MAGA no longer using 'cooked-up' claims to steal elections

President Donald Trump and his supporters' plan to steal the 2026 midterm elections is more simple than was last time, according to a conservative commentator.

“These days, Donald Trump reflexively denounces any election result he dislikes as stolen and fraudulent,” wrote The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger on Wednesday. “But it doesn’t always catch on. In April, Republicans seemed faintly embarrassed by his claim that Virginia’s redistricting referendum had been a ‘rigged election’ and ‘crooked victory’ after Democrats executed a phony ‘mail-in ballot drop’; few wanted to defend it on the merits, and the president let the matter drop.”

Yet in contrast to those contests, Republicans jumped on the Trump bandwagon in claiming that the Los Angeles mayoral race must have been stolen. They said this despite not even attempting to produce evidence, and even though incumbent Mayor Karen Bass performs far better against Republican candidate Spencer Pratt (who failed to make the runoff) than councilmember Nithya Raman (who is now slated to appear against her).

“What had happened to get these guys so riled up?” Egger wrote. “As the ballots were counted, progressive challenger Nithya Raman, who had been in third place in the early stages of the counting process, gradually caught up to and passed conservative candidate Spencer Pratt to advance to the runoff against incumbent Karen Bass.”

He added, “That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Voters who voted in a certain way — by mailing in ballots at or near the deadline — turned out to be more pro-Raman than early mail-in voters or same-day voters had been. This is the smoking gun that has Republicans everywhere crying ‘fraud.’”

Ultimately Egger concluded “nobody denouncing the race has pointed to specific supposed examples of malfeasance; it’s simply the result itself that’s supposedly suspicious.” This, he added, is likely their playbook for trying to steal the 2026 midterms if Democrats as expected make inroads and possibly retake one or both chambers of Congress.

“The GOP base is going to go along with Trump on any major election he decides to claim is fraudulent this November,” Egger wrote. “All it will take, again, is for Democrats to do better than they expected. And what Republican base voter is expecting a blue wave? Trump is going to do this, and they’re going to fall in line. Somehow, some people will be surprised by this. Don’t be among them.”

In February a different conservative columnist, George F. Will, wrote in The Washington Post that Trump supporters have been conditioned to reject all evidence that does not support their president’s preferences.

“Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything,” Will added. “His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence.”

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