For Immediate Release
Thurs, Sept. 29h, 2022
Contact: Josselyn Berry, Jberry@azdem.org
Kari Lake’s New TV Ad Claims She Tells the Truth But Her Campaign Runs on Lies
PHOENIX–Kari Lake is out with a new TV ad claiming to tell the truth about herself. But Lake has built her whole campaign on lies, half-truths and disinformation. Lake can claim she’s telling the truth, but here are the top five lies she’s pushed throughout her campaign.
- The One Where She Claims Biden Didn’t Win and the Election Was Rigged–We’ve lost count of how many times Lake has spewed out election lies and conspiracy theories since launching her campaign. Lake has aggressively pushed a steady stream of election lies. Lake has consistently and falsely claimed the 2020 election was “stolen” and “corrupt.” Lake has also said of Biden: “He lost the election, and he shouldn’t be in the White House.” At the GOP primary debate, Lake claimed that the right-wing and fraudulent 2020 election audit was proof the election was rigged, and defended the right-wing propaganda film, “2,000 Mules.” In the days leading up to the primary election, Lake warned that something was going very wrong. “We’re already detecting some stealing going on,” Lake said at a campaign stop the week before the election. Hours before the polls closed, she hadn’t changed her tune, saying “If we don’t win, there’s some cheating going on. And we already know that.” After she was declared the winner however, Lake dropped all talk of fraud and never produced a single piece of evidence.
- The One Where She Lied About Her Knowledge of Arizona Abortion Bans–In a New York Times profile, Kari Lake was caught trying to lie about her stance on abortion. When asked about Arizona’s 1901 abortion ban, which on the campaign trail she calls “a great law,” Lake replied, “At the time, I wasn’t even aware that we have this law on the books. So I don’t think that’s ever going to have to come up.” Except that’s not true at all. In fact, Lake knew that abortion ban well enough to reference the statute number in a June 24th interview with the Conservative Circus, saying, “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books, I believe it’s ARS 13-3603.” This isn’t even the first time Lake has touted the 1901 law, which has no exceptions for rape or incest and requires prison time for doctors. She responded to the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe by saying she supports the 1901 Arizona law and celebrated it again as a “great law” during a forum in February and said she would support and enforce it during the Republican primary debate.
- The One Where Her Gotcha Attempt on Katie Hobbs Was An Epic Flop–Kari Lake proved she has more of a knack for reading teleprompters than she does for legislation when she tweeted out a video after teasing “painful, hurtful news about Katie Hobbs.” Except her bombshell news promptly blew up in her face when multiple Arizona and national reporters correctly flagged it for the outright lie that it was. The video wrongly claimed that Hobbs fought to purge the Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem, Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from Arizona’s classrooms—Except she didn’t. The bill in question, SB1289, had nothing to do with the pledge, national anthem or Constitution, and Hobbs didn’t vote to keep them out of schools. Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin criticized Lake’s ignorance of the basic workings of state government, saying “It’s disappointing that somebody that’s running for governor can’t read state statute, especially for someone who claimed they triple-checked their facts.”
- The One Where She Said She’d Unite the GOP And Then Ripped Them To Shreds–At her press conference after winning the GOP Primary, Lake said, “I want to bring the Republican Party together.” But in the months since, she’s done the opposite, referring to her fellow Republicans as “lords of the swamp,” “doormats” and “RINOs.” During an online interview, Lake went on another tear against her own party, saying, “This is the Cindy McCain branch of the Republican Party. They’re not Republicans. They’re globalists. And they want, I think they want, an end to America.” The Arizona Agenda reported, “Kari Lake secured the GOP nomination for governor, then promptly left town to bash the moderate Republicans she’ll need to win the state. Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, the former newscaster said, ‘We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,’ continuing the anti-McCain tour she started months ago.”
- The One Where She Claimed Red for Ed Was A Ploy to Legalize…Weed? Back in 2018 at the height of the Red for Ed movement, Lake tweeted that the teacher movement is a push to legalize marijuana, “What did I say?! #RedForEd is nothing more than a push to legalize pot. Check this out. T-Shirts are already printed!! This is a big push to legalize pot and to make it more savory by tossing teachers a bone with a substantial raise. #IHateTheDishonesty.” On her Facebook page, Lake also wrote, “How much Legalize-Pot $$ is being poured into Red For Ed? Or are the legalize-pot-folks just piggybacking on the teacher pay issue? Either way, it seems unsavory,” reads the Facebook post that was later deleted.
But don’t take our word for it:
- American Independent ‘Republican Kari Lake’s campaign for Arizona governor is built on lies’– Kari Lake, the front-runner in the Republican primary race for governor of Arizona, last week repeated the claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential elections that have been a hallmark of her campaign. In an interview with the conservative media outlet Newsmax, posted to her Twitter account, she claimed that the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft decision in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “really is a way to detract from Dinesh D’Souza’s movie ‘2000 Mules,'” which makes a case for bogus claims of election fraud.
- Esquire ‘Kari Lake Is Straight-up Lying, and There’s No Second Option’ –Kari Lake, Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, is an ideal example of the candidate you get when your party is suffering at every level from an advancing prion disease. In this case, the Republicans first consumed the monkey brains when they decided to denigrate political public service—and by extension the political institutions themselves—and the people who ask their fellow citizens to vote for them. If all of government service is merely a sham and a nuisance (which was the general theme of Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address), then anybody can do it. And if anyone can do it, why not Lauren Boebert or Louie Gohmert? Or come to think of it, Kari Lake?
- CNN ‘Fact-checking Kari Lake, serial promoter of election lies and early frontrunner in GOP primary for Arizona governor’ – Lake’s words have raised concerns among independent elections experts about the fairness of future elections in a key swing state. It is possible, though far from certain, that Arizona’s 2024 presidential election will be conducted with two aggressive 2020 deniers at the helm: Lake as governor and state representative Mark Finchem as Secretary of State. Both of them have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump. And like Trump, Lake has not only disseminated false claims about the election but called for action based on those false claims.
- NPR ‘The truth in political advertising: ‘You’re allowed to lie’’ – Political candidates can say some outrageous things. Sometimes, those things are even lies, like in an ad from Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.Lake, a Republican former TV anchor who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, got lots of attention with an introductory ad in which she invoked the lie that the 2020 election was rigged (and that the news media won’t cover the rigging).
- Daily Beast ‘NBC Reporter Confronts Kari Lake Over Her Bogus Election Conspiracies’ –NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard confronted Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake over her wild allegations that she’s already detected “some stealing” in the upcoming elections. Of course, Lake refused to explain herself because Hillyard works for “MSDNC.”Once an Obama-supporting local news anchor, Lake in recent years turned into a Trump acolyte and has become a GOP frontrunner primarily due to her embrace of the twice-impeached ex-president’s election lies.
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