Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt said he’s not looking for anyone’s endorsement as he continues his bid for Los Angeles mayor ahead of the June 2 election.
“I don’t need anyone’s endorsement but mothers’. That’s who’s getting me elected,” Pratt told NBC News on Thursday. “People keep forgetting it’s Democratic moms that do not feel safe that are putting me in office in five days.”
Pratt’s comments come after U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he’d like to see Pratt “do well” in his Los Angeles mayoral campaign.
“I’d like to see him do well, he’s a character. I don’t know him. I assume he probably supports me. I heard he does. I heard he’s a big MAGA person. He’s doing well,” Trump told reporters.
Trump went on to discuss his thoughts on “rigged” ballots in California.
“You have a really rigged vote in California. You have all the mail-in ballots, everything else. Very hard to win because the elections are very dishonest. If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California,” Trump said.
The Los Angeles mayoral candidate, who rose to fame alongside his wife, Heidi Montag, on The Hills, was asked if he thinks Trump is a “good president” during his sit-down with NBC News.
“The only prism I see anything is what I live. My town burning down. That’s what got me in the race. I’m in a local race. The president has nothing to do with why my streets have naked drug addicts,” Pratt said. “My streets don’t have lights in the poles. My streets have potholes all over. My town burned down.
“I don’t care what’s going on in the national politics, in other states. I am running for a local position.”
Pratt announced his campaign in January at an event marking the one-year anniversary of the deadly Palisades fire, which destroyed his home and thousands of others. He’s been very vocal about the fire during his mayoral campaign, often blaming Mayor Karen Bass for the destruction.
“When people ask, ‘What is Spencer Pratt from The Hills doing running for the mayor of Los Angeles? How is he qualified?’ What would you say,” NBC News’ Tom Llamas asked Pratt.
“Well, thankfully, Mayor Bass’s failure was a national story when she let 7,000 homes burn to the ground when she was out of the country in Ghana and 12 people, my neighbours, burned alive,” Pratt responded. “And when nobody ran against her, I had to step up so that she didn’t just go in to get four more years after being an utter failure for Los Angeles.”
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Pratt said he thinks the national story is why he’s “surging across the country because they say, ‘Finally, someone is stepping up against these politicians that can burn your whole town down.’”
The 42-year-old former reality star said he is aware that people know him as a villain on TV but claims he was just doing that to make money.
“I’m the look-around candidate. I just say, ‘Look around. Use your own eyes. Do you see what I’m talking about?’ They don’t need to worry about what I was before my house burned down and before I got in the race because they look around. They see what I’m running on. I’m running on making the streets safe,” he added.
Pratt went on to reveal that he thinks running for mayor is “not fun” because he has to have 24-hour security with “the amount of death threats.”
“My kid now has to have his security next to him when he goes in the ocean because psychos come to the beach. This is not like, ‘Oh, I get to be on a new show,’” Pratt said.
The author of The Guy You Loved to Hate said people are voting for him because he’s the “mandate in change.”
“That’s why they’re voting for me. Not because I’m Spencer Pratt, not because what I did 20 years ago, not what I did two years ago. It’s because what I’m saying right now,” he added.
Global News has reached out to Pratt for further comment, but has not received a response.
When Bass was recently asked about Pratt drawing national attention, she dismissed him as a political dilettante.
“He is an entertainer and that’s what he’s doing is entertaining,” Bass said.
She also questioned how Pratt would be received in a city where less than 15 per cent of voters are registered as Republicans, The Associated Press reports.
“This is Los Angeles,” Bass said. “This is not a MAGA city.”
On Wednesday night, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel spoke about the reality TV star-turned-political candidate during his monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“So then you get a guy … whose profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows and his house burns down,” Kimmel continued. “So even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn’t believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down.”
Kimmel said that because Pratt is “a moderately famous person, he gets attention.”
“For the first time in his life, people are agreeing with what he has to say. It’s hard not to agree with what he has to say. He’s angry about the same problems a lot of people here are angry about. Does he have solutions to those problems? No,” Kimmel added.
The late-night host went on to ask his viewers if they believe that Pratt wants to be “sitting in city council meetings all day talking about zoning.”
“No. He wants to be a star again. And guess what? It’s working,” Kimmel said. “This is exactly what Donald Trump did. I know this for a fact: Donald Trump ran for president because his TV show was going to get cancelled and he wanted to be relevant again.”
Pratt responded to Kimmel’s monologue in a post on X, writing, “Jimmy’s secretly voting for me.”
— with files from The Associated Press
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