Full interview: Spencer Pratt

[0:00] all right we'll just jump right in okay so la voters saw for the first time who you're all about [0:07] on the debate stage how do you think you did incredible because all i say is common sense [0:13] i don't do the politician talk and i think it's refreshing to people hear somebody speak from the [0:19] heart be authentic and what i'm talking about is what thousands of moms message me every day come [0:25] up to me they don't feel safe and i'm saying as mayor i'm going to enforce the laws that exist [0:31] to make moms and kids feel safe in front of their schools on their sidewalks in front of parks in [0:36] front of daycare so that message resonates so i don't think it could have gotten better because [0:42] my opponents will not tell these mothers anything they want to hear about keeping them safe they'll [0:48] continue this path that we've been on and we see does not work the combined i think that's what 10 [0:54] years these two have been in the city and nobody feels safe and this idea that crime is down you [0:59] can talk to any of these moms or people and message me nobody even bothers calling 911 because [1:04] unless you're actually being shot at the response time nobody they'll be like go online they don't [1:10] have the resources right now because of the amount of drug addicts taking all the law enforcement [1:14] resources the fire department resources so long long answer i felt like it was great yeah you mentioned [1:22] that uh people see you as you know you're an outsider you're your breath of fresh air uh you have [1:28] not been in the system like your other uh two candidates it's one thing the easy part is [1:34] criticizing where the mayor and the council go wrong right that's the easy part the hard part is [1:39] actually running a city why should voters believe that you who don't have any experience in that realm [1:46] can actually be the solution yeah because we're living their experience right now their experience has [1:52] failed us so what we need is somebody to come in with common sense they're going to continue their [1:57] experience is to tell you that all these people are just need a bed we need more billions of dollars [2:03] for these beds the dea has said 90 of the people living on the streets in los angeles are drug addicts [2:11] drug addicts do not want beds they want drugs we need mandatory treatment i don't mean jail they don't [2:17] need to get jail but we need to get mandatory medical treatment to get people off of super meth get them off of [2:23] fentanyl and then we can work on getting them beds and i also don't think the current bed situation they [2:29] have even works because say these people are sober you have your sticks maybe a veteran here and a former [2:37] criminal here with a single mother with a kid all in one house or building with no services for these [2:43] people if they're even inside safe isn't even safe for the people inside and it's not safe for the people [2:49] outside and again i may not have the experience but i have the common sense to say this is not working [2:55] we watched them for an hour last night make excuses why it's not we know why it's not working you've had [3:01] years and billions of our tax dollars to prove it's not working and now you want more billions of dollars [3:08] for more beds with the billions you've got you're you're bragging about 3 000 people 4 000 people they're [3:14] not even talking about the 1500 people that died in the streets overdosed dead they don't even count [3:19] that number from last year so again the amount of very talented smart successful people with [3:27] experience that call me all day long the lunches i take the people waiting to come in to my [3:32] administration a lot of them i can't say their names right now because the city really does retaliate [3:36] of people look at what they did to chief crowley when she told the truth she got fired now she's suing [3:41] mayor bass for that so there's a lot of people i have as deputy mayors ready to go with a lot 40 plus [3:48] years of experience running major cities that are waiting for the right time that we can bring them [3:53] out but again i'm not saying i know all the answers what i'm saying is i'm going to put a team around me [3:58] mayor bass i keep saying this why my house was burning down and she was in ghana her deputy mayor who [4:04] was supposed to be calling in the fixed air wing support to drop water on our on the state park here he [4:10] wasn't because he was on house arrest for calling in a bomb threat to city hall if that's the experience [4:16] voters are looking for we've seen it nobody wants that experience anymore we want change so they're [4:22] voting for me for a change we're done i'm the mandate for change um just one month before the primary [4:30] a recent poll from ucla indicated that over 40 percent of the electorate still is undecided this that makes [4:37] this race wide open by by every margin and it's unusual uh to see that that