On Tuesday night, while California was still counting ballots in its governor’s race, Donald Trump went on Truth Social and announced the outcome he’d decided on — and promised to deliver it with federal power behind him.
“The Federal Government will be there, with him, to help,” Trump wrote, referring to his hand-picked candidate, former Fox News host Steve Hilton. The race hadn’t been called. As of this morning, it still hasn’t been. None of that mattered.
This is not how endorsements work. A candidate endorses someone, the voters decide, and the winner governs. That’s the process. What Trump described is something else entirely. He promised that if Californians elected his chosen candidate, the federal government would move in alongside him. He didn’t say what that help looks like. He didn’t have to. The message was the point.
California voted against Donald Trump by twenty points in 2024. Forty million people live there. They have a governor’s race of their own, with their own candidates, decided by their own ballots. Trump looked at all of that and saw an opening to install someone he could work with — and said so out loud, in writing, before the votes were finished being counted.
The candidate Trump is backing isn’t even American-born. Steve Hilton is a former British political strategist who went from advising David Cameron to hosting a Fox News show to running for governor of the largest state in the country on Trump’s blessing. His qualification for the job is that Trump likes him and the federal government will show up to help him govern if he wins.
That’s not democracy. That’s a managed outcome with extra steps.
The votes weren’t counted. Trump had already made his promises. If that doesn’t alarm you, you haven’t been paying attention to how this ends.