CNBC Transcript: Los Angeles Mayoral Candidate Spencer Pratt Speaks with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Today

WHEN: Today, Thursday, May 28, 2026

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk on the Street"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Los Angeles Mayoral Candidate Spencer Pratt on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" (M-F, 9AM-12PM ET) today, Thursday, May 28. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/28/la-mayoral-candidate-spencer-pratt-says-his-message-focuses-on-local-common-sense-issues.html%3C/a%3E.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

SARA EISEN: The primary election in the Los Angeles mayoral race is coming up this Tuesday. Our next guest is one of the top contenders vying to take the post from incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and has surged eight points in popularity since March. That's according to a poll by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. Joining us here at Post 9 is Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, former cast member of MTV's "The Hills." It's great to have you, Spencer. Welcome.

SPENCER PRATT:  Thank you for having me.

EISEN:  So you launched this campaign in January of this year, one year since the Pacific Palisades Fire burned down your home, your parents' home. And now you're out with a message of government competency. Why do you think it's resonating so much beyond just L.A.?

PRATT:  Yes, I only got into the race because nobody else was going to run. And Mayor Bass, who allowed with her negligence 7,000 homes to burn, 12 people to burn alive, and she was just going to get four more years? So I had to step up for my community and for Los Angeles to say, no, we are not going to have this level of failure in our city for four more years. And my message resonates because I stick to local commonsense issues, like making sure people's houses burn down, make sure billions of our tax money doesn't go into increasing drug addicts naked in front of schools and businesses and restaurants. This is all I focus, the lights being on, the streets not having thousands of potholes.

EISEN:  Like basics.

PRATT:  Basics. I don't do national politics. I don't do party politics. I do a nonpartisan race. And that's why it's so refreshing across the country and even outside of the country. I have support all over the world because people want to get back to the people that we pay our tax money to actually do their jobs, make sure that moms can feel safe in the park, in front of their school, going anywhere. They don't feel safe right now in the second largest city in the country. That's unacceptable.

EISEN:  Well, you have also courted a lot of very prominent businesspeople, people that are familiar to us in our audience, Dan Loeb on the list, Bobby Kotick, Mark Pincus, Jeanie Buss. I mean, it's a who's who of L.A.-focused businesspeople financiers. How did that happen?

PRATT:  Yes, because my message of safety, that connects with enforcing the law. And when you enforce a law, all the hundreds of restaurants that keep closing every year, 50,000-plus citizens that have to leave L.A., the literal hotel empire that's down 35 percent in Los Angeles because nobody wants to come to L.A. because it's not safe. It's disgusting. We pay with our money to give needles to drug addicts to overdose in front of kids, to be shooting up and smoking. When these successful businesses hear there's a mayor that's coming to L.A. that's going to enforce the law and make sure, when you invest in L.A., you're going to have an actual investment that can succeed. Right now, and all the money is leaving Los Angeles, because why would anyone put money into a place where we allow as a city, the city leaders allow naked drug addicts in front of restaurants and businesses? You could have the nicest tower in downtown L.A. and have a naked drug addict attacking you with the machete in front. Nobody's putting money in. But these people know, when I'm mayor, I will enforce all the laws that exist.

EISEN:  I mean, this has been your whole thing, the homelessness, the drug addictions, the street, the crime. So you directly tie this to the business, the business leaving? Because I know that's been another big story, especially Hollywood leaving.

PRATT:  If you don't feel safe on the streets, people don't go to restaurants. I talk to people that work, that still have to work in downtown L.A. They have to get their food served inside of their offices because their companies do not allow them to go down the street to eat at maybe one of the restaurants that hasn't closed down. That's how unsafe it is for anyone. This isn't just women and moms. This is men, anybody. It's not safe. Everyone—

EISEN:  The crime rates have improved, though. I mean, Karen Bass does say that, under her tenure, homelessness decreased 17.5 percent.

PRATT:  So these numbers that are completely fabricated, let's go back to the homelessness since she started has increased. The number she's referencing is since last year, since, when she started, even with these made-up numbers, it's actually increased. And when she says crime is down, when you have 42,000 people defecating, peeing, being naked in front of kids, smoking drugs in front of kids, shooting up all the courts, these are all crimes. They go unreported.