level of uncertainty [4:44] when you have an incumbent mayor running once again what does that say to you about who you might be [4:50] able to bring under your uh under your constituency everyone everyone wants change again bass has not [4:57] changed councilwoman robin is actually a worse change it's bass but worse which is mind-boggling so [5:04] those people a they didn't hear my message yet b they heard it and they just don't want to argue [5:09] with something like oh he's a reality star they just hang up and say undecided it's a lot easier not [5:14] to mention all my voters are probably not picking up a poll call because we get a thousand spam calls [5:19] every day in la uh there's scary people on the street so most people don't interact with strangers [5:24] so my voters probably aren't even talking to these ucla pollsters so i don't even go off of that poll but [5:30] with that poll what it shows is that mayor bass has the worst record in la history so everything [5:37] i'm saying when people say oh you don't have experience look at the experience and councilwoman [5:42] robin's experience is just as bad you heard mayor bass call her out last night in the debate she's [5:47] terrible she doesn't even show up to any of these votes any of these things she's talking about she [5:51] hasn't done in five years of being the third most powerful person in city council so now she has all [5:57] these ideas because she thinks you know she can hop in because mayor bass's approval is so low [6:02] she's just a clout chaser i think a lot of people i think a lot of people are surprised or were surprised [6:08] when you threw your hat in the ring right this is an unlikely race with a very unlikely candidate [6:13] do you think that you've managed to change people's minds you know i was surprised i didn't want [6:19] to run for mayor but i saw that mayor bass was a hundred percent gonna get four more years on june [6:24] second nobody else was stepping up i wish somebody with the experience that everybody wants stepped [6:30] up but we didn't get that opportunity so i had to step up so that my sons one day can come back to [6:35] we're standing in their former bedroom come back here and live in the la that i lived in beautiful [6:41] safe and i don't want the la i want lived in i actually want la to be the number one city in the [6:45] world because now that i've been having all these meetings and these powerful people that want [6:49] la back to what it should be they're like this should be better than dubai this should be the number [6:53] one city on the planet so i used to say in my messaging i just want la to be back to the la i [6:59] grew up in i want that but times a hundred better because why would we go back in time let's make la [7:04] the greatest city on the planet so i'm as surprised as they probably were that i'm here but somebody had [7:10] to do it because we need to get la changed yeah uh going back to uh the the inevitable question about [7:18] your reality show beginnings um you know you are best known to americans as a reality star [7:25] and a reality show villain right you you yourself have said this you're also a republican in a deep [7:32] blue city that hasn't voted for republican in decades do you think you have an actual shot and and and how [7:40] and why i mean it seems that the odds are stacked against you yeah thankfully all my supporters in los [7:46] angeles are democrats everyone i know my family are all democrats i grew up in la i went to crossroads [7:53] everybody that texted me last night amazing congratulate are all democrats so the what [7:58] people are confused on the democrats all are behind me it's just the socialists and the communists [8:04] that don't back me but no i'm confident i'm probably gonna win with 51 on june 2nd because i don't do a [8:10] political message i don't do national politics i don't do tribal politics i don't talk about [8:16] other states i'm localized i just want to fix our streets get the lights on i want people to feel [8:22] safe i want to get our tax money to not be robbed by these these literal criminal ngo stealing from our [8:29] tax to increase the homelessness so my message isn't political it's common sense so i have democrats love [8:35] me republicans love me republicans love me independence love me libertarians love me [8:39] constitutionalists love me it's just socialists and communists that i even have some socialists [8:45] reaching out be like hey stop being so mean to us we love you too because they hear me you know [8:51] asking for accountability and i guess that's one of their things yeah well speaking of socialists many [8:55] have compared you to zora mandani in the sense your politics are obviously very very very different but in [9:02] the sense that you've really harnessed the power of social media to get your message out what do you [9:06] think of that comparison you know the one thing i connect with is i know he promised his voters like [9:11] the subway will be free and i'm promising