Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hit back at Karen Bass in a powerful new ad after she accused him of “exploiting” the grief of Palisades Fire victims as part of his campaign.
The new ad features Pratt, best known for TV’s The Hills, exploring the ruins of his charred lot with his wife, Heidi Montag, along with his mother, Janet Pratt, who also lost her home in the fire. The ad takes an emotional turn when Pratt’s mother breaks down in tears as she reflects upon how long it will take for the Pacific Palisades to get back to normal.
“I feel like all I do is cry,” Janet tells her son in the video. “I just really wish we could’ve sold our lot and bought a house in Santa Monica on Montana. The Palisades is just so depressing.”
Pratt then reassures her that it would be easier “to sell a house you build on a lot, than selling just a lot.”
“It’s way more chance to buy a brand new, nobody’s-lived-in house than that dirt lot,” Spencer tells his increasingly tearful mother.
“Because the Palisades isn’t going to come back for a long time,” Janet says. “And it’s so depressing. I just got to pull myself together.”
On Monday, during an appearance on MSNOW with Katie Phang, Bass ignited severe backlash on social media when she called Pratt “reprehensible” while accusing him of exploiting the grief of wildfire victims, ignoring the fact that he personally experienced that said grief 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.