mister trillionaire, and then the other billionaires. They dropped on my head in the last month onety million dollars of advertising. There was not negative about me. It was just simply that same line. They were drumming it into people's heads. A vote for Curtis Lee is a vote for Zora Mondami, vote for Andrew Commell, even though people felt every time they thought of Andrew evilized comal, they had to take a hot shower.

00:12:12
Speaker 5: They were soiled.

00:12:13
Speaker 4: There were the fifteen thousand elderly who died under his watch in the lockdown and pandemic that he refused to apologize for. And thirteen women who worked for him, who worshiped him, who trusted him, who really adored him, including a state trooper that he's sexually harassed, and he claimed they all made it up. And I would constantly say Andrew maybe one, maybe two thirteen and a.

00:12:36
Speaker 3: State trooper Bakers does.

00:12:38
Speaker 4: But again, he thought he was entitled. And that's the problem with all the professional politicians. They feel that's my pedigree. I'm entitled. Do you know how much money I've given up by not going into the private sector and becoming And this is what they really are, a self serving servant instead of a selfless servant, because you notice they all go into politics, maybe with the best of goals, maybe they do give up more income than they can make in a private sector, but oh boy, sometimes they do that shake and make like Nancy Pelosa and I'm a billionaire, I'm a bit How the hell did you all that money.

00:13:18
Speaker 5: How you were.

00:13:22
Speaker 1: When you look at Karen Bass Now, she's a politician that has come from a very safe congressional district, very Jerry Mander Democratic district. Before that, she was a member of the state legislature in a district that was very similar in fact, some of the same geographic area. And then she became mayor of Los Angeles. She beat Rick Caruso, who was then a Democrat, and a bunch of other Democratic politicians at the city and state level. She's never had to beat someone to the right of her before in a contested race. She's never had to beat a Republican before. And in this circumstance, he's palling at nineteen percent, and he's palling and I believe eleven or twelve percent right now, there's a huge number of undecided. It's been a really long time since she's had to run hard. She's been anointed, she has won by acclamation. She is someone who's always had the crown on her head. What type of campaigner do you think she is going to be running against him, given the fact that she hasn't had to work for it before.

00:14:32
Speaker 4: Oh that we've seen this before, and I think your listeners even though they're out there on.

00:14:37
Speaker 3: The West coast.

00:14:38
Speaker 4: Well, remember the ascent of aoc all out crazy Alexandria Ocasio Cortes. She was a bartender, but she went out there and she hustled the vote against Congressman Joe Crowley. He would have been where Hakim Jeffees is today on the cusp of becoming the future Speaker of the House when the Democrats get the majority, and she whooked them because he had never had to run a race before. He always had a pathway, a easy pass, and then she forced him to have to actually go out there and bust his shoes. I don't think Mayo Bass is capable of doing that, and I think the DSA candidate has already proven that she's spinning her like at top. When I think of Karen Bass, I think of em and m ice, ice baby, because that's all she keeps constantly vilifying ice Ice. And I know, being in the big urban area you have with all the massive problems that we have in New York City. Although ice has been a situation that has to be dealt with because of the people's views on it, that's not going to propel you to victorate. You're not delivering on your basics. You're not providing the water, the sanitation, you're not paving the roads, you're not providing better education, You're not doing the basic things that people want a mayor to do, and they never do. They always want to talk about geopolitical issues, Israel, the Middle East, Persian gold, all the things that they have absolutely jactedly squat no impact on because it distracts from what they should be doing on a day to day basis and the corruption that obviously she's already been tainted with.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: It seems like Bass and her people want to run against Spencer Pratt and not the socialist candidate. They think the socialist candidate is the real threat to them, so they're trying to position this as a race between Bass and Spencer Pratt. And that reminds me of what happened in twenty sixteen when Hillary Clinton didn't want to run against Jeb She decided Donald Trump would be the easiest candidate to be So that's the one that they were promoting, and it reminds you to be careful what you wish for.

