MAGA dress rehearsal tests online army trained for midterm onslaught
“Quite frankly, it’s a propaganda machine — a propaganda machine that’s the thing of dreams for an authoritarian regime,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
The MAGA messaging surrounding the California primary suggests that a synergy between influencers and administration officials committed to Trump’s election denial claims will be a significant factor in the November elections. That dynamic was on full display in an exchange on X only hours after the “Meet the Press” interview aired.
Bill Essayli, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, accused the state of California of “blocking a federal audit of its voter rolls” while claiming that the state’s voter registration policies don’t provide adequate safeguards to prevent fraud.
Nick Shirley, a popular influencer whose discredited investigation into Somali daycare fraud appears to have prompted the January immigration crackdown in Minneapolis that led to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, asked Essayli, “Why not arrest those that won’t comply with the federal government?”
Essayli quickly obliged Shirley with a response, saying, “Congress has not provided us with that authority. I’m limited to enforcing federal law as currently written. Congress may change any of these rules at its will.”
“Keep doing the work! Congress step in,” Shirley told Essayli, closing with a “thank you” emoji.
Based on the administration’s active promotion of “conspiracy theories about voting” and mobilization of influencers to gin up outrage, Carroll Rivas — whose organization has been targeted for criminal prosecution by the Trump Department of Justice — warned that 2026 could see a repeat of the vigilantism that took place in 2020. Influencers don’t need to shape mass opinion to prove their usefulness to the administration, she said.
“It’s reinforcement of a base by a few rather than trying to reach the masses, and trying to bait the base into more extreme actions, including potentially to show up and prevent people from participating in a free and fair election,” Rivas said.
Trump’s headline-grabbing NBC interview, which ended with him walking off the set, opened a firehose of social media posts by conservative influencers amplifying his message.
Nine influencers who were invited to the White House last year for a “roundtable on antifa” and an ill-fated stunt in which they received “Epstein binders,” posted a total of 60 times on X about the Los Angeles mayoral primary or California elections between June 7, the day Trump’s interview aired, and June 10, according to a review by Raw Story. One, Liz Wheeler, devoted two podcasts on June 8 and June 9 to the subject.
“Illegal aliens get health insurance in California,” Chaya Raichik, owner of the Libs of TikTok account, posted on X on May 8, echoing one of Essayli’s talking points. “California lets people register to vote with insurance cards. Do you see what’s happening?”
Two Trump loyalists in the U.S. House piled on in interviews with right-wing outlets.
“So, people can just dig through garbage cans, find ballots, and send them in, apparently forever after an election is over,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) told Newsmax. “It’s not okay, it’s got to come to an end, and people need to go to jail.”
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told influencer Benny Johnson in a video clip posted on June 10, “Not this mess in California, where Spencer Pratt was in second place on election night, and then like five days later he’s out of the runoff. Like, this is craziness…. These mail-in ballots, you just can’t send them out to everybody…. They got to clean up their voter rolls. You know the Democrats don’t want to do that, because then it gives them an opportunity to figure out how many ballots they need.”
None of the claims by influencers, administration officials or Trump-friendly lawmakers included any evidence of fraud or manipulation that would have changed the outcome of the Los Angeles primary.
Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, also participated in the MAGA messaging campaign surrounding California elections, even though his jurisdiction is on the opposite coast.
“On the integrity side, we’re doing an absolutely terrible job, and the American people are right to question it,” Clayton said on CNBC on June 8, in what has been described as an “audition.” When challenged to show there was fraud, Clayton responded, “There’s a great phrase: opportunity for fraud.”
Three days later, Trump announced that he was appointing Clayton to fill the position of director of national intelligence.
Stephen C. Rhea, a senior researcher at the Critical Internet Studies Institute, told Raw Story that Clayton’s willingness to entertain unfounded allegations of voter fraud raises concerns that he might be willing use his authority to act on conspiracy theories. During the effort to overturn the 2020 election, conspiracy theorists reportedly fixated on the position of director of national intelligence in the hope that he would produce a finding of foreign interference that could be used as justification for the administration to interfere in the vote certification process.
“The alarm bell it rings with me is there’s a popular conspiracy theory around the kidnapping of [former President Nicolás] Maduro, that that was not actually about removing Venezuela’s leader, not about oil — instead, the claim is that Maduro was brought to us so he can reveal how [former President Joe] Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump,” Rhea said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if some people in Trump’s orbit believe that Venezuela, or China, or Iran, stole the election. Even if they don’t believe it themselves, it’s in their interest to keep that narrative alive.”
Clayton could not be reached for comment for this story.
While Clayton does not appear to have an active X account, many other Trump officials regularly post on the platform and interact with influencers.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights who is suing California and dozens of other states to access their voter rolls, has replied to or reposted prominent influencers at least 15 times since taking her position in April 2025, according to a review by Raw Story.
In at least three instances, Dhillon has responded to posts by Raichik — alleging discrimination against white people by an Oregon city, and school districts in New York and Massachusetts — by promising that the Civil Rights Division will open investigations.
Another administration official who frequently interacts online with influencers is David Harvilicz, an official at the Department of Homeland Security whose role is described by ProPublica as setting “policy on protecting the nation’s election infrastructure, including voting machines.”
Harvilicz’s posts on X are nakedly partisan, including one June 10 proclaiming, “On election night, November 4, 2008, I warned everyone I knew that Obama would attempt to implement a revolution of globalist race communism. // He continues to push this evil. // It is un-American and must be stopped.”
An X post by David Harvilicz, assistant secretary for cyber, infrastructure, risk & resilience policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityX screengrab
Following the June 2 California primary, Harvilicz re-posted a post by Mike Cernovich, one of the influencers who received an “Epstein binder” at the White House. Cernovich disparaged the California primary, saying, “Calling this election legitimate is Soviet era slop.”
While states are responsible for administering elections under the American election system, an X post shared by Harvilicz on June 13 advocates for the federal government to intervene in the Los Angeles mayoral primary. The post calls on Trump to "unleash" the Department of Justice " on the mayor's race and settle this — period full stop."
“Multiple officials and election experts” interviewed by ProPublica “expressed concern that if Trump again wanted to get control of voting machines after the election, perhaps if Republicans lose seats in the midterms, Harvilicz is ideally positioned to help them do so,” the outlet reported.
An unnamed Department of Homeland Security official told ProPublica that “it would be super easy” for Harvilicz and his team at the Office of Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk & Resilience “to get the voting machines,” adding that they can “describe it as they want, if they don’t like the results.”
As previously reported by ProPublica, Harvilicz has called for the Department of Homeland Security “to ban voting machines for all federal elections.”
A Raw Story review found that Harvilicz has interacted with prominent influencers by replying or reposting at least 23 times since April 2025.
Harvilicz could not be reached for comment for this story.
If there was any doubt about who Harvilicz was supporting in the Los Angeles primary, his pinned post on X shows a photo of him standing on the site of his home, which was destroyed by the Pacific Palisades fire.
He’s holding a Spencer Pratt campaign sign.