The liberal media had a narrative ready the moment the LA election results started shifting.
Bill O'Reilly watched them create it — and he had a question.
What he asked on air is something ABC and CNN still cannot answer.
How the Liberal Media Called California Election Fraud Claims Baseless Without Looking
The moment the LA mayoral results started shifting – Spencer Pratt leading on election night, then a Socialist Democrat councilwoman surging past him over the following days – ABC and CNN put the same word on screen for anyone who questioned the results: “baseless.”
Bill O'Reilly called it out by name during an appearance on On Balance with Leland Vittert on NewsNation.
"When it broke that Pratt was going to lose to this socialist, the networks immediately put up on screen – ABC and CNN – 'Trump baselessly criticizes the vote,'" O'Reilly said.
Then he asked the question neither network can answer.
"How would they know?"
"They didn't investigate it," O'Reilly said. "They didn't look into it."
They reported what California officials were reporting – that socialist Nithya Raman surged in the final days of counting, that nobody could explain the scale of it, and that anyone asking questions was pushing conspiracy theories.
That's not journalism.
That's a press release with a chyron.
O'Reilly didn't claim fraud happened.
He said it's suspicious – and pressed the networks on why they were so confident it wasn't.
"Every thinking person knows that it's suspicious," O'Reilly said.
"And they also know that California, as you rightly pointed out, has the most lax voting procedures in the United States by FAR."
"A dog can vote," O'Reilly said, "and they found out the dog voted multiple times."
He wasn't speaking in hypotheticals.
A Costa Mesa woman named Laura Lee Yourex registered her dog – Maya Jean Yourex – as a voter and cast mail-in ballots in the dog's name in two California elections.
The 2021 vote was successfully counted.
Yourex pleaded guilty earlier this year.
The Bill Essayli Election Fraud Investigation the Networks Buried
What happened next is the part ABC and CNN buried.
Trump's handpicked U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, announced multiple election fraud investigations are underway in California and sent a federal prosecutor to the Los Angeles County ballot processing center to observe the count.
Essayli looked into one specific viral claim – that a ballot update showed zero new votes for Pratt – and confirmed that particular claim was false.
He still opened broader investigations anyway.
Because "that one specific claim was wrong" is not the same as "nothing suspicious is happening."
Pratt led Raman by 9 percentage points on election night.
Over the following days, as mail-in ballots rolled in, she picked up more than double his vote totals in batch after batch – until she had erased a lead that prediction markets had briefly priced above 95%.
O'Reilly pressed the question nobody at ABC or CNN bothered to ask.
"Why was there a surge for this woman?" he said. "Why wasn't it for Karen Bass? Why her?"
California Mail Ballot Counting Has Been Shifting Elections Left Since 2018
This is a pattern.
Republicans questioned California's counting process in 2018, when Democrats flipped multiple congressional seats after election night as late mail ballots shifted the results.
In 2024, one California House race wasn't called until December.
Every time it happens, the same cycle plays out: Republicans lead on election night, the press stamps "baseless" on any questions, and the final results move Left as mail ballots come in.
Election law expert Hans von Spakovsky identified four structural causes for California's late-count shift left: mass mail voting, a seven-day post-Election Day ballot receipt window, a 22-day signature cure period, and high volumes of provisional ballots requiring individual review.
The word "baseless" does the work so the journalism doesn't have to.
That's not a mistake.
It's a strategy – stamp the questions as crazy before anyone can ask them, and the networks never have to answer for a counting system that consistently produces the same result every single time.
O'Reilly saw it immediately.
The liberal media is still hoping nobody else does.
Sources:
- Bill O'Reilly, On Balance with Leland Vittert, NewsNation, June 2026.
- Hans von Spakovsky, "California Election Limbo Fueled by 4 Pressure Points Dragging Out Vote Count, Expert Says," Fox News, June 2026.
- Staff, "Spencer Pratt's LA Mayoral Runoff Bid in Jeopardy as Ballot Count Narrows," Fox News, June 2026.
- P.J. Gladnick, "Politico Knocks 'Baseless' Suspicions of Radical Raman's Surge in LA Mayoral Vote Count," Newsbusters, June 9, 2026.
- Staff, "US Attorney Opens Investigations into California's Elections, Sends Prosecutor to LA Vote Center," NBC Los Angeles, June 2026.