About
Kari Lake is a former Fox News anchor in Phoenix who resigned in March 2021 to run for governor of Arizona. A conspiracy theorist known for spreading misinformation, she surged ahead in the crowded GOP primary race for governor once Trump endorsed her in September 2021. The Atlantic recently dubbed her “Trumpism’s leading lady.”
Lake has called for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who is running against her for governor, to be “locked up” over unspecified election crimes in 2020 and with little apparent irony, has also advocated for imprisoning journalists she claims have lied about the election.
Since the 2020 election, Lake has thrown herself into spreading the Big Lie and spewing Trumpist, far-right vitriol, a strategy that seems to be serving her well. In October 2022, the New York Times reported that Lake’s “hard line against abortion” and routine use of “strident language on the stump”—along with her slick TV persona—have allowed her to overshadow “Hobbs, whose more subdued personality has driven far fewer headlines.”
The Big Lie
- Lake falsely claimed that Biden didn’t win 81 million votes in the 2020 election (though he did).
- In September 2021, Lake parroted a lie that the Democratic Party uses absentee ballots to rig elections.
- She claimed fraud because Trump was initially winning on election night—before all the votes had been counted.
- Lake promoted baseless accusations about Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment.
- In September 2021, Lake called for the “decertification” of the 2020 election, which is impossible from a legal standpoint.
- Lake has said she would not have certified the 2020 election results, even though a Republican-led audit determined that Biden actually won by an even larger margin than in the original count..
- According to The Verge, Lake received $2.1 million in political advertising support from anonymous donations to 1TEN, a firm owned by Jake Hoffman. A former Turning Point USA employee, Hoffman was one of Arizona’s fake electors who attempted to submit fraudulent votes for Trump in 2020. He was also banned from Facebook for operating a troll farm.