Chris Moritz exposes how Kamala Harris’s progressive reforms—Brown v. Plata (2011), Prop 47 (2014), and Prop 57 (2016)—gutted California’s justice system, flooding streets with cartel-linked gangs while reclassifying theft as "reparations," costing $27B in flight capital. With 200K–300K gang members (63% Latino) rivaling the National Guard and fentanyl production soaring, prisons became cartel HQs, cops defunded, and elites like Newsom and Soros-backed DAs (e.g., Gascon) prioritized ideology over safety. Moritz warns California’s "neo-feudal" collapse—6M exiles, $300 fines for MS-13 invaders, and OJ-style juries—is a blueprint for national decline unless laws are repealed and elites held accountable. [Automatically generated summary]
I gotta say, it is a little bit astounding to those of us from California to see a politician from that state run for president, because in the back of your mind, you wonder, when's someone going to ask her about the state she's from, which is the greatest disaster in the history of the United States, probably the greatest disaster since the fall of Rome, I would say.
It went from the greatest place, I think it's fair to say, on planet Earth, when I grew up in the 70s and 80s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, To a place that people are fleeing.
And so without blaming Kamala Harris for all of it, it's not all her fault, but someone should have to answer for that.
There's a lot of reasons as to how we ended up in a one-party state, how we ended up in a state of decrepitude, and frankly, with elements of criminality that are so depraved and savage and dark that they are really unseen outside of the worst conflict zones in the world.
And that is characterized by...
Let's say, for instance, the rise of child soldiers, juveniles committing a lot of crime.
In fact, maybe driving the crime surge in the state, and certainly in Los Angeles.
There are a million authors of this tragedy, but if you were to point to two or three big facts, big changes, big trends that created the dystopia you're describing, what would they be?
Well, so there's a legislative angle to this, and I think that's a really, really important part of the history and the pathway to destruction.
Well, that was influenced by a number of factors.
Principally, there was an important Supreme Court case in 2011 called Brown v.
Plata.
And in this decision, which was a 5-4 split, Kennedy was the deciding factor on the liberal side and wrote the opinion.
It was determined that the California state prison system was in violation of the Eighth Amendment, which is a cruel, unusual punishment.
And this was owing to the fact that prisons were operating at 200% capacity at that time.
And according to this ruling, California had to conform to a very arbitrary capacity ratio that was established by a federal bureaucracy of 137.5%.
So, if you were at 137.5%, you were no longer in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
So, as a result of this ruling, California did have to find ways to comply and took a number of steps to do so, a number of laws that I'll discuss.
But coinciding with this ruling and going back further is the emergence of the criminal justice reform movement.
Principally coming out of places like Stanford Law School and some particular individuals like a gentleman named Mike Romano, who was able to influence the legislature and executive-level officers in the state to embrace policies that were...
Part of the criminal justice reform movement and principally dedicated to the idea of reducing the so-called crisis of mass incarceration.
So, this meant that there was a force coming from the Supreme Court that was motivating this, and also ideological activist elements that pushed for these same reforms at the same time.
So, as— If I just notice, the formulation there, which I've never thought about until now, mass incarceration, which I don't think any normal person would be in favor of mass incarceration, but that's—you're only describing one side of the coin.
The other way to describe it would be the crime wave that we're living through that results—I mean, that results in people going to prison.
Well, so, California had, up until, let's say, 2011, One of the most stringent criminal justice systems in the entire country.
We, of course, were the force behind the three strikes law.
And three strikes put a lot of bad people away forever.
But it had problems too, to be honest.
And there were reforms applied to it to reduce, you know, potential injustices.
Right.
And I support those.
But nevertheless, three strikes and also the introduction of what are called enhancements.
So special circumstance enhancements in which, let's say you use a gun in a crime.
You use a gun that adds 10 years additionally to your conviction.
If you use a gun and you shoot someone, that's 20 years.
If you use a gun and kill someone, it's life.
So that's an enhancement.
If you're a gang member and engage in whatever crime, gang enhancements would apply, and those would add to the sentencing.
These things were all eliminated and obliterated in big parts by directives that came from the so-called Soros DAs, the progressive DAs in 2020. But the dismantling started really following this Supreme Court case.
So the first law that was a big problem and put us on this path was called AB-109.
It's called the Public Safety Realignment Act.
And the idea was that to reduce the number of prisoners in the state system, you would transfer so-called nonviolent, non-sexual, low-risk offenders to county jails.
A problem, though.
And the problem and the sort of poison pill within it was the issue of what classified nonviolent, nonsexual, low-risk offenders.
Because under AB 109, the only offense that would be considered was the last offense for which you were convicted.
So, in other words...
Inmates with long and violent criminal histories, who happened to be in jail, in state prison, because of a non-violent offense, were eligible for this system, and they were transferred out, 27,000.
Even with that, we still didn't meet the capacity threshold of 137.5, but this was one of the steps to do so.
Actually, Jerry Brown, to his credit, did a lot earnestly to try and straighten the ship of California's fiscal situation, but these kinds of policies specific to jailing were totally ill-conceived.
So with AB 109, all of these prisoners go into county jails, but the county jails don't have the resources to house them.
They don't have the funds to staff them.
And so the outcome is that many are just released into the communities.
Kamala Harris is elected attorney general in 2010, narrowly beating...
Steve Cooley, who is probably the last great district attorney of Los Angeles, a Republican.
By the way, he's the only Republican she's ever run against, other than Trump.
And he lost to her by just a few thousand votes.
And this is kind of an interesting coda, is that there were also kind of odd circumstances around that election.
Steve was ahead, and then...
You know, kind of in 2020 fashion, there was a surge of her votes, but anyway, she's elected to California Attorney General in 2010, and her first big task is administering AB 109, Because as the head of the California Justice Department, she really has the most, you know,
highest level of presence in for sure understanding the budgetary constraints of the counties and what everyone was warning her, highest level of presence in for sure understanding the budgetary constraints of the counties and what everyone was warning her, including the California District Attorneys Association, police And she supported it.
