Chelsea Handler posted a video to Instagram on Friday, pausing to pour herself a canned cocktail, and delivered her verdict on Spencer Pratt's mayoral campaign. "If you're seeing this video, this is a reminder that a straight, white male former reality star that has no previous experience in government should not be a legitimate political candidate. Have we learned anything yet? The bar is on the f---ing floor, people, and I need you to jump over it." The Trump comparison was implicit but nobody missed it.
It landed like a grenade in Spencer Pratt's mentions. And on the surface, she has a point. Spencer Pratt understands attention the way Trump does. He knows how to feed a news cycle, how to make himself the story, how to absorb bad press and convert it into relevance. I know this because for twenty years, as editor of People magazine, Life and Style and Us Weekly, he was one of my most reliable contacts. He still texts back within 45 seconds. I flew across America on a promise from him once, landed to find a media scrum, and had to explain to my bosses why the exclusive I'd promised them wasn't. I covered the wreckage when Speidi went broke. I brokered stories that ran on every entertainment show in America.
I've been burned by him, charmed by him, and genuinely surprised by him. And I'm here to tell you the Trump comparison is worth taking seriously — and worth taking apart properly. Here is twenty years of receipts.
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