MAGA dress rehearsal tests online army trained for midterm onslaught

The pieces are all in place for President Donald Trump and his allies to upend the November midterms by falsely claiming that the elections were rigged.When Trump angrily insisted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Los Angeles mayoral primary was “rigged” after his favored candidate Spencer Pratt lost, it unleashed a stampede of echoed claims by administration loyalists and an army of internet influencers. That eruption of unfounded fraud claims earlier this month previews a disruptive playbook likely to be deployed by Trump and his allies on Nov. 3, when congressional races across the country determine which party will control the House and Senate.“Quite frankly, it’s a propaganda machine — a propaganda machine that’s the thing of dreams for an authoritarian regime,” said Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.The MAGA messaging surrounding the California primary suggests that a synergy between influencers and administration officials committed to Trump’s election denial claims will be a significant factor in the November elections. That dynamic was on full display in an exchange on X only hours after the “Meet the Press” interview aired.Bill Essayli, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, accused the state of California of “blocking a federal audit of its voter rolls” while claiming that the state’s voter registration policies don’t provide adequate safeguards to prevent fraud.Nick Shirley, a popular influencer whose discredited investigation into Somali daycare fraud appears to have prompted the January immigration crackdown in Minneapolis that led to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, asked Essayli, “Why not arrest those that won’t comply with the federal government?”Essayli quickly obliged Shirley with a response, saying, “Congress has not provided us with that authority. I’m limited to enforcing federal law as currently written. Congress may change any of these rules at its will.”“Keep doing the work! Congress step in,” Shirley told Essayli, closing with a “thank you” emoji.Based on the administration’s active promotion of “conspiracy theories about voting” and mobilization of influencers to gin up outrage, Rivas — whose organization has been targeted for criminal prosecution by the Trump Department of Justice — warned that 2026 could see a repeat of the vigilantism that took place in 2020. Influencers don’t need to shape mass opinion to prove their usefulness to the administration, she said.“It’s reinforcement of a base by a few rather than trying to reach the masses, and trying to bait the base into more extreme actions, including potentially to show up and prevent people from participating in a free and fair election,” Rivas said.Trump’s headline-grabbing NBC interview, which ended with him walking off the set, opened a firehose of social media posts by conservative influencers amplifying his message.Nine influencers who were invited to the White House last year for a “roundtable on antifa” and an ill-fated stunt in which they received “Epstein binders,” posted a total of 60 times on X about the Los Angeles mayoral primary or California elections between June 7, the day Trump’s interview aired, and June 10, according to a review by Raw Story. One, Liz Wheeler, devoted two podcasts on June 8 and June 9 to the subject.“Illegal aliens get health insurance in California,” Chaya Raichik, owner of the Libs of TikTok account, posted on X on May 8, echoing one of Essayli’s talking points. “California lets people register to vote with insurance cards. Do you see what’s happening?”Two Trump loyalists in the U.S. House piled on in interviews with right-wing outlets.“So, people can just dig through garbage cans, find ballots, and send them in, apparently forever after an election is over,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) told Newsmax. “It’s not okay, it’s got to come to an end, and people need to go to jail.”Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told influencer Benny Johnson in a video clip posted on June 10, “Not this mess in California, where Spencer Pratt was in second place on election night, and then like five days later he’s out of the runoff. Like, this is craziness…. These mail-in ballots, you just can’t send them out to everybody…. They got to clean up their voter rolls. You know the Democrats don’t want to do that, because then it gives them an opportunity to figure out how many ballots they need.”None of the claims by influencers, administration officials or Trump-friendly lawmakers included any evidence of fraud or manipulation that would have changed the outcome of the Los Angeles primary.Jay Clayton, the U.S.