Spencer Pratt, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, finds himself on the defensive after TMZ reported that he is actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air instead of living in a trailer on his burned property in Palisades.
TMZ’s Harvey Levin and co-executive producer Charles Latibeaudiere confronted Pratt on this matter during an interview. Levin pointed out, “The campaign ad certainly made it seem that you were living in that trailer, it was a high point of the commercial. But you’re at the Hotel Bel-Air, so, kind of undo that for us.” This reference was about Pratt’s viral campaign advertisement.
In the ad, Pratt showcases the home of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and the “$3 million mansion” of City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. He then shows his own living situation: an Airstream trailer on a burned lot, stating, “This is where I live. They let my home burn down.”
Pratt responded to Levin, clarifying, “No, to be clear… that is where I live. That’s where Mayor Bass burned down my house. That’s where I will live until I have a new house. The Airstream is a temporary facility. A hotel is a temporary facility. Where my kids are in Santa Barbara right now is a temporary housing. This is where I live… This is the consequences of their failed leadership. And again, I don’t live at the Hotel Bel-Air. I don’t live in the Airstream. I don’t live in Santa Barbara. I don’t have a house. They burned it down.”
He also mentioned he had hired a security team because of death threats. “This idea that anyone’s like, ‘Oh, he’s at a hotel’—I’m at a hotel because these psychopaths are messaging me every day saying they’re going to kill me, because Nithya Raman is calling me a fascist, because I don’t want people to have their kids next to drug addicts at the park or stepping in human poop when you get your matcha. I have common sense; that’s not fascism,” Pratt asserted.
Levin continued to press him, asking, “Are you saying you live in that trailer?” to which Pratt firmly replied, “I don’t live anywhere, is what I’m saying. I don’t have a house. They burned it down, Harvey. I don’t have a house. Period.”
Pratt seemed frustrated with Levin and Latibeaudiere’s line of questioning. It felt like TMZ was engaging in a sort of semantic trap. Pratt’s emphasis appeared to be on the fact that, despite his current living arrangements, he remains a resident of Palisades. He does not claim to “live” in the Hotel Bel-Air—he’s simply staying there because of the loss of his home.
To be fair, he may not have expressed this point as clearly as he could have, though many social media users seemed to understand his perspective. TMZ also ran a poll on social media, asking followers if they thought Pratt’s campaign ad was misleading now that he’s revealed to be living in a luxury hotel rather than a trailer. The poll received more than 9,700 votes, and nearly 94% said “No, his house is gone!”
If this situation is the worst scandal Pratt encounters during his campaign, he might actually be one of the cleaner candidates to run in recent history.
