For Immediate Release
Tuesday, Oct. 11th, 2022
Contact: Josselyn Berry, Jberry@azdem.org
A Post Mortem On Trump and Lake’s MAGA Rally Featuring MEGA Lies
PHOENIX–Trump was back in Arizona Sunday for a rally with Kari Lake and Blake Masters that was full of the expected election lies and outrageous mistruths, and Kari Lake further demeaning herself for Trump. Lake has decided to tie herself completely to unpopular, right-wing extremists like Trump, Masters, Ted Cruz and others, alienating the moderate and independent voters needed to win this race.
“Unlike some other GOP candidates who’ve tried wooing voters in the center, Lake has placed herself in the furthest right corner for her entire campaign,” said Josselyn Berry, spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party. “Sunday was a tale of two visions for Arizona – Kari Lake stood with Donald Trump as he repeatedly made false claims about the 2020 election, calling it ‘rigged and stolen,’ while the crowd chanted ‘lock her up’ in reference to Katie Hobbs. Meanwhile, Katie Hobbs showed her bipartisan base of support, standing with Arizona Republicans who held a press conference to highlight why they’re putting country over party to elect Katie Hobbs as the next governor.”
Here’s more of what we saw from Kari Lake this past weekend:
Lake Lacks Local GOP Support While Hobbs Consolidates Arizona Republicans–Lake has failed to garner local Republican support for her campaign, relying solely on out of state extremists like Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. In contrast, Arizona Republicans held a press conference on why they’re putting country over party to elect Katie Hobbs as the next governor. With less than a month until election day Kari Lake is still failing to consolidate wide GOP support for her campaign and continues only speaking to her far right base. Former Arizona governor Jan Brewer has again said she hasn’t decided she’ll vote for Kari Lake. Brewer went on the Gaydos and Chad Show last week and said she won’t commit to voting for Kari Lake and that Kari Lake continues to snub the former Republican governor even as Brewer had a lunch meeting with Katie Hobbs. Other high level Republicans are also defecting from Lake, and every day more Republicans are speaking out about their support for Katie Hobbs. Most notably, Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said recently, “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Kari Lake is not elected.” Instead Lake continues to associate with unpopular extremists like Ted Cruz and Blake Masters.
Lake Claims Fentanyl Kills More People COVID– Lake made the claim that “Fentanyl is a bigger killer of young people than COVID was for our young people.” Except it’s not, as an Arizona Mirror fact checker called out. It’s just further proof that Lake will say anything, even if it contradicts basic facts.This of course isn’t the first time we’ve seen Kari Lake make verifiably false claims on the campaign trail.”
Lake Says She Backs the Blue But Hired A Man Who Tried to Pay Someone to Murder Them– Lake said, “I back the blue 100%. Make that 1000%.” But Lake has called to dismantle and defund the country’s leading law enforcement agency. In response to being asked if she supported “disband[ing] the FBI” Lake said “absolutely” and “100 percent I agree.” In another interview, Lake said “It’s time to fire the federal government” in response to the FBI raid of Mar-A-Lago, and even suggested Arizona should secede from the United States in retaliation. More recently, Lake even hired a staffer who “attempted to kill” an FBI informant.