PHOENIX, Ariz. — Former TV host and failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake alluded to violence against a crowd of thousands of conservative activists on Sunday, continuing her claim that she effectively won last month.
“On November 8, they committed a highway robbery,” he said, amid chants of “Kari! Dear!”
Lake, who is suing election administrators for alleged fraud, called Maricopa County’s election system a “house of cards” that he vowed to eliminate. “I’m not just going to tear down that house of cards. We will burn it to the ground,” he said. “They were wrong with the wrong woman. They made the wrong move, “we the people”. And we won’t do it again.”
He then told the crowd that the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — was in danger because of the current leadership, and that that amendment protects everyone else.
“Don’t steal our vote and get away with it. No, he added.
Lake, borrowing a tactic from former President Donald Trump, attacked the media, urging the public to turn around and boo the “mainstream media” rant.
“Their days are numbered,” he said.
It was unclear whether he knew the people he was insulting were actually a production crew for Turning Point USA, the event’s organizer.
Lake spent much of her remarks claiming the election was stolen from her. “They had to steal our vote in broad daylight,” he said. “By the way, my pronouns are: I won.”
Lake’s appearance at Turning Point’s “AmericaFest” was promised long before the election, when many conservatives believed he would end up as Arizona’s governor-elect. The conservative group moved to Phoenix a few years ago after its founding in Illinois. Attendance at the conference — 10,800, according to Turning Point founder and chief Charlie Kirk — rivals that of the American Conservative Union’s Decennial Conference of Conservative Political Action.
Until a few weeks ago, the longtime local news anchor was considered one of the brightest stars in the Trump wing of the Republican Party. He eagerly embraced his lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” and made it a cornerstone of his gubernatorial bid. Lake also flirted with advocating political violence in the final weeks of the campaign; was widely criticized for mocking his attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.).
She held fundraisers at her Palm Beach social club — putting tens of thousands of dollars in his pocket — and rallied his support, leading to a narrow victory in the Republican primary this summer.
But Lake continued to spread his campaign lies before the general election and ended up losing by 17,000 votes to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who many Democrats also criticized for running a campaign weak
Exit polls across the country found that many independents and even some Republicans, though unhappy with high inflation and President Joe Biden’s leadership, voted against GOP candidates who supported Trump’s false campaign claims.
That key fact, however, didn’t seem to impress Lake or any of the other speakers at the Turning Point USA conference.
Kirk, whose full embrace of Trump in 2016 greatly increased TPUSA’s influence and fundraising ability during Trump’s presidency, lamented the way the midterms are going and said he and his allies need a “coherent vision of what we conservatives believe and who we are. fight for” — but did not address Trump’s unpopularity with most Americans.
Saturday night’s keynote speaker, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, said he was “blown away” by the interim results and after a detailed explanation of how he had to go pheasant hunting in South Dakota for three days to clear his head, it was assigned to the Republicans. showed weakness towards unspecified leaders who did not believe in God.
Even Florida GOP Congressman Byron Donalds, who began his remarks by offering the “good news” that California Democrat Nancy Pelosi would no longer be speaker but acknowledged that this was “the end of the good news,” did not blame Trump . fixing on 2020 for losing the election. Instead, Donalds blamed Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and ultimately Republicans’ inability to attract more voters in “urban corridors.”
Trump, who continues to lie about the 2020 election, is being criminally investigated by the Department of Justice and Georgia prosecutors in connection with the January 6, 2021 coup attempt to remain in power and for his various efforts leading up to until that day. He is also being investigated by the DOJ for removing confidential documents from the White House and keeping them at his Mar-a-Lago social club in Florida, even defying a subpoena ordering him to hand them over.
Despite this, he is again running for president and retains the loyalty of a sizable segment of the Republican primary voting base.
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