She did nothing to try and, like, bring more resources to these county jails.
And this is a theme, actually, we'll see over and over again in California where the state has some failure, some bureaucratic, you know, incompetency or shortfall in the budget or some issue.
And the strategy at Sacramento is to simply move that problem, shift it to localities, to counties, to manage, which are also struggling.
So it's kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul and nothing changes.
So after AB 109 went into effect, the next year, property crimes went up 9%.
And moreover, 61% of those offenders who were eligible for this program, and by the way, it's retroactive, 61% are arrested within a year, and 41% are convicted again.
Clearly, the recidivism rate created by this law was a major problem.
Fast forward to 2014, and the worst of them all comes out of political strategy consultant firms in San Francisco, who, by the way, backed Kamala Harris to a great extent.
And this is called Prop 47. So Prop 47 was...
It's marketed to Californians, and I should say for people who don't understand California politics, we have this system that allows for really important legislation to be put forward directly to the voters, and that's how a lot of very, very big laws in California have come to the effect.
Yes, and I will tell you, Steve Cooley calls it fraud by misrepresentation, and there is a poison pill within Prop 47 that is quite shocking, and she was actually called out for it by the Sacramento Bee.
And that is that these reclassified offenders would no longer be subject to mandatory and standard DNA testing.
As a result, DNA testing for across the state went from 15,000 a month to 5,000 a month.
And DNA testing is super, super critical for the solving of cold case homicides, rapes, and other violent crimes that are typically associated with people with track records of crime.
So these nonviolent, you know, larceny type offenders are, you know, are very likely or, you know, or at least, you know, it should be investigated whether they have some kind of connection to other crimes as we've seen, you know, everywhere.
So Kamala Harris' description in the ballot for 47 basically obfuscated this issue of the DNA testing.
And the Sacramento Bee called her out on it and said that this was effectively a misrepresentation, a failure on her part to omit this information from the voters.
She's a facilitator and an opportunist, and everything, every action, really, she has taken in California has been on the basis of what is good for Kamala Harris.
But what I have heard from my sources, who certainly would know...
With Prop 47, it was significantly influenced in terms of the language by prominent figures from the criminal justice reform movement and even entities affiliated with George Soros, who's always been a funder of criminal justice reform.
So they sold this as, like, good for the California budget, good for the safety of your neighborhood, sort of the opposite of the truth, well, literally the opposite of the truth.
And we did so because our leaders manipulate language.
Nonviolent offender, for instance, is not nonviolent offender.
In fact, in the next law that came about that was, again, on our pathway to destruction, Prop 57, which passed in 2016, that law, again, which Kamala Harris wrote the language for and which she was excoriated by other Democrats when which Kamala Harris wrote the language for and which she was excoriated by other Democrats when she was running for
Prop 57 was, again, to address mass incarceration and would offer...
Additional parole opportunities for offenders that were deemed to be, quote, nonviolent.
But what is nonviolent under Prop 57?
It is anything that is not one of 23 specific crimes that is in an obscure section of the penal code.
So nonviolent could be drug trafficking, human trafficking, rape by intoxication, some forms of assault.
Financial crimes, serious financial crimes, and basically these offenders under this provision would have opportunities for parole and also parole administration was also passed down to the county levels who, again, didn't have the resources to handle this new burden.
And not as famous, infamous as 47, but, you know, very destructive.
There's a case of an offender released under this who went on to kill like four or five people in a mass shooting.
Gang-related, like, within two years of release.
Because, of course, when they go into the parole system, the parole system is completely incompetent at the local levels.
Again, they do not have the resources.
And there was a participation rate of offenders of 9% in rehabilitation programs.
And the cornerstone of 57 was, we are taking these, you know, People that, you know, they are nonviolent and they can be redeemed, right?
But it's really just a gimmick that is driven by, again, this mandate by the Supreme Court, but also by the influence of criminal justice reform advocates.
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Well, I think there are those who are pushed for these initiatives.
Who are just pure sociopaths, and they are not really committed ideologically.
They galvanize around it because it's in vogue and it allows them access to money, like Soros money.
George Gascon is probably the greatest example of this.
Not an ideologue, by the way.
A very bad, stupid lawyer, from what everyone says, but not an ideologue.
A sociopath is how he's been described to me.
As have some of these other rogue prosecutors.
But then there's the true believers.
And within criminal justice reform, I think it's fair to say there's a spectrum of radicalism.
Some initiatives, I think, have good intentions.
We do want rehabilitation in society.
We do want the opportunity to...
Build one's life back by a bad choice.
That's a Christian value.
But it goes much, much deeper than that.
And I think that as you peel back the layers of criminal justice reform and look at what they're specifically advocating for, it ranges not only from mass incarceration solutions, but also, frankly, defunding the police.
Pacifying the police through, you know, ideas like community policing, in which police are sort of characterized now as social workers rather than law enforcement.
I mean, women now make a huge portion of overall cops.
And, you know, there's...
The cops I've talked to who are like, you know...
Serious, serious, like, threatening figures, but good guys.
They see the police today as an absolute joke.
And I can tell you, and I'll get into it, about how bad it's getting at the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, but through erosion because of these policies and morale erosion.
But back to criminal justice reform, I think that it's really important to strip away euphemisms.
When I was evaluating the tenets of this movement, it became apparent to me that not only did it place the offender above victim, it fundamentally resulted in the diffusion of crime and the spreading of suffering.
So, trying to wreck other people's neighborhoods, safe neighborhoods, affluent neighborhoods, white neighborhoods with crime on purpose because they were orderly, affluent, and white.
Well, for sure, BLM activists say that mass stealing of retail stores is a form of reparation.
I call this crime equity, this concept.
