President Donald Trump yet again doubled down on his claims about California’s elections being rigged. This came after the latest reports suggested that former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, whom he backed for Los Angeles mayor, was running third behind Democrats Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. It was just a couple of days earlier that Trump walked off an NBC interview after the journalist challenged his unproven assertions about California election officials.

On Monday, Donald Trump took to his Truth Social and wrote, “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” further claiming, “Rigged Elections!” He then pointed to the California governor race, where the candidate he supported, TV commentator Steve Hilton, was behind Democratic former cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra and billionaire ​environmental activist Tom Steyer.

“Now they’ll be working on great guy Steve Hilton,” Trump added, seemingly suggesting that the opposition party might be trying to influence the vote count in a way that could prevent Hilton from progressing to the next stage of the race. The latest accusations come nearly six days after the polls had already closed.

According to the BBC, Pratt was initially leading Raman, but over the days of counting, she bypassed him, and the latest results suggested that she had 28.5% of the vote while Pratt had 25.8%. Meanwhile, another Reuters report states that Pratt was lagging at third with 26.69% of the vote. However, on Monday, he still insisted that he had a chance to clinch a spot in the November polls.

Taking to X, Pratt wrote, “Folks, we’re dealing with a fraction of a percentage point difference. There are still hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding, and LA officials have given us the next three weeks to count!”

Prior to this, on Sunday, Pratt claimed that he received more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday from homeless people. He elucidated his point by referencing an annual count of the city documenting more than 43,000 residents experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles on any given night. “43,000, huh? Where ​have I seen that number before …? Probably nothing,” he wrote.

In another exchange, Pratt also consistently challenged the vote count over the weekend and also assured supporters that “there’s still hundreds of votes outstanding, and LA officials have given us the next 3 weeks to count,” adding: “Let’s git-r-dun!”

Trump’s latest rant on California’s election system came just days after he had a heated exchange with NBC News journalist Kristen Welker during Meet the Press, which aired on Sunday. During the conversation, he walked off the interview after the show host challenged his accusations without evidence, suggesting that California election officials were cheating, noting that they were not even close to finalizing the results.

While discussing the California elections, including the vote-tallying process, Welker noted that it was the process by which the votes were counted in the state. Trump, on the other hand, claimed that they were “cheating.”

Trump told Welker that “they’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.”