Leading Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake came from the media, where she was a local anchorwoman for KSAZ-TV, so has considerable knowledge of how the media works. Since she started running for governor over a year ago, she frequently turns interviews around and puts the interviewer in the hot seat. During an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier on June 27, she turned the focus to Fox News’ lack of coverage of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Baier has consistently expressed skepticism of former President Donald Trump’s belief that there was significant election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Lake described the exchange on Twitter, “WATCH what happens when a Mama Bear takes down a Fake News Baier…”
WATCH what happens when a Mama Bear takes down a Fake News Baier…
The Corrupt Media REFUSES to talk about the biggest story of our lifetime: a STOLEN election. Instead they try to divert our attention to meaningless stories…
I will never let them. pic.twitter.com/Me98qZG2ku
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) June 27, 2022
Baier, a week earlier, interviewed the other main candidate in the race, Karrin Taylor Robson – who is polling much lower than Lake – and he failed to mention when introducing Lake that the candidate was endorsed by Trump.
Baier began by asking Lake what she would do if the cities of Phoenix and Tucson don’t defend Arizona’s law criminalizing abortion, which their mayors have indicated. Lake said there is a “socialist mayor running Tucson, and one running Phoenix.”
Next, Baier asked her what she thought was the most important issue facing Arizona. Lake said the “wide open border,” but said “that wouldn’t be happening without fair, honest elections.” She went on, “We had a fraudulent election, a corrupt election, and we have an illegitimate president.” She discussed the massive amounts of fentanyl coming over the border, killing Americans.
“We’re going to secure that border beginning on day one; after I take my hand off the Bible, we are going to issue a declaration of invasion, we’re going to finish President Trump’s wall, and we’re going to send out armed National Guard to the border and stop people from coming across,” she said. “With Joe Biden, they feel they’re gonna stay here forever, but when I’m governor, they’re going back.”
Baier questioned her assertion that the election was stolen and calling Biden an illegitimate president, and played a clip of Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R-Mesa) testifying to the Democrats’ January 6th House committee. Bowers said he hadn’t seen any “strong, judicial quality evidence” of election fraud, and “evidence can be evidence but it’s still hearsay.”
Baier admitted that Bowers supports Trump (Bowers has said he would vote for Trump again in 2024). Lake responded, “He’s a RINO. And he hopefully will be defeated.”
Bowers has repeatedly angered conservative Republicans by siding with Democrats, particularly on election integrity bills. He used a rare procedural maneuver to defeat HB 2596, which would have banned most absentee ballots, required various unique markings on ballots and state ID to vote, and required casting ballots within relatively small-sized precincts. He has been in the Arizona Legislature since 1993, and is now running for the Arizona Senate since he is term-limited in the House.
Lake went on, “[Senate President] Karen Fann even admits there were issues with the election, that it can’t be certified. And here’s what we have: 740,000 ballots with no chain of custody – they cannot be authenticated, and they should not have been counted; 34,000 ballots that were counted two, three, and four times; people who moved who still voted in our election.”
Lake expressed her frustration, “There’s a mountain of evidence, and I wish that the corporate media would start covering it instead of putting their head in the sand and acting like it didn’t happen. We know what happened here. Just because we have a RINO saying it didn’t happen … .”
Baier interrupted her and said there were “more than 70 cases where there was not evidence, and there was not any state legislature or governor who failed to certify an election, including your own Republican Doug Ducey.”
Lake shot back, “We did not have any court cases where the evidence was presented. We now have evidence that is admissible in a court of law, and I believe the day will come when we have that court case.” She cited the evidence discovered by True the Vote, which was revealed in Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary 2,000 Mules.
Baier interrupted her again when she was talking about bringing back “honest elections,” challenging her on Arizona voters not wanting to look backward at 2020. Lake retorted, “I’m with them every single day. We draw record crowds. Number one issue.” She said voters know all the other issues stem from the “corrupt election.” Lake said it should be an “election day,” not an “election month,” with paper ballots, not electronic voting machines. She cited her lawsuit to get the latter banned in Arizona.
After Lake declared “we can’t have this level of fraud anymore,” Baier pointed out that “every Republican leader in Washington believes that Joe Biden is the legitimate president, every one.”
Lake retorted, “They’re sitting there in Washington, they’re not here in Arizona. We just need some decent journalists to come out here and dig through this.” Lake frequently attacks “the swamp” in Washington D.C.
Baier next brought up a drag queen who attacked Lake for criticizing drag queens performing around children, Richard Stevens, who said he used to be friends with Lake. Baier quoted The Washington Post reporting that Stevens once performed in Lake’s home. Lake said she was “shocked, appalled” that Fox News would bring up a defamatory story like that considering she’s pursuing legal action against Stevens for defamation.
She said she was disappointed that Fox News would rather bring that up than discuss the stolen election. “I’m really disappointed in Fox, I thought you were a little better than CNN.” A CNN reporter tried to ambush Lake on June 23 outside of an event, and Lake responded, “I’ll do an interview with you … as long as it airs on CNN Plus – does that still exist?”
Lake explained that she had covered Stevens at her news anchor job for 20 years, “and he’s never been in my home.” She went on, “He’s lied; we tried to serve him defamation papers, and he’s so shady that we can’t even track him down because he’s not even welcome at the places that he works.”
Baier asked her about photos Stevens has given the media showing the two together, repeating the portion from the article that Lake said was defamatory, while declaring, “I don’t want to ask you these questions, I asked you to address them.”
Lake shot back, “Actually I do think you want to ask them, but you don’t want to ask about 2,000 Mules. … I’m talking about drag shows in schools, this is what triggered this man. Somebody who goes to a drag show with female impersonators is one thing. We don’t want our tax money going into drag shows at schools.”
The Arizona Legislature considered a bill this session to ban children from drag shows, after discovering that Tucson Magnet High School hosted a drag show in May.
Lake concluded, “I am really appalled that you would spend time on a false story like that,” as Baier bit his lip in what appeared to be a nervous response. “It’s shocking,” she said. “You didn’t ask my opponent, the establishment opponent who was here last week … about her vote to allow illegal alien students to get a lower tuition than American students. You didn’t ask her about the 70-plus times that she raised tuition on American students. You didn’t ask her any tough questions. And here you have me on and you try to bring a defamatory story out. It’s really sad.”
Watch the full interview:
[rumble]https://rumble.com/embed/v17lm6u/?pub=x1yay[/rumble]
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Bret Baier interviews Kari Lake” by FoxNews.
