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April 13, 2023 - Viva & Barnes
48:33
Interview with Kari Lake! Viva & Barnes LIVE!
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Time Text
I'm not refreshing this.
People, do you see me?
Yes.
Okay.
Sorry.
That's me.
Whoa.
I have So long as I don't panic and do what I did the other time and end the stream, there's a bit of a delay.
I had to go through a commercial.
I'm here, which means that you can all see me.
Everybody, sorry about the late start.
It's not really a late start.
There just won't be any intro rant today.
We had to make sure everything was video, audio was working.
Carrie Lake exclusive.
We're not touching YouTube tonight.
And not because we couldn't, because I've decided not to.
We're going to talk about, obviously...
What's going on in Arizona, the election stuff, but more broad issues or broader issues.
And we'll get into some of the Carrie Lake's next venture, which I've been watching some interviews.
I know she's got some good things on the horizon.
So that's it.
We are good.
We're live on Rumble.
We're live on Locals, vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
We don't have Carrie Lake for too long, so that's it.
I'm going to bring in Robert first.
And Carrie, if you can see me, I'm going to bring in in three, two, one.
She's ready.
Okay.
Hello.
I'm going to put myself here.
I think I know why we're not on YouTube.
I'm too dangerous for YouTube, I'm told.
No, I'm going to post it to YouTube.
We only have 45 minutes.
I like to move from YouTube to Rumble exclusively.
It'll interfere with the interview.
So we're just going to do this live on Locals.
And I'll post it to YouTube because the world's going to see this.
Carrie, first of all, thank you.
This is incredible.
I've been following what you've been going through for the last little while, and I feel like we've met already, but we've never actually met.
Ordinarily, I ask for the 30,000-foot overview, but everybody knows who you are.
I'm going to get into this real quick.
We need a bit of the backdrop on your family history.
Other than what else Wikipedia says about you, it says...
Oh, boy.
Don't trust that.
No, I take it with a great assault.
The youngest of nine kids?
Yes, I grew up in Iowa, and I am the youngest of nine.
We have eight girls and one boy in my family.
And I am mother of two children, married to Jeff for 25 years this August.
And I have a son and a daughter, and I couldn't be more proud to be their mom.
Now, what led you from Iowa to Arizona?
Actually, a job in broadcast journalism.
I was a broadcast journalist in my hometown, which is the Quad Cities.
It's right there along the Mississippi River.
And it kind of straddles both sides of the river.
And I grew up on the Iowa side of that, but I was working on the Illinois side at a television station when I got the call from Phoenix that they were looking to hire me.
So I packed up my car.
And drove across the country and never looked back.
I just fell in love with Arizona from the minute I stepped foot in Arizona.
And it's been a long love affair.
And the people have been so wonderful.
And it's just, it's home.
Carrie, you said there were eight girls and one boy?
Yes.
How did he turn out?
No, I was a good asset.
I was like, did your parents continue to have kids to try to have more boys after the boy, or did they just want a big family in general?
Mom was Catholic, and obviously a good Catholic.
She followed all the rules, and so we just kept having kids in our family.
I'm the baby, so they had four girls, then my brother, and then four more girls.
Sorry, but what is it like growing up as the youngest of nine kids?
I mean, are you getting attention or do you not get attention?
Well, I think most of the time when you think of being the baby in a family, you think, oh, the baby is spoiled.
But when you're the ninth child, you probably need a little more attention.
There's just too many mouths to feed and too many people in the house.
But that being said, I wouldn't trade one second.
I'm so blessed to have...
Eight siblings that I love and adore very much.
And it was a great upbringing because you learn a lot in a big family.
There's give and take.
You don't get your way.
Even if you are the baby and the youngest, you have to kind of...
Scrap and work your way through.
And thankfully, growing up in the Midwest, you kind of had that natural Midwest work value.
But then when you grew up in a big family, and my father was a school teacher, history and government, and also a football coach, we didn't have a lot of material wealth.
So we had to work for everything.
I mean, I started babysitting when I was seven.
It was back in the 70s.
So you would actually, there were people who would leave their baby with a seven-year-old back in the 70s.
It was a different era.
I worked for everything.
We had to work for shampoo if we wanted it.
We had to work to pay for toothpaste.
Therefore, I just came out of that experience with an incredible work ethic.
I always have felt like no matter what happens to me, I can survive because I know how to work.
