The right-wing media’s response to former reality TV personality and conservative candidate Spencer Pratt’s defeat in last week’s nonpartisan primary race for mayor of Los Angeles shows that the right-wing media’s election denial machinery is as strong as ever. But a post-proof era of election denial is dawning as that apparatus moves away from its prior strategy of ginning up myriad deranged conspiracy theories, with major implications for future American elections.

“You could call it fraud, I think a more accurate word would just be cheating,” prominent podcaster Megyn Kelly claimed on Tuesday. “I don’t think they’re actively fooling anyone, in the way a fraud would, they’re just cheating.” 

Kelly maintained that she doesn’t “buy” the results, and dismissed the notion that it would be important to have evidence before making such a claim. “There’s not going to be proof this close to the actual vote, like, we actually need to do an investigation, look at the votes,” she explained, pointing to “all these Republicans online” who purportedly say they had received a call from election officials that the signature on their mail-in ballot didn’t match. 

“It smells to high heaven,” she insisted.

Election denial is table stakes for participants in President Donald Trump’s Republican Party and the MAGA media that support it. Rather than accepting Trump’s 2020 defeat, his supporters concocted and amplified a seemingly endless array of election fraud claims in the days, months, and years after the election. These conspiracy theories were often bizarre, sourced to obvious kooks, and routinely collapsed under scrutiny, at times exposing their proponents to legal jeopardy.

But Trump — after losing dozens of lawsuits premised on claims of election fraud and leaving office in disgrace — successfully purged Republicans who opposed his subversion plot and then regained the presidency. He still falsely maintains that he won in 2020, appoints judges who refuse to say otherwise, and fills his administration with cronies eager to use state power to attack past and future elections. And the lesson his media supporters appear to have learned is that the smarter strategy is simply to assert that the election was rigged without pointing to any specifics. 

Pratt’s race, on paper, was the longest of long shots: He was a first-time candidate with no relevant credentials running an unabashed right-wing challenge to incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass in a city where Trump carried 27% of the vote in 2024 and has likely become even more unpopular given his plummeting national poll numbers since returning to office. But he garnered national media attention, in part through AI slop videos on social media, and on the right, supportive commentators apparently convinced themselves and their audiences that he was a “star” with a real chance to win. 

He didn’t. Los Angeles has a “jungle primary” in which candidates from all parties stand for election and then the top two advance to the general election. In late May, polling from University of California, Berkeley, and the Los Angeles Times found Pratt in third place with 22% of the vote, trailing Bass at 26% and City Council member Nithya Raman, a Democrat challenging Bass from the left, at 25%. Pratt did not exceed that position in the final weeks of the campaign — while returns on primary night showed Pratt in second, he lost ground as votes were counted over the following week, and fell into third on Sunday. The Associated Press projected the following day that Bass and Raman would advance to the runoff. 

After all the right-wing fuss over Pratt’s candidacy, Pratt was locked out of the top-two run-off just as polling predicted and ultimately seems to have garnered roughly the same vote share Trump managed in LA two years ago. But for vast swathes of the MAGA commentariat, this doesn’t show they were high on their own supply in the weeks leading up to the election. Instead, they have adopted the position that only massive election fraud could explain Pratt’s defeat.

This makes no sense even at the level of premise. In 2020, election deniers could at least hang their hats on the idea that Democrats really wanted Trump to lose and thus would be willing to commit voter fraud to ensure his defeat. But who is supposed to be conspiring to prevent Pratt from making a run-off that his vote share, even on primary night, suggested he had no chance of winning? And if the election was being stolen, why drag it out over a series of days?

But past election denial typically turned on something. To support their claims that Democrats had rigged the 2020 election, conspiracy theories seized on or dreamed up Sharpies used to mark votes or mail-in ballots carried by “mules” or voting machines flipping votes or fraudulent ballots stuffed in suitcases. 

In the LA race, they have nothing but the feeling that Pratt losing means that the election’s result is dubious. Indeed, like Kelly, some are very specifically saying that they have no proof beyond a feeling.

“This LA mayor election is a doozie,” offered Newsmax’s Carl Higbie on Monday, pointing to Rahman passing Pratt as votes were tallied after primary night. “But if you question this, you’re the conspiracy theorist.” 

“Can I walk into a courtroom and prove anyone did anything illegal? No, I cannot,” he added. “But it is the duty of the government to make me trust their system. That’s their burden. That’s why I pay taxes, and that’s why you call them public servants.” 

“I don't like the way any of this smells," Fox News co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery said Tuesday on The Five. “I'm so angry, I'm actually speechless about this whole thing. I don't trust it, I don't trust anyone's explanation. Ten magical points with some magical ballots.”

Her colleagues then laid out the strategy at hand.

When Harold Ford, the show’s resident Democrat, pointed out that Steve Hilton, the former Fox host who is running for California governor as a Republican, “said he hadn’t seen any evidence” of fraud, Dana Perino replied, “Yeah, cause he’s in second place, because he made the run-off.”

“Oh, now I get it, I’m sorry. So if you don’t make the run-off that’s when you accuse — ” Ford responded sarcastically.

“Exactly,” said Perino, adding, “Don’t you see how this works? I mean, are you new here?”

Indeed, this brand of evidence-free motivated reasoning has spread beyond right-wing pundits to Republican leaders.

On Wednesday, Trump claimed that the election had been stolen from Pratt, who “had all the mojo,” but “they” had “approved” Hilton to make the run-off for governor because “I started hitting them, it is going to happen to Steve Hilton, too.”

“It would be two weeks, they said,” the president added. “And then they approved him that night because the heat was on them. Because they are cheating dogs.” (Trump seems to be conflating statements from local election officials, who say they have 13 days to count all the ballots under the law, with the calls from media outlets, who project winners before all votes are tallied.)

Likewise, when CNN correspondent Manu Raju asked House Speaker Mike Johnson for “evidence” that the Los Angeles election had been stolen, the Louisiana Republican replied, “You tell me, Manu. They are counting votes weeks after the election. We have entire nations with huge populations, like India, that can count their votes in 24 to 48 hours.”

“So you’re saying it’s rigged, like the president?” Raju replied.

“I’m not saying it’s rigged, I’m saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that,” Johnson said. Pressed further for evidence the election had been rigged, he added, “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove, but I think everyone knows instinctively something is wrong here.” 

Post-proof election denial like this is the MAGA movement’s natural endpoint. Its champion claims that he is nationally beloved and no evidence to the contrary can be trusted. Trump asserts that media outlets fake the polls finding he is unpopular and only fraud could explain his electoral defeats, even in Democratic strongholds like California. It's much easier to disregard and delegitimize every election result you don’t like once you’ve said that neither survey data nor past vote totals are credible evidence of public sentiment.

This strategic shift comes with tangible benefits for MAGA media. Specific claims related to election fraud can be debunked, and outlets like Fox paid a hefty price after the 2020 election because the discrete lies they promoted were subject to defamation lawsuits. But no one can refute a vibe: By making broad claims of vote rigging backed by nothing, they can keep their audience agitated about stolen elections without fear of legal reprisals. 

This won’t be the last race where MAGA media run wild in this manner. In November’s midterm elections, California’s House races may determine which party controls Congress. Those races will likely see the same pattern of “red mirage” and “blue shift” — with Republicans over-represented in early returns from votes cast on Election Day, then falling behind as officials count mail ballots — that Trumpists have repeatedly cited as pretexts for election fraud claims. And right-wing media figures have laid down a marker that elections should not be trusted if Democrats win, preparing the way for a new round of election subversion.