Trump’s “Meet the Press” Tantrum Also Revealed His Midterm Plans

The Status Kuo

06/08/2026

Donald Trump’s plans for the November midterms have been crystallizing over the past months. He’s ordered raids on election offices, made federal demands for state voter rolls, and issued executive orders purporting to end mail-in voting, which he doesn’t have the power to do.

Over the weekend, his playbook for undermining—and possibly even stealing—the midterms flipped wide open on “Meet the Press.”

Trump’s meltdown… was five days in the making, undercutting the idea that he was simply angry and speaking off the cuff.

His attacks began with Truth Social posts. “Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote.” Then: “There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???” Finally, “They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

The two races Trump has been watching obsessively show the vote shift pattern in real time. In the gubernatorial primary, Trump’s endorsed candidate Steve Hilton held an early lead, but that lead has slowly narrowed as the mailed ballots dropped him into second place. Ballots more favorable to Democrat Tom Steyer than to Hilton keep arriving and being counted. Hilton may still hang on to qualify for one of two top spots, but it could be close.

On one level, the current dispute in California is a primary election fight over a governor’s race and a Los Angeles mayoral contest. On another, it is a dry run for something far more consequential.

California holds 52 seats in the House of Representatives, the most of any state in the nation. Democrats currently hold 43 of them. After Proposition 50 redrew the congressional maps, five seats currently held by Republicans were shifted into friendlier Democratic territory. With Trump’s approval ratings at historic lows and the generic ballot tilted sharply toward Democrats, those five seats are very much in play, and they may well be the seats that determine which party controls the House when the next Congress is seated in January.