Jimmy Kimmel claims Spencer Pratt 'doesn’t believe in climate change' after arson-sparked Palisades fire burned down his home

On Wednesday evening, Jimmy Kimmel blasted Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt on his late-night show as a "screaming jerk” and said that the candidate, whose home burned down in the Palisades fires, "doesn't believe in climate change." 

"His house burns down,”  Kimmel said. “And even though he had no private insurance on his house, and doesn't believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down. And since he's a moderately famous person, he gets attention. He's on the news. He's on social media. And for the first time in his life, people are agreeing with what he has to say. It's hard not to agree with what he has to say. He's angry about the same problems a lot of people here are angry about.”

A Florida man has been accused of starting a fire in the hills above Los Angeles on January 1, which were not fully extinguished and reignited into the massive wildfires that scorched tens of thousands of acres. Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, allegedly filmed the first fire he started, called the police to report it, and later returned to watch firefighters battle the blaze. Rinderknecht has been charged with destruction of property by means of fire, a felony that carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. 

Kimmel then went on to attack Pratt's lack of experience while going after his and his wife's spending habits. “The mayor of LA is in charge of a $14 billion annual budget,” Kimmel said. “Spencer Pratt is not the person who should be in charge of it. In 2011, Spencer Pratt and his wife intentionally blew through all their money on purpose. They bought an armored truck. They bought half a million dollars' worth of Birkin handbags.”

Kimmel, whose late-night show films in Los Angeles, lamented that Pratt, despite his inexperience, was polling at 22%. 

“Right now his job is selling healing crystals on a site called prattdaddy.com,” Kimmel said. “That alone should be disqualifying, and yet he’s polling in second place. And if he’s one of the top two candidates after the primary next Tuesday, a week from tonight, he will be one of our two choices for mayor of Los Angeles. So if you don’t want to vote for Karen Bass on June 2, I get it. But you better find somebody else to vote for, and preferably somebody who isn’t wasting our time and money to get himself back on television.” 

For his part, Pratt responded on X. “Jimmy’s secretly voting for me,” he quipped. 

Pratt, who will face other mayoral contenders on June 2 in the dash to the Los Angeles general election, is polling four points behind current mayor Karen Bass and just three points behind councilwoman Nithya Raman, according to the latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll that was released after Kimmel's show. The last time a Republican won a mayoral race in Los Angeles was in 1997.