my voters the metro the metro buses the metro trains they will [9:19] be free from urine feces stabbing attacks so that's kind of similar those we both had free things for [9:27] public transportation but you know i think he connected with people because they felt like [9:33] change they wanted change that message would never connect here because we've already been doing the [9:38] socialist experiment pretty much for six plus years and it's failed here in los angeles so i think my [9:45] message is why it's resonating on social media is it's the truth it's authentic it's from my heart i [9:50] didn't want to be a politician i'm standing in what happened because of failed politicians that's why i'm [9:56] here i don't want to be i want to go in and change la so that this never happens to anybody a lot of [10:02] people are like oh he only cares about palisades this isn't coming back for a long time not fighting [10:07] for other communities this is going to happen to a lot of people in the next four years there's less [10:12] firefighters now than january 7th there's 45 less firefighters we are not prepared don't listen to [10:18] mayor bass if you live in the hollywood hills sunland to hunga bel air the valley the dead brush is already [10:24] growing back in the palisades everyone is in danger not to mention forget fire danger we're [10:29] not ready for a mass casualty event if there was an earthquake we don't even have a helicopter we'll [10:33] have one chinook that could come in and take 40 people if there was an earthquake and the freeway [10:39] crash and all these people need to be rescued we don't have a plan for this we are so under prepared [10:44] for everything so i'm excited actually because once you get in the in this you're like oh my god this is a red [10:50] alert like let's let's change yeah okay then we'll move okay um let me get the fire question out there [11:01] um oh you've talked about cooperating with the trump administration when it comes to ice enforcement [11:10] what does that cooperation look like given the fact that we are in a sanctuary city [11:13] as well as a sanctuary state to be clear i said i'd always work with the federal government just [11:18] like i'll work with my state partners i'm going to be the mayor for all angelinos so the it's a sanctuary [11:24] state so by law i can't work with ice but what i can do because i'll be enforcing laws is make sure [11:30] that rapists drug dealers child trafficker the worst of the worst criminals whether they're illegal [11:36] or legal i'm removing these people off the street so my point was ice won't need to come to la when [11:42] i'm mayor because i'm going to be getting all the criminals the hardened criminals and that's what we [11:48] we were all told ice is looking for so i'm going to find them on behalf of what we were all told [11:53] mayor bass loves ice because she knows she can't do anything but she can distract everyone and yell [11:59] about something that she has no power over because it's a sanctuary state she can't do anything she [12:03] can't work with them and you can't stop federal law enforcement so i don't do performative politics [12:08] i just tell the truth and what is possible the federal agencies i want to work with are the fbi [12:14] that just yesterday in macarthur park went after all the fentanyl drug dealers not mayor bass the fbi [12:21] the dea i want to bring the cdc back to la because we have medieval diseases on these streets in these [12:29] encampments go walk around los angeles and swab some of these encampments the cdc needs to be shutting [12:36] down the streets and putting up white tents and we need to be spraying these streets with chlorine or [12:41] whatever chemical because these streets are not safe you know what all this fentanyl and all this stuff [12:46] that goes right into our sewers goes right into our ocean goes into our water there's plenty of federal [12:52] agencies i want to work with and again as mayor i will be the one enforcing the law and following [12:57] the law which for some reason our current city leaders forgot to do all these laws i want to [13:03] enforce back to democrat republic every law i want to enforce is a democrat law in the city of l.a [13:08] i'm going to enforce them all so i'm the democrat law enforcer okay cool and then we're going to [13:16] going to do a walk and talk clear here gentlemen go ahead so you were saying that your child's bedroom [13:31] was right here before you lost your home yep no nothing's been rebuilt out of 7 000 houses i i think [13:40] don't quote me maybe 300 houses are being rebuilt i think maybe three have been finished so no it's that [13:47] when people brag about fastest recovery faster than the in hawaii's fire which was on island this is [13:54] nothing's fast this has been a disaster mayor bass after 18 months just went to washington three days [14:01] what three four days before a debate just to get that talking piece there actually there's a city [14:07] commissioner