Reality TV villain-turned-mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt is addressing his past claims that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were an “inside job.”
“What I have learned almost 20 years later is, it’s actually the negligence of the people in power,” Pratt, 42, told CNN’s Jake Tapper during a Thursday, May 28, live interview. “I would have loved to have gone along with, when my house burned down and my parents’ house burned down, everyone saying, ‘It was lasers! It was a land grab! It was just like Maui!’ But it’s not.”
He continued, “The reality is, people in charge fail us as taxpayers.”
In 2009, Pratt appeared on notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars (now owned by the satirical website The Onion), claiming the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the U.S. government.
“Not from my research, but from your research, it 100 percent is,” Pratt told Jones, praising the debunked conspiracy film Loose Change. “I can’t even believe that it took me seeing your film to know about building seven.”
Pratt also spread 9/11 conspiracy theories via his social media, posting on X, then Twitter, that anyone who could watch Loose Change and “not see the truth is blind.” He also claimed that if elected president of the United States he would reveal “the facts of 9/11 that were not presented to the mainstream media.”
Spencer Pratt Getty Images
Twenty years later, Pratt says that he no longer believes in 9/11 conspiracy theories, but has realized that the terrorist attacks were the result of powerful people making deadly mistakes.
“When you’re listening to that audio, that’s a 21, 22-year-old person,” he continued. “I’m now 42, and have experienced city negligence, state negligence, and I’ve learned a lot. It’s actually worse than a conspiracy, it’s that we have people in charge that make mistakes that get people killed.”
The Hills alum added, “So, unfortunately, you know, I was young and naive to understanding how there [are] people that will fail citizens across the board.”
Pratt admitted that he would have to “go back and look at all that” regarding his past conspiracy theory peddling, adding that he hasn’t “watched any of those things in 20 years or whatever.” It is also worth noting that when spreading 9/11 conspiracy theories, Pratt was nearly 26 years old, not 21 or 22.
“I bet now, with my fresh eyes of surviving the city’s negligence that burned 12 people in my neighborhood alive, 7,000 structures, and seeing how fast the internet said that was a conspiracy and how I had to be like, ‘No, this is how it happened — this, this and this — now with new fresh eyes, I’m sure I would look like at that a lot different,” he told Tapper. “I think anytime we see something that’s just so shocking and unbelievable we as humans want to try to find excuses, but sometimes the excuses are just real simple — people failed us as taxpayers.”
Pratt announced his unlikely mayoral bid on the one-year anniversary of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires that destroyed his home. He has since surged in the polls, barely trailing incumbent Karen Bass and fellow challenger Nithya Raman.
While his campaign has received some backlash, and many have denounced his political ambitions due to his reality TV past, Pratt has also secured numerous high-profile endorsements, including President Donald Trump and many of his former The Hills costars.
Twenty years after becoming reality TV’s most infamous antagonist on The Hills, Spencer Pratt has entered perhaps his most unexpected era yet: a respected political candidate. (Yes, really!) The 42-year-old TV personality turned crystal entrepreneur and hummingbird enthusiast is currently running for mayor of Los Angeles, steadily surging in the polls. His campaign videos rack […]
When asked if Pratt regrets his past conspiracy theory claims, the reality TV star reiterated his current stance.
“What I’m saying is I believe a lot of people failed to allow the Al-Qaeda terrorists to get in,” he said. “So I think the negligence in government allowed — not on purpose, but just failures. They didn’t burn my house down on purpose, they just failed. And again, everything I have done in the past, I was learning. I’m not perfect. I didn’t run to be mayor because I have some perfect past. I ran because there was no other fighter to stop corruption now. I was happy just living my life, feeding hummingbirds with my two kids, taking them to school.”
He continued, “I didn’t have this life to become one of these career politicians where I didn’t make mistakes, I wasn’t human, I didn’t say dumb or stupid things for 20 years in a very public light. So, you know, regret? Of course, I have 20 years of regret. I have talked about how many regrets, but that doesn’t connect to my mission now. Once you lose everything, once your parents lose everything, once your neighbors lose everything, you become a new person.”
