Kornacki: Steyer not closing gap on Hilton at ‘pace’ needed to advance in California governor’s race

[0:00] Turning now to the moment when President Trump abruptly ended his exclusive interview with Meet [0:04] the Press, as Kristen repeatedly pushed back on his false claims that the elections are rigged, [0:10] including in California, where the votes are still being counted right now following last [0:14] week's primaries. The winners have not yet been called in the race for governor or Los Angeles [0:19] mayor. We should note California relies heavily on mail-in ballots, which contributes to the slow [0:24] ballot counting. President Trump is using that to sow doubts about the results. He has repeatedly [0:30] called the elections rigged on social media, including last night when he posted, quote, [0:34] has anybody been watching the crooked election going on in California? Two great Republican [0:39] candidates are being cheated, and so is America. The president's baseless claims about election fraud [0:45] led to this heated exchange with Kristen, and we should note the interview, which was conducted [0:49] on Friday, was interrupted multiple times by the sound of heavy rain. After 50 minutes, [0:54] as you'll see, the president ended the interview. Listen to me. [0:58] Let's talk about Todd Graham. There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence. [1:02] The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. [1:07] You've never presented evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. [1:09] It's happening right now in California. Right now, it's looking, look at what's happening in California. [1:14] It's four days. The Republicans are doing well in California. In California, it's, no, they're not. [1:19] They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you, it's four days, [1:25] and they aren't even close to coming up. That's how they count the votes in California. [1:27] You know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election. [1:30] There's, what, do you have evidence to support that? All I have to do is look. [1:33] All I have to do is look. That's not evidence. [1:35] And I listen. And I listen to people, and let's see what happens. [1:38] But, sir, that's not evidence. Do you think it's appropriate? [1:40] That's how they count the votes in California. [1:42] Do you think it's appropriate that they have an election, and five days later, [1:46] they're nowhere close to picking a winner? [1:48] State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They're urging. [1:51] No, they're crooked. [1:52] They're urging the votes to be counted quickly. That's how they vote in California. [1:54] They're crooked, just like you're crooked. Your press is crooked. And meet the press is crooked. [1:58] To be fair, I'm not crooked. But let's continue. [2:00] Really? Well, you play right into their hands. [2:02] Let's continue. [2:03] You're either crooked or you're stupid. [2:05] Let's continue. [2:05] You play right into their hands with this rap. [2:07] You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. [2:13] You know that I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94% bad press. [2:19] But, Mr. President, you've never presented evidence. [2:22] You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility. [2:23] But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about it. [2:26] I want to talk about Todd Koch. [2:26] You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. [2:31] Let's talk about it. Your elections in this country, we're like a third-world country. [2:35] But, sir. [2:35] Your elections are crooked. And you're crooked. And meet the press is crooked. [2:39] But, Mr. President. [2:40] And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. [2:44] But, Mr. President. [2:44] Your one-sided crooked network. [2:46] So, let's call it quits, because I've had enough. [2:48] Thank you, darling. Have a good time. [2:50] Mr. President, let's, please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. [2:53] I've sat in the rain with you. [2:55] I know. I've sat in the rain with you for an hour, on and off in the rain, and I've given [3:00] you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what? [3:03] Mr. President, a country can never be great with a dishonest press. [3:06] Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview. [3:10] We should note you can watch Kristen's full interview with the president [3:16] and read the entire transcript online at NBCnews.com. [3:21] NBC News senior reporter Jane Tim, who covers election administration issues, [3:25] she joins me now. Thank you so much for joining us, Jane. [3:28] I want you to walk us through where things stand with the ballot counting, [3:32] and has there been any evidence of actual election fraud in California? [3:36] Hey, Mel. So, we'll definitely just start there. [3:39] There is no evidence of election fraud in California. [3:42] California is notoriously slow for their count how they count elections. [3:46] They vote mostly by mail, as you said. [3:48] And they also are a really, really big state with incredibly voter-permissive policies. [3:55] So, if you mail your ballot before the election and it arrives a week late, [3:59] as long as the postmark's there, it's still going to count. [4:01] If your signature doesn't match, you have 22 days to