President Donald Trump accused Democrats of trying to steal two major California primary races from Republican candidates, pointing to delayed mail-in ballot counts and saying the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles had opened an investigation into the matter.
Trump issued the charges Thursday in a pair of Truth Social posts as vote tallies in both the California gubernatorial primary and the Los Angeles mayoral primary remained incomplete days after polls closed Tuesday. With ballots still being processed through signature verification and audits, the president framed the drawn-out count as evidence of foul play.
The accusations land in a state where Republicans have not held the Los Angeles mayor's office in decades, and where one-party Democratic governance has faced growing public frustration. Whether the delayed counts reflect routine California ballot processing or something more irregular is now the central question, and Trump is not waiting for an answer before pressing the issue.
In his first post, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
"The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS."
Minutes later, he followed up with a second post, as Breitbart News reported:
"There's BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY??? President DJT."
The New York Post reported that with 56% of ballots counted in the governor's race, Trump-endorsed Steve Hilton held the lead at 27.6%. Xavier Becerra sat in second at 25.6%, a margin of just two points with nearly half the vote still outstanding.
In the Los Angeles mayoral primary, incumbent Karen Bass led with 34.97%. Spencer Pratt, the Republican-aligned candidate who has drawn national attention, trailed in second at 29.91%. Nithya Raman held third place at 22.81%.
After the first ballot drops Wednesday, the New York Post reported that voters appeared to be leaning toward sending both Pratt and Hilton to runoff elections. By Wednesday night, both candidates held their positions steady. But the slow pace of the count, driven by California's mail-in ballot procedures, left final outcomes uncertain.
Trump stated Thursday that Los Angeles officials had launched an investigation and that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles was looking into the vote-counting delays. His Truth Social post presented this as an active matter. The fact pack does not include independent confirmation of the investigation beyond Trump's own statements.
That gap matters. If the U.S. Attorney's Office has in fact opened an inquiry, it would represent a significant federal interest in the integrity of California's primary process. If it has not, the claim still carries weight as a signal of what the White House considers acceptable, and what it does not.
Trump's broader concern about California's election practices is not new. He has repeatedly questioned the state's vote-by-mail infrastructure and the long timelines California routinely takes to finalize results. The New York Post noted that the state's count may take significant additional time due to signature verification, vote-by-mail ballot processing, and audits.
For voters in most states, learning election results days or weeks after polls close seems abnormal. In California, it has become standard operating procedure, a fact that does not, by itself, prove fraud, but does invite reasonable scrutiny about why the nation's largest state cannot count its ballots faster.
Steve Hilton, whom Trump endorsed in April and recently called a "hard driving WINNER," has run as the Republican standard-bearer in the governor's race. His narrow lead over Becerra with so many ballots uncounted makes the race a genuine toss-up as mail-in votes continue to be processed.
The administration's push for tighter controls on mail-in voting at the federal level provides important backdrop. Trump has signed executive orders aimed at voter citizenship verification and mail-ballot restrictions, orders that Democrats have fought in court. California's protracted count is exactly the kind of scenario that fuels the president's argument for reform.
Spencer Pratt's mayoral campaign has drawn an unlikely coalition of supporters. The former reality television figure has positioned himself as a populist challenger to Bass, heavily criticizing the incumbent and sharing videos on social media of interactions with local residents whom he says Bass ignores.
Even HBO late-night host Bill Maher, hardly a conservative, recently called Pratt "authentic" and threw his support behind the candidate, Breitbart News reported. When a liberal comedian backs a Republican-aligned challenger to a sitting Democratic mayor, it says something about the depth of dissatisfaction with the status quo in Los Angeles.
Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow framed the races in broader terms during an episode of The Alex Marlow Show on Monday. He noted that Los Angeles has not had a Republican mayor in decades and described the city's governance as an extension of "one party rule."
"And if you ask anyone, do you think that it's good to have one party rule in a given city, in a given state? No one's going to say yes. No one in the entire world is going to say that. It is a positive thing, that we have one party that gets to dominate and never gets held to account. But because of the power of the unions, because Karen Bass has all the unions lined behind her, she's still the favorite to win, even though the city burned down on her watch."
That last line carries particular force. Los Angeles has endured devastating wildfires, a homelessness crisis that defies description, and a cost of living that has driven hundreds of thousands of residents out of the state. Bass inherited some of those problems. She has also presided over others. Voters now get to decide whether they want more of the same.
The broader pattern across California mirrors what Democratic strategists themselves have warned about: a party so consumed by its own internal dynamics that it cannot address the practical failures voters see every day. When a city's residents are angry enough to consider a reality TV personality over the incumbent backed by every major union, the establishment has a credibility problem that no amount of ballot processing can fix.
Several important questions remain open. How many total ballots are still outstanding in both races? What specific matter has the U.S. Attorney's Office been asked to investigate, and has that office confirmed any inquiry? What triggered Trump's claim that Los Angeles officials launched their own investigation?
The final results could take weeks to materialize. In the meantime, the margins are tight enough in both races that the mail-in ballots yet to be counted will determine whether Republican candidates advance or fall short.
Democrats have fought aggressively in court to preserve expansive mail-voting rules. They argue these systems increase access and participation. Republicans counter that the same systems create windows for irregularity and make timely, transparent results nearly impossible. California's current count, still unresolved days after Election Day, hands Republicans a powerful exhibit in that argument.
Trump's language was characteristically blunt. Whether the word "steal" proves accurate or overheated will depend on facts still emerging. But his core complaint, that California takes far too long to count votes, that the process lacks transparency, and that the delays always seem to benefit the same party, resonates with millions of voters who have watched this pattern repeat cycle after cycle.
When a state cannot tell its own citizens who won an election within a reasonable timeframe, the system is not working for the people. It is working for whoever benefits from the confusion.
