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Rewind about 15 years or so, and Spencer Pratt was a run-of-the-mill reality TV villain.
He famously burned through his The Hills earnings — including spend a massive sum on “therapeutic” crystals.
Now, he’s running to be mayor of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we cannot rule out that he could win.
But it’s possible that telling one huge lie on the campaign trail could derail his run.
‘You can’t fake that’
The January 2025 Los Angeles fires were devastating.
Take it from someone who’s been in a “once in a century” disaster: cleanup and recovery from catastrophes like that take years.
But disaster and the long road to rebuilding can be very inviting for opportunists who want to ride the wave of anger and frustration by pretending that they can do better.
Pratt clearly hopes to capitalize on the horrific wildfire, insisting to CBS News and others that his reality TV antics were “strategic” and all in conjunction with producers.
“I’m being very strategic to win and save L.A., but there’s no strategy when you’re standing in an Airstream on your burned out town,” he claimed. “You can’t fake that.”
It turns out that you can, very much, fake living in an Airstream trailer.
TMZ exposed Pratt’s claim, noting that he has actually been residing in the Hotel Bel-Air for over a month. Rooms there can go for as much as $2,000 per night.
His wife, Heidi Montag, is with their children in Santa Barbara.
When confronted with what appears to be a transparent lie, Pratt told TMZ: “I have never told anyone I lived there.”
As you can see in the clip of his ad that this next video uses before debunking it, Pratt declared: “This is where I live.”
He argues that his campaign lie is ‘semantics’
“That is where I live,” Pratt insisted when confronted about his lie. “That’s where Karen Bass, Mayor Bass, burnt down my house.”
We should just interject and note that Mayor Bass did not start the wildfire. There are legitimate grievances against any politician, and some are unfairly blamed for slow recovery after a disaster.
Pretending that the mayor’s office committed arson seems, at best, childish.
“That is where I will live until I have a new house,” Pratt continued. “The Airstream is a temporary facility. A hotel is a temporary facility.”
Insisting that his lie was merely a technicality even after making it the heart of his campaign ads, he continued: “Where my kids are in Santa Barbara right now is a temporary housing — this is semantics.”
It’s never gonna stop being funny/sad how absolutely *terrified* conservative men are of just like… cities.
— David Slack (@slack2thefuture.bsky.social) May 12, 2026 at 10:07 PM
Pratt’s campaign has also drawn fire for a grotesque use of generative AI slop. It’s an odd choice for someone who is supposedly campaigning because of a natural disaster to support the tech that leads to worse climate and less available water.
One particularly malicious billboard appears to show a slop image of his own wife pushing a stroller through a homeless encampment, a blaze behind her, and “Zombieland” written in place of the Hollywood sign.
Vilifying the unhoused is a common sinister move. Likening them to the ravenous undead is particularly vile.
Despite Pratt’s obvious lack of qualifications and the things that have been transparently wrong with him, on and off of reality television, for a good two decades now … we cannot rule out that an unqualified reality TV dirtbag will win. It’s happened at higher offices than mayor.
Hopefully, the people of Los Angeles will see through both provable lies and incendiary slop and keep Pratt irrelevant. And perhaps someone can figure out where his funding is coming from.
Spencer Pratt Caught Lying in Mayoral Campaign, Doubles Down was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.