00:16:52
Speaker 4: And then John, remember she led the fox into the chickens poop. Bernie Sanders mayor of Burlington, Vermont, congressman, senator. It's never been a Democrat, never till the day he dies, they'll never be a registered Democrat, independent Socialist. She let him in because she said, I got this in the bag, I got this super delegates, but I need to show that there's some kind of a competitive Democratic primary, so it's not a coronation.

00:17:19
Speaker 3: He won that primary.

00:17:21
Speaker 4: If not for the super delegence, it would have been Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders. And by the way, Bernie is the godfather of that movement of AOC of Johann Mondami and your DSA candidate. I think the best opportunity for the up and comer from the Palisades, the guy who basically because of this anger, because of this ODJIT that has seized momentum, is to let the DSA candidate and Bass fight it out in the gladiator pit, you know UFC. Let them just basically slim each other up and then take the high road, and people will get so upset at what the heel. Bass, the sitting mayor versus the DSA candidate, just goes say, hey, this guy looks pretty good. He's cool, coming collected, He's not getting down into the in the pig, in the pig myer, and I think he would have a real opportunity in a three person race to actually take this election where I'm sure when he first announced he felt he wanted to make a difference, but probably he didn't think I could win this. But I think as I followed it, and I'm following it all the way from New York City, he's got momentum and I think he could take this.

00:18:36
Speaker 3: The one and only Curtis Leewa.

00:18:38
Speaker 1: You can get him online at Sliva for NYC dot com. You can follow him on exit Curtisliwa, Curtis Sliwa, thanks so much for joining us.

00:18:46
Speaker 3: Have a great weekend.

00:18:49
Speaker 4: My hands across America from the lunacy of New York City to the lunacy of Los Angeles.

00:18:55
Speaker 3: Curtis Leeva Everyone.

00:18:57
Speaker 1: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is the telephone number on eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you want to email the show, you can do so at Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is the telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny Don't Like Show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny Don't Like show at gmail dot com. Former Los Angeles mayor and current candidate for governor of the state of California, Antonio Viri Goosa. We'll be joining us momentarily. He's running a few minutes behind. But if you want to listen to us tomorrow and Fresno, that's easy to do.

00:19:46
Speaker 2: Get ready for the longest promo for a best of you've ever heard.

00:19:50
Speaker 3: Kids.

00:19:51
Speaker 2: We do fifteen hours of live radio every single week. That's a lot right there. And if that's all you need, that's fine. If you need more than that, oh have we got you covered. See We post every hour of this show on podcast, which means if you don't know what a podcast is, it's like the radio, except you can hit start and stop because it plays on your phone. And there are many ways you can download the podcast of this show. You go to the Apple podcast app. That's the little purple app on your phone. iHeartRadio that's the red one, Spotify that's the green one. Search for the John Phillips Show, and then you hit subscribe or hit follow. It's different on some of the apps, and then you get to download all of the episodes or find a specific episode, like let's say that you are looking for John's interview with Spencer Prad from yesterday. If you search for the John Phillips Show, you'll see it. It was yesterday's one o'clock hour and it's says Spencer Pratt is running for mayor you can download that. You can listen to it over and over again. You can listen to it at slow speed, you can listen to it at double speed, so it sounds like everyone's doing their best Ben Shapiro impression. You can also do a Google on the YouTube right George Gascon Google on YouTube, because every single hour of the show also gets posted to a YouTube channel that's called Cumulus News Talk. And so you can see all of our stuff, and all of Frank Motech stuff and my solo show, the KABC News Splitz. You can see all the stuff from Red Eye Radio, and then a whole bunch of other local shows from other markets. We're all in the same channel. Don't you worry. Nobody actually looks at that. I thought i'd just mention it. But there's also the apps. There's the free KABC app. You get room on your phone, download the KABC app, it's kabcam. If you get some more room on your phone, get the KSFO app. And that's an easy way to listen live to KSFO wherever you are. Not only can you get the podcast on those apps, but you can stream the radio station if you're in a place where the reception sucks, and you can listen to it in places that are outside of the reception. But on top of all that, we wanted to give you even more. So that's when we said, well, we've got southern California covered, We've got northern California to come up for air. We've got northern California covered. This is my filibuster, thanks Tony. And we wanted to make sure we cover this central valley as well, and that's why we started doing the Fixed California our replay Saturdays at noon on k mjos. KMJ is the big station in the central Valley. It is a massive station, covering what's going on in Fresno, Kevin, what's going on in Madera, and Merced covering what's going on in Bakersfield, And since we talk about a lot of that stuff too, we thought, hey, why don't we join the lineup by Jay?

