Did Spencer Pratt Win Last Night’s Los Angeles Mayoral Debate?
Nithya Raman had just finished criticizing Los Angeles’ homelessness spending when the debate moderators turned to Spencer Pratt for his reaction. “Mayor Bass would like to respond,” Pratt said, stunning the moderators into silence by giving up his time. The former reality star—whose campaign is using social media to conjure a lurid Democratic dystopian LA stocked with fentanyl, super meth, and “free pussies” for transgender migrants—had, for a fleeting moment, sounded statesmenlike. “I’m a nice person actually,” Pratt added after yielding to Mayor Bass yet again.With no governing experience and a résumé built in reality television, Pratt, the lone Republican in the race, needed to prove during last night’s LA mayoral debate at the Skirball Cultural Center that he could do more than churn out AI generated social media clips and lob insults at his opponents. And for stretches of the night, he cleared that bar simply by sounding articulate. “I’m the adult in the room,” Pratt said. “This is what it’s come to.” An informal online poll conducted by NBC4-LA showed that 89% of respondents thought that Pratt won the debate.Even before Wednesday night’s debate, Pratt was already winning the race for eyeballs and social media impressions. While Mayor Karen Bass and councilmember Nithya Raman campaigned like conventional Democrats, Pratt has flooded social media with algorithmically optimized meme warfare—using Trumpian nicknames like “Karen Basura” and posting hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of homeless people to his feeds to hammer home his message that the city is not safe under current leadership.A viral AI-generated video promoting The Hills star imagines Los Angeles as a kind of apocalyptic Gotham—Pratt plays a sort of body positive Batman, while Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom, and Kamala Harris appear as 18th century aristocrats presiding over the city’s collapse. A mother in distress is seen begging the governor to keep schools safe from “homeless drug addicts.” “If you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy,” the deepfaked Newsom responds. The video has raked in millions of views across social media platforms since filmmaker Charlie Curran posted it on Tuesday and Pratt amplified it to his followers.Spencer Pratt on Fox & Friends, January 2026.
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