Big-name mayor warned against repeating major Trump mistake by boosting MAGA favorite

An activist was sounding the alarm over the Los Angeles mayoral race and how incumbent Mayor Karen Bass could be repeating a strategy for MAGA-approved former reality TV star Spencer Pratt — a similar move that ended up costing Hillary Clinton the election against Donald Trump.

Adam Conover, a comedian known for both his jokes and political commentary, offered his views of the upcoming election in Los Angeles and why the stakes were so high.

"There's something really dangerous happening in the LA mayor's race and a lot more people need to be talking about it," Conover said. "So you guys are familiar with how Hillary Clinton boosted Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016 in the primary because she thought it would help her win the general, right? We all know how that turned out. Well Karen Bass is doing the same thing in Los Angeles this year."

Bass, whose campaign has pitted her against current Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Rahman, has viewed Rahman as a top contender, Conover explained.

"Karen is catastrophically unpopular," he added. "She has a 24 percent approval rating because of her mismanagement of the fires and the city budget. And so she has drawn a strong progressive challenger named Nithya Rahman, who has been described in the press as the next Zohran Mamdani and who's running on a platform of housing affordability. So since Karen detects that she might lose, she has started promoting the candidacy of Spencer Pratt, a right-wing MAGA Republican who wants to let ICE invade the city, he vacations with Alex Jones, and he was literally inspired to run by watching Donald Trump on television."

Bass' decision could ultimately put Pratt in a power position, considering that Los Angeles has a nonpartisan primary system, and that on her website she has even called the former "Hills" star a "strong contender for the second spot," Conover argued. He said the maneuver could work in the short-term to boost Pratt's recognition but called it "risky," citing the current mayor's unpopularity among voters.

"All the Republicans and Democrats run against each other and then the top two finishers go to the general election in November," he said. "And in a normal year, LA is so blue that that means that a centrist Democrat usually goes up against a progressive Democrat. Unless the centrist Democrat can get a right-winger to win that second spot. And so that is what the Bass campaign is doing."