And it's not even something said in jest or flippantly.
It's actually a very deep and dark...
I think particularly pertinent would be what happened in Rhodesia, where criminals are released from prisons en masse and sent on essentially government-sanctioned theft of white farmer land and other property.
And this is a form of, you know, kind of anarchic tyranny.
The second in charge at the L.A. County District Attorney's Office, the Chief of Staff, a woman named Tiffany Blacknell, who is proud to have been a rioter and looter in the 1992 Rodney King.
Well, it's extremely evil and it is demonstrably the case because these laws were so obviously negligent and reckless.
Everyone knew.
All the law enforcement agencies, all the district attorneys came out against these kinds of initiatives.
Saying that the result is going to be dangerous criminals on the street.
Dangerous criminals on the street.
This is our future.
And they passed it anyway.
Voters passed it.
Kamala Harris wrote the language.
And again, Prop 47 is called the Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act.
So the idea is that the funding budget savings from not classifying these larcenies as And thereby being misdemeanors, which are not ever, ever enforced or prosecuted, would save millions of dollars that would then be redirected to schools.
One power exerts influence on another and allows some autonomy of the subordinate power.
It's often been used in geopolitical analysis to, for instance, describe how a Roman Empire administered Gaul.
Right, exactly.
So there's a semblance of autonomy, but there is still ultimately a power that is answered to.
And the reason that the Mexican drug cartels, I think, qualify for that is because sometime around 2010, all this bad stuff happened in 2010. And if I may even say, like, you know, when we last spoke about the trans issue, that also really got into effect in 2010. It's peak Obamaism is what it is.
So I think in retrospect, we can say that Obama was a destroyer, that the intent was to subvert and destroy the United States, and that some people called that early.
When the cartels moved into California, they said to all the black gangs, if you sell dope without our permission, we will, quote, cut your head off.
And they meant that literally.
They meant that literally.
So every black gang had to then find an alternative revenue stream or get their dope supply from the cartels, from Hispanic gangs, because all Hispanic gangs in California kind of operate as an extension of gangs above them, which are based in prison, and that's another issue.
The highest level gang in California is called the Mexican Mafia, and it's a prison gang.
And this gang is the ultimate authority, really, on all Latino gangs in the state.
There are 200,000 to 300,000 gang members in California.
And as it was told to me by this incredible L.A. County Sheriff, Sergeant, who, and I'm not going to mention the names of any of my sources for their protection and safety, but this gentleman...
He said to me that he was head of Major Crimes Bureau for the LA County Sheriff's and 25-year veteran of the force, now in private security.
And he said to me that the prisons rule the street.
So effectively, the criminal economy of California, which is in tens of billions, maybe 100 billion, passes through California state prisons.
So, that is a prima facie indictment of the failure of our prisons, because from prison, the Mexican mafia is ordering hits, running drug trades, human trafficking, you name it.
Well, I will tell you that the law enforcement and prosecutors that I talk to would say that The illegal alien gang element is characterized by extreme violence.
And not just the Aztecs, but the Maya and the Inca also.
That it does, in the end, as much as you sort of hate the conquistadors because they were brutal and all that, you root for the conquistadors with everything you have.
I will tell you, the Aztecs worshipped a lightning and rain god called Tlaloc.
And when there were droughts, they would sacrifice their children.
And they believed that the tears of their children, as they walked up the steps of the pyramid to have their hearts ripped out, Would be taken by the gods and transformed, transmogrified into rain.
You see this with in some Native American cultures in North America as well, where it's not simply a matter of killing people, but of prolonging their suffering as an offering to the spirit world.
And that's why I feel it's so critical to understand this dynamic.
It's not just a historically interesting facet.
But the fact is that we have brought in millions, 12 million migrants, many of them coming from this triangle, right, in Central America.
And it's really important to understand who are these people?
And especially, let's say, the 2 million gotaways, which is often cited as the...
Pure criminal element amongst the migrant invasion.
And because there was all migrants that are looking for economic benefits or whatever, they turned themselves into ICE. And Tom Homan told me this directly.
They turned themselves into ICE. And under the Biden administration, ICE, as Homan put it, has been reduced to, instead of enforcement, changing diapers and making sandwiches.
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So you said before I sidetracked you into a really interesting cul-de-sac, thank you for that, but that...
They're the single most powerful force in the state of California, Mexican drug cartels.
They had to find other alternative revenue streams, other verticals.
And what was the...
What was the safest alternative and also highly lucrative?
Residential burglaries and retail theft.
So all of the retail theft that you see, that we see in the media of these Nordstroms being looted by hordes of thieves, that's not just incidental individual acts of larceny.
That is all organized by gangs.
And the market...
For the resale, the fencing is called, in California, maybe just even Los Angeles, is like $10 billion.
But I think primarily on the internet or to, you know, even perhaps other companies.
You know, it passes through multiple layers, right?
And, you know, so these fencing operations are extremely lucrative.
So there's that angle to it.
And it's resulted in the emergence of trends within these kinds of burglaries.
Flocking is a term that refers to penetrating a safe neighborhood, blending into that neighborhood, targeting a particular person that they've perhaps...
Through social media identified as potentially wealthy and then going on missions into these neighborhoods to rob them, tie them up, home invasions, whatever.
But what's quite interesting is that there are some gangs that have become so good at it that they now actually act as consultants to other gangs to teach them how to flock.
Well, so if I can turn it to like a personal anecdote, about a year ago, my home in Santa Monica, which it's an affluent neighborhood, but like my house is for sure the most dilapidated on the block it's been in my family.
Through my great-grandparents, my brother and I live there and own it.
And in September of last year, we were subject to two home invasion robberies in a row.
Although I should say, technically, these are what's called a hot prowl burglary, which means that...
Residents are in the property when the burglary takes place, but don't necessarily confront the burglar.
The next night, he dismantles a window in our dining room, which is also my office, and he...