00:23:04
Speaker 4: I give.

00:23:09
Speaker 3: I was going to go until he called in.

00:23:11
Speaker 1: I know, I know, but if he says he's going to be ten minutes late, he could be twenty.

00:23:18
Speaker 2: It's the fixed California replay Saturdays at noon on KMJ.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: All right, so there is a gubernatorial debate that's coming up on March the twenty fourth, and this debate is being sponsored by USC ABC seven and Univision, and one of the things that they decided to do was exclude all the candidates of color who are running for governor, including Javier Bessera, Betty Yee, Tony Thurman, and our next guest, Antonio Viragosa. They decided, I guess that there would be too many people on stage, so why invite everyone. The problem is that in normal circumstances, there's a front runner, there's someone who you can tell is going to win or is likely to win, and then maybe there's a second candidate who has a chance to win, and then a bunch of candidates who have no shot at all. The difference between those elections, and this election is that in this election, you have a lot of people who are bunched together, but you have no one who's been able to break away from the pack. Yet every time you see a poll where it looks like someone might break away, there's someone nippot at their heels just below them. And when that happens, then you look at the next poll and you go, oh, wait a minute, they flip flopped, or maybe there's someone else that's now in the picture.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: And when you have a dynamic like.

00:24:46
Speaker 1: That, particularly when you're dealing with polling that has a margin of air a plus or minus usually of three and a half to four and a half percent, you're talking about an entire field of candidates who are essentially statistically And when you have an entire field of candidates who are statistically tied, it's very difficult to say you have no chance because you might be within the margin of air of the top performing candidate in your party.

00:25:17
Speaker 3: Well, well, that may mean.

00:25:19
Speaker 1: They're ahead of you in that poll, but that doesn't mean that you're out of it all right. Joining us right now is the former mayor of the City of Los Angeles, candidate for governor in the state of California. You can get him online at Antonio twenty twenty six dot com and you can follow him on x at a via re Goosa Mayor Antonio Viragosa, Welcome, Antonio.

00:25:48
Speaker 5: How are you, John Ah.

00:25:50
Speaker 3: Good, mister Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.

00:25:53
Speaker 5: Good to be on the show.

00:25:56
Speaker 1: All right, well, let me start out with the first question, why should you be the next governor of the state of California.

00:26:03
Speaker 5: You know, there's just a great state. Has given me more than I could have ever hoped for growing up in the home of where my mother struggled to make ends meet and put four kids through college. But it's a state with enormous challenges, and I think we need a proven problem solver to take on those challenges. And the biggest challenge is the challenge of affordability. People just can't afford this state. The high cost of rent and housing utility cost second highest in the country that have gone up sixty percent in the last six years, and the highest gas prices the United States of America that are going up still higher because of this war in Iran.