fix it. [4:05] The idea is that California has done these policies with voters' access in mind, [4:10] trying to make it as easy as possible for voters to get their ballots counted. [4:15] So, those are some of the reasons why it takes so long to count ballots. [4:18] But I do think the most important thing to remember here is that it's just a ginormous state. [4:23] Los Angeles has more absentee ballots than the entire state of Florida did in their 2024 primary. [4:30] So, it's just a whole lot of ballots to count. [4:33] And while this is all going on, you know, there's a sort of a perfect storm of conditions [4:38] that encouraged this and made this sort of more fertile ground for this kind of misinformation [4:42] and Trump's, what are routine election fraud claims, just sort of take hold. [4:48] Because while, you know, we're used to the ballots taking a while in California and feeling really slow, [4:53] we also had this really competitive governor's race where people were holding on to their ballots [4:58] later than usual, not mailing them two weeks before election time, [5:02] at which point election officials could have gotten a head start on processing those ballots. [5:06] We had people holding on to them until the last day, dropping them off in drop boxes, [5:11] so that there was so many ballots showing up on election night with a mountain of work [5:16] for election officials to get through. [5:18] Those are such important points, Jane, especially the point about how this is actually not unusual [5:23] for California, especially those of us who have covered these elections for a long time. [5:26] We know it notoriously takes California a long time. [5:30] But give us some context here about how typically long it does take to count ballots in California. [5:36] Yeah, so we actually dug back into the archives with the decision desk today, [5:41] and we have a full screen we can put up here showing sort of how long we're used to these ballots taking, [5:47] where it takes sometimes 10, maybe 20 days to count all of these ballots. [5:51] They've made recent changes in the last few years to try and shorten this period, [5:56] because I do think people want these results to come quicker. [6:00] But with 80 percent of people voting by mail, it does take more time. [6:04] And I think in case people don't maybe understand why it takes more time, [6:08] when people go to the polls in New York, I vote in person. [6:11] So that means I go and I stand there, and they check me in to see who I am, [6:15] verify my identity in that way, and then I fill out my ballot, and then I put it through the machine. [6:21] That whole process is what takes more time if you're doing it by mail. [6:25] So if you do it by mail, if I vote by mail in New York, they're going to verify my signature. [6:29] This is how they do it in California, too. [6:30] They're going to make sure that I'm a registered voter, that I haven't moved or become ineligible in some way. [6:37] And then they're going to verify a signature and make sure that matches with my signature on file. [6:42] And then they're going to check the ballot and run it through the tabulator. [6:45] So that's why it takes more time for election officials to actually go through this. [6:50] And, Jane, a federal prosecutor in California says his office has opened multiple investigations of California elections. [6:56] What are those investigators actually looking for? [6:59] Do we know why they opened these investigations? [7:01] And what is the status of those probes? [7:04] Yeah, so I reached out to that office today to sort of ask some more questions [7:08] and got a pretty curt response of that I'm on the mailing list, and they would let me know. [7:13] I was particularly interested to know why we know about these investigations, [7:17] because the Department of Justice policy, of course, is that we don't, you know, inform people of ongoing investigations, [7:23] that it's, you know, you usually hear about an investigation when charges maybe are brought or they find something wrong. [7:29] But for now, they are not commenting on that. [7:32] But we also know that that Department of Justice office, that U.S. Attorney's Office, [7:36] did debunk one of the most popular conspiracy theories about this election, [7:40] the idea that there was a vote total upload that include no votes for Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles. [7:47] We know that that vote update was split into two by the Associated Press, I think, [7:51] and that that is why it sort of looked a little funny for about a minute online, [7:56] and people are just so closely watching this that they found that suspicious. [8:00] But again, this is just the way California counts their elections, [8:04] and it sure feels slow, but it is how it is right now. [8:07] Jane, thank you for that incredibly important context and reporting. [8:11] As for those undecided races in California, where the top two finishers will advance to the general election, [8:17] Republican Steve Hilton, who was endorsed by President Trump, is now in second place in the race for governor. [8:22] Democrat Javier Becerra has already advanced to the November general election. [8:27] And in the race for mayor of Los Angeles, city council member and Democrat Nithya Rahman [8:31] now leads Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt