Kari Lake Has That Special Brand Of Crazy That Appeals To The MAGA/QAnon Cult

Permanent musical accompaniment, Do-Whacka-Do by Roger Miller.

Update to Florida Man’s Summer ‘Loserpalooza Tour’ Comes to Arizona To Promote The Big Lie.

At least four MAGA/QAnon candidates for governor last night attended the “Loserpalooza Summer Tour” in Phoenix and prostrated themselves before the Florida Man in supplicatory obeisance, and fealty to the Big Lie.

The Arizona Republic reports, 4 GOP governor candidates stump at rally; 1 stands out:

Republican faithful at Saturday’s Trump rally got an early look at the GOP field for Arizona governor.

And one candidate stood out: former Fox10 TV newscaster Kari Lake.

Kari Lake has that special brand of crazy that appeals to the MAGA/QAnon personality cult of Donald Trump in attendance.

Lockdowns, Masks, Weak Border Policies, Sketchy Elections & FAKE News Media — I’m taking a Sledgehammer to ALL of it

Elect the Conservative Outsider as Governor to drain the Arizona Swamp

DONATE: https://t.co/ULQ4knpsKR pic.twitter.com/wfG1IS27kO

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) July 22, 2021

Judging by the chants and cheers, Lake was the hands-down favorite among the four Republican hopefuls who attended the event, billed as a “Rally to Protect Our Elections.”

Although Trump was by far the main attraction, Lake was a highlight among the warm-up acts. Before she even started speaking, the crowd at Arizona Federal Theatre was chanting, “Kari, Kari.”

The other gubernatorial candidates got polite applause and some cheers: state Treasurer Kimberly Yee, businessman Steve Gaynor and former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon.

They all addressed the need for election reforms and supported the ongoing audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results.

Gaynor, who lost the 2018 race for secretary of state to Democrat Katie Hobbs, suggested that the contest was an early warning sign of election mischief. He noted he was leading by 40,000 votes on election night, but by the time ballot counting ended two weeks later, he had lost by 20,000 votes.

There has been no evidence of fraud in that election.

In the wake of his loss, Gaynor said he told the “Arizona swamp” that election reform was needed, but no one listened. Now, he said, “There are 1 million Republicans in our state who believe the 2020 election was rigged.”

This right-wing rich guy founded Fair Maps Arizona and is trying to rig the supposedly “Independent” Redistricting Commission into producing safe GQP districts for the next decade. Ex-GOP candidate looks to influence redistricting. Watch for his disruptors at the public hearings of the Independent Redistricting Commission which just got under way last week.

Salmon said if elected, he would make a ban on ballot harvesting permanent. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Arizona law that bans people from returning others’ ballots, unless that person is a relative or a caretaker. The Arizona legislation has no expiration date.

Salmon touted his credentials as the founder of the Republican Freedom (sic) Caucus – truth in advertising: Republican Fascist Caucus – in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms in the late 1990s and then another two terms from 2013-2017.

This is his second run for governor. In 2002, he lost a three-way race for the seat, with Democrat Janet Napolitano besting him and an independent candidate.

Yee promised fair elections and touted her anti-abortion stance as a state lawmaker.

“I am running for governor because I am pro-life,” she said.

She was the sponsor of a bill that required women seeking an abortion to first view an ultrasound and listen to the heartbeat of their fetus. The legislation, she said, saved “so many babies’ lives.”

So she is a single-issue candidate. You are not pro-life if you are an anti-masker and anti-vaxxer during a global pandemic. Arizona Republican legislators are already responsible for thousands of Arizonan’s deaths.

[Former Fox10 anchor] Lake drew repeated applause as she urged rallygoers to ignore traditional media — “Turn it off,” she said — and bashed COVID-19 restrictions.

“They’re about to push more COVID restrictions on us,” she warned the maskless crowd. “We’re not going to fall for it. Pastors, don’t shut your churches down. Mothers, don’t let them make us mask our children again.”

The Arizona Republic reported earlier this year, Here’s why Fox 10 Phoenix news anchor Kari Lake has been off the air recently:

[Lake] has taken time off for personal reasons, Lake said in the tweet.

Given some of Lake’s previous controversies and her past support on social media of fringe conspiracy theories, it’s understandable that she might want to clear the air.

