The press conference you should’ve been paying attention to while Trump rambled on about nothing

One of Trump’s most devoted disciples is fighting to stay relevant — and things are getting nasty in Arizona. Eric Garcia reports from on the ground

(Eric Garcia)

Just as former president Donald Trump wrapped up his stemwinder of a grievance-filled press conference 2,300 miles away, one of his most devoted disciples fought to show signs of life as she runs significantly behind the former president.

Two years ago, Republican Kari Lake, the news anchor-turned-election denier, lost the governorship in Arizona by 17,117 votes. Since then, she’s filed lawsuits to overturn the results while at the same time announcing that she will be running for the US Senate seat Kyrsten Sinema will vacate at the end of this year.

“We are in a difficult time in our country and it seems that Arizona is kind of right there at ground zero for a lot of the problems that people are facing,” she said to open a press conference at the Maricopa County Republican Party office on Thursday. “Whether it be the inflation and the cost of living that has soared under the Biden-Kamala regime or whether it be the wide open border that used to be secure and is no longer secure in America.”

Lake’s press conference was an attempt to turn the heat up on Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz, who will be in Phoenix on Friday as part of their swing through battleground states. Harris is also making a play for Maricopa, a county that could make or break the election.

But Lake faces a huge problem that many other Republicans running downballot in other crucial swing states share: she is underperforming Trump. Even before Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election amid his lagging poll numbers, candidates like Lake continued to fall behind.

"She's kind of a drag on [Trump], because the main issue with Lake is that she's very much defined," said Mike Noble, the founder of Noble Predictive Insights based in Arizona.

He noted how Lake has almost universal name identification because of her tenure as a news broadcaster — but that's not necessarily a good thing. Lake trails behind both "Trump-first" Republicans and voters who see themselves as "Party-first" Republicans, according to his research.

"It's funny, a lot of people say Lake is like the Arizona version of Trump," Noble added. "However, when you look at the numbers, it's like she has all the baggage Trump has, but none of the positives."

And that number has only gotten worse as time goes on. Highground Public Affairs, one of the top consulting firms in Arizona run by longtime Republican hand Chuck Coughlin, showed that Harris leads Trump by slightly less than three points recently, but Lake’s opponent Ruben Gallego has opened an 11-point lead against Lake.

Lake dismissed her low numbers during her fiery presser.

“My internal polling actually shows me up,” she told The Independent, to applause from supporters. “And so I feel very comfortable. I think I'm going to catch up with President Trump.”

Earlier this week, many of former Senator John McCain’s former aides endorsed Gallego, a reminder of how Lake openly antagonized supporters of the late senator — at one point even telling them to “get the hell out” of the party. McCain’s family has not taken kindly to this, with his daughter Meghan memorably responding: “NO PEACE, B***H.”

And despite receiving the backing of the establishment Republican Party, Lake only won her primary against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb by 16 points last week.

Lake has since tried to strike a slightly more conciliatory tone; indeed, she did not invoke her previous language about the 2020 election — or even her own election — being stolen on Thursday. But there was still plenty said that would raise eyebrows.

While she initially focused on the border and immigration — notoriously a weak spot for Democrats, especially in a border state like Arizona — the speech quickly devolved.

Representative Eli Crane, of the hellraisers who ejected Kevin McCarthy and who was there to support Lake, repeated an attack line by Trump and JD Vance about Tim Walz’s military record.

“When I look at what he's been all about, lying about his military record, that's pretty standard in Washington, DC,” Crane, a retired Navy SEAL, told reporters. “Some of you guys [in the media] actually cover this stuff fairly but it's only a matter of time before it's somebody in your family that dies of fentanyl, or maybe one of your daughters gets raped and murdered by an MS-13 gang member that's not supposed to be here.”

Lake criticized Walz along the same lines before she called for the press to hold Harris accountable: “It is time for you to stand up, push back against your corporate managers and owners, and do the right thing for our country.”

Lake also attacked her opponent Gallego for moving toward the center after serving as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, presumably because she worries it makes him more popular with voters: “All of a sudden, many in the media and in his own commercials, he's trying to act like he's a cross between Mr. Rogers and GI Joe,” she complained. (Gallego served in the US Marine Corps, explaining the GI Joe reference.)

Lake invited a number of hand-picked locals onstage during the press conference, including a Black woman named Jade Gillum, who invoked Trump’s bizarre allegation that Harris “happened to turn Black” recently and “became a Black person” for strategic electoral advantage.

“I am a former Democrat. Unlike Kamala Harris, I'm an actual, real life Black woman,” Gillum said. She continued by chastising Harris for featuring rapper Megan Thee Stallion at her events.

All the while, Gallego’s campaign has continued to hammer home Lake’s record on abortion, playing repeated attack ads on radio and on the airwaves to remind voters that Lake once referred to abortion as “genocide.”

On Thursday, Lake and Trump received another blow as the non-partisan Cook Political Report moved its rating for Arizona from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.”

Meanwhile, as Trump began to meander, Meghan McCain, whose father was the last Republican to win a Senate race in Arizona, offered her own obituary on X/Twitter. While Trump was busy comparing his address before the January 6 riot to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, she tweeted: “Vice President Harris is going to win.”