‘He Can’t Win!’ Bill O’Reilly Claims Steve Hilton Doomed Because California Elections Are ‘Rigged’

Conservative journalist Bill O’Reilly claimed on his No Spin podcast that gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton (R) “can’t win” in California because the elections there are “rigged.”

“Steve is a good campaigner, and he’s a sincere man, I believe,” O’Reilly said, adding, “He can’t win! Because counties in California are rigged. You won’t get the vote count ’til three weeks after election day! Come on! Everybody knows this. So, Hilton’s doing a good job up against [Xavier] Becerra, who is like one of the worst civil servants I’ve ever seen. He was in the Biden administration. But Steve can’t win.”

A recent poll from the Manhattan Institute showed Becerra continued to hold a wide margin over Hilton with 55% of the vote. Just 38% of likely voters said they supported Hilton.

The Trump administration began pushing the theory that California’s elections were rigged during the primaries when L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt (R) started to fall behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (D) and city councilwoman Nithya Raman (D).

California state law allows counties up to 30 days after elections to process votes, and can count late-arriving ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and arrive before a certain date. Trump claimed the delay in knowing an election’s outcome meant the state was rigging votes against Republicans.

“You see what’s happening in California — they’re rigging the election,” Trump said during the mayoral race. “Now maybe we caught them and maybe they won’t be able to get away with it.”

Trump’s claim was echoed by Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and MAGA world on social media.

But Trump-backed Hilton distanced himself from the president’s claims during an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“Just in terms of where you stand, are you worried that there’s fraud right now? Or are you just frustrated that the count is slow, but that you believe the process is fair?” Burnett asked on a June episode of Out Front.

“Yeah. So look, there’s so many things wrong with the system. I’ve been saying all along that we take it very seriously because we don’t want to let people down and we’ve been very vigilant on it,” Hilton said.“We’re keeping an eye on it. We’ve got teams standing by, lawyers standing by, and actually it’s the same answer that actually I’ve been giving for a few days now, we’ve seen nothing that would give us cause to intervene in that way.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying in a statement, “In California, election officials work every day to maintain accurate voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered.”

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has called Trump’s claims, “The ramblings of a mad king,” and in September, Newsom signed a package of preemptive election laws designed to keep the federal government out of their rallying process.

“It’s the latest move by the Golden State to prevent law enforcement or federal officials from disrupting the counting of votes ahead of November’s midterm elections,” Democracy Docket reported.

Watch the No Spin podcast above.

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