EISEN:  So what do you about that? How do you clean that up?

PRATT:  You enforce the law. We don't enforce any laws in Los Angeles. The only laws that are enforced now are maybe parking tickets for people that are hardworking taxpayers that are just trying to get their matcha and have to step over a naked drug addict. These are the people that are getting enforced. That's it. There's no laws being enforced. And then she brags about homicide numbers being down. That's a nationwide trend post-COVID. That has nothing to do with the city of L.A. Major incidents, for instance, just on the Metro in Los Angeles have doubled. And that's just the ones that are reported. I just spent the day at the 911 call center and looking at the stacks of calls. Unless you're getting stabbed in the neck or getting shot, you get put below a list that's so long that you're going to hang up. You're not going to wait for that officer to report. You're not going on the website, the amount of people that just don't report anything because nobody's coming, because all of our resources in L.A., whether it's the fire department responding to 84 percent of their calls for encampment vagrant fires, or they're responding to overdoses on the sidewalk or in the park. That's where all of our tax money is going, to the drug addicts. It's not a homelessness problem. It's a drug addiction problem. And when I'm there, we're going to treat that with mandatory treatment with the state law, S.B.43. When you can't manage yourself, we can remove you from the street and get you the help you need. I'm the compassionate one. My opponents are fine with just saying they need more beds. No, they need to get treatment. And then we can focus on getting them the bed and the housing and the rehabilitation that they need after getting off of fentanyl or super meth.

CARL QUINTANILLA: You know, you talk to longtime Angelenos, and they do say the city feels different, in part because of the production that has left. And how do you bring that back when so many other states and even countries are competing for film production?

PRATT:  Well, thankfully, I get to be the mayor of one of the best cities on planet Earth. Everyone will want to produce and make projects in Los Angeles because it's perfect when it's a functioning, beautiful, safe city. But, right now, it's dangerous. Film crews have to pay gang members to protect them on the street. Equipment will get stolen. As mayor, I'm going to fight for the independent filmmakers, the independent artists, independent creators, and I'm going to really work with them to make sure they feel welcome here. Of course, as mayor, I'm also going to fight with whoever is going to be the new governor to make sure we get uncapped post- and pre-production tax credits that rival England, Canada, Massachusetts.

EISEN:  Georgia.

PRATT:  Massachusetts has better tax credits than Hollywood. That's how far we are off. But, again, a lot of these people don't want to make projects in Hollywood because it's not a fun place to be in right now. It's not safe. It's not clean. And it's not affordable, because the current mayor and the current city have so much red tape and so much literal impossibilities for developers to build. When I'm mayor, I'm going to get rid of all this red tape. I'm going to make sure builders can come in and feel like their investment is going to be protected and there actually will not be drug addicts at the entrance to their buildings. And we're going to build so much housing, the entire city will be cranes. We're going to look like Dubai in eight years.

QUINTANILLA:  Safe to say the fire was your inspiration to run?

PRATT:  Oh, yes.

QUINTANILLA:  So, where does fire preparedness fit in all of this public safety discussion?

PRATT:  Yes, it's back to, we need to take all of our tax money that's being stolen and going to corrupt NGOs to increase homelessness. We need to get our tax money back. And we're going to audit and have full transparency, accountability of all of our tax money in the city of L.A. And, with that money, we're going to get the fire department where it should be. Right now, we're running a fire department from the 1960s with double the population, and 84 percent of those calls are going to vagrant encampment fires next to the freeway or in the bushes. And, again, I'm going to go work with the new governor and make sure we clear the dead fuels that are surrounding our communities, 60 years of dead brush that go into people's backyards that, if I were to go cut it, I could risk a penalty from the state. I could risk a lawsuit. No, we need to have firebreaks 300 feet so we can give fire department a chance to fight these fires. Yes, let's talk about climate change. I say my house burned down because of climate change. That's what my critics will say. Well, we know the climate's changing then. Well, let's prepare for it. Let's fund the fire department. Let's get the helicopters we need. Let's make sure the reservoirs have water in them. Let's not drain them. Let's add, let's have actual more opportunities for these helicopters to get water around the city, where, right now, there's no plan. We actually have 45 less firefighters than we did when my house burned down.

