Commentary: Spencer Pratt, like Donald Trump, is a product of the reality TV industrial complex

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Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was on the downslide in 2011.He’d been a tabloid sensation in the decade prior thanks to his villainous four-season run on MTV’s reality series “The Hills,” and his ratings-boon relationship with co-star Heidi Montag.

By the 2010s, the spotlight was fading and it seemed as if Pratt might slip into obscurity.He was jobless, broke and living at his parents’ vacation home in Santa Barbara.

He told the Daily Beast that he was considering going back to USC to finish his political science degree, but asked, “What real job — what political world — would want Spencer Pratt, with the stigma I’ve attached to my name?”The political world of 2026, of course.Pratt is following in the footsteps of those before him who’ve leveraged their reality TV fame into political careers.Predominantly Republicans, they occupy the Oval Office, or serve as the secretary of Transportation, or have run as a California gubernatorial candidate.Pratt, a registered Republican, has now become part of the reality TV-into-politics pipeline, entering the L.A.

mayoral race against incumbent Karen Bass and L.A.City Councilmember Nithya Raman.To the rescue? Spencer Pratt’s campaign for mayor of Los Angeles gets the AI superhero treatment.

But will it be enough to influence voters?Pratt announced his intent to run one year after his home was destroyed in the 2025 Palisades fire.Frustrated by the red tape holding up the rebuilding process, Pratt is running on a message that L.A.

is broken and only he can fix it — somehow.He has no experience in public office.

Pratt does, however, have an edge on his competitors in one category: He knows how to amass attention.For those who did not grow up consuming reality TV in the 2000s, Pratt was the medium’s No.1 villain, a polarizing figure who understood that in reality TV — and later, on social media — bein...