As the surprise opener for Netflix Is a Joke, Jon Stewart looked a massive crowd of Angelenos in the eye and asked them what the heck they were thinking.
“It’s a crazy world that we’re living in … It’s f–ked, man,” Stewart told the Hollywood Bowl crowd before headliner John Mullaney. “We’re in an astonishing moment. You know, I was just saying, I mean, L.A., oh, you poor b–tards get one fire, one mudslide and you’re like, OK, just let the guy from ‘The Hills’ take over. Like, is that really what we’re doing?”
Stewart questioned Pratt’s credentials to be mayor, thought about it a moment, then questioned his own questioning of Pratt’s credentials.
“Everybody’s like, what does he know about L.A.? He was on a show with superficial, entitled rich people who were addicted to plastic surgery. How is he even gonna know what to do around here? … No offense,” Stewart joked.
Pratt performed better than expected in this week’s mayoral debate, another pivot point on the 42-year old Republican’s rapid rise in the polls to go from novelty candidate to actual contender.
“The reality is no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super meth. They are on fentanyl,” Pratt said while addressing his opponent Nithya Raman’s ineffectiveness on homelessness in the city. “The DEA statistics says 90% of this is a drug addiction problem. Councilman Raman’s plan for treatment first? I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck.”
“I actually thought that [Pratt] had a strong performance,” Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, told TheWrap. “I’m sure the debate organizers were worried, going in, about how the reality TV star bad boy would behave. Would he keep interrupting? But he came across as serious and passionate and funny at times.”
Pratt announced his plan to run for mayor on the anniversary of the Palisades fires. “We’re going to expose the system,” Pratt said to cheers from a crowd. “We’re going into every dark corner of LA politics and disinfecting the city with our light.”
Pratt sued the city of Los Angeles alongside 20 others in response to perceived failures to adequately respond to the fires as well as damage caused.
“On information and belief, the Palisades Fire was an inescapable and
unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed,” the lawsuit read. “The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.”
Benjamin Lindsay contributed reporting to this story.