He took whatever was left, which was nothing.
There was nothing left.
The guy would steal things like Easter eggs, like sunglasses, like a letter opener, in addition to really valuable stuff.
I believe he came back a third night because I saw a car lurking in the middle of the night outside of our house.
And I saw a figure in this vehicle that ultimately matched the description of the perpetrator who was caught about a month later.
And the story behind this is, I think, really quite interesting and was the reason why I undertook the research that I've done.
Because the guy who did this to us was an illegal alien, a dreamer actually, an MS-13 gang member with a convicted felon who had done seven years in prison, in California state prison for violent crimes.
He was deported by Trump administration, Homeland Security immediately after getting out of prison.
In fact, he notes, I read the whole police report of this in the course of my trying to understand what took place.
And it's funny, he comments to the cops during his interrogation that...
As soon as he was released from state prison, ICE immediately picked him up and deported him back to El Salvador.
Immediately.
And while he was in El Salvador, he had his MS-13 face tattoo removed.
And he was in El Salvador for about a year or so, and then went back, then traveled to France.
I don't know, for whatever reason.
The guy had a—his day job was as a carpenter.
And, you know, actually, his primary language was English, so I guess we can be thankful for that.
Thank you, Lindsey Graham and the DREAM Act.
But he sneaks back into the U.S. in 2021 during the Biden wave of migration.
And he proceeds to go on a rampage.
He does have a kid, too, at this time, so we now have a U.S. citizen to deal with.
And he robs a dozen houses in the same manor all over L.A. County, but also in Ventura County.
He robs the home of a judge, a very well-respected criminal judge who presided over the Michael Jackson death trial.
It's funny, the police report notes that he took the judge's small-wristed Seiko watch.
The guy took anything and everything.
I saw the police reports and he was taking wedding rings.
He took a Catholic rosary box.
There was nothing that was above limits.
Again, he stole memories from people.
And he did so callously and with impunity.
And he was eventually arrested in Simi Valley, which is in Ventura County, which is tougher on crime overall than in LA County, but not by much.
And when he was arrested...
By a joint task force in the middle of the day, he was in his vehicle with his wife and child in the back seat.
The police found on him a loaded stolen Kimber handgun with hollow point bullets.
They found body armor, which by the way is a federal crime because he's a convicted felon.
You cannot have body armor as a convicted felon.
It's a federal crime.
They found strange things like a bachelor's degree diploma from Armenia, currency, foreign currency, knives.
It went on and on and on.
He was clearly, clearly a violent person.
And when he was brought into interrogation, the officer assigned to him started by saying, thank you for not opening fire on us.
We really appreciate that.
And he said, don't thank me because I was planning on killing you and for sure, quote, going Eric's on you, whatever that means, and taking my last stand had it not been for the fact that my wife and kids were in the car because he said, I'm never going back to jail.
So fast forward to his arraignment in Ventura County.
He's convicted on one count of one of these charges, maybe two counts.
But in any event, he's sentenced to Two years in jail and a $300 fine, and he'll probably serve less than that.
And if my brother had been awake and woken up, I think there's a high chance of a violent interaction that would have taken place.
I mean, I'm sure he had a gun or a weapon on him when he did this.
There's absolutely no reason to doubt that.
So it's a miracle, actually, that we're okay.
But I was so shocked by what happened.
And of course, after the second night, you just lose sense of reality.
How is this happening?
Am I being targeted?
And the cops really had no explanation for this.
I think that this guy thought we were an easy mark because it's an old house.
There's still a handicapped parking sign in front of the house.
It's from my grandparents' time.
So he probably presumed there were old people living in the house and predators go for the weak.
So in an attempt to try and intellectualize and frame this experience, which still haunts us to this day, I mean, you never feel quite the same in the home.
And it's a terrible thing when a home that's been in your family for almost four generations is stained and violated.
It almost feels like an assault, like a sexual assault even.
It's a very, very strange feeling.
I mean, burglaries gut you.
It's made all the worse by the fact that victims are re-victimized by the justice system in California.
And so as I started to talk to prosecutors and law enforcement officers about how this could have happened, what is going on in the state, is this common?
How could it be common?
Very, very well-respected victims' rights advocate and veteran deputy district attorney for L.A. County, a liberal, by the way, named Kathleen Cady.
And in the course of my interview and telling this story, she said, what's so important about your story is that it's so relatable.
How is this in any way relatable that an MS-13 gang member, convicted felon, dreamer, illegal alien, could break into your house brazenly two nights in a row, probably armed, threatened to kill police officers, and get two years in prison?
And this is relatable?
So if that is the case, then the system...
It's fundamentally broken.
And in fact, I would go so far as to say that the entire...
Look, civilization is based around the social contract.
And the tenets of the social contract is that we surrender certain freedoms to the government, to the state, which is supposed to have a monopoly on violence.
The state, in turn, provides protection to us from the anarchic state of nature, as Hobbes put it.
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So let me just now maybe a time to ask a question about like just the change in who lives in California.
So I lived in LA as a kid.
I think it was overwhelmingly white, the city, and now it's overwhelmingly non-white.
That's not a racist statement to acknowledge.
It's a fact.
And it's taken by the Department of Census every 10 years.
And it's a massive change.
It's an incredibly abrupt change.
In fact, it's a bigger change than probably any civilization ever in history has experienced except during war, except during invasion.
But California is by far has the greatest foreign, you know, presence in the state.
And I think that, you know, the reason for this is that we long ago, you know, and long before these laws that I've been discussing and will discuss, enacted policies that incentivized I will tell you,
the junior prosecutors I talked to for this research say that under George Gaston, and this also is applied to other jurisdictions, including actually under Kamala's policies,
but In L.A. County, illegal aliens who commit certain crimes are given special plea deals that would never, ever, ever be given to a U.S. citizen for the specific purpose of protecting them from ICE. So, to me, that's a due process violation.