that told me they were on a zoom after the president first came here after the fire and [14:12] said rush everything and she on a zoom mayor bass this city council the city commissioner said mayor i said [14:19] the president said all this i'm not doing any of it and that's the problem with tribal politics when [14:24] there's a disaster everyone needs to come together and that's what's clearly failed us in the palaces [14:29] can we take a look yeah yeah yeah so this is base this is the base thank you to my sba disaster loan [14:37] i'll be paying for this for uh for um the next uh 30 years but i mean this is a great i love coming here [14:52] because it just pumps me up because this is this is reality i had to get this with a sba disaster loan [14:59] they took they don't just hand you the loans you gotta you know it took a long time just to get [15:04] this and then i just got the wire to connect the power last night on the debate night so been waiting [15:11] weeks my neighbors it took six weeks for one wire to connect their power so this idea that things are [15:17] moving fast and red tape cut or what it just shows you how long it takes for people to build in the city [15:23] in la if you're a restaurant if you're a developer if this is the fastest place and a wire takes six [15:29] weeks there's across the board la is in trouble you obviously entered this race because of something [15:36] very personal and tragic for you and your family was the you know the wildfires and loss of everything [15:41] that you had you had built up over your lifetimes all that said you know the mayor is a big job [15:49] right you're up against people with enormous amounts of experience um you have not been in [15:54] politics before you haven't run a government agency you haven't run a city park why should voters trust [16:01] you to lead the second largest city in the country i mean look at obama he was a community organizer [16:09] i've won two community advocate awards for my nobody thought why can obama become a senator and then the [16:15] president he had no experience running the whole entire country which is way bigger than la so [16:20] when people have passion and they care and they have common sense and they have humility to know [16:25] i don't know everything but what i do know is all these very smart successful people in los angeles [16:31] want to get around me get behind me and make sure la is the number one city in the world so the team [16:37] that i'll put around me my job as mayor is actually just to fight for the constituents to be in these [16:43] communities to be with the community leaders to be fighting their city council members to get what they want [16:48] done that's all the conversations i've had in all these communities they don't feel heard by their [16:53] city council members or the mayor so my job actually isn't to run the entire city my job is to put the [16:58] smartest people in the world in these positions and we clearly do not have the smartest people in the [17:03] world running ever anything right now across the board think about who mayor bass put in power [17:09] janice quinones she drained two of the wildfire protection water reservoirs in the pacific palisades [17:16] in the driest season in history all red you look at the the warning maps for months it had no plans [17:23] no extra water tanks that's experienced mayor bass had she put that person as the ceo right there this [17:30] idea that i'm up against these really intelligent great people that they don't know what they're doing [17:35] they're failing six people are dying in the street every day that's the experience i'm up against [17:40] yeah i'll promise you i won't let six people die in the streets because i have compassion i'll make [17:44] sure addicts get mandatory treatment that's the experience i have i will make sure these dogs that [17:50] are being abused and tortured on the street right now that they're not being these people are they're [17:54] letting this happen they're not doing because it's culturally insensitive to give a ticket or citation [17:59] to somebody without an address no they need to go to jail if you torture an animal you know you're [18:04] going to torture next is a wife a mom a kid this data people that hurt animals are the first people [18:11] to then do something really bad to human beings so back to this experience thing the city is a disaster [18:18] people that's why i have so much momentum people don't care if i'm not a politician mayor bass had [18:23] no experience running a city she was a congressman she maybe made a post office this councilwoman ramen [18:30] can't even handle her own district she's not some experience i'm not running against people who are [18:35] successful they put people around them that are failures they are failures that's why i'm leading [18:41] a lot of polls i'm leading the messaging because people are well aware of the experience they're [18:46] living under so now when i hear that i'm like yeah no again i'm meeting