Former television newscaster and failed Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake hinted at violence to a crowd of thousands of conservative activists Sunday, continuing her claim that she had really won last month.
“On Nov. 8, they committed highway robbery,” she said, to chants of “Kari! Kari!”
Lake, who has sued elections administrators alleging fraud, called the Maricopa County elections system a “house of cards” that she promised to take down. “I’m not just going to knock that house of cards over. We’re going to burn it to the ground,” she said. “They messed with the wrong woman. They messed with the wrong movement, of ‘we the people.’ And we’re not going to take it anymore.”
She then told the crowd that the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms - was in danger because of current leadership, and that that amendment protected all the others.
“You do not steal our vote and get away with it. You don’t,” she added.
Lake, borrowing a tactic of former President Donald Trump, attacked the news media, urging the audience to turn around and boo the “mainstream media” on a riser.
“Their days are numbered,” she said.
It was unclear whether she knew that the people she was insulting were actually a production crew for Turning Point USA, the event organizer.
Lake spent much of her remarks claiming the election had been stolen from her. “They had to steal our vote in broad daylight,” she said. “My pronouns are by the way: I won.”
Lake’s appearance at Turning Point’s “AmericaFest” was promised well before the election, when many conservatives believed she would be doing so as governor-elect of Arizona. The conservative group relocated to Phoenix several years ago after its founding in Illinois. The conference’s attendance – 10,800, according to Turning Point’s founder and head Charlie Kirk – rivals that of the decades-old Conservative Political Action Conference staged by the American Conservative Union.
Until a few weeks ago, the longtime local television news anchor was regarded as one of the brightest stars in the Trump wing of the Republican Party. She enthusiastically embraced his lie that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him and made that a cornerstone of her race for governor. Lake also flirted with endorsing political violence in the final weeks of the campaign; she was
widely criticized for mocking the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.).
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Lake was seen as one of the brightest stars in the Trump wing of the party but was among a slew of candidates spreading his election lies who lost in November.
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