So I do think anybody who advocates for not just illegal immigration or mass immigration, but...
Any immigration of any kind has to account first for California.
So here's a state in which it's been tried to the greatest possible extent, and it went from the best state to the worst state.
Now, maybe you could say immigration had nothing to do with that, but you can't say immigration didn't change California, and the fact is California has become a much worse place to live, and the immigration numbers from California prove that.
That oligarchy is always at your doorstep and in reach, and if it's not vigilantly guarded against, it will consume you, it will terrorize you, it will control every aspect of your life and reduce you to a state of misery.
Because California has now stratified into something that, you know, I think Victor Davis Hanson has very eloquently We've discussed over the years, which is that California has actually regressed into some kind of political economy that is reflecting neo-feudalism,
even, where you have a very small, extremely rich, the most powerful, super rich in the world, and an underclass of serfs.
And the middle class, Have left and are leaving more and more costs of living, other reasons, de-industrialization, you know, the overall disintegration of the state, which the elites are insulated from, of course.
And so the aristocracy rules the state, and yet in California, because language is manipulated, In almost Orwellian fashion, oligarchy has become to mean progressive.
I guess what, and I've heard Victor say that thing, and I've nodded along as he said it, and not to be picky about it, but if I could just defend feudalism against what we're seeing in California right now, the idea of feudalism, while repugnant to the American mind, in my mind, Was still based on mutual need.
The guy who owned the property, the lord of the manor, was dependent upon his serfs as they were dependent upon him.
For sure, but I guess what I'm saying is, over time, a feudal family had a built-in incentive to, at the bare minimum, make sure that their serfs weren't dying of fentanyl ODs.
Yeah, I guess they don't, maybe to put a finer point on it, the people who, whereas the lord in feudalism needed the labor of the serfs, the lords of California do not need the labor of their serfs.
And so California's government and, frankly, uneducated voters have inflicted a grievous tort upon the state.
And I think that it is so reckless that, to me, it is psychotic.
It is a form of psychotic, sociopathic behavior.
And certainly many of the people implementing these policies are raving psychopaths.
A really impressive young deputy district attorney in Alameda County said to me, with respect to the kind of progressive DA of that county named Pamela Price, that she's, quote, a raging psychopath who wants to burn down civilization.
And I will tell you that every prosecutor that I spoke to, and I spoke to 10, Over the course of 30 hours of interviews, and I also spoke to, you know, equal number of cops.
But the one commonality that every single prosecutor I talked to mentioned was that there seems to be a motivation by the true believers of burning the system down.
I mean, look, if you're asking, I mean, of course, like, personal power, right?
So, like, George Gascon is not, you know, it's been told to me by people who would know him that he's not particularly ideological.
He was a lousy LAPD cop that apparently everyone hated.
He moved to Arizona at some point, got a law degree in an unaccredited law school, and through the machinations of the one-party state, which of course elevates people based entirely on, has this identity checkmark been met or not?
Kamala is the avatar of that.
But he ends up as...
District Attorney of San Francisco and appointed by Gavin Newsom and mayor, succeeding Kamala Harris.
And he follows the money, you know, Steve Cooley puts this very eloquently, he follows the money, the Soros money, down to LA to run for a district attorney in 2020. And it just so happened that, you know...
This was the perfect ripe opportunity given the riots of the George Floyd incident and the mood of the nation at the time, particularly in California, when the most radical policies and people could rise to positions that was otherwise unimaginable.
He has put in directives the first day of his tenure that include, of course, no cash bail, no enhancements, no juveniles tried at adult court.
Obviously, no death penalty.
And he has also, this is particularly insidious, there is a parole committee called JACE. I forget exactly what that stands for, but basically it's an opportunity for victims to appear with their offenders who are up for parole and to make a statement.
And then this committee will decide on whether or not to grant parole.
And under Gascon, prosecutors who typically would accompany these victims for this, frankly, an ordeal, seeing your perpetrator again in a rape case, you can imagine what a trauma that is.
Well, Gascon said, Prosecutors are no longer allowed to accompany victims.
And in fact, what the victims are now required to do is to write a persuasive essay submitted to the committee, and the committee is stacked entirely of public defenders.
Well, let me put it this way, even more maybe relevant to the time that we're in.
I would say, how did Kamala Harris not know that?
Because Kamala Harris, as Attorney General of California in 2012, Under the auspices of so-called budget cutting, budget reform, eliminated a 100-year-old agency called the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
And it is widely held amongst law enforcement officers and on the prosecution side that this was a very important task force for fighting organized crime.
It had been doing so since Prohibition and then became a major force in disrupting narcotics trade in the state.
It's not clear to me whether that's happening to the extent I'm certainly, as expressed by Tom Homan when I spoke to him, he says that it's very hard often to distinguish the Mexican elite from the Mexican drug cartels.
There's an interwoven nexus.
And, of course, like in parts of Mexico, the cartels exert actual, like, authority and governance over certain regions.
A director of the LAPD union said to me that the cartels are increasingly committing ransom attacks in San Diego of high-profile families, and this is not getting reported.
Human trafficking is also a very serious problem in the state.
It's, of course, more lucrative in some ways than the drugs because they can be used over and over and over again as sex slaves.
It's like a recurring revenue stream.
Fentanyl should not be underplayed in any way.
Fentanyl produces like 200,000% margin.
And Fentanyl, according to one of the top gang enforcement detectives in LA County, based out of Compton, ex-Special Forces guy, black guy, incredible man, he said to me, Fentanyl, It's so ubiquitous, it's like salt.
And if you buy a pill off the street, it has fentanyl in it.
And that's why, you know, in fact, it's so deadly and so dangerous that even the cartels are thinking that maybe we need to come up with something not quite as lethal because we're killing our customers.
So you've had, you know, the black population of huge parts of LA moved east into the Inland Empire, murdered in huge numbers.
