Spencer Pratt Surging in LA Mayor Race, DNC Autopsy Report Fight, UFO Files Released: AM Update 5/11

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:02]Good morning everyone. I'm Thatcher.

[00:00:04]>> I'm Yates.

[00:00:05]>> And I'm Yardley. It's Monday, May 11th, 2026. And this is a special Mother's Day edition of AM Update, where we're giving our mom the day off.

[00:00:14]>> We're living their experience right now.

[00:00:17]Their experience has failed us.

[00:00:19]>> Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is surging in the prediction markets and sparring CBS News over claims of selective editing. What we don't need to be focused on is actually relitigating 2024.

[00:00:32]>> Democrats ramping up pressure on their party chair to release a secret report on what went wrong in the 2024 election.

[00:00:39]The Pentagon dropping a trove of newly declassified UFO files. And 17 Americans in the middle of a deadly cruise ship pantirus outbreak now off the vessel as health officials prepare to screen them in Nebraska. All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.

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[00:02:04]Fresh off his performance on the Los Angeles mayoral debate stage last week.

[00:02:08]Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt dominating the political and cultural conversation. The outsider now seeing the prospects of his unlikely victory rising with prediction markets signaling his surge in the race. Pratt, best known for his role as the villain on MTV's reality series The Hills, entering the mayoral race after his home burned down in the 2025 Palisades fire, pointing to what he calls overwhelming failures by city officials to prepare for and respond to the disaster. Since then, Pratt's campaign has evolved into a broader referendum on politics as usual in Los Angeles with the candidate hammering city leaders over homelessness, public safety, affordability, and basic city services.

[00:02:48]He has been especially critical of the millions spent on homeless outreach and nonprofit contracts. Though he is a registered Republican, Pratt has tried to avoid becoming a national political proxy, keeping his message almost entirely local and casting his campaign as a revolt against the city hall establishment. While no formal post-debate polls have been released on Poly Market, Pratt has gone from just a 13% chance of winning the race to 30% as of last night. Current mayor Karen Bass rising as well since the debate, up from 27% to 49% largely thanks to the complete collapse of city councilwoman Nithia Ramen, who has fallen from 55% to 22%. On KHI, Bass at 51% and Pratt at 30%. While not a substitute for polling, betting markets suggest traders now see Pratt as Bass's closest challenger heading into the final stretch. Mayor Bass may be coming to the same realization on Saturday. the mayor pulling out at the next televised forum set for this coming Wednesday. Pratt previously declining an invitation citing scheduling conflicts. As Pratt has taken a higher profile, he's facing off with the national media organization over claims of biased edits. Pratt sitting down with CBS News late last week for an interview on the burnedout lot where his home once stood. The outlet condensing the interview into a short package featuring clips from Pratt's reality TV villain days and its own political analysis. Pratt first made a name for himself as the resident villain on MTV's hit show The Hills.

[00:04:16]>> I got a sister crying in my face doing drama. He yelled at me.

[00:04:20]>> But the 42-year-old former reality star who has no political experience is now a main character in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Why should voters believe that you, who don't have any experience in that realm, can actually be the solution? I may not have the experience, but I have the common sense to say this is not working. It's going to be a hard road to to convince a very blue city like LA to take a chance on not only a novice politician, but somebody who has pretty much aligned himself with with Donald Trump and with Republicans.

[00:04:51]>> Pratt responding in a series of social media posts accusing CBS of cutting the interview into a quote hit piece. Quote, "CBS filmed with me on my burnedout lot for over an hour, and they turned it over to Karen Bass's PR team to edit it into a comical 5-minute hit piece with clips from The Hills. They can't beat my ideas. They can't beat me in the debates, so they got to try to turn my campaign into a sideshow." On Saturday, CBS News posting the whole 28-minute interview to social media. In the extended interview, Pratt elaborating on one of the central arguments of his campaign that political experience in Los Angeles is not an asset if the people with experience are the ones who created the crisis.

[00:05:31]>> Why should voters believe that you who don't have any experience in that realm can actually be the solution?

[00:05:37]>> Yeah. Because we're living their experience right now. Their experience has failed us. So what we need is somebody to come in with common sense.

[00:05:46]They're going to continue their experience is to tell you that all these people are just need a bed. We need more billions of dollars for these beds. The DEA has said 90% of the people living on the streets in Los Angeles are drug addicts. Drug addicts do not want beds.

[00:06:03]They want drugs. We need mandatory treatment. I don't mean jail. They don't all need to get jail, but we need to get mandatory medical treatment to get people off of super meth, get them off of fentanyl, and then we can work on getting them beds.

[00:06:16]>> In another moment, Pratt addresses comparisons between himself and New York City Mayor Zoran Mandani. The one thing I connect with is I know he promised his voters like the subway will be free. And I'm promising my voters the metro, the metro buses, the metro trains, they will be free from urine, feces, stabbing, attacks. So that's kind of similar. We both had free things for public transportation.

[00:06:43]>> Early voting already underway ahead of the June 2nd primary. If no candidate reaches the 50% threshold, the top two finishers advance to a November 3rd runoff. An early April poll from UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs finding 40% of the electorate remains undecided with Mayor Bath leading the field at 25% followed by Pratt with 11% and Ramen at 9%. But as we get new polls, we'll bring them to you.

[00:07:10]Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin taking fire from fellow Democrats over his refusal to release the DNC's full autopsy report on the 2024 election with rumblings the report may be coming out after push back from his own party.

