ON ALLEGED ELECTORAL FRAUD, EVERY REPUBLICAN'S STANDARD OF EVIDENCE IS ABOUT AS RIGOROUS AS TRUMP'S

In an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker that was aired yesterday, President Trump proclaimed, once again, that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was rigged, and that this year's California primaries are also rigged. Welker challenged Trump to provide evidence. He responded with a temper tantrum and a walkout.

Trump's fraud assertions are based on his usual rigorous evidentiary standard:

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.

KRISTEN WELKER: Mr. President –

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: And it’s happening again right now in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: — you’ve never presented evidence –

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s happening right now in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: – that the 2020 election was rigged.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Right now, it’s look at what’s happening in California.

KRISTEN WELKER: Where’s the evidence to that?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s four days –

KRISTEN WELKER: The Republicans are doing well in California.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: In California, it’s, no they’re not. They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election. Let me tell you, it’s four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with the –

KRISTEN WELKER: That’s how they count the votes in California.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.

KRISTEN WELKER: There’s — What? Do you have evidence to support that?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s-- all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

Trump's additional evidence: "And I listen. And I listen to people." "You have more evidence, there’s more evidence than ever presented." "Your elections in this country – we’re like a third world country." That's an open-and-shut case!

But every Republican's evidence standard is approximately as rigorous as Trump's. In Los Angeles, Republican demi-celebrity Spencer Pratt was in second place in the Los Angeles mayoral primary based on votes counted on Election Night. However, many mail-in votes were still uncounted, and vote counting in California tends to be quite slow, primarily because the state allows mail ballots to trickle in late as long as they're postmarked by Election Day. It's widely known that Democratic voters vote by mail more than Republican voters, so it's no surprise that Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialist who was in third place on Election Night, has surged into second place.

Pratt himself, who undoubtedly has a brain full of Fox News talking points just like Trump, thinks he's identified the fiendish trick the Demonrats have pulled on him. Last night, local news reporter Matt Seedorff provided a vote-count update:

On election night, Pratt led Raman by about 40,000 votes—roughly a 10-point advantage.

As of tonight, Raman now leads Pratt by about 3,100 votes, a net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.

Pratt replied:

"A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.."

43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before...?

Probably nothing. 🤷 https://t.co/W2E3k6PHyR pic.twitter.com/ZfzHCy9enb

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) June 8, 2026

Let's take a deep breath and try to understand what's being alleged here. The Demonrats, as every Fox viewer "knows," cheat routinely (though they somehow lose many elections). When they're not arriving at the border and registering every border-crosser and asylum-seeker as a Democrat, or counting fake ballots made of Chinese bamboo, they're rounding up homeless people to provide fake Democratic votes.

Apparently they got nearly every homeless person in L.A. to vote Democratic -- because, you know, homeless people are well known for being docile and cooperative, and for doing whatever authority figures ask them to do. Or maybe the Dems just filled out fake ballots with homeless people's names, carefully matching each of the 43,000 fake ballots to the name of a homeless person (because no homeless person ever slips through the cracks and is unknown to the government). Democrats did this evil thing -- but they didn't deploy the 43,000 fake votes until the actual returns came in and, by astonishing coincidence, it turned out that they needed precisely that number to beat Pratt. (Somehow, it never occurred to them to include these fake ballots in the Election Night vote count.)

And all this assumes that Democrats wanted Pratt out of the runoff. If he'd survived, he'd be a Republican running in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. He'd be toast. Now, however, the Democratic Establishment's candidate, incumbent Karen Bass, might get a real challenge from an actual Democrat who is to her left. Wouldn't the party have preferred to run Bass against Pratt?

To Trump, this is a sign of rigging -- even though the rigging doesn't seem to extend to the governor's race, in which Republican Steve Hilton still seems likely to make the runoff (although he's slipped from first to second place as late votes have been counted). Apparently the Demonrat cheaters want Pratt out but don't want Hilton out, for some mysterious reason.

No one in the GOP can find actual evidence of fraud in these vote counts, but for Republicans who believe elections are rigged, it's feelings that matter, not facts. Here's an excerpt from an opinion piece published by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and new California Post. It was written by Joel Pollak, the former Breitbart editor in chief who's now the California Post's opinion editor.

Half of America is watching LA count its votes with a sense of déjà vu: The spectacle of a candidate who is leading on election night, suddenly falling behind when mail-in ballots are counted, is what caused many to regard the 2020 election as fraudulent.

There was no proof of fraud then, just as there is no proof in LA; but the process does not inspire confidence. The fact that we are being told — by incumbents — that everything is OK only deepens the suspicion.

It was always possible — as I had said before Election Day — that socialist Nithya Raman would take second place, ahead of Pacific Palisades fire survivor Spencer Pratt.

I used an analogy from auto racing: Raman was “drafting” off Pratt, letting him do the tough work of attacking incumbent Karen Bass, and take all the attacks in return, then scooping up voters who decided they could not reelect Bass, but would not vote for a Trump-like Republican.

Yet, assuming that Raman does qualify for the general election ahead of Pratt, it would have been better to know that on election night — not several days after the fact.

If there were, in fact, fraud, this is exactly what it would look like. Again, there is no proof of fraud — but there is also no proof that there isn’t.

So let's sum up Pollak's argument:

* We can't find any fraud in the L.A. mayoral race.

* We couldn't find any fraud in the 2020 presidential election either.

* But as votes were being counted in both elections, the vote totals changed in ways that made Republicans feel bad.

* Therefore, the results seem fraudulent to us, even though

* we can't find any fraud.

Pollak admnits that Raman seemed poised to do well, then says the fact that she did do well looks like fraud, because it took a couple of days for us to realize that she did as well as ... um, Joel Pollak predicted she might do.

Republicans are butthurt. That's their evidence of fraud.

This is how the right-wing media makes Republican voters -- and politicians, including Trump and Pratt -- stupider.