From the free press, this is honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss.

A lot of people are wondering if things in Los Angeles would look different right now,

if Rick Caruso had won the mayoral race against Karen Bass in 2022.

If he had been mayor when the devastating fires began last month,

would he have prevented over 20,000 acres from burning to the ground, an area

about two times the size of Manhattan? At the time Caruso ran, many privately supported

the billionaire real estate mogul, scared to come out publicly against the candidate backed

by Barack Obama, Shonda Rimes, and Ariana Grande. But now many in L.A. are texting

me saying they wish he had won, and they wish they had done more to make him win. Indeed, some of

these lifelong Democrats are saying that they're Republicans, or the very least, their whatever

Karen Bass isn't. Caruso may have lost that race, but he's acting a lot like a de facto public official

right now, launching and funding a nonprofit he calls Steadfast L.A. He's leveraged his connections

to get everyone from Netflix to Amazon to J.P. Morgan to help restore critical infrastructure

in the city, to rebuild homes with the help of AI, and to figure out ways

to use America's most advanced technology to prevent future fires. Now everyone is watching

to see what Rick Caruso does next. Will he run for mayor again, or perhaps even governor

of California? And most pressingly, can Rick Caruso figure out a way to save Los Angeles.

I also ask him about ethical issues around inmates and private sector firefighters and hot-button

topics in California, like DEI in public schools and Trump's plans for immigration.

Today on Honestly, all of that and much more. Stay with us.

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