California Gov. Gavin Newsom is “absurd & pathetic” for claiming Republicans are “rigging” the upcoming midterm elections — at least by his own standards.
In a post on X, Newsom alleged that the upcoming midterm elections are “being rigged” in his response to the Texas legislature’s proposal for a new congressional map that would purportedly eliminate five Democrat-held seats.
“Donald Trump asks for 5 seats and Greg Abbott automatically bends the knee,” Newsom said in a post on X. “The 2026 election is being rigged. California won’t sit back and watch this happen.”
But it was Democrats and their leftist allies in the corporate media who endlessly smeared anyone who suggested the 2020 election had been rigged, and Newsom himself declared in 2016 that suggesting an election is “rigged” makes you “absurd & pathetic.”
Then-candidate Trump said in a 2016 post that “the [2016] election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD.”
Newsom responded by saying: “By pushing conspiracy theories you look absurd & pathetic. Nothing is rigged — your misogyny, racism & bigotry have finally caught up to you.”
But the difference is that Trump’s concerns about the 2016 election (and the 2020 election) turned out to have far more substance than Democrats are willing to acknowledge, with newly declassified reports only further uncovering the depths of the Russia collusion hoax.
During the 2016 election cycle, Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS enlisted the help of former British spy Christopher Steele, who later compiled opposition research in what would become known as the Steele dossier. The primary subsource for the dossier was Russian national Igor Danchenko, who was later indicted in 2021 for “making false statements to the FBI,” as reported by The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland. Danchenko was “alleged to have invented some of the supposed intel contained in the dossier.”
Despite the dossier being unverified, the Clinton campaign successfully fed the now-debunked dossier to the FBI, which used it as a basis for obtaining several Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe later admitted as much.
And newly declassified documents show then-President Barack Obama and intelligence agencies later tried to legitimize the Clinton-funded attempt to rig the election.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence showing that members of the intelligence community were concerned with several aspects of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that was the heart of the Russia collusion hoax.
In particular, intelligence analysts and operations officers felt that the infamous Steele dossier’s inclusion in the ICA was the wrong move since the dossier lacked credibility. According to the now declassified report, members of the intelligence community “struggled to explain how the ICA … could have included dossier information without identifying and vetting primary sources and without explaining the political circumstances surrounding why the report was produced and funded.”
Nonetheless, the dossier was added to the ICA. Moreover, the FBI began investigating the Trump campaign in what became known as “Crossfire Hurricane” just three days after Clinton’s campaign funneled the phony-information operation to the FBI.
Fast forward to today, and Democrats like Newsom are crying foul over Texas’ redistricting efforts.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced earlier this month that the legislature would reconvene for a special session to tackle an issue of legislative priorities, including redistricting. Abbott cited a determination made by the DOJ that four districts were racially gerrymandered. The letter, from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, alleges that the current congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ argues in its letter that the four districts are unconstitutional in light of Petteway v. Galveston County, a case in which the 5th Circuit ruled the Voting Rights Act does not permit minority-coalition districts. The DOJ argues the four districts were drawn to create minority-coalition seats.
The new maps were released on Wednesday. According to Forbes’ Mary Whitfield Roeloffs, the new maps “don’t significantly change the political make up of any Republican incumbents’ districts,” referencing the reporting of the Texas Tribune, “but they do change demographics.” Roeloffs stated that the changes would create two majority black districts “where there currently are none,” while adding two majority white districts and one majority Hispanic district.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