How did the broadcast industry change during your time in it?
Oh my gosh.
Boy, when I got into it, it was a very admirable profession, I thought.
As a broadcast journalist, you know, I was trained and taught to give both sides of the story.
And if there's three sides, you give all three sides and you keep your opinion out of it.
And if you have bias, which let's face it, we all do.
We're human beings.
We've had experiences in our lives that lead us to form opinions.
You have to learn how to check that.
You have to learn how to check that as you're covering a story.
And I loved covering stories.
I loved interviewing people, finding out more about their backgrounds.
If it was a story about how they were successful, how did they find that success?
Even local live news.
I loved covering live news as well.
But unfortunately, it became more and more liberal.
And I think the reason it became more liberal is that a lot of the more experienced journalists, as they got older, became more expensive, right?
You make more money as you've got more depth in a market.
You've worked there for 10, 20 years.
You understand the market, you have roots in the market, but you also are a little more expensive.
And I think that news stations, as they started to grow with five owners buying up all the stations and they became conglomerates, they started realizing that they could get rid of some of those reporters who had depth, who were more expensive, and replace them with two or three young kids coming straight out of journalism school.
And journalism school...
Stopped teaching journalism.
It started to teach social justice activism.
And so we lost a lot of talented, seasoned reporters who were less biased and more fair in how they reported and were placed with a bunch of activists.
95% of most newsrooms are liberal.
There's no diversity in thought.
And so it changed a lot.
During COVID, Is when I had my wake-up call, and I realized that even though I always felt that I could work and push back against kind of that liberal mindset and keep it balanced, during COVID, I was unable to do that.
There was just this push to force stories that were dividing us, that would keep us living in fear, and I didn't want to lend my heart and my voice and my reputation to that, so I walked away.
You got your journalism degree from University of Iowa.
And you work in the industry.
I mean, that's basically what you've done your entire life.
Pretty much.
I mean, I told you that I worked as a babysitter when I was a kid, and I worked all kinds of jobs.
I always had to work since I was very little.
I worked in restaurants.
I worked as a janitor in college.
That's the job, by the way, that probably prepared me most for politics.
I will say that.
By the way, I didn't mean that as a slight.
I meant it's an amazing thing.
You spent your entire life in journalism and then made a decision to go from that into the foul cesspool that is the world of politics.
And you got into how that happened in the later years.
But just to Robert's question, we all see now that there's a liberal bias and you can't deny it.
I think there's even a liberal bias at Fox News, which is the least liberal.
But back in the day, like in the original days, Was it the case that there was in fact more diversity of thought or was politics just not the wedge divisive issue that it is today where the identity of what political party you subscribe to was the defining element of who you were as a human?
That's a good point.
We weren't as divided.
But I also think that we weren't aware that we were living in a country that had really one political party disguised as two.
We didn't realize we had something called the Uniparty, which, you know, we thought, okay, you're either a Democrat or you're Republican.
And now we're realizing, thanks to President Trump, that that's really one party.
It's a party of political elites disguised as two separate parties to make the people think that They're either Republican or Democrat.
And in many ways, it's just one party to keep the apparatus, the political apparatus, the D.C. bureaucracy moving and flourishing while the American people are not flourishing, are actually hurting and struggling.
And then President Trump came in and exposed that.
And now we realize, wow.
There's a big difference between the Uniparty and America First.
And that's really where we're at right now.
And I think that's why the political parties, or rather, that's why journalism became so hostile.
Because the fake news was in on it all along.
And when Trump came along and tipped over the apple cart and exposed what was going on, they, in a panic, said, we've got to destroy this guy.
We've got to bring him down or he will destroy.
Our way of life, our politics, our bureaucracy.
And that's where we are right now.
They brought him down in 2020 by unleashing COVID, by stealing an election.
I hope I'm not...
Please, don't worry.
This is not a spoiler alert.
Everyone here understands what's going on, hopefully.
And they had to stop him from being reelected.
He won that re-election in a landslide.
Huge.
I think he had 12 million more votes than Obama had the year before, and Obama had done quite well.
And so they had to make up this phony story that this dementia patient, who never left his basement, could barely walk, and can barely string two or three words together and make a semi-coherent sentence, couldn't debate, or barely could debate, and didn't do any campaigning, won by the most.
Votes ever in the history of our great nation.
81 million votes.
As I like to say, 81 million votes my ass.
