Arizona’s gubernatorial race may not be having a debate, but Kari Lake is still making headlines. The Republican candidate has made a habit of going viral in her interactions with the press, and that happened again recently.
Once again, Lake was confronted with accusations of “election denial” because the mainstream media are the most boring people in the world. While normal Americans are focused on the economy and other issues that affect their daily lives, the only thing reporters seem to care about is asking about the 2020 election for the umpteenth time.
This time, though, Lake came ready to flip the script, bringing the receipts showing Democrats “denying” elections over the years. Her point? That the press is incredibly hypocritical in who they demand to show subservience to election results, even just rhetorically.
The setup for the question came from Lake’s recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. In it, the Republican made a quip about winning the election and accepting that result, essentially as an eye-roll to the question being asked in the first place. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual sentience knew what she was saying in turning that phrase. Still, we are talking about the national press, so her comment led to yet another round of hand-wringing that Lake supposedly wasn’t committing to accepting the results of the coming election.
Anyway, that led the reporter in the clip to rehash the ordeal, asking for Lake the address the outrage. That’s when she called over a campaign surrogate (I assume) with a stack of papers listing showing over 150 instances of Democrats denying the election results. Lake hit the White House’s Karine Jean-Pierre for claiming Brian Kemp “stole” the election in Georgia and continued from there, reading tweets and comments.
It was an effective counter because it showed the press has no actual standard when it comes to “election denial.” Rather, they only freak out when they feel someone isn’t bending the knee enough to a Democrat. Why? Because they don’t actually believe Lake or anyone else who wants a more secure election system is a danger to democracy. They just think they are a danger to Democrats.
At the end of the day, we have freedom of speech in the United States. No one, not even someone running for the governor of a state, is required to repeat some mantra about 2020 being the “most secure election in history.” It is reasonable to see the chaos that occurred during that cycle, with mass, last-second voting changes, and to be critical of how things were handled.
Besides, as Lake has noted many times, no one outside of the press corps actually cares to keep talking about it. She’s focused on the issues that Arizonans actually care about, and if things continue to go the way they are going, she’ll be rewarded for that come November.