Republican Kari Lake, the frontrunner in Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial primary race, took aim at the longtime political insiders of her party during an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday.
Lake told host Matthew Boyle she believes the Democrat Party and the “old school establishment Republican Party” share a similar “greed and globalism” mentality.
“I see some of the swamp-type Republicans more similar to the Democrats than the America First Republicans. They both want open borders. … They’re both fine with having our businesses moving overseas and not coming back home. They’re not putting our economy first, our workers first,” Lake said, adding that both Democrats and establishment Republicans have gotten “so far away” from their original tenets “and now they’re just greed and globalism.”
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Lake, who is former President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate in the primary, has found her toughest challenge in Karrin Taylor Robson, a business owner who has been polling in second place to Lake and is endorsed by Trump foe Gov. Doug Ducey (R) and propped up by Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Robson has outraised Lake $6.4 million to $2.4 million, according to financial reports filed in April, but more than half of Robson’s money has come from self-funded loans.
“She’s trying to buy this election” with her husband’s money, Lake charged. “And I say that because she doesn’t have good ideas. She’s a complete— all of her talking points are written by her high-priced McCain consultants. … Her border policy is just a bunch of made-up gobbly gook that they made up, and there’s no teeth to it. If you like what’s happening on our border under our current governor, Doug Ducey, then you’ll probably like her border policy. It’s open borders, let them all in, who cares about the people in Arizona. And they don’t want this all to end. They want to have complete control on the money in Arizona, on the resources in Arizona.”
Lake said of Robson’s backers and financial capabilities, “This is the McCain machine with his hand up, pulling up from the grave, trying to hold on to complete control of Arizona, and the America First MAGA movement is saying, ‘No, it’s not going to go that way this time.’”
Former President Donald Trump and Kari Lake speak during a rally at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds in Florence, Arizona, on January 15, 2022. (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
In addition to running as a political outsider and embracing an America First agenda, Lake has gained a reputation for bucking mainstream media in a similar manner to Trump.
The Arizona Republican recently shared a clip of herself ripping into a CNN reporter during a brief encounter in June, telling the reporter CNN was “pedaling … propaganda.”
WATCH what happens when @CNN ambushes @KariLake outside of an event 😂
“I’ll do an interview with you… as long as it airs on CNN+, does that still exist?”
Help fuel our Movement! ⤵️
Visit: https://t.co/2OpN9naeZ6 pic.twitter.com/kDZr8TgHG0— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) June 23, 2022
That same month, Lake shared on social media a popular clip of Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart from the documentary Hating Breitbart in which he declared “war” on mainstream media outlets. Lake called it her “message to the media.”
My message to the media:
Email press@karilake.com if you have any further questions. pic.twitter.com/xtCSES6LJo
— Kari Lake for AZ Governor (@KariLake) June 15, 2022
Lake has also taken heat, mainly from Democrats but also some establishment-aligned Republicans, for promoting her view that the 2020 election was “stolen.” Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen recently observed that, should Lake win the primary, the general election would likely be heavily focused on election integrity, as the frontrunning Democrat candidate is Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, who was responsible for overseeing Arizona’s 2020 election process.
Lake is an advocate of protecting the Second Amendment and has taken a hardline stance on border policy amid the United States’ ongoing illegal migration crisis. She previously vowed to immediately issue a “declaration of invasion” in Arizona should she be elected governor.
Her race, in which she is hoping to replace Ducey by first defeating the Ducey-backed primary contender, “is truly an election about saving a border state,” Lake said.
“The deep state, the establishment, the swamp, however you want to call it, they’re desperate, and they’re losing their grip on power, and they’re scared to death because Donald Trump and people who love his policies are coming roaring back and they don’t know what to do,” Lake said. “So this is truly an election about saving a border state. I have the most bold, aggressive border policy that will secure our border and get Arizona back on the right track.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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