I'm Isaac Doberra. Welcome to Off Message. Today's guest, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Garcetti and I met to talk in D.C. last week, but at the beginning of June, he's headed to Wisconsin to speak at the State Democratic Convention there.

The past couple months, I've run into him all over the place. In Washington, he also gave three different speeches at the Democratic National Committee elections in Atlanta when we were there, in part, to record that podcast with Donna Brazile.

Crazy as it may seem right now, he might be up to exactly what the most politically suspicious out there would think.

I'm not focused on running for president was how he tried briefly to deflect when I asked him if he's looking at the 2020 race.

We were sitting in a room one floor up from where he'd just spoken at the Ideas Conference

hosted by the Center for American Progress, which they eagerly promoted as the first roundup

of potential Democratic candidates.

And they picked him to give the opening keynote.

He's 46, he's just been re-elected to a second term in a landslide, half Mexican and half

Jewish,

a Rhodes Scholar, former Navy Intelligence Reserve Officer.

Hillary Clinton thought he was handsome, and that helped keep him in play in the consideration

to be her running mate, according to people that I talked to.

So his deflection about 2020 lasted about 20 seconds.

At a time when cities are stepping up their opposition to Trump, mayors around the country

and other Democrats are buzzing about Garcetti.

And he talked through all of that.

He wasn't really shy about it, said that this is a moment for people to stop thinking by

the old rules.

Asked him whether that meant to start thinking about him, and he didn't say no.

He talked about how Donald Trump's presidency affects the Olympic bid he's trying to win for

...