May. 22, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT
Spencer Pratt doesn’t approve of all the Trump comparisons.
The former reality TV star gets them a lot these days. He’s a celebrity — best known for his breakout role on MTV’s “The Hills” two decades ago — who is now running for mayor of Los Angeles. He doesn’t have much experience in politics or city government, but he comes with an A-list Rolodex and a built-in fanbase that includes more than five million followers across X, Meta and TikTok. He’s bombastic, confident and has a habit of rambling his way through speeches that veer into conspiracy theory. And, by his own admission, he has harbored an absurd, borderline toxic obsession with money since he was a teen.
Pratt, 42, is a registered Republican, but rejects the notion that he is aligned with MAGA or following in Trump’s footsteps. In February, while gathering signatures at an early campaign event on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, he joined the livestream of celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton to give his elevator pitch to be mayor. When Hilton asked about claims he’s a MAGA candidate, Pratt pushed back.
“I’m not a political person — I’m somebody with basic expectations of our tax money and our quality of living,” he told Hilton.
Pratt’s primary motivation for the career pivot, he said, stemmed from the Palisades fire that ravaged his neighborhood last January, destroying his family home and killing a dozen of his neighbors. He blames Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom for the devastation, which he believes was preventable were it not for the “corruption” in city government.
Talking about the fires on Hilton’s show, Pratt began to ramble, meandering through allegations of deceit and misconduct at the hands of a mysterious “they” who he said were misappropriating fire recovery funds and purposefully “increasing homelessness” in LA to defraud taxpayers.
This election, Pratt said, is a matter of good versus “evil,” and he’s waging “spiritual warfare” on behalf of his future constituents, who, in Pratt’s telling, have fairly simple requests.
“They just want to go on TikTok, have their Wi-Fi working, and be able to not step in human poop or a fentanyl needle on the walk to get their matcha. That’s who I represent,” he said.
As a Republican in a deep-blue city, Pratt was a longshot candidate on day one of his campaign. He’s also a career entertainer with no experience running for office, let alone running a city of 3.8 million people. And he has earned support from MAGA loyalists, establishment Republicans and even Trump himself, making him a tough sell in a city and state the president casts as a leftist “trash heap.” Pratt, too, seems to prioritize sparring with his political opponents and railing against quality-of-life issues on social media over laying out detailed policy plans for voters.
LA Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign “block party” event on May 20, » …