Karen Bass watched Spencer Pratt and thousands of Los Angeles citizens' houses burn down.
Now Pratt is running for mayor to replace her – and the media tried to make him look like the villain.
Jesse Watters just showed America exactly what TMZ pulled, and Pratt's response ended the smear before it started.
TMZ Thought They Had Him
TMZ ran a story flagging that Spencer Pratt – the Republican candidate who campaigned from a trailer on his burned-out Palisades lot – was staying at the Hotel Bel-Air instead.
The implication was obvious: hypocrite.
Harvey Levin put it to him directly on air: "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?"
Pratt didn't flinch.
"No, to be clear, that is where I live. That's where Karen Bass, Mayor Bass, burned down my house. That is where I will live until I have a new house."
Levin pressed him: "Are you saying you lived in that trailer?"
"I don't live anywhere is what I'm saying. I don't have a house – they burnt it down, Harvey. I don't have a house, period. There is nothing there, Harvey. It's a dirt lot."
He didn't stop there.
"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."
The gotcha was over in about thirty seconds.
https://x.com/JesseBWatters/status/2055090475657269759“>https://x.com/JesseBWatters/status/2055090475657269759
Bass Was 5,500 Miles Away When LA Was on Fire
When the Palisades Fire exploded into one of the most destructive wildfires in California history, Karen Bass was in Accra, Ghana, attending a foreign inauguration.
She flew home – but the damage was already done.
The fire tore through Pacific Palisades because the hydrants ran dry.
The city had gutted the LADWP budget for emergency water reserves.
Emergency alerts failed to reach residents in time.
Pratt didn't just lose his home – the fire took his parents' home too.
Why He Was at the Hotel
Pratt wasn't at the Hotel Bel-Air for the thread count.
He was there because people are threatening to kill him.
"I'm at a hotel because these psychopaths are messaging me every day they're going to kill me," he told TMZ. "You can literally snipe me out from any part from 300 yards away easily."
The trailer – sitting on an open dirt lot – offered zero security.
Karen Bass is on the record raising "violent rhetoric" concerns about the campaign.
The same mayor who let hydrants run dry while she was on a foreign trip is now worried about rhetoric.
Pratt is sleeping four hours a night, campaigning through LA encampments, and living out of a secured hotel room because the city Bass built has become dangerous enough that a candidate needs armed protection to survive the race.
Jesse Watters put the whole montage together on air – the TMZ setup, the Pratt call-in, Bass's deflections, the rally footage – and framed it for exactly what it was: Democrats targeting the man challenging them while ignoring everything they broke.
The City Bass Built
Los Angeles has a homelessness crisis Bass promised to fix and didn't.
It has a crime problem Bass promised to address and didn't.
It has fire infrastructure so degraded that hydrants ran dry while homes burned – on Bass's watch, after Bass's budget decisions.
And now her allies in the media are running hit pieces on where a fire victim sleeps.
Pratt told TMZ: "That is where I live, period. I don't need to sleep there every night. I don't need to go number two on that toilet. That is where I live."
A man who lost everything – twice, counting his parents' home – is still showing up, taking death threats seriously, and pointing at the person responsible every single day.
TMZ handed him a microphone to discredit him.
He used it to put Karen Bass on trial instead.
Sources:
- Jesse Watters, "Spencer Pratt Responds to TMZ Hotel Story," Fox News, May 14, 2026.
- TMZ Staff, "Spencer Pratt Staying at Hotel Bel-Air – Not in Campaign Trailer," TMZ, May 14, 2026.
- Madeleine Hubbard, "Karen Bass Flew to Ghana as LA Fires Burned," The Daily Wire, January 2025.
- Rebecca Rosenberg, "LA Fire Hydrants Ran Dry During Palisades Blaze," Fox News, January 2025.