By newcomers.
And I've never heard, and Maxine Waters supposedly represents Compton, though she doesn't live there, but I've never heard a single black politician in California mention the fact that illegal immigration has completely overturned life for a lot of black people in California.
But on the other hand, if your job is to guard the prison and you're getting paid more than anybody else working for the state in California and the gangs run the prisons and there's something wrong with that formula.
So if we import 7 million military-age men into the United States illegally, which the Biden administration has done, it does raise the obvious question.
What is this?
Is this a mercenary army for the ruling class?
It certainly seems like one.
And if they're making them cops, then it kind of...
Well, let me tell you a story that's not been reported.
It's a cover-up.
And it was conveyed to me by a senior director of the LAPD Union.
It's called the LA Police Protective League.
And this is also a...
25-plus year veteran of the LAPD and a detective.
Both his daughters are in the LAPD. He is as plugged into this world as anyone.
In fact, he said to me in our interview, he says, I tell everyone, don't come to LA. We cannot protect you.
But on the DACA issue, apparently in February of...
Yeah, this last February, an off-duty LAPD detective encountered two members of the Serenio gang, which is a very violent, powerful Latino gang in Southern California.
They were attempting to steal his car.
So there was an exchange of gunfire, and the gangsters got away in their getaway car.
They were apprehended the next day, and it turns out that the car was registered to a DACA cadet in the LAPD, and the LAPD quietly shuffled her either out of the program or just covered it up entirely, but the LA Times did report on this incident.
Cops are increasingly finding alternative revenue streams by becoming private security officers for the elite.
And a lot of the officers that I talk to are doing that because it's so lucrative.
California has the highest pay rates for private security and the highest demand for private security in the nation.
And in fact, I'll just tell you, this is a difficult thing to substantiate for a variety of reasons, but I think it's interesting, which is that I heard from this L.A. County Sheriff, former Major Crimes Bureau lead, and now in private security, that he believed it was quite, you know...
Well-known but quietly known in the private security industry that George Soros or his proxies were investing significantly in private security businesses.
This was also confirmed to me by a former head of federal security for LAX and one of the top traders on Wall Street.
So, again, George Soros is...
Portfolio and transactions are private.
It's a family office.
We really don't know where the investments are going.
But I think it's quite striking to think that there may be other incentives beyond simply undermining the law for some kind of sake of creating a new world.
A dystopia, of course.
Nevertheless, I don't think a trader, a financial trader, maybe one of the greatest in the world, stops becoming a trader, right?
And I will tell you, everyone that I know, Democrats who have worked with her, including a very elite consulting firm that tried to manage her campaign at one point, they say that she is lazy.
Steve Cooley also says that, by the way.
She's a lazy prosecutor.
And she is vicious.
And when she doesn't do her homework...
And gets caught in, you know, word salads because she doesn't know what she's talking about.
She then lashes out on her staff.
So she's kind of like an even dumber version of Hillary Clinton.
And I think, fortunately, like, she's so inept that the country is starting to see that.
I pray to God, because if Kamala Harris rises to the level of the presidency, we now have basically exported.
California Nationwide.
And as I told you, in the name of my book, it is called Failed State, A Portrait of California in the Twilight of Empire.
Yeah, but she did not go after the cartels bringing in the drugs.
No, of course not.
No.
So, let's talk for a minute about who runs California.
So, you're from Southern California, as am I. I spent most of my childhood in Southern California, which was, you know, by far the most dynamic, prosperous part of the state, by far.
For sure.
Aerospace, you had some ag, obviously tourism, and then you had the creative industries, the movie business, the record business, both headquartered there.
It's all gone, except the ag.
But that's not the part of the state that runs everything.
So we went from that to, let's say, I think a month or so ago, the legislature put forward a bill that would give illegal aliens preferential mortgages.
Can I just say, because I can't contain my resentment, so ever since Prop 187 passed, and that was invalidated by a judge because it's a democracy where some judge gets to override the will of people.
It's also fake.
But ever since then, a certain kind of Republican consultant, and that would be the dumbest people I've ever met.
And I'm speaking specifically of Frank Luntz, the guy with the hairpiece, but there could be many others.
They've lectured Republicans about how 187 lost California.
And California used to be a reasonable, safe, secure state with really tough laws that put gangsters away and following...
The three strikes law and other reforms that came at the late 90s and into the early 2000s between 2000 and 2010 roughly.
It was a pretty damn good place.
Like Steve Cooley in Los Angeles.
You know, cleaned up a lot of the mess.
Even his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, did a relatively good job, although she was chased out of office by BLM. She's black.
She was chased out of office by and literally harassed her home by BLM activists because she was not, you know, in line with their anti-police, anti-incarceration agenda enough.
And so we then have George Gascon.
Who received $2 million from George Soros.
That was enough.
For a DA race, that actually was an extraordinary amount of money.
It's interesting because Soros played money ball with these DA races all over the country because he realized that...
The district attorneys have enormous power because they can set policy about what crimes are going to be prosecuted, which are not.
Some of these other directives that I mentioned earlier about cash bail and so forth, although George Soros is actively, excuse me, George S. Stone is actively in violation of state law and just operates nonetheless.
But Soros understood that with a few million bucks, You could change a DA race.
Like, why would you want, you're George Soros, you grew up in war-torn Europe, then you go to England, you helped destroy their economy, right?
Which he did.
And then you come to the United States, which is like the nicest country in the history of the world, and you decide you want to take your ill-gotten gains and use those funds to wreck someone else's country?
I talked to a lot of people about this, and, you know, initially, again, I didn't want to even go down the Soros, you know, rabbit hole, because I... Oh, you're not allowed.
I do not believe a world-class arbitrager, trader, ever kind of leaves that mindset.
It's always money that motivates.
So I think it's, you know, again, this is entirely speculation, but I would be very interested to see what is the portfolio of the family office of George Soros.
