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President Trump on Friday urged Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt to dispute his loss in the primary.
The Republican president repeated claims he’s been making in recent days that he believes California’s elections were “rigged.”
“Spencer Pratt…He shouldn’t go away quietly. He should protest because it was, in my very strong opinion, that was a rigged election,” Trump said during a speech to the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
He went on to compare Pratt’s loss to what he claimed could have been a loss of Republican candidate Steve Hilton in the gubernatorial race until he intervened.
“And then they tried to hurt Steve Hilton, too, and I called the U.S. attorney and said, ‘You have to look into this.’”
Earlier in the week, the president had revealed at a rally that he used the controversial turn in Spencer Pratt’s election results to put pressure on a US Attorney in California, claiming it helped saved Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton from a primary loss.
Pratt’s loss — where he had an Election Day second-place lead that slipped after mail ballots were counted — fueled speculation of voter manipulation.
Trump has taken part in that speculation and blasted California’s notoriously slow vote-counting process that can take weeks for fueling that. He has made it known that he wants to target mail voting, which California generously employs.
On Election Day, it seemed Pratt would make the runoff to face off against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Instead, socialist city councilmember Nithya Raman surged from late-arriving mail ballots counted days later to secure the last top-two spot for the general election.
Pratt has seemingly conceded the election, but he has insisted he is not going way. He had dropped a bombshell concession video that seemed more like a threat, claiming he has evidence he will reveal that could take Bass or Raman down.
“You think you can get rid of me that easily? I know a lot of dimwitted jerks thought I was in this for a grift. That I was going to roll up and leave town if I didn’t get into city hall,” Pratt had said.
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