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June 8, 2026 / 1:27 PM EDT

/ CBS News

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President Trump walked out of an interview with NBC News in Wisconsin after he was challenged on his claims of election fraud and struggled to provide evidence for those claims. In an interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker that was taped Friday and aired Sunday, Welker pressed the president for evidence on his claims of election fraud in the 2020 election and claims that election fraud is currently happening in the California primaries. California, which allows for last-minute mail-in ballots, is taking days to finish counting ballots in close primary contests. California's gubernatorial primary and Los Angeles mayoral race are still undecided nearly a week later. State officials say it's common to take days and even weeks to count the millions of mail-in ballots due to California laws and processes. The president, however, claimed it's taking California days to count the ballots "because they're cheating on the election," and Welker asked, "Do you have evidence to support that?" The president retorted, "All I have to do is look," without citing support for his claims, aside from the length of time. "But that's not evidence," Welker responded. After the president accused Welker of being "crooked or stupid," he insisted that there's "more evidence than ever presented" that the 2020 election was rigged. When Welker pointed out that the president and his allies went to court to litigate those election claims — and only prevailed in one minor case out of 62 cases total — the president again called Welker and NBC "crooked," adding that he thinks the same thing about ABC, CBS and CNN. "You're a one-sided crooked network," Mr. Trump said. "Sorry. Let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time."After another moment of exchanges in which Welker urged him to say, the president walked off camera. The California election system is famously slow, and experts have warned it could take days or weeks to finish counting votes. Experts and California Gov. Gavin Newsom knew the vote counting would be slow even before it began. Last month, Newsom sent an open letter to county election officials, urging them to speed up the counting process to fight off unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about election security.