For Immediate Release
Tuesday, December 19th, 2023
Contact: Olivia Taylor-Puckett, otpuckett@azdem.org
Kari Lake Yet To Address New Report’s Revelations On “Far-Right…Online Show”
ARIZONA -– While Kari Lake has found plenty of time this week to espouse her conspiracy theories at Turning Point USA’s America Fest, she still hasn’t answered for the shocking revelations revealed in the Arizona Republic’s report about her “far-right…online show”
The Republic detailed how Lake’s online talk show on the site AFN provided a platform to espouse even more fringe conspiracy theories, and the extreme views held by AFN’s founder Joshua Feuerstein:
Here are the new revelations Kari Lake has yet to address:
- That the election of 2020 was a “civil war.”
- That abortion is a “Holocaust.”
- Whether Kari Lake is paid to host extremists and disseminate conspiracy theorists on “The Kari Lake Show.”
Read more about Kari Lake’s new show and why it raises questions about her campaign for Senate:
Arizona Republic: Kari Lake’s back on the air, this time talking far-right topics on online show
By: Ron Hansen
December 15th, 2023
Key Points:
- Not long before Kari Lake launched her long-expected U.S. Senate run, the conservative firebrand and former newscaster took up another project: hosting an online talk show for a company started by a former Fountain Hills evangelical who has said Christians need to be “capable of extreme violence.”
- “The Kari Lake Show,” as it is called, has offered reminders of Lake’s far-right rhetoric in a Senate race where some have suggested she is now trying to moderate or focus her political messaging.
- So far, her show for America First News has provided interviews with conservative figures that often dwelled on election denialism, fealty to former President Donald Trump and corruption allegations involving President Joe Biden and his son. She also raised her political differences with the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose allies Lake has approached in hopes of support […]
- AFN was founded by Joshua Feuerstein, who burst onto the national scene in 2015 protesting generic holiday cups from Starbucks. Since then, he has notably disparaged Islam, gay marriage, abortion rights and is now running for a seat in the Texas Legislature […]
- In working with AFN, Lake has aligned herself with Feuerstein, a far-right evangelical pastor who advised against COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 and told Newsweek then that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, “was a pedophile, not a prophet.”
- “You have a sound mind. You don’t have to wear the mask, you got Jesus. You don’t need the vaccine. You got Jesus,” Feuerstein said in a video of his preaching posted by the London Independent.
- Before creating an uproar over Starbucks’ seasonal cups, Feuerstein drew attention for other skirmishes in the war against what he views as an ungodly culture.
- He rejects evolution. A Florida bakery received death threats after Feuerstein posted a video of the shop’s owner refusing his request for a cake labeled “We do not support gay marriage.”
- He said the “Christian Holocaust has begun” after a Kentucky clerk was jailed for refusing to sign the marriage license for a same-sex couple.
- The day before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Feuerstein spoke at a rally between the White House and the Capitol urging action, if not violence. Feuerstein figured prominently in a documentary-style video of that period posted by Business Insider […]
- “It is time for war! Let us stop the steal!” he thundered as he banged his hand on a lectern with a U.S. flag draped around his neck, the video shows.
- The next day, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to derail congressional certification of the 2020 election results, Feuerstein promised a takeover of the GOP:
- “No matter what happens in the coming days, I can promise you this: There is no longer a Republican Party. It’s MAGA vs. everybody. It’s patriots vs. everybody. We are not voting Republican any longer. It is our party now.”
- Cataclysmic rhetoric isn’t new for Feuerstein.
- In October 2019, he spoke at a pro-Trump rally at the Trump National Doral Miami Resort, calling the coming presidential election war even then.
- “I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,” he said, according to a 2019 account of his remarks posted by the liberal People for the American Way’s “Right Wing Watch.”
- More recently, in July he posted this message on Facebook: “In order to be peaceful, you must first be capable of extreme violence. Otherwise, you’re just weak. Be dangerous, but peaceful” […]
- Lake’s contempt for “the media” figured prominently in her first four shows. She sometimes advanced conspiracy theories or let others do it unchallenged.
- Election denialism has come up at least 27 times.
- Lake’s willingness to rehash claims of stolen elections were published as a key Republican has signaled he wants prospective candidates to discuss other things […]
- AFN provides its audience a torrent of conspiracy theories and hatred for Democrats […]
- AFN is based at the same address as Endtime Ministries in Plano, records show.
- Endtime Ministries has for decades sold magazines, books and videos discussing the coming apocalypse as interpreted and predicted by its founder, Irvin Lee Baxter Jr.
- Baxter was a Pentecostal minister who hosted radio and TV shows for 30 years, wrote a book outlining the case for the Bible prophesying the United States and other modern countries. Later, he opened the Jerusalem Prophecy College in Israel, which offers online classes that purport to show how contemporary events are linked to biblical predictions.
- Baxter died in November 2020 from COVID-19, a disease he said in a broadcast four months earlier could be God’s vengeance.
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