for second place. [8:35] Incumbent mayor Karen Bass has already advanced to November. [8:39] Steve Karnacki is tracking it all and joins us now from the big board. [8:44] Steve, so where do things stand in these key California races, [8:47] both the race for governor and the race for Los Angeles mayor? [8:50] Yeah, well, I mean, as you're talking about, the ballots are still being tabulated here, [8:54] and there are still quite a few of them left here. [8:56] Not quite three-quarters of the expected vote tallied statewide in that governor's race. [9:00] But again, we've already projected Javier Becerra will be one of the two finalists here in the general election in the race for governor. [9:08] And there is the difference between the leading Republican, Steve Hilton, and the other leading Democrat, Tom Steyer. [9:14] You can see there a difference of about 300,000 votes, again, with more to come. [9:19] But what we've been seeing over the last couple days here, as these updates have been coming in from around the state, [9:24] Steyer has not been closing the gap at the rate he wants to be doing it. [9:30] It has been getting tighter between him and Hilton, [9:33] but so far it's not been getting tighter at the pace Steyer would need it to, [9:37] to overtake him with the number of ballots that are left right here. [9:41] So, again, that's another one of these features here, talking about these late-counted ballots, [9:45] these late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots that can come in up to a week after Election Day. [9:50] Something we've been seeing here, something we are accustomed to seeing in California, [9:53] is those votes tend to be very, very Democratic-friendly votes here. [9:59] And so that's one of the reasons we sort of expected that both Becerra and Steyer would improve their position [10:04] as more votes have been counted. [10:05] That, indeed, is what's happened. [10:07] Becerra cementing the top spot right here, Steyer moving up on Hilton. [10:10] But, again, he has not been moving up on him at the pace he needs to if he's going to overtake him. [10:16] So the possibility here that you will have a Democrat and a Republican [10:19] as the two candidates in the general election here in the race for governor of California, [10:24] certainly extremely, it's a lot more likely I think that's going to happen [10:27] than you're going to have two Democrats right there. [10:29] In the mayor's race, again, you mentioned it there, the big development again, [10:33] these late-counted, late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots being so overwhelmingly Democratic. [10:38] We have seen the two Democrats here now cement the – to take these – Karen Bass has cemented her lead here. [10:44] The incumbent mayor shall be one of the two finalists. [10:47] And Nithya Rahman moving up very dramatically in the last three or four days here [10:52] to overtake Spencer Pratt there for second place. [10:55] Again, about 83 percent, we think, of the expected vote in in L.A. [11:00] But, again, just the way these updates have been coming, as overwhelmingly Democratic as they've been, [11:05] there's no indication that that momentum for Rahman is going to stop [11:09] and that she's not going to continue to increase that margin there over Pratt, [11:13] potentially setting up a Bass-Rahman general election in the race for mayor. [11:17] And, Steve, compare for me how long it's taken to count ballots in California versus some other states. [11:23] Yeah, I mean, again, this is like any time it gets close in any race in California, [11:27] since they've gone into the system, you're looking at days, you're looking at weeks. [11:30] Just to give you a sense here, though, two other – you know, the other two largest states, [11:35] Texas and Florida, you know, looking in March, Texas had its statewide primary. [11:39] We're looking here, time to get three-quarters of the vote. [11:41] How long does it take to get three-quarters of the statewide vote reported out, available to the public? [11:47] In Texas in March, it took three hours and 42 minutes. [11:50] In the 2024 presidential election in the state of Florida, it took 40 minutes to get to 75 percent. [11:57] California, as we just showed you, is not quite at 75 percent of its expected vote. [12:03] And we're now on the day six since Election Day. [12:07] So, again, these are different systems. [12:09] As you were just talking about, it's heavy, heavy, heavy vote-by-mail in California, not in Texas. [12:16] Florida's kind of split between. [12:18] They've got some vote-by-mail. [12:19] They've got in-person Election Day voting. [12:21] They've got early voting. [12:23] But keep in mind, one of the justifications for that California system, they say, is, you know, turnout. [12:28] It's all about prioritizing turnout over efficiency and reporting results. [12:32] Well, 2024 presidential election, the statewide turnout, the voter turnout in California was 71 percent. [12:38] In Florida, it was 79 percent. [12:41] So, in the state that has the more efficient system there, it also had higher turnout rate. [12:46] Steve Kornacki at the Big Board, thank you. [12:49] We thank you for watching. [12:50] And remember, stay updated on breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or watch live on our YouTube channel.