When Kari Lake was running for governor of Arizona, she had a few things to say about the late John McCain.
He was an archenemy of Donald Trump and Lake, running as Trump in high heels, went after the longtime Republican senator from Arizona with a vengeance.
“We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” Lake told his enthusiastic supporters after winning the 2022 Republican primary, his jaw clenching as he pantomimed the fatal blow.
He called McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018, a loser and told his supporters to “get the hell out” of a campaign event. He accused McCain's wife, Cindy, of being in cahoots with liberal billionaire George Soros to destroy the United States.
It doesn't matter.
Turns out it was all a lot of fun.
The loser label was used “jokingly,” Lake, who is running for Senate after her failed bid for governor, said last week. “I think if John McCain, who had a great sense of humor, had heard it, he would have laughed.”
But McCain's daughter, Meghan, a fierce defender of his legacy, was not amused.
“Kari Lake is trying to walk back her continued attacks on my dad (and my family) and all of his loyal followers,” McCain wrote in a social media post after Lake whitewashed in an interview on radio station KTAR from Phoenix. -FM. “I guess she realized that she can't become a senator without us.
“We see you as you are,” McCain added, “and that disgusts us.”
Lake’s embarrassing response – “my dad also passed away from cancer,” he wrote on
McCain's response was much more emphatic: “NO PEACE, BITCH!”
It's not difficult to understand Lake's change of heart.
Hit that. The change of heart suggests a level of introspection and sincerity that seems beyond her.
It's not difficult to understand Lake's change in tone and attitude. There are crystals that are less transparent.
She jumped into the Senate race after apparently giving up hopes of becoming Trump's running mate. (So much for all that time spent at Mar-a-Lago).
The race is expected to pit Lake against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego for the seat held by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Sinema has yet to say whether she will seek re-election, but each passing day makes her candidacy seem less likely.
In a state almost evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and those registered in neither party, “Kari Lake can't win… without messaging and then getting the support of moderate Republicans and right-wing independents,” Barrett Marson said , strategist for the Arizona Republican Party. that she does not support any candidate in the Senate race.
Meghan McCain, campaigning with her father, the late Senator John McCain, during his 2008 presidential bid, rejected Lake's proposal to let go of the past after Lake attacked him.
(Stephan Savoia / Associated Press)
Those are the voters, he noted, “who propelled John McCain to more than a dozen statewide victories during his lifetime.” In fact, although he frequently disagreed with the far-right wing of the Republican Party, which today is Trump's political base, the former senator did not lose a single election in Arizona in his political career of more than three decades. .
So Lake has gone from punishing McCain to sucking up to him.
Many, however, do not believe in his attempt at reconciliation.
“This amendment tour is deeply politically motivated and disingenuous,” said Chuck Coughlin, a former Republican pollster. The longtime McCain supporter left the Republican Party and went independent as Trump denigrated McCain for spending five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “I don't know anyone I've met who thinks she's sincere.”
Lake's overture to the McCain family is just one part of his attempted image makeover.
After spending months claiming the gubernatorial election was stolen, Lake suggested he now wants to put his false claims behind him. “I don't want to sit back and look back,” she told KTAR.
But it may not be that simple.
A top elections official, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, filed a defamation lawsuit against his Republican colleague over Lake's incessant falsehoods about voter fraud. In December, a judge rejected Lake's claim that his statements were “rhetorical hyperbole” (perhaps he thought “just joking” wouldn't have carried the same legal weight) and allowed the lawsuit to continue.
The Arizona Supreme Court is weighing Lake's appeal.
The courts have done a good job holding Trump's enablers, including disgraced lawyer and fallen 9/11 hero Rudolph W. Giuliani, accountable for lying and defaming others on his behalf.
Lake should also be made to pay. Perhaps it will force others to think twice before making such reckless and irresponsible statements.
As for his Senate bid, voters should consider what kind of person slanders a war hero and deeply revered figure like McCain, insults his widow, and then insists, when politically expedient, that it was all a joke and the past must remain in the past.
His shameless, shameful actions and blatant attempt to erase the past with Etch-A-Sketch are an insult to anyone with even a modicum of intelligence.
There's nothing funny about a fake like that.
