In October 2020, Adrian Alvarez, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, was so panicked that Joe Biden would not win the election and “dethrone” Donald Trump, he wound up in a hospital for 10 days.
“I woke up outside my apartment in Hollywood,” Alvarez, now 41, told me. “I hadn’t slept in three or four days, and I was watching MSNBC all day, and my blood pressure shot up, and my heart was beating like crazy, and then the ambulance came around, and they put me on an IV.”
Now, in a bit of a departure, Alvarez is making short, viral AI videos backing LA mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt from the two-bedroom townhouse in mid-city that he shares with his wife, 9-year-old son, and their tortoise, Spike—the headquarters of a budding online movement known as “Latinos por Pratt.”
Alvarez’s breakout video came in April, with “Spencer, Saca La Bassura!” or “Spencer, Take Out the Trash!” Pratt has taken to calling LA mayor Karen Bass Karen Basura, which is exactly the kind of politically incorrect put-down that Donald Trump (the mastermind behind “Low Energy Jeb” and “Little Marco”) might have conjured up. The nearly three-minute, animated video is meant to convey the same jaunty, angry, Archie Bunker, enough-with-these-people sentiment that courses through the whole Pratt campaign: It revolves around the candidate in a black T-shirt and pushing a garbage bin full of—well, garbage—plus Karen Bass past a cheering, multicultural throng. So far, it has racked up millions of views across all platforms. Pratt shared it. So did Billy Bush of Hollywood Access “grab ’em by the pussy” fame.
