California Screamin’

Trump loses his cool while trying to defend a conspiracy theory

Screenshot via NBC News

You may have seen a video of Sunday’s hostile interview the president had with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.” He yelled at Welker and insulted her. No elected official, much less the President of the United States, should behave that way. Donald Trump has a problem with women, especially female journalists who ask tough questions.

Welker was asking about California’s primary election and the multi-day vote count when Trump began his rant.

While this behavior was beyond boorish, it carries a reminder of something more important — stay alert for the midterms because Trump gave away a big part of the Republican game plan. This president and his party will do anything to raise questions about the validity of your vote.

The laundry list of things that Donald Trump does poorly is a mile long. But one thing he is good at is sowing doubt. The more desperate he is, the more aggressive he gets. And he is desperate.

His approval ratings are abysmal. His “quick” war with Iran has dragged on for 100 days. Prices for most everything continue to rise. All of which points to the Republicans losing control of the House and possibly the Senate come November.

Trump knows he can’t win on the strength of his policies because they are very unpopular. Instead, he is returning to his 2020 playbook of preemptively casting suspicion about the integrity of elections. California is his current ground zero.

During the interview, Welker asked the president for evidence after he accused California of rigging its recent primaries. Since he had none to provide, he lashed out at her.

“You are either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap,” he spat at Welker. He had some other choice words, including damning legacy media outlets. “Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN,” he said as he unclipped his microphone and walked off the set.

Trump’s disinformation campaign about California’s election integrity is off to a decent start, being parroted by the usual suspects in the right-wing media. It is important that the whole country understand why he is trying to undermine California and its unconventional voting process.

First, Trump hates the Golden State. The most populous state in the country is deep blue. It has 23 million registered voters, far more than second-place Texas, which has 18.7 million. The prosperous state is helmed by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has been an outspoken and cheeky thorn in the president’s side. The Trump-engineered Texas redistricting plan was neutralized by California’s own redistricting, which was orchestrated by Newsom.

Now, to California’s election procedure. The state employs what is called a jungle primary, in which the top two finishers move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. In an effort to get the highest voter turnout possible, the state mails ballots to every registered voter. Because of this, 80% of votes cast are by mail.

Mail-in ballots take longer to count. First, though they must be postmarked by Election Day, they have seven days to be received. Second, all mail-in ballots are checked by hand. If there is an issue with a ballot, say a signature does not match, the voter has 22 days to fix it.

Initially, in the governor’s race and the Los Angeles mayor’s race, Trump-endorsed candidates were doing well. They were in the top two in each race. As more mail-in ballots were counted, their percentages slipped, since Republicans are more likely to vote in person, while Democrats are more likely to vote by mail.

As of Sunday evening, Trump’s candidates had both dropped to third, and possibly out of their respective races. By no coincidence, it wasn’t until Sunday, five days after polls closed, that Trump cried foul.

The president has fixated on the time it is taking California to finalize its vote, suggesting, nonsensically, that the slowness of the vote count indicates the election is rigged. In reality, a place Trump seldom visits, slowness should suggest a more thorough count, not a corrupted one.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced it has opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to the primary election. No other information has been provided. A federal prosecutor was sent to “monitor” vote counting at an election center in L.A.

Election fraud in the United States is extremely rare. A study conducted by the Brookings Institution found only 0.000043% of cases of fraud in mail-in voting, which works out to four out of every 10 million votes cast.

California has weathered criticism of its process for years. To curtail concerns surrounding this year’s primary, Newsom sent a letter to election officials warning that delays could lead to disinformation.

“We face an assault on our democratic values unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, and it’s our job to safeguard those values,” Newsom wrote.

He is right to be concerned. A National Academy of Sciences study found that trust in elections fell from 67% to 60% when there were unexplained delays in results.

Trump’s attack on California is just one part of his plan to undermine the 2026 elections.

His Department of Justice (DOJ) has attacked voting rights around the country. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. He issued executive orders giving him the power to take over elections, which is unconstitutional. He lobbied hard for the SAVE Act, a voter suppression bill. It failed in the House almost a dozen times. Meanwhile, 2020 election denialism has become a litmus test for his judicial nominees.

You would think someone who continuously cries wolf about election integrity would do what he could to ensure free and fair elections. But that is not what Trump wants. He wants to win by whatever means are available. And his best bets in the 2026 midterms are to suppress the vote when he can, then question the validity of the votes that are cast.

Here’s the unsurprising irony. According to political news website NOTUS, the DOJ has canceled all election integrity training and deleted its guide to prosecuting election offenses. There is no director of the Election Crimes Branch, and most of the lawyers in the Public Integrity Section have been fired. Normally, by this point prior to a national election, an election integrity command center has been established to address emergencies. There is no evidence that the command center will exist.

The country has witnessed this president’s thuggish behavior for more than a decade, and it’s beyond time for someone in his party to stand up and say, “Enough.” Odds of that happening are not encouraging, with Trump-backed candidates winning most of the Republican primaries.

Trump’s current conspiracy theories of election rigging in California are just a prelude to what he will do in November. Remember, democracy is not a spectator sport. The best defense against his disinformation campaign is action. Whether you are a Democrat, Independent, or anti-Trump Republican, these are things you can do to blunt his campaign: register to vote, encourage others to do so, then vote and stay informed. You can also volunteer with your election board or with voting-rights organizations.

This is one of the most important mid-term elections in the history of the country.

There is no excuse for citizen apathy.

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Stay Steady,
Dan