'Stupid' new MAGA election lie dismantled as city at heart of scandal shown not to exist

A pro-Trump influencer is getting mercilessly mocked after pushing a voter-fraud claim about former reality star Spencer Pratt that collapsed over a single fatal detail: the location doesn't exist.

The account Paul White Gold Eagle, a prolific conspiracy-minded influencer, posted what he billed as "BREAKING" news this week: "675 ballots for Spencer Pratt found in a dumpster in San Recto." He claimed federal authorities were "on scene" and declared, "Let the games begin."

There was just one problem. As a community note appended to the post pointed out, there is no city called San Recto in California — making the supposed discovery impossible.

The claim is the latest iteration of a fraud narrative that erupted after Pratt, the MAGA-aligned former star of "The Hills," lost his bid for Los Angeles mayor. Pratt held second place in early returns from the June 2 primary but slipped to third as mail-in ballots were tallied, with progressive City Councilmember Nithya Raman edging him out for the second runoff slot behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. The result triggered a wave of unsubstantiated fraud allegations from right-wing media and President Donald Trump himself — despite California's well-documented habit of counting ballots slowly.

The "San Recto" post drew a pile-on. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) joked that even more Pratt ballots had turned up "in Atlantis," adding: "The MAGA conspiracies get stupider every day."

The ridicule wasn't limited to Democrats. Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz answered the claim with a single withering image — a glitchy "[CITATION NEEDED]" GIF.

But the episode also showed how readily these claims spread regardless of plausibility. Whether or not the original post was meant as satire, MAGA accounts ran with it as fact. Conservative author Janie Johnson, who posts under the banner "America is Exceptional," shared it approvingly, insisting Democrats "have been cheating for years through algorithms & motor voter" and vowing that "Communists" would not give up control without a fight.

Fact-checkers have spent the past two weeks swatting down similar Pratt-related claims. Snopes recently debunked a viral assertion that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots for Pratt had been rejected over signature problems, noting that only about 12,700 ballots countywide were flagged for additional verification — not all of them for Pratt — and that affected voters were told how to make sure their votes still counted.