with people that are they're [18:53] going to charge a dollar a year because they're already so successful they want they want to stay here [18:58] that's the fight that people have for la yeah they want to invest i met with a billionaire this week [19:04] his family donated 300 million dollars for a project in new york he said his family would willing [19:09] to do 500 million just to bring fun back to la so these people are having lunch with me i know [19:15] the type of this is now i'm not even the mayor and i'm able to have these meetings with these people [19:19] that are like we can do this so i'm really confident and i'm not concerned most la voters for the [19:26] first time saw a different side of the reality show villain that that americans associate you with [19:33] do you think you change perceptions on that debate stage you know i always have been an authentic [19:38] person people know when i was a reality villain i was doing it to get paid i was chasing ratings [19:43] bonus i was the youngest executive producer in the history of hollywood i sold a fox television show [19:48] reality show at 20 years old for 3.7 million dollars that was all character and again that's 20 years ago [19:55] since then i've been a father to two sons a husband of almost 20 years to my amazing angel [20:00] wife a small business owner my e-commerce was at one time before covert the number one e-commerce [20:06] e-commerce jewelry site in the world so i know people think i'm this you know villain but people [20:11] who really have looked into me know that that was a performance a character and again i would do all [20:17] that again it was incredible job thank you mtv you know so it's not like it was strategic i was working [20:23] with the producers are are you being strategic now or is this is this the authentic spencer pratt i'm [20:28] standing in my airstream in my burned down house so i'm being strategic to fight these people that [20:33] have destroyed my life my neighbor's life all of angelino's life so yes i'm being very strategic [20:39] to win and save la but no there's no strategy when you're standing in an airstream on your burnout town [20:46] you can't fake that there's no bit to that i would much rather be in my house feeding my hummingbirds [20:51] and have my life back but that wasn't god's path for me and so now i'm going to undo the harm these [20:57] people are doing to a lot of people in the city of la and back to this thing for instance they say [21:02] oh he seems so angry everyone i talk to in la is angry they're actually angrier than me because i have [21:08] a beautiful two kids a beautiful wife some people are alone and they're dealing with the destruction [21:13] of their city not feeling safe on the streets all the disasters in this city they're alone at least [21:20] i have my family so there's people a lot angrier than me that are going to show up and vote for me [21:24] right now they're already setting in their ballots they're putting in ballots every day i truly believe [21:29] i'm winning with 51 on june 2nd that's how angry angelinos are they're not looking for the guy [21:36] with the they don't want an experienced politician they're living what experienced politicians have done [21:41] to their lives so it's time for a change you you've uh you've launched quite a quite a successful [21:47] sorry so you've gone a lot of traction on social media between your campaign videos your messages [21:53] as well as the the many uh campaign videos that others have have thrown in support that you have [22:00] re-exed or or reposted i'm curious i'm curious to get your sense of like what is the what is the [22:07] strategy and what do you think is is coming from uh those those pushes on social media everyone is done [22:14] with politicians period they see me and they don't see a politician everyone wants to support that [22:19] that's real grassroots that's why i have the number one in the history of los angeles the number one [22:25] small donor donations to my campaign beat the record that's because under a hundred dollars it's [22:31] because everyone wants a non-politician i don't have a political party that supports me you can call me [22:36] whatever you want there's no i don't have a campaign manager i don't have one consultant this is from my [22:42] heart so that resonates people see the bs people know image crafting people know performance politics [22:50] they know i'm raw and i'm going to go in there i'm a fight for these people that are corrupt they're [22:55] stealing our tax money to increase problems to let people die on the street when that money can go to [23:01] helping people and that is going to be a life mission for me and now i know because i you know what i [23:06] was real sad after everything i lost my mom cries all day long and all my friends lost everything all my [23:11] friends family's lost i was very sad and i felt like a victim and then when i got into this fight [23:16] i was like oh i don't need to be a victim i can help