California Governor Gavin Newsom fired back after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday night to rant about California's primary elections, claiming the Republican candidates he backed had been "cheated" by Democrats.
In the race to succeed Newsom—who cannot run for reelection but is considered a favorite for a White House bid in 2028—recent polls showed Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra leading Republican Steve Hilton, with Democratic candidate Tom Steyer in third place.
In Los Angeles' mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass has led most recent polls, while the contest for second place has remained close between Trump-backed reality television personality Spencer Pratt and city councilmember Nithya Raman. Pratt held second place early in the count but later fell behind Raman as additional ballots were tallied.
Amid all this, Trump took the time to rant about one of his favorite subjects—election fraud:
"Has anybody been watching the CROOKED Election going on in California. Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow."
"Watch this "Election" closely!!!"
You can see what he wrote below.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
Republicans have indeed alleged fraud took place but many of the fraud allegations appear to stem from a misunderstanding of how California counts votes, particularly the time required to complete the process.
California uses a nonpartisan "jungle" primary system, in which the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation. Because the state relies heavily on mail-in voting and must process millions of ballots, final results in major races can take days or even weeks to be fully certified.
Newsom was quick to shut this down:
"There isn’t a bigger sore loser in the country. Back to bed grandpa!"
You can see what he wrote below.
Many concurred.
A couple of days before Trump's post, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles announced that it had launched multiple investigations into alleged election fraud in California and dispatched a federal prosecutor to observe operations at the county's vote-counting center.
The move also came amid Trump's continued efforts to cast suspicion on routine shifts in vote totals that occur as late-arriving ballots are processed and counted.
Hilton, Trump's preferred choice in the gubernatorial race, called for major changes to California's election system. Among his proposals were ending the practice of automatically mailing ballots to all registered voters and requiring mail ballots to arrive by Election Day, rather than allowing the state's current seven-day window for ballots postmarked by Election Day.
Despite backing those changes, Hilton said he had not seen evidence of wrongdoing in the ongoing vote count. He acknowledged that federal investigators may have information unavailable to his campaign, but said his team had closely monitored the tabulation process and observed nothing that appeared illegal.
