Trump makes wild claim about 2020 election in California

Donald Trump sat down for an interview on Tuesday with talk show personality Doctor Phil, and the interview contained the usual litany of bizarre claims by Trump, but one stuck out to us. It involved the results of the 2020 presidential election. I look at California, I gave a speech I had, so I had a crowd so big I said, there's no way I could lose California. But automatically they mark it down. If you're a Republican is a loss that you lose by 5 million votes. I said 5 million votes. I guarantee if Jesus came down and was the vote count, I would win California. Okay. I would win California, is what he just said. Okay. To be clear, California has not voted for a Republican for president since 1988. It has been a blue state for many decades. Trump lost it by almost 30 percentage points four years ago, so the race wasn't even close. If he can claim he should have won there, it really says something about how far he might go in trying to cast doubt on any loss. And what does that tell us about what could happen if he loses this year? Let's bring in Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer. He's also a CNN political analyst. Julian, first, your reaction to Trump's claim about California? Well, it's one more piece of a long thread of election denialism thrown in with a little ode to his evangelical Christian base. But it's a run more reminder that even though the Democrats have focused on a campaign of joy and optimism, Trump very much is still focused, maybe more so than a few months ago on, spreading this idea that the election is not fair and potentially setting up a challenge. If this is as close as the polls suggest it can be. I want to pick up on what Elena train was reporting. And, of course, the nitty gritty about, you know, the processes of, you know, getting this debate, to happen on September 10th. It looks like it will happen. what kind of clash are you expecting? Well, it will be very different than the first one. I think that Trump will be the same. It will be chaos at some level. He'll throw a lot of things at her and basically try to overwhelm her and intimidate her, through, through his words. And I think Harris will be different than Biden. What? She's very precise. She can be very focused, prosecutorial, in her demeanor. And I think she will listen, respond very carefully and try to pick apart what he has to say. It's a hugely important debate, more so than many in the past, because it's the first and probably only between them and because of a backdrop of the first debate. So, we now know that Vice President Kamala Harris will do a sit down interview. it'll air Thursday here on CNN. And Dana Bash will be doing the interview airing at 9 p.m. eastern. I mean, this is a high stakes interview, one that, everyone will be scrutinizing. because she has been criticized for not making herself available, as readily to the media. what does she need to do in this interview and do you think that she will get more details on her policy, as opposed to staying broad? to some extent? I mean, I think some of the questions about the details of policy are certainly not what's being asked of the Republican ticket. and I think the Democrats believe you keep the issues broad. You don't go into, you know, points A, B, and C, but you focus on the big themes. And I think she will try to lay out what are the 3 or 4 big agenda items that she wants to focus on, and she'll continue to, you know, introduce herself as a person, which matters in politics, to the electorate. And she will try to do what she did in her speech. You know, Republicans were attacking her. Many thought she couldn't do it. She did it. Many think it was very successful. and I think she'll try to recreate that with a little more in terms of, of the outlines of what she wants to do as president of the United States. It's also a high stakes interview. whether it will carry her momentum or slow it down. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer, thank you. And what is Trump enduring? What he's been saying? Well, he went on Doctor Phil's show yesterday and he was asked about the variety of things, and he talked about and how he thought that he won Florida last, California last time. It's interesting. If we had an honest vote counter, I would win California. You think so? Oh, I think so, I do, I see it, I go around California. They have Trump signs all over the place. Look, France had mail in ballots. They went away from them because people were cheating. Anytime you have a Mail-In ballot there's going to be massive fraud. What we have to do is get control and then we have to change it. And it's a very simple change. Same day voting. Okay, beyond the fact that he did not win California. the the about the strategy of criticizing same day mail criticizing Mail-In voting when he did that last time and Democrats ran up the score in Mail-In voting and then this time Republicans there Trump tried to change this to and say, okay, you can mail in your ballot. Everything is fine. Now he's back to what he said before. And that's probably, if you're Republican strategist, not what you want your nominee to be, say, yeah, this is a big move, George. I remember, Ronna McDaniel going down to the campaign office during the run off and getting heckled by people who thought this, this is deep in the firmament of Republican thinking. The Trump campaign is paying strategies to get mail ballots turned out, in these states, in every swing state. But he keeps undermining the message. I think that interview with Doctor Phil, though, is also part of this other thing the Trump campaign's doing every day, hammering home the message that Harris is not doing enough interviews. Trump is doing a ton, but they're usually with people who are asking him. I wouldn't say friendly softball questions, but getting in his comfort zone and in his comfort zone, even yours wildly off message back to things because they don't want to be talking about every every organizer trying to get people in central Pennsylvania turning Mail-In ballots, make their head again a very well worn part of their head and neck every week when he says this, Trump veering off course at a time when the party is trying. Yeah, very, very hard and strategically to ensconced their position on, how they want people who want to vote for their candidate any way they possibly can, and even getting Trump to film a recorded message for his supporters and acknowledging that some people simply can't make it to the ballots on Election Day, that early voting Mail-In voting is okay from saying a message or not saying a message. but kind of the story of the Trump not going to go away.