Elon Musk Weaponises Grok to Push Baseless '0-Vote' Conspiracy as Reality Star Spencer Pratt Crashes Out of LA Race

Elon Musk on Monday boosted unsubstantiated claims about the Los Angeles mayoral primary after Nithya Raman edged ahead of Spencer Pratt, the former reality television star, in the race to join Karen Bass in the runoff.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief, who has increasingly used X as a political megaphone, amplified posts suggesting the count was compromised even as the latest tally pointed to a much simpler explanation, namely that late ballots were still being added in a heavily Democratic city.

According to the Associated Press, 83 per cent of the votes had been counted in the mayoral primary, with Raman at 27.1 per cent and Pratt at 26.7 per cent. Bass had already been called to advance to the runoff, which means the real fight was over who would meet her there.

Pratt led when the first tranche of votes was released last Tuesday night, but late and mail-in ballots, which tend to lean Democratic, gradually narrowed the gap and then pushed Raman ahead on Sunday.

Elon Musk Fuels Claims Of Fraud On X

Musk's intervention was not subtle. On Sunday, he reshared a post by venture capitalist and Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire that said, 'It takes a conspiracy theorist. To believe California's election is secure.'

He then boosted several other posts that tried to frame Raman's surge as a 'statistical impossibility,' a phrase that reads more like online theatre than election analysis, especially in a city like Los Angeles, where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.

He also reshared an X user's question to Grok, the platform's AI chatbot, which was used to push a claim that Pratt had received '0 votes' after a sudden overnight drop of 24,000 ballots. That post had already been hit with an X community note citing a Justice Department statement that contradicted it, but Musk boosted it anyway.

He added another layer of strangeness by suggesting it would be a 'worthwhile exercise' to interview '1000 homeless people' in Skid Row and ask who they had voted for.

The pattern matters because it was not just one stray post. Musk was repeatedly lending his account, and the enormous reach that comes with it, to a narrative that had not been established by the count itself.

Nothing in the reported vote tally suggests the race was anything other than close and still developing. What it did show was a gradual shift as more ballots arrived.

Pratt, whose campaign leaned heavily on discontent over Bass's handling of last year's wildfires and borrowed from Donald Trump's political style, had initially seemed to have the inside track against Raman. That advantage did not last once the later ballots were folded in.

By Sunday, Raman had moved ahead, and by Monday, the conversation had become less about the arithmetic of the race and more about the latest wave of accusations ricocheting through Trump world.

Elon Musk Echoes Trump's California Attacks

Musk's comments closely followed similar claims from Trump, who last week accused Democrats of trying to 'steal' the California primaries from Pratt and Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.

As with the Musk posts, Trump offered no evidence to support the allegation. Instead, he returned to a familiar line of attack about 'very late and massive numbers of' mail-in ballots, echoing his long-running hostility to voting by post and the false claims he has made since the 2020 election.

Trump also claimed that the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles was investigating the voting process. On Sunday night, he doubled down on Truth Social, writing, 'Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow.'

Early on Monday, as some outlets called the mayoral race for Raman, he posted again and declared, 'No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!'

The response from California Governor Gavin Newsom's press office was brisk and typical of the tone he has often used against Trump. Replying to the president on X, the office said, 'There isn't a bigger sore loser in the country. Back to bed grandpa!'