EISEN:  So, you mentioned the business competitiveness. I think the other problem is the cost of doing business in L.A. is so high when it comes to taxes, when it comes to labor legislation. I mean, how do you change that without blowing a hole in already a pretty strained budget?

PRATT:  Yes, again, I want the less taxes as possible. But what we need to do to make things more affordable is have more opportunity. The only way we could put things costing less is putting more money in people's pocket, having more competition in the sense, right now, the restaurants are all closing. So there's less job opportunities. Hotels have no, nobody going to them because there's no tourism. There's no building, so there's no construction. I need to make more money in the city for people to not be hurting so much with the already insane taxes. I keep also saying that we pay so much in taxes. I'm like Robin Hood. I'm actually going to take the money that's already being taxed by the rich. I'm going to make sure other rich people aren't stealing it to increase problems. So we have a lot of money that needs to go back into our infrastructure, back into creating jobs and opportunity, but it's being stolen by criminals, corrupt politicians and their friends.

EISEN:  On a related note with crime, there's an antisemitism problem, I think, across the country right now, but also especially in major cities like L.A. UCLA was sued by the DOJ for the third time for providing a hostile environment for Jewish students. I do wonder if this is on your agenda and what you hear and how it's being handled in big cities.

PRATT:  Well, absolutely.

EISEN:  It's a question for New York too.

PRATT:  Yes, I grew up in Los Angeles. I went to a private school, Crossroads. All of my best friends since kindergarten are Jewish. So it was obvious when I got in this race I made it very clear that I'm going to protect my Jewish friends and families that feel unsafe from these attacks. And I didn't even realize how insane it was until I said that publicly, and the level of Nazi crazy psychopaths that are threatening me, saying I'm owned by Jewish, no, I want Jewish moms to feel safe for their kids go to the temple or they go to class at UCLA. The same, I want a Muslim student to feel safe going to worship. Everyone needs to feel safe in Los Angeles. That's my message as mayor, whether you want to be trans and however you want to identify. When you're 18 years old in America, you should be able to do whatever you want if you don't hurt other people. I want to protect everyone's right to how they identify, practice religion. And so whether you're Jewish or Christian, everyone needs to feel safe practicing their religion or how they identify. And it's back to my tenet of my mayor mission is safety.

EISEN:  That's your goal, yes.

PRATT:  Safety.

EISEN:  How are you going to get, 55 percent of registered voters in L.A. are Democrats. Predictions odds have you under 30 percent. How are you going to get this done?

PRATT:  Thankfully, these prediction odds are all cooked. And if you go off of these odds and these, respectfully, then you're in for a wakeup. The moms that are getting me elected across the city that just want their kids to be able to go under the underpass to get to school or go to the park or go get lunch, these moms are showing up. All my supporters are Democrats. There's this big misconception because it became a national story, but the energy I have in L.A., all my fund-raiser, all the big businesspeople, everyone I meet with are Democrats because my message is not political parties. It's common sense. I'm the commonsense American with the basic expectations of our tax money. So they're going to be shocked when I have the most Democratic votes in the history of L.A. with 51 percent in five days.

EISEN:  Well—

PRATT:  Make sure you vote right now. Get your ballots in. Get your ballots in now.

QUINTANILLA:  For the West Coast audience.

PRATT:  Yes.

EISEN:  We will be watching. We will be watching, Spencer. And you have a lot of fans on Wall Street already. I'm getting a lot of e-mails. So, thank you for coming in—

PRATT:  My pleasure.

EISEN:  To see us here at the New York Stock Exchange. And, by the way, quick note, we have reached out to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, extended her an invitation to join as well.

PRATT:  And this is not financial advice, but if you want to invest in L.A., there's stocks there. Business is going to be booming in Los Angeles. So get ready. Thank you very much.