Trump Slams 'Radical' California Democrats, Claims He Could Win the State Without a 'Rigged Voting System'

Former President Donald Trump appeared before the party faithful in Anaheim Friday, keynoting a luncheon at the California Republican Party convention with a speech in which he ripped into Democratic state leaders and insisted that he could win the state in a presidential election if it wasn’t for a “rigged voting system.”

California Republicans make up just under 24% of registered voters and Trump lost to President Biden here in 2020 by nearly 30 points. But Trump told the adoring crowd in the hotel ballroom that he could win if it wasn’t for mail-in ballots. He falsely claimed that some voters are being given multiple ballots.

Trump, the party’s dominant frontrunner, then went on to name-check Democratic state leaders — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — as the crowd booed.

“While California was once a symbol of American success, today, under the radical left fascists and Marxists that run your state — that’s who’s running your state, bad people. It’s becoming a symbol of our nation’s decline,” Trump said, before launching into a litany of purported problems.

“The far left communists in Sacramento, San Francisco and L.A. cities, which are absolutely being destroyed rapidly on a daily basis, have given you sanctuary cities, wide open borders, mass homeless encampments, out-of-control taxes, soaring income inequality like nobody’s ever seen before,” he said. “Marxist district attorneys, woke tech tyrants. They are woke. Rolling blackouts, child sexual mutilation and roving bands of looters, criminals and thugs. But other than that, I think they’re doing quite a good job.”

He later spoke at length about what he claims is a “man-made drought” in California, and said people in Beverly Hills smell bad because they have to take short showers.

“They’re told to hurry up. You’re only allowed a small amount of water when they shower. That’s why rich people from Beverly Hills, generally speaking, don’t smell so good, you know, typically. You ever notice they’re not great, their hygiene is not good, but it’s forced to be that way,” Trump said.

He took particular aim at Pelosi, promising to “stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.”

“How’s her husband doing anyway, anybody know?” he said to laughter, referring to the brutal 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi at their San Francisco home.

A host of additional Republican presidential candidates are also scheduled to speak at the state convention this weekend, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Trump’s remarks come two days after he skipped the second Republican presidential debate and as he faces 91 felony charges in four separate cases against him.

But those indictments seem to have cemented Trump’s base of support, not weakened it. In Friday’s speech, he accused Democrats of orchestrating the cases against him and joked that he’s made history with them.

A UC Berkeley poll conducted in August and released earlier this month found 55% of likely California Republican primary voters plan to back Trump, up 11 points from the spring. DeSantis appears to be the main casualty of that surge of support for the former president. The same poll shows the Florida governor’s support falling from 37% in February to just 16% in August, among GOP voters.

Trump’s growing support is even more important because of recent changes the state Republican Party made to the way it awards its delegates at next year’s national convention — changes pushed by the former president’s campaign. Under the new system, any Republican presidential candidate who receives more than 50% support in California’s March primary will lock up all 169 state delegates — the most of any state in the nation.

Under the previous system, used by the state’s GOP for about two decades, three delegates were awarded for each congressional district won in the primary — giving lower-tier GOP candidates more incentive to campaign here but also diluting the state’s influence in helping to pick a nominee.

Republican National Committee Chair Harmeet Dhillon, from California, a staunch Trump ally whose law firm represents his campaign, said the energy around the former president shows that the other Republican candidates should step aside.

“I think it’s time for some of them to call it quits,” she said, adding that Republicans need to unify against Democrats.

“California is really the poster child of what’s wrong with America right now, with our rampant crime and high unaffordable rates of gasoline, food, housing, you name it, and terrible educational system.”

While Trump’s speech was a big draw, the party is not actually taking any action to endorse a presidential candidate at its convention. Instead, the state GOP will consider adopting a new party platform — essentially a statement of principles. Even though most voters don’t even know about party platforms, the process is dividing the party and mirroring national fissures within the GOP over how to handle hot button issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, which has contributed to Republicans’ ballot-box losses — even in conservative states like Kansas and Ohio.

Under the proposal adopted by a California GOP party committee in July, the platform would drop language spelling out opposition to a federally protected right to abortion. Instead, it states “we value protecting innocent life and want to see the number of abortions reduced.”

The proposed changes also remove language saying the party defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, swapping it out for a more benign statement — that the party supports “traditional family values” and “the family unit as the best environment for raising children.”

The proposed platform, approved in July, runs four pages, but delegates have submitted over 200 pages worth of changes, which they will debate Saturday in meetings scheduled for the morning and afternoon. Among those opposing the change to the party’s definition of marriage is Dhillon, the RNC chair.