Is it real estate?
Because certainly the crimes surge in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles have depressed real estate in these downtown districts by 25% at least.
But as I said, there's people that I trust and who would be in a position to know that indicate that there is potentially other motivating factors, at least with respect to Soros.
Well, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
It used to be.
You know, like much of California.
In any event, the oligarchy that has been really in place for almost 100 years, starting with the Getty's involvement with the Newsom family and the Newsom's family involvement with Jerry Brown, goes back to the 1940s and 50s.
And the scions of each of these dynasties, all intermarried...
They were into business together.
Gavin Newsom's first big entrance into the scene was forming a restaurant group called Plump Jack, which was seeded by the Getty family and was also co-founded with...
Billy Getty, who is the son of Gordon Getty, who is the son of J. Paul Getty.
And the Eddies have funded Gavin's entire political career, and they've made that possible in the winery and restaurant group.
The success of that became a launching board into San Francisco city politics.
I think he was on the board of supervisors and then became mayor.
But always there was this commonality and nexus between Pelosi's family, Pelosi's husband, the Gettys, the Browns, and the Newsoms.
So they're the old money elite that have been running the state on or off since the 1940s.
I mean, of course, there have been Republican governors here and there.
It used to be, as we've...
We talked about a sort of moderate state.
Sometimes we voted for Democrats, sometimes we voted for Republicans.
Usually we voted for Republican candidates, presidential candidates.
The last one was George H.W. Bush.
But the accumulation of power amongst this circle really took hold after these changes that we've talked about.
In Southern California, the de-industrialization of Southern California, the exodus of at least 6 million middle-class Californians in the last decade, and the aerospace and defense leaving Southern California.
So LA then became a Democrat stronghold when it was once a Republican stronghold.
And power shifted to San Francisco.
And the other reason power shifted to San Francisco is because of the presence of tech, big tech.
Big tech is the new money, and the new money interweaves with the old money through VC investments and private placements and other sorts of social circles and Bohemian Grove, you name it.
So we then have a power structure of an industry that is made up of very few people, a lot of foreigners, by the way, of course, and these kind of dynastic, almost like ancient aristocrats in the manner of patron-client relationships that define this paradigm.
And they have formed an enormous, let's say, power block with tech.
And through that connection, California has been ruled by this oligarchy.
I mean, my mom's family got to California in the 1850s from Maine to find their fortune, and they did.
And so I've sort of gone there my whole life, was born there.
And it was, you know, I thought a nice city, liberal in some ways, very traditional in other ways, but kind of the same, like the city that saw the least amount of change.
And then after, during the tech boom, 99, 98, 99, all this money came in, not just the South Bay, renamed Silicon Valley, but into the city, particularly after 2000. And I thought, well, okay, San Francisco's really rich now.
It'll get better.
It was pretty nice, I thought, but it will get better.
The richer the city got, the dirtier it got, the more dangerous it got, the more chaotic it became.
When Twitter moved its head, because, you know, all tech was, again, south of the city, but then when the tech companies started moving into the city, like, oh, it's this beautiful city, it's our Cape Town.
And then it became like such a rich city, richest city in the United States.
So in Venice, California, Google has established a big office.
And Venice is marred by just tragic levels of homelessness that are shocking.
Shocking.
Sites that I had only seen when traveling to the poorest parts of Guatemala.
Maybe worse in some ways.
But right around the corner from the Google office in Venice is a, let's call it a shantytown, a favela even maybe.
But tent after tent after tent and right next to Google.
It's a fascinating dichotomy.
And I was told by someone who would know in the private security sector and a former cop that he has observed, because he has done work for Google, that gang members, local gangs, extract tribute from each homeless tent every single day, $20 to $50 a day.
And this is happening, he claims, across the city.
There's 75,000 homeless in Los Angeles.
And if they cannot meet the tribute, they are forced to sell drugs or other crimes.
And by the way, thanks to, I believe this was a Newsom policy, cops require, have to get search warrants to enter any tents.
So the tents have become denizens of...
Dens, rather, of murder, of rape, of drug, the worst kind of drug trade, and other forms of depravity that shock the senses.
I think, obviously, I'm too simple to understand the modern world, but I always thought that the problem was poverty, and that people committed crimes because they were poor.
And the richer your society became, the safer and more orderly it became.
But the exact opposite has been true.
And it makes you wonder, like, is there some evil emanating from these tech companies?
Answer, obviously, yes.
That inspires chaos, depravity, crime, violence, and filth.
But I wonder if the city of San Francisco, though, is such a great example of the failure of leadership and the failure of the ruling class to be vested in the society from which they're taking their riches.
In a normal society, the rich people would say, hey, I live here.
My kids live here.
You can't do that shit.
Get off the sidewalk.
We're going to make the San Francisco Police Department the most efficient and highly endowed police department in the world.
And he was a liberal, but also one with a sense of duty to do the job.
But I think what happened is sometime around, again, around the late 2000s, when Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris really came into their power structures, especially San Francisco.
You know, I've also heard it's compared to, like, the fact that we have a full-time legislature versus Texas that has a part-time legislator, and that has a moderating effect.
I think that's, like, a good analog for comparison.
I mean, Sacramento is out of control.
There's supermajorities, Democratic supermajorities in both houses.
There's not a single Republican at any...
There's an administrative officer-level position in the state.
I think the last one was maybe an insurance commissioner.
Yeah, I went to her house in Atherton, speaking of Atherton, at that time.
What is it you would think that the Republican off-soldiers in the state, the few who remain, would be even clearer-eyed and more resolute, but they seemed even more cucked than they were?
I mean, Marc Andreessen, who's the biggest VC in the state, has come out for Trump publicly.
So that's good, but I just mean within the state of California, as long as you're going to have a corrupt one-party state, as long as it's going to be Guatemala, okay, fine, that's what we are now, why don't the oligarchs get together and just say, well, we're at least going to have, I don't know, nice roads and functional schools, and your daughter's not going to get raped on the way to CVS. Like, why not just do that?
