{"id":359010,"date":"2026-06-13T06:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/359010\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T06:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T06:44:16","slug":"trump-adds-a-bizarre-twist-to-his-baseless-california-election-conspiracy-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/359010\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump adds a bizarre twist to his baseless California election conspiracy theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been 10 days since California held its closely watched statewide primaries, and nearly every day since, Donald Trump has shared baseless conspiracy theories about the contests, with varying degrees of hysteria about Democratic mischief that hasn\u2019t happened in reality.<\/p>\n

The list of problems surrounding the president\u2019s claims is not short. Even putting aside the obvious and inconvenient details \u2014 there\u2019s literally no evidence of the system being \u201crigged,\u201d Trump doesn\u2019t seem to understand how election administration works, etc. \u2014 the fatal flaw in the Republican\u2019s groundless claims is that the election outcomes haven\u2019t quite turned out as Democrats would have preferred<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Los Angeles\u2019 mayoral race, for example, the Democratic incumbent would have welcomed the opportunity to run in the fall against a conservative television personality with an embarrassingly thin professional resume, but instead she\u2019ll face a Harvard- and MIT-educated City Council member who\u2019s already demonstrated an ability to win local elections.<\/p>\n

In the state\u2019s gubernatorial race, Democrats would have been delighted if Republicans had been locked out of the general election altogether, but instead, Republican Steve Hilton, a Trump-backed former Fox News personality, finished second in the multiparty \u201cjungle\u201d primary.<\/p>\n

Yet despite the obvious flaws that have already made these theories flimsy, the president added a new twist on Thursday.<\/p>\n

During a phone interview that aired live on \u201cFox and Friends,\u201d Fox News\u2019 Brian Kilmeade asked about the war in Iran. Trump responded by immediately focusing<\/a> on his 2020 election conspiracy theories, which naturally led to his California election conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was happening to Steve Hilton, and I went on a tear,\u201d the president said<\/a>. \u201cAnd they said it was going to be two weeks and they\u2019d know about Hilton, whether or not he\u2019s going to make it. I went on such a tear, then they approved it immediately. They approved Steve. It\u2019s such a rigged deal, it\u2019s so crazy. They approved him so fast because everybody was watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours later, at a White House event ostensibly about commercial fishing, Trump echoed his absurdities.<\/p>\n

\tRecommended<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tLatest Post\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tFriday\u2019s Mini-Report, 6.12.26<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been 10 days since California held its closely watched statewide primaries, and nearly every day since, Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-359010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}