Lake  tweeted a debunked COVID-19 video in 2020 and was off the air temporarily after uttering the F-word accidentally during a Facebook Live event in 2019.

[Lake] often retweets fringe conservative viewpoints on Twitter and formerly on Parler. Judging by the responses to her tweet about her absence on Thursday, her viewers share many of those views.

The Phoenix New Times added, Five Highlights of Kari Lake’s Dark Path to Right-Wing Radicalization (excerpt):

Kari Lake completed her transition from nightly news fixture to conspiracy peddler last week, posting a video screed in which she announced her resignation as Fox10 News anchor, railed against the media, and claimed that hit pieces about her would soon emerge.

Coincidently, Lake’s resignation came shortly after video of her schmoozing at CPAC, a conference for conservative activists, surfaced.

* * *

Here are five memorable features of Kari Lake’s descent into the murky depths:

Thinly Supported Conspiracies

If there’s one thing Lake loves to amplify, it’s a poorly vetted conspiracy theory. There was the time in 2018 she tweeted that teachers’ efforts for better pay were secretly a ploy to legalize marijuana — based solely on a joke T-shirt. In recent months, she’s retweeted news about power outages at the Vatican and in Pakistan, which conspiracy theorists have claimed were signs that the Pope was being arrested for child sex trafficking.

She’s also helped push unverified claims about voter fraud, further spreading a myth that Trump supporters have used to try and overturn the presidential election. In 2018, she boosted a random Twitter user’s unverified claim that the person had received a pre-filled-out ballot. In November, Lake posted a Twitter thread quoting what she called a “sobering interview” by election-conspiracy-theory-pusher Sidney Powell, who is now facing a huge defamation suit related to her claims that the election had been stolen in a scheme connected to Venezuela, Cuba, and China.

And in April of last year, Lake shared a COVID-19 misinformation video that had been denounced by leading medical organizations as “reckless” and not based in science. When YouTube removed the video, Lake re-shared a link to it on Facebook.

Far-Right Social Media

So where’s Lake getting this stuff? We’ve all heard stories about older family members who’ve fallen down the wormhole of right-wing misinformation online, only to emerge as a QAnon supporter or a COVID-denier. Lake seems to be living that spiral.

The former news anchor was an early adopter of Parler, a want-to-be Twitter favored by Trump supporters and right-wing extremists. The service lost its hosting following the attack on the U.S. Capitol after it couldn’t reign in threats of violence on its platform, but Lake was undeterred. Along with many hardcore Trump supporters, she opened an account on Gab, an even more marginal site beloved by QAnon converts and neo-Nazis. Lake even appears to have paid $100 to the site for a yearly membership.

There, Lake seems to have adopted an even looser standard for fact-checking, sharing articles from propaganda outlets like the Epoch Times.

With this history, it was unsurprising that her resignation from Fox10 came in the form of a video hosted on Rumble, a video platform used by Trump supporters.

‘Cancel Culture’

Lake’s moves seem to reflect a larger trend among the far-right and fervent Trump supporters to label basic fact-checking and accountability as vicious “cancel culture.” This is obviously a problematic stance for a journalist who is supposed to advance those values as a core part of their job.

* * *

Lake further alleged that she had been given news copy to read that she didn’t believe was fully truthful. She didn’t elaborate on what that was, but in an interview with the Arizona Daily Independent she specifically cited coverage of COVID-19. Given her history, she might have had a problem with basic fact-checking and avoiding misinformation.

Back to the original Republic reporting above:

Lake called herself an “unapologetic Trump Republican” [that she is] and predicted Republicans will bounce back from top-of-the-ticket electoral losses next year.

These traitorous seditious insurrectionists must be punished harshly by voters. They must be held accountable by soundly defeating them, from top-to-bottom of the ballot.

“The pendulum is swinging and is going to come back as a wrecking ball,” Lake said.

Later, as Trump was thanking the numerous candidates who attended, he paused as the crowd cheered when he said Lake’s name. It was clear he was impressed by the response.

Karrin Taylor Robson, another Republican candidate for governor, was not a speaker at Saturday’s rally.

As Nancy Reagan used to say, “Just say no” to the crazy of the MAGA/QAnon cult.