people i can change i can make other people not [23:22] feel like what i felt like and that's been so empowering and when i get out in communities people [23:26] come up to me senior citizens old ladies they hug me and they cry and they're like you give me hope and [23:31] that super charges me again you know you think i'll be tired today but no thousands of messages thank you [23:38] thank you that gets me motivated so it's actually fun i'm having fun now yeah you know i'm sure you [23:45] get a lot of this i hated you on the hills thought you were an asshole but i see you a little differently [23:51] these days yeah the goal was to be hated on the hills like that i asked david foster who started [23:56] with music producer legend by soul princess malville it was planned he's we had a talk he said you could [24:02] be more hated than simon cowell you'll be a multi-millionaire this is somebody with 18 grammys helping me and [24:07] dave foster next week is hosting a fundraiser for me full circle this is somebody who started with [24:13] me when i was 20 and now he is backing me for mayor and hosting and calling all the heavy hitters in [24:18] the whole city for a fundraiser so of course they hated me i was a professional villain i was a tv [24:24] character personally and i don't regret one of those things because it was a show i worked with the [24:29] producers i worked with the story writers and everything was fake everybody thought i was this bad [24:34] boyfriend 20 years later i'm still with my wife we have two beautiful kids so no i totally understand [24:40] why those people think that and yeah yeah yeah it was a job yeah job in your 20s yeah it was a long [24:46] time ago and you know i've done a lot of life since then and i don't regret it because if you came back [24:52] to me at 20 and offered me millions of dollars when i was 20 years old again to be ridiculous on tv and [24:58] have people not like you i would do it again right now so it's not like i say to you i was terrible like no [25:05] i was a 20 year old trying to make a hit tv show and if the ratings got to 5 million i got a 1 million [25:10] dollar bonus so i was crazed yeah tried at all times because i was like let me get that extra [25:17] billion you know so yeah and you don't think it's a liability at this point no i i think people the [25:23] liability is the people in charge right now i'm living the liability you know i actually you know [25:28] what i think is so funny when they call me the reality star i'm like no i'm the only candidate living [25:32] in reality these people are delusional you heard them last night for hour just talking in circles [25:38] and like just it's just they don't even say anything they're just blah blah blah they're not living in [25:43] reality so call me the reality candidate because i'm living in reality with all my voters i also was [25:50] watching your facial expression when sorry yeah yeah okay i'm here huh yeah yeah i can't complain because [25:57] you gotta carry that yeah yeah no one last one one last one i was just i was watching your facial [26:02] expression as i forget who it was uh said that la does not need mega well la needs a change and i'm [26:10] a change so people aren't voting for me because i'm represented by a political party i am an angry [26:15] angelino that just wants common sense i want moms to feel safe i want restaurants we lost over a hundred [26:22] restaurants this year i want restaurants to be able to stay open i want businesses to be able to stay [26:26] open i want people to be able to have money again in la i want hollywood to be booming like it should be [26:33] for everyone for the grips the camera operators the set crews that glam people i am not a political [26:39] person i i was in entertainment business i sold healing crystals so to frame me as like this [26:45] politician representing any political party is just a it's a they're just trying to distract people [26:51] it's like just oh right when i'm saying facts facts i gotta yell something like so it's just pathetic [26:58] and people are done with that tribal politics we have a problem with local leadership nothing with [27:05] the national politics has anything to do with why our streets aren't working why they don't feel safe [27:11] why our tax money is being stolen why drug addicts are running the streets that's all mayor bass and the [27:17] city council and the ramen so i i truly am like ah good luck with that it's not gonna work i'll show you [27:24] on june 2nd when we win by 51 because i have angelinos because i'm a native angelino these people aren't [27:30] even real deal la people nithia ramen councilman ramen moved here in 2013 okay mayor bass has lived in [27:38] sacramento and washington her whole life in politics i'm a real la person so again and real la people feel [27:46] that oh hey there's a native angelino so not all right say whatever you want uh let's do it more [27:53] please you know all right very good thank you appreciate it really appreciate you