[00:07:23]Martin ordering the review shortly after becoming DNC chair in February of last year. The effort reportedly included hundreds of interviews across all 50 states looking at what went wrong in the presidential race, down ballot races, organizing, communications, fundraising, and spending. The report totaling roughly 200 pages, initially expected to be made public. But in December, Martin abruptly reversing course, deciding to keep the report a secret, releasing a statement, quote, "Here's our north star. Does this help us win? If the answer is no, it's a distraction from the core mission. The decision fueling backlash within the party. In midappril, more than a dozen DNC members calling on Martin to release the findings. Later that month, DNC chair Ken Martin appearing on the Pod Save America podcast where former Obama speech writer John Favro repeatedly pressed him on why he will not release the full report.

[00:08:18]>> So, what changed between August and December? I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report?

[00:08:26]What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize?

[00:08:29]>> Yeah, there's no smoking gun in the report. And I know that's that's what everyone's so eager to learn. I the smoking gun. Guess what, John?

[00:08:36]>> But if there's but if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then? because we want to keep the focus on the lessons because what ends up happening here is that uh people of course want to weaponize the report in a way to look backwards to point fingers place blame in a way that actually doesn't keep us focused on the upcoming election but instead the naval gazing of focus focusing backwards um actually takes us backwards we're 189 days from this election John what we don't need to be focused on is actually relitigating 2024 what we need to do is learn the lessons of 24 in the years preceding that can help us win this upcoming election.

[00:09:14]That's why we've been releasing them.

[00:09:16]That's why we've been focused in on actually putting those lessons into action. Former Vice President Camala Harris also reportedly backing the reports release according to NBC News.

[00:09:27]Yesterday on NBC, Democratic strategist Ashley Etienne suggesting the pressure campaign on the DNC may be working and that any release could expose some uncomfortable truths inside the party.

[00:09:38]I'm being told that the Democratic Party is going to release the autopsy in a matter of weeks. And it's going to include four things. It's going to include one, an assessment of the organizing infrastructure of the party, an assessment of messaging and media strategy, as well as fundraising, and how and where the money was spent. And that's going to be the most explosive part because there's speculations that decisions were made by campaign leadership to line their pockets rather than actually uh advance a strategy to win the election. That is really the question that's on on the table here that I think is causing a lot of people to want to uh to to discard and and brush this under the rug. And I'm also hearing that Ken Martin is suffering a lot of pressure. He wants transparency, but there's pressure from within the party, the DNC, and campaign leadership to bury this report.

[00:10:27]>> Coming up, a new trove of declassified UFO or UAP files released by the Pentagon. And 17 Americans who were aboard a cruise ship hit by a deadly virus now off the vessel with health officials preparing for their return to the States.

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[00:11:59]In a long anticipated disclosure, the Pentagon releasing a trove of declassified materials on Friday related to the unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs. the updated government term for UFOs. The Department of War launching a new website, war.gov/Ufo, posting the first batch of materials, including over 160 files, most of them PDFs along with 28 videos and 14 image files. Some of the records dating back to the 1940s, the Pentagon indicating more releases will come on a rolling basis over the next few weeks. The release coming after President Trump directed the Secretary of War and other federal agencies back in February to begin identifying the release of government files related to alien life in UAPs. President Trump posting to Truth Social on Friday, quote, "Whereas previous administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new documents and videos, the people can decide for themselves what the hell is going on. Have fun and enjoy." The New York Times and ABC News pointing to NASA transcripts from 1969 included in the release documenting a technical debriefing with Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. In the transcript, Aluldren described flashes of light during the moon mission, saying he saw what appeared to be quote a fairly bright light source with the crew quote tenatively ascribed to a possible laser.

[00:13:36]ABC News highlighting one of the more notable cases in the files. A two-day encounter in the western US in 2023 where federal law enforcement officers separately reported seeing orbs or round glowing objects, including one account of quote orbs launching other orbs. The Pentagon describing the case as quote among the most compelling reports it has reviewed. 2026 is shaping up to feature a summer of disclosure. The latest Stephven Spielberg movie called Disclosure Day hits theaters June 12th.

[00:14:12]17 Americans are among the dozens of passengers who disembarked yesterday from the MV Hondas cruise ship at the center of a deadly honor outbreak. The ship anchoring off the coast of the Canary Islands, where officials from several countries are now working to repatriate passengers without risking further spread of the deadly disease.

[00:14:30]Hont virus spreads primarily through contact with infected rodent waste. the strain responsible for this outbreak, the only type that can spread personto person through close contact. It carries a roughly 40% fatality rate, though officials stress transmission between people is rare. At least nine confirmed or suspected hauntus cases have now been tied to the ship, including three deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The Americans met by a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, with the State Department arranging their flight back to the US. According to NBC News, the University of Nebraska Medical C Center's National Quarantine Unit is preparing to receive them for evaluation. Acting CDC director Dr. Jay Badachara yesterday on CNN describing what the next steps will look like for the Americans.

[00:15:20]>> We're going to interview them and assess them for risk. Risk is a high risk if they've been in close contact with somebody who was symptomatic. Um if they weren't in close contact with someone who was symptomatic, then we're going to deem them low risk. At that point, we will offer them uh you know alternatives including an offer to stay in Nebraska if they'd like or if they want to go back home and their home situation allows it to safely fly them home without exposing other people on the way um and then be put in control put under the the uh the the uh opices of their state and local public health agencies which with the CDC support all the way.

[00:15:54]>> A CDC official telling the Wall Street Journal that passengers will be monitored for around 6 weeks. Yesterday morning, the chief of the World Health Organization telling reporters, quote, "This is not another CO and the risk to the public is low, so they shouldn't be scared and they shouldn't panic."

[00:16:13]That'll do it for your AM update. Join our mom back here for the MK Show live on SiriusXM's The Megan Kelly channel 111 at noon Eastern on youtube.com/megan Kelly and all podcast platforms. Thank you everyone. Happy Mother's Day.

[00:16:28]>> Happy Mother's Day.

[00:16:29]>> Thanks. Have a great day.