MAGA media’s election denial in LA mayoral race is a warning for the midterms

Right-wing media’s coverage of this June’s Los Angeles mayoral primary election unsurprisingly went heavy on voter fraud conspiracy theories and presented essentially zero real evidence. Their reactions offer a warning of how MAGA is likely to respond if Republicans suffer significant losses in November’s midterms, considering that the Trump administration and its outside allies spent the summer laying groundwork to undermine voting rights using flimsy claims of foreign election interference.

After lining up behind Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor, conservative pundits began crying foul in June as the votes were still being counted. Challenger and L.A. councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Pratt after an early “red mirage,” triggering outbursts from the right. 

On his radio show, Fox’s Sean Hannity said: “President Trump rightly is calling out Democrats, saying they’re probably cheating, trying to steal” the race. MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson said, “You can already see that they’re stealing and they’re cheating.” YouTube streamer Tim Pool alleged that “it appears, with new information coming in, we can now say the Democrats are cheating in the California race.” 

As is so often the case, these figures were operating symbiotically with President Donald Trump, who wrote that it was “not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” decrying “Rigged Elections!”

There was no evidence of voter fraud in the L.A. mayoral primary, and it isn’t surprising in the least that Pratt would lose in a city where former Vice President Kamala Harris won 70% of the vote in 2024. But it is now a matter of faith on the right that, in the words of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “if Democrats can’t steal elections, they can’t win.”

My Media Matters colleague Matt Gertz has characterized MAGA’s reaction as a signal that right-wing media are entering a period of “post-proof election denial.” Whereas in the aftermath of 2020, an entire cottage industry arose on the right to produce a simulacra of evidence to allege that allies of former President Joe Biden had rigged the outcome, no similar effort emerged on Pratt’s behalf. 

Instead, these figures relied on nothing but vibes, especially olfactory metaphors. “It smells to high heaven,” said radio show host Megyn Kelly. “I don’t like the way any of this smells,” said Fox News co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery. “I can tell you it stinks to high heaven when you have a drop of 24,000 votes and Spencer Pratt gets zero,” said Hannity.

These pundits opened up a permission structure for others to make similarly outlandish accusations. Case in point: Two recent guests on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast claimed that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory last November was rife with fraud. (It was not.)

Ubiquitous, reflexive election denial in conservative media presages the MAGA strategy for 2026 and beyond. In early July, I laid out the broad strokes of an emerging plot to subvert the midterms that was hidden in plain view if you knew where to look.

The basics: First, a White House task force that included right-wing media figure John Solomon — who spread misinformation related to Trump’s first impeachment — would declassify documents that purportedly showed China interfered in the 2020 election. Trump undertook this step in a primetime address on July 16, although the released files provided more evidence that Russia — not China — attempted to influence the election to weaken Biden’s campaign, not Trump’s. 

The second step would be for the Trump administration to issue a “national emergency” declaration based on the supposed threat posed by China, thereby unlocking “king-like powers” over election systems.

Finally, Trump would issue an executive order to outlaw the use of voting machines, ban mail-in ballots, institute national voter ID laws, or force voters to prove their citizenship when they register. This phase is an attempt to enact parts of the SAVE Act, anti-voting rights legislation that has stalled in Congress.

This scheme appears to be faltering for now, but the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the midterms are ongoing.

There are other risks beyond these three stages, even absent a national emergency declaration. Bannon has been pushing for additional anti-voting measures — most notably calling for “up-armored” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to occupy polling sites in November, a demand he has been making since at least last August. The Trump administration has attempted — and at least temporarily failed — to use the Postal Service to limit mail-in ballots, and has tasked the Department of Homeland Security to scour state election websites for noncitizens who are registered to vote.

The election denial espoused by the MAGA pundits has ramifications in the world beyond their immediate audiences, as evidenced by the events of January 6, 2021. Although nobody rioted on behalf of Pratt, right-wing media are creating a dangerous environment where the reflexive rejection of negative election results is the new normal.