JD Vance Calls LA’s Skid Row a ‘Third-World Country’ in Interview With Joe Rogan

Vice President JD Vance criticized California during an interview with Joe Rogan, describing Los Angeles’ Skid Row as “more like a third-world country” while criticizing the state’s political culture, questioning its election system, and arguing Californians should adopt voter ID.

Recalling his first visit to Skid Row, Vance said the conditions shocked him.

“This part of America is actually more like a third world country than anything that I thought we’d ever become,” Vance said while discussing Skid Row, the roughly 50-block district in downtown Los Angeles that is home to nearly 4,000 homeless people under Mayor Karen Bass’ administration.

Rogan then asked Vance why major population centers like Los Angeles and New York are almost always run by Democrats.

Vance argued there are two reasons. First, he said celebrities, influencers, and Hollywood overwhelmingly lean left, encouraging young people to adopt similar views. Second, he said conservatives increasingly choose to leave big cities for suburban communities—a trend he described as “cultural self-segregation.”

The conversation then shifted to this year’s Los Angeles mayoral primary.

Rogan called the election “very suspicious,” citing allegations that homeless people were paid to vote a certain way and arguing that candidate Spencer Pratt performed well in in-person voting before mail-in ballots disproportionately favored Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, pushing Pratt out of the runoff.

“It’s like you were designing the vote share in order to kick Pratt out and put the third person into second place,” Vance said. “That to me is very, very bizarre.”

Rogan also criticized California’s mail-in voting system, arguing that widespread mail voting should not be permitted outside of limited circumstances, such as military members serving overseas or people physically unable to vote in person.

“I think they cheat and I think they’ve been doing it forever, and I don’t think there’s any other reason why you would have no voter ID,” said Rogan.

Vance and Rogan’s discussion comes just months before Californians will vote on whether to adopt a voter ID requirement.

Despite criticizing conditions in the state, Vance said California remains too important to abandon.

“California is a quintessential part of the American dream,” Vance said. “If you abandon California, you’ve lost something very core to American culture.”