So the idea for societies that are stratified by class and where there is especially an aristocracy that has a political hegemony as well as social power.
There was a sense, I think, in those kind of societies in the past, even frankly, you know, within the United States, that there were certain responsibilities as a noble to your county, to your city, to your, you know, land, and so forth.
So, like, when we talk about neo-feudalism and maybe how that's not a perfect analog, I would add in support of your approach is, well, at least in feudalism, they believed in God.
I would say that, you know, if you're going to make historical comparisons to, like, let's say, are we in a new Dark Age?
You could argue that, you know, the so-called Dark Ages was characterized by a separation from...
Hellenism and classical ideas and literacy, right?
And so I think you could argue, frankly, that modern America, actually modern society as a whole, and this is especially true in California, is also disconnected from its history.
I think that's exactly right, and I think good weather plays a huge role in this.
Places with really good weather, you see this on Australia as well, allow people to sort of drift along in a state of content, numbness, and they don't ever, they're sort of content with...
You know, an ever-declining standard of living and an ever-shrinking basket of freedoms.
At this point in California, you have the right to have an abortion.
And California is a Latin American country basically now.
With some recognizable Latin America country problems, like rule by cartel and corrupt politics and the rest, one-party state.
But at some point, it's going to be characterized by another feature of Latin American society, which is fascist interludes, where you're going to have a military junta or some strongman takeover California, and all these new immigrants, they're not.
Rich white liberals, actually, they probably don't think theft should be legal.
So that's very different from the state that you and I grew up in, completely different, which was basically an egalitarian state where even rich people, like, I grew up in a rich part of the state, and we didn't feel like we were a class apart, that everyone else was a serf, you know what I mean?
I didn't drive through the Central Valley feeling like, I have nothing in common with these people.
I feel like, well, they're Californians, just like me.
Victor Davis Hanson, who was very kind in helping me with some of the research for my book, made some incredible insights on the comparison of the late Roman Empire, really the period between 376 AD and 476 AD, and what we're experiencing now in California.
Because the 5th century is when we think of the end of Rome, but we forget that there was at least a century preceding that where it was like on the way to the fall.
And it was characterized by things that are eerily similar to what we're seeing in California.
So, of course, there is the erosion of borders.
There is the influx of...
Of migrants, about I think like one or two million from Germanic and Huns into Rome, not assimilated, breakdown of law at the county levels, a disconnect from the capital.
And it's the sense that these, like, these actions or inactions, rather, over time that seem incremental lead to outcomes that actually produce Incredible evil and violence.
So after Prop 57, 2016, that passes, we jump ahead to 2020, where I think everything broke down across the world, but especially in the United States and especially in California.
And as a result of the George Floyd riots, which, by the way, all of the law enforcement officers I've talked to who were there and were there for the 1992 riots say these two cannot even be closely compared.
Gangsters in L.A.
during the George Floyd riots were laughing their asses off because they didn't give a shit about George Floyd at all.
Everyone knew he was just a some armed robber drives with fentanyl.
So after the riots and there was a momentous push for, again, I call it crime equity legislation.
And this took the form of two laws that have been absolutely devastating.
And I think that they probably will ultimately get thrown out by the Supreme Court because they're so egregious.
The first is called the Racial Justice Act of 2020. And the Racial Justice Act of 2020 allows defendants, and it's retroactive, To challenge their convictions based on the presence of bias or racial animus by, let's say, anyone involved in the trial or on the police side.
That doesn't have to have any bearing on whether or not the evidence supports their guilt at all.
Under the Racial Justice Act, these statistical differences can be entered into consideration by the judge on whether or not to apply the RJA. That's just like the end of civilization.
It gets worse.
The same year, Sacramento passed AB 3070. AB 3070...
Took away the ability of prosecutors to apply peremptory challenges to prospective jurors on the basis of bias.
So, for instance, up until AB 3070, if a juror would say, my son had been arrested or I have a negative opinion of police, So on and so forth.
This would be a cause by which a prosecutor could use a peremptory challenge to remove the juror.
Well, under AB 3070, if this juror is a member of a protected group, which, by the way, includes gender identity.
And the OJ jury, by the way, never got the credit.
We never learned a single thing from that.
We spent our entire lives hearing about all white juries being bad, but here we had a jury that just let a guy get away with murdering two people because those people were a skin color that was fine for them to be murdered.
I think that there are some problems that become so embedded and given the multifaceted nature of this dysfunction and the complexity of the problems and the entrenched interest groups that do not have any incentive to modify a system that has enriched them.
So I think maybe the lesson for me, just as a listener to this incredible story that you've just told, the main lesson is that civilization is really fragile.
You don't maintain it without continuous effort and vigilance.
And you really have to be radical in preserving it.
And once it goes away, it doesn't necessarily come back.
And you should not participate at all in unjust systems at all.
Why should the politicians in Europe and in this country who facilitated the invasion of their countries and displacement and diffusion of their native indigenous populations as a form of let's face it, a form of ethnic cleansing?
Why should those politicians who enacted those laws not be subject to the same kind of standard that was applied in the Nuremberg trials?
Is that really any different than what's happening when 7 million people have come across the U.S. southern border with impunity and are going to most likely probably become citizens unless Trump, God willing, wins?
And reverse that?
I mean, times are very dark, Tucker, and I don't know if there's a positive message to be made, except I pray that our leadership, at least the federal level...
We'll write the ship and perhaps California over time can come back to some semblance of what it once was because it is the defacement of a grand work of art.
In Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the prettiest cities, in fact, I would say the prettiest cities we have by far, both of them in their very different ways, but it is destroying art and irreplaceable art.
And as a birthright Californian who's living in his great-grandparents' house, You're one of the few in LA who can say that.