Pratt lost because he was a laughable candidate. Period. | Opinion

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt is out of the Los Angeles mayoral race for two reasons.

First, and most important, he got fewer votes than two other candidates, incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and LA City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who will now face off against each other. Second, he’s an unqualified dipstick whom a majority of Los Angelenos understood wasn’t qualified for the job.

Pratt was endorsed by President Donald Trump and hailed by some MAGA Republicans as a rising star, a political outsider with a winning populist message.

That was, in a word, wrong.

The Free Press, the conservative publication founded by Bari Weiss, who is presently busy ruining CBS News, ran a piece in May that posed the question: “How did Spencer Pratt, reality TV star and ‘healing’ crystal salesman, become the ‘adult in the room’ in the LA mayor’s race?”

That question is, in a word, hilarious.

Pratt's loss in LA shows Americans have had it with reality stars

Pratt, like Trump, is a quasi-celebrity capable of talking a good game to a right-wing swath of the populace. But he was never the adult in any room, he was never going to win as a Republican in a heavily Democratic Los Angeles, and he was never going to be significant on a national stage because voters appear to have had it with former reality stars moving into leadership positions.

I’d like to believe that Pratt’s collapse in this race, coupled with Trump’s complete collapse in approval ratings, shows a solid number of Americans are embracing a slogan I’ve been repeating for some time: Make Stupidity Embarrassing Again. 

Pratt was a ridiculous candidate, someone who never would’ve been taken seriously in the days before MAGA became a thing. And the way Trump and the Republican Party have reacted to Pratt getting overrun by Raman, who got the second most votes after Bass, is beyond ridiculous.

Trump finds conspiracy in Pratt's loss, because of course he does

On June 8, Trump posted on social media: “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!”

This lame sore-loser patter from the nearly 80-year-old nutter who’s president of the United States in between naps has grown so tiresome it’s impacting Ambien sales.

It's stupid. California’s vote-counting process takes longer than most states. As The Wall Street Journal reported: “The majority of California voters cast their ballots by mail. State law, which favors voter participation over speed, requires that election officials verify and count every ballot that is postmarked by Election Day and arrives within a week after.”

You don’t have to like it, but that’s the way it is, and voter fraud there and everywhere across the country is rare. Anyone saying otherwise is a dummy doing democracy a great disservice.

Oh no. Mike Johnson thinks something is 'diabolical' about Pratt's loss.

Enter GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who on June 8 was asked to provide evidence of voter fraud in California. He responded with this: “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it's impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.”

Nope. Not everybody instinctively knows something is wrong here. Because there’s no proof that anything is wrong here, and only a person who has sold their soul for power would say otherwise. And also, Speaker Johnson … diabolical? Really?

That’s just stupid. And it’s embarrassing for our country.

Like many Americans, I'm really sick of stupidity being seen as an asset

Pratt’s candidacy in Los Angeles was a joke. Johnson, as an educated human being and a high-ranking government official, is behaving like a buffoon, and he knows it. He’s a joke. 

Trump was elected a second time by Americans who knew exactly who he was and were told exactly what he would do. And now he’s doing all those things, and tanking the economy, and quagmiring us in a war in the Middle East, and continuously fabricating nonsense about rigged elections to soothe his ego. He’s a joke.

This is all very, very stupid. And Americans should be about full-up on stupid.

So let Pratt wallow in the embarrassment of losing. And let Trump sulk in the embarrassment of being monumentally unpopular and swiftly losing control of his presidency. And let Johnson continue to embarrass himself with his obsequious lies.

Perhaps the rest of us can find some national unity in making sure stupidity stops being a calling card and, once again, becomes embarrassing. 

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.