00:26:50
Speaker 1: There is a debate that's going to be coming up that's going to be hosted by usc ABC seven, and you division and you were one of the candidates is going to be excluded from this debate, along with Javier Bessera, Betty Tony Thurman, all the candidates of color who are running for governor. Now, I'll tell you, I am someone who believes that you should be on that stage. And I believe that for a bunch of different reasons, one of which is, when you look at the poll numbers, there really is no front runner in this particular race. Everyone is kind of bunched together. And when you factor in the margin of air, you are in some polls within the margin of air of whomever the top performing Democrat is. In some polls, you're doing not quite that good. But hey, you're all bunched together. Why make the decision now? If there's no clear front runner, let everyone go out there and make their case and let the voters decide. But I also think that there's another reason why you should be on that stage. When you look at the top polling Democrats in this race, whether it's Katie Order, Tom Steyer, Eric Swalwell, none of them are from the state of California. I think two of them are from Iowa. Tom Steyer, I think is from New York, and they don't know how life used to be here. Maybe they've been here a while, maybe they haven't. I don't know. They don't seem particularly familiar with California subjects. Whenever they're asked about a problem that is happening here in California, they shift it to something national. They talk about Trump, they talk about something going on in Washington, and when they try to get pinned down on the details, they don't really know much about these state and local issues that people like you have been dealing with in Sacramento at City Hall for many, many years. And I see you on stage with them sometimes and they look like the kids that didn't read the book that are trying to do the book report, and you look like the kid that read the book that has the answers, but you seem like you're holding your punches with them.

00:29:00
Speaker 3: And I just believe that you belong on that.

00:29:03
Speaker 1: Stage, as at least for someone who's been here a while, who knows how it used to be and how it is now and how things have failed. But am I seeing something that isn't there? When I see you on that stage holding your punch when you know they don't know what they're talking about.

00:29:20
Speaker 5: You know, let me just say this. First of all, you make a great case for why we ought to be included in the debate. But there's one more. You know, there's an old maxim and that maxim is you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. The rules were who's pulled the highest and who's raised the most money. I've raised more money than all of them except for the billionaire in the race. That's a fact. I've also pulled higher than Matt Mayhean. In fact, so has Javier Baserra. And so what we've said is we need open, transparent rules that you know are fair, and that makes sense to most people. On top of the arguments you've made, which I think are excellent ones, you know, this bait shouldn't go ahead if we're not included. But you said something else. You know, the problem with these they're not really debates. They're called forums. And they're called forums because you only get a minute to answer and you can't speak about the other candidates. So when somebody says something that's just nonsense, has no merit, They have no idea what they're talking about, you can't criticize them as then the rules in every single forum, so you really can't engage one another. And that's the problem with it, which is why I'd much rather be on a radio show or a podcast where people get to hear you answer questions on your own, you know, without you know, a teleprompter or notes, and you know, be able to kind of kick the tires and look under the hood. And I don't think that's what we've been able to do up to now. Every single date is said you cannot mention another candidate, so you can't say, for instance, so and so you don't know what you're talking about. You have no experience. All you do is talk about Trump, and you know Trump is a threat toward democraty. I agree. But at the end of the day, there are a lot of problems in this state that we created, and we should take responsibility for them and have a plan to fix them.

00:31:43
Speaker 3: You mentioned the cost of living.

00:31:45
Speaker 1: So many of the factors that makes it so expensive to live here are based in state and local failures. You look, for example, at what's happened to the parks where the parks in many cases in the big cities La Oakland, San Francisco have been taken over by the homeless, by people who are on drugs. People can't take their families there, so you need to have a house with a backyard so your kids can play there. Well, there's an extra cost to that. That's at taxed by a different name. The libraries in many cases in the big cities, they've been taken over by the homeless. Nobody wants to take their kids in an area that's not safe like that, so you buy them the books on Amazon. That's a cost by a different name. And you can just go down the list of how many of these issues that cause people to spend more money to live here that could be fixed if the state and local government worked and did what they were supposed to do.

00:32:42
Speaker 3: But they fail at it.

00:32:44
Speaker 1: And because of that, people just assume the costs on their own. And the people in Arizona don't have to do that, the people in Nevada don't have to do that. But the people of Los Angeles do, the people of Oakland do. And I think that in many cases, particularly for those Cannons who have focused exclusively on the federal stuff, they don't understand that the problems. Many of these problems can be fixed here in California.

