Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused reality television star Spencer Pratt of “exploiting the grief” of Palisades fire victims as he seeks to oust her from office, completely ignoring that he was a victim of those fires.
Pratt, known for the TV series The Hills, received a helpful boost to his mayoral campaign last week when billionaire Jeanie Buss, governor of the Los Angeles Lakers, donated the maximum amount to his campaign, elevating his potential chances. His popularity with aggrieved voters also accelerated when his first campaign ad — in which he criticizes Bass for living in a multimillion-dollar home while Angelenos suffer — went viral with over 12 million views.
Part of the reason why Pratt’s message has resonated so strongly with voters mainly stems from the fact that his home, which he shared with reality television star Heidi Montag, burned to ash in the Palisades Fire of 2025, prompting his entry into public activism.
During an appearance on MSNOW with Katie Phang, Bass called Pratt “reprehensible,” accusing him of exploiting others’ grief, seemingly unaware of the very grief he personally experienced when his home burned down along with thousands of others in his neighborhood.
“Honestly, before this, I had never even heard of Spencer Pratt,” the mayor said.
“But the thing I am concerned about is that I feel like he’s exploiting the grief of people in the Palisades. And I think that’s reprehensible. That’s the main thing. And I think that he is about his own celebrity, he’s famous now again,” she added.
Bass even recommended that Pratt take a “basics civics course,” blaming the wildfires on “climate change.”
“He could benefit by a basic civics course, because I don’t think he understands the basics of how any government works,” she said. “For me, these fires, it was the worst natural disaster that we experienced in our city. At the root of it, we have to get adjusted to, just like everybody else in the nation, to different weather experiences because of climate change.”
Pratt later responded to Bass’s assertions during an appearance on Fox News, calling her statements “diabolical.”
“Karen Bass let my house burn down, and my parents’ house burn down, and I had actual neighbors burn alive across the street from my childhood home,” he said. “The only grief is my grief, my community’s grief that I initially started this fight on behalf of.”
“It’s the most insane, psycho, diabolical thing I’ve heard in a minute,” he added.