For Immediate Release
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Contact: Hannah Goss, hgoss@azdem.org
Blake Breakdown: Tucker, Thiel, and Trump — A Tale of Three Puppet Masters
PHOENIX — Welcome to the penultimate edition of the ‘Blake Breakdown’ — a weekly roundup of the latest news on Blake Masters, the “fringe,” “extreme,” and “dangerous” Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
Known for his divisive rhetoric, far-right positions, and Twitter temper tantrums, Masters is a risk Arizonans cannot afford. From now until November 8th, the Arizona Democratic Party’s ‘Blake Breakdown’ is here to help you keep track of the latest reason why he has no business serving in the U.S. Senate.
Here’s what you missed this week:
PUPPET MASTERS, TRUMP EDITION: On Tuesday, new footage from a Tucker Carlson documentary showed Donald Trump scolding Masters on speaker phone for “going soft” on election denialism on the debate stage and warning Masters he was on the verge of losing his “base” because of it. Like the good soldier (read: liar) he is, Masters took the former president’s orders, appearing on Fox News just days later to mark the first day of early voting in Arizona and reassert his longstanding belief that “Trump won in 2020.”
IT’S A TOSS UP UNTIL Y’ALL TOSS HIM OUT: Yesterday, the Cook Political Report made the widely expected decision to revert the always competitive Arizona Senate race back to “toss up.” While Cook made it clear that the rating change was a recognition of Arizona’s close statewide races in spite of Masters’ “lackluster campaign,” Politico went even further. They explained that Masters, “who is widely seen as running an underfunded and uninspired campaign,” “can claim little credit” for the change. Brutal, but then again, most people who meet Masters find him to be off-putting — just ask the 75 of Masters’ high school classmates who wrote a letter to their hometown paper begging their neighbors to reject their former peer.
ROGERS, GOSAR, AND BIGGS, OH MY!: This week on the campaign trail, Masters proudly appeared alongside some of Arizona’s worst: Wendy Rogers, Paul Gosar, and Andy Biggs. Who we’d call far-right Neo-Nazis, Masters called “amazing politicians.” Not to worry — Masters’ affinity for White Nationalists is well reciprocated; he’s been endorsed by a long list of other prominent antisemites including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andrew Torba, and Andrew Anglin, to name just a few. At this point, if we had a dollar for every bigoted individual who endorsed Masters, we could cover the salary of the bonafide White Nationalist that Masters *still* has on his payroll.
PUPPET MASTERS, THIEL EDITION: It’s giving…a 36 year old who still gets an allowance. New reporting yesterday by Puck revealed that Masters’ Big Tech puppet master, Peter Thiel, recently came through with another multi-million dollar payment towards buying his very own Senate seat. Cumulatively, Thiel has bankrolled Masters’ bid to the tune of $17.5 million, which notably and dramatically exceeds the total Masters has raised on his own…ever. And the big-dollar donor duties don’t stop there for Thiel — next week, he’s throwing Blake another fundraising bash in a desperate attempt to scrounge up enough cash to keep his protégé’s political career afloat.
THE ONE ARMY HE’D ENLIST IN: On Wednesday, just days after calling for “an army” of people to monitor his baseless claims of voter fraud across Arizona, Masters encouraged his supporters to continue their efforts to intimidate voters, saying “get your video camera out and record to make sure people aren’t ballot harvesting.” Despite his bogus election conspiracies and preemptive fraud claims about the 2022 midterms, Arizonans are still rightfully utilizing our secure and trusted early voting system. After all, Democrats and Republicans know — deep down — that we do elections well in Arizona. That’s why 90% of voters, including Masters, rely on early voting to cast their ballots — not that he’d ever admit it now.
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