00:33:11
Speaker 5: You know, in addition to the music to my ears, you're absolutely right, John, But in addition some of the forums there are candidates to get up that don't believe we ought to be able to prohibit encampments as I do in parts in front of schools. You know, Look, I've said from the beginning, we shouldn't criminalize homeless. We should be compassionate, but you know, we shouldn't accept chaos, and selling drugs in front of cops is chaos. You know, at the end of the day, we've spent twenty four billion dollars at the state level alone, not to mention what cities and counties spent, and homelessness went up. So the people of this state have a right to want to know what happened with that money, What works, what doesn't. I'm not just going to throw money at the problem. I understand that we should invest in what works, but throw money it waste money at things that don't, and those are That's the difference between someone who's been a mayor of the largest city in this state, a city larger by the way than San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and San Diego in the middle of a recession. And you know, I don't have to remind you, but I will. When I became mayor, Ali was one of the most violent big cities in the country. When I left, a eight percent drop in violent in crime. We were as safe as any city.

00:34:47
Speaker 4: Along with New.

00:34:48
Speaker 5: York schools, one out of three schools were filling. The San Fernando Valley was going to secede from the LA Unified by the time I look, a sixty percent increase in the graduation rate. When I was mayor in the middle of a recession, we had about I'm told, about twenty five percent of all the cream in the United both market rate, workforce, affordable and homeless housing than the twelve years before me. At the end of the day, we need somebody to actually done this, not somebody that gives a great talk or on MSNBC or CNN thinking about Trump all day long. Somebody's actually taken these issues on and has a record of accomplishment. And look, these problems aren't easy to fix. You know, we won't end poverty overnight if you elect me or any of the rest of them, but we can make progress and I think a lot of people who do remember when feel like, you know, we had better days, and we need to restore luster to that dream, to the California dream.

00:36:00
Speaker 3: Question before you go.

00:36:01
Speaker 1: There was a bombshell report CBS News about fraudulent hospice facilities in the San Fernando Valley where there's one building where I guess they have a ton of different facilities that check all the boxes for fraud and CBS had this bombshell report. It went all over the place, and in response, the press office for Newsom basically attacked the people that we're exposing it and we're mocking them and making fun of them. And I thought to myself, as a taxpayer here in California, if people are stealing money from the taxpayers, if people are stealing money from the State of California, which is all of us, why isn't there more offense at the people who are taking from us, Because that's money that could going to fix our infrastructure, that's money that could be going to make sure that the State of California's budget is balanced. All of these needs that we have. We don't have money for those things. If money is stolen from us, and there seems to be no offense at the fact that money is being taken from the tax payers.

00:37:06
Speaker 6: You know, accountability is in a democratic notion or a Republican I think most voters, no matter where they lie on the political spectrum, I believe we ought to be accountable.

00:37:19
Speaker 5: And if it's demonstrated with facts that there's fraud waste, the answer should be that we're going to fix it, We're going to change it, and we're going to hold people accountable. That's what we need again in this state, William the country. You know, at the end of the day, people have a right to make sure that their hard earn tax dollars are being spent appropriately. And so to criticize someone because they've unveiled or discovered that the frotten waste is not what we should be doing. We should be fixing it. We should say not under my watch, and I'm gonna fix it.

00:38:08
Speaker 3: That's all right, We're gonna have to leave it there.

00:38:11
Speaker 1: Former mayor of Los Angeles candidate for governor in the state of California. You can get him online at Antonio twenty twenty six dot com. Follow him on exit Avia Regosa Mayor Antonio Via Regosa thanks so much.

00:38:23
Speaker 3: For stopping by.

00:38:25
Speaker 5: Thank you John.

00:38:27
Speaker 3: It's the John Phillips Show.