Former President Donald Trump was widely mocked after saying he would win the state of California if Jesus Christ himself "came down" to count the votes.
During an exclusive interview with television personality "Dr. Phil" McGraw, Trump asserted without evidence that he would win California if not for what he claimed was widespread voter fraud. He specifically targeted the state's extensive vote-by-mail program, falsely accusing it of facilitating fraudulent voting.
He said:
"I look at California, I gave a speech [and] had a crowd so big, I said, 'There's no way I could lose California' but automatically they mark it down if you're a Republican as a loss."
"You lose by 5 million votes and I said, 'Five million votes?' I guarantee you, if Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California."
“In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter, I do great with the Hispanics, great, I mean I had a level that no other Republican’s ever done, but if we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.”
When McGraw asked him to elaborate, Trump replied:
"I think so, I do, I've seen it. I go around California, they have Trump signs all over the place. It's a very dishonest ... everything is mail-in. They send out 38 million ballots, they send them."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Trump was mocked almost immediately.
It's worth noting that no Republican presidential candidate has carried deep blue California since President George H.W. Bush in 1988. Trump himself lost the state by around 30 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020.
Historically, California frequently elected Republican governors while maintaining Democratic majorities in the state legislature. And from 1952 to 1988, California voted Republican in every presidential election except one, as noted by Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign seized on Trump's remarks, saying he “reached a level of delusion difficult for even Dr. Phil to diagnose.”
Sarafina Chitika, a Harris campaign spokesperson, said Trump "still doesn’t acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election four years ago – despite the violent insurrection launched in his name," stressing that "voters know Vice President Harris is the candidate to lead us into the future.”
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