Less than two weeks before voters head to the polls, Steve Bannon lauded Spencer Pratt's run for Los Angeles mayor and cautioned that the City of Angels will collapse into anarchy and chaos should Karen Bass or Nithya Raman win.
Bannon, who served in the first Trump administration as the White House chief strategist, told the Daily Mail that this year marked the 'most serious' mayor's race in Los Angeles history. 'To save this country, you need more Spencer Pratts,' Bannon said in a phone interview.
Pratt's campaign was seeing success because he was talking about an 'existential threat' to Los Angeles, Bannon said. 'The existential threat is the political elites and the political system that now has shown they don't care if the city is collapsing. They're still gonna make their money and have their power.'
Bannon, who lived in Los Angeles' South Bay for about 15 years, said the city was in a state of 'total collapse' and that the people who caused it could not carry on or LA would cease to exist. That made Pratt's messaging simple but effective. 'You're gonna have anarchy and chaos as personified by what's happened in Pacific Palisades,' Bannon said, adding that Pratt was pitching himself as the only candidate prepared to stop LA becoming an unlivable hellhole.
Bannon called Bass a 'system's quarterback' who was 'so interchangeable by so many other of these Democratic politicians,' such as Raman. He said Pratt was talking about the 'most serious thing that's ever been talked about' in an LA mayoral race. 'Is the very system that governs us destroying us and destroying the thing we love best, which is the lifestyle of Los Angeles?' Bannon told the Daily Mail.
If neither candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote on June 2, the LA mayoral election will be decided in a run-off on November 3. Bannon also blasted the political culture in Southern California, and specifically Los Angeles, claiming that 'voters don't matter' while pointing to Bass' mayoral campaign as a supposed example. 'They don't give a f*** about the voters,' he told the Daily Mail. 'They don't, and her arrogant attitude shows you.'
Bannon said Pratt spoke to issues that imperiled the 'livelihoods of every Angeleno' and that he was effectively promising to 'destroy the system.' 'You put me in office, I will take it on. I will slay this dragon,' Bannon said about Pratt's goals. He added that no one had truly criticized Bass or the Democratic establishment in Los Angeles until Pratt and his combative style came along. 'He made himself the message, and the message is: nobody is looking out for hardworking citizens who pay their taxes and play by the rules. You're the ones getting screwed. You're suckers.'
Bannon dismissed Raman, an LA City Councilmember who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, as a 'junior varsity player in the system,' adding that she, too, was interchangeable with Bass. 'It doesn't matter. You have one real person in Spencer Pratt running,' he told the Daily Mail. While not mentioning Raman specifically, Bannon said that 'so many people that run for city council get into this habit of political nomenclature and this risk-averse nature. People want action and they want people prepared to fight for them, although they may not even know how to define the issues.'
On the other hand, Bannon said Pratt had a clearly defined message, having launched his campaign for mayor in January after the wide backlash to Bass' response to the LA wildfires. Pratt and his wife Heidi Montag were among those who lost their home in the fires, which destroyed more than 6,800 structures across Southern California. 'It's pretty obvious he did this because they burnt down his town. They allowed it to burn down, they were responsible for it to burn down and we're two years into it and nothing's happening. That's driven this guy as close to madness as you could get,' Bannon added.
Bannon said Pratt's campaign was not rooted 'on some esoteric political theory from a textbook that you learn in some Ivy League college.' 'He's going back to a very American tradition, which is an angry citizen that's sitting there going, 'I'm not going to take this anymore,'' Bannon told the Daily Mail. The former TV star, known for his role on The Hills, has also used more modern tools, drawing both praise and criticism for his promotion of AI-generated videos. That included content depicting himself as a seemingly Batman-inspired vigilante taking on Bass, as well as other Democratic figures like California Governor Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Pratt has also highlighted the high levels of drug use and rampant homelessness in LA during his campaign, promising a three-week 'grace period' to warn criminals, drug users and homeless people to leave the west coast city. Bannon said that Pratt's style was 'Trumpian' and causing his candidacy to pick up momentum. 'It's to be up in your face, in your grill. A fighter. Not going to back off,' Bannon told the Daily Mail. He said Pratt was captivating low-propensity voters who typically had no interest in politics, much like the US President. Pratt's supporters would probably disagree with some of his policies or even be unable to name them, Bannon added, but they still felt galvanized by his fiery campaign nonetheless. 'What they agree is that the man is stepping into the breach to save his country. That's what Pratt is,' Bannon told the Daily Mail.
Bannon said he believed Pratt could pull off the win and that his campaign was comparable to Trump's successful run for president in 2015. 'He was an armor-piercing shell that shattered that political culture. Spencer Pratt's the same thing in Los Angeles,' Bannon told the Daily Mail. On Wednesday, Trump was asked about Pratt while attending the US Coast Guard Academy commencement at Joint Base Andrews. 'I'd like to see him do well. He's a character,' Trump said. Trump, who has not endorsed anyone in the race, added: 'I heard he's a big MAGA person. He's doing well.' Still, Pratt has attempted to distance himself from the US President despite the frequent comparisons to Trump. 'I represent all of Los Angeles. I don't have a campaign manager. I don't have campaign consultants. There's no political party backing me,' Pratt told NBC LA last Friday.
A poll published by Emerson College last Wednesday suggested that Bass remained in the lead in the LA mayor's race but was under pressure. She received 30 percent support in the survey, with Pratt placing second at 22 percent and Raman third at 19 percent. That represented a 12 percentage point boost for Pratt since March, per Emerson's polling. Pratt is a registered Republican but the mayoral election is nonpartisan, meaning that party labels do not appear on the ballot. However, a Republican has not been elected as LA mayor since Richard Riordan in 1997.
Bannon acknowledged it would be 'very difficult' for Pratt to win and predicted that he was 'about to get hit with what they call his turn in the barrel.' 'They're going to try to destroy Spencer Pratt, everything about him, and you'll see it,' he told the Daily Mail. The former White House chief strategist drew another comparison to Trump as he discussed Pratt's future. 'They are trying to destroy people that stand up to the political elites and the financial and economic elites in this country. This is everything they tried to do to Trump. Bankrupt him, put him in prison, assassinate him. Good lord, man,' Bannon told the Daily Mail. Bannon added that the 'system is going to come' for Pratt and reveal how tough he is. 'Spencer Pratt's gonna find out how tough he is because they're just not prepared to have Spencer Pratt come in and take it down,' Bannon said.