Don't insult our intelligence.
We didn't just fall off the turnip truck.
And so they had to create that whole scenario to bring down Trump because in his second term, he was going to bring down that rotten, corrupt regime and machine.
And now they are scared to death as he is attempting a third try.
I think he's going to be successful, but they're going to throw everything they've got at him.
And they did that.
And as a journalist, it was painful to watch.
I always felt that I need to be fair with everybody who I'm covering.
And I was always fair with President Trump, but it killed me to watch as he took on incoming 24-7 for eight.
Solid years of the most bogus stories and lies.
It's one thing to cover someone fairly when they've done something wrong.
These were made-up stories.
And the whole purpose of these stories was to get into the minds of everyday Americans and turn them on the one person who was standing up and actually fighting for them.
It's quite diabolical.
And that's why I'm such a staunch supporter.
Look, I don't want to have a long political career.
I never wanted to get into politics.
The people recruited me.
But I recognize what's at stake right now.
And we've got to get President Trump in office or I think we lose our country.
I think he's the one man standing between us keeping America and preserving our Constitution and us losing it and losing it all.
To what do you attribute, I'm always curious, people that become independent of thought, that are in a position where they don't have to as a matter of societal success, they already have some degree of success economically, societally, in terms of prestige and recognition and so forth.
What do you think it was in your upbringing or your life experience that allowed you to be independent of thought at the time you chose to be so?
Wow, I think it was the way I was raised.
I had a very old-fashioned dad.
I was the youngest, so he was kind of an older father who raised me, and he always kind of pushed up against whatever pop culture was saying.
You know, he didn't want us to have name-brand clothes, and he thought it was a waste of money.
So he raised us to be very...
Frugal, even though growing up in the 80s, it was kind of painful not to have the name brand jeans or whatever.
But his thought was, why would you even want to wear those?
You're advertising for that company.
They're not paying you to advertise for them.
Why are you running around advertising?
So we always thought as to kind of just think different from whatever everybody else was thinking and critical thought.
And when we were growing up, we weren't allowed to watch television.
So we didn't have a lot of pop culture.
We did a lot of reading and we played games and we just had more conversations and discussions rather than just sitting there and not having our brains stimulated by watching television.
So I think that might have been why.
And then also growing up, I graduated from high school at the age of 16 and went off to college where I paid my way through college.
And so I was kind of forced to work hard, and I always was forced to kind of interact with older people because I was young in the working world, and therefore I was engaging and chatting with older people.
So I think I became a little more mature a little quicker in a good way.
How many generations American is your family?
Oh boy, I don't know.
We go way back.
I think my ancestors came over here on a boat.
They immigrated to America many, many generations ago.
I had one great-great-grandfather who was a fur trapper.
I've got relatives who came over from Norway and England.
They go too far back for me to even...
I guess I should look into that.
No, it's just very cool.
In terms of multi-generation, having a long history with the country and appreciating it in that family historical context.
Oh, for sure.
Well, my dad was a history teacher and he taught government.
And I'm talking old school, like where you actually did teach the Constitution.
And you learn about the rights enshrined in that amazing document and our Bill of Rights.
And now, right now, I don't even know if that's being taught properly.
Kids don't even know about it.
And so we learned a lot about history, and it's important to understand our history so we know where we came from and where we're headed.
Why do you think Trump in particular, like the state that he has been most popular in, in terms of from the Democratic baseline, you might say, in terms of from Obama to Trump, has been Iowa?
What do you think it is about Iowans, the political culture of Iowa, that they see in Trump a sort of populist icon that they connect to and relate to?
Well, Iowans are tough people.
I mean, they're friendly people.
They're always interested in getting to know.
If you go to Iowa, I'll just give you a story.
My kids were little.
They were in a stroller.
We had gone back home to visit family in the summer.
We were at like a street festival.
And we were strolling around and we stopped and somebody started talking to us.
And we had about a 15-minute conversation.
And we strolled away and my husband said, how do you know him?
Did you guys go to high school together?
Or did you go to college together?
Because we talked for 15 minutes.
And I said, no, I have no idea who that is.
I just met him.
So we are friendly people, but we're also hardworking people.
And I think Iowans have a very good BS meter, for lack of a better term, maybe just more common sense.
And they take very seriously that job that they have, that task of helping choose the president.
That's the caucus state.
And so I think they really look at politics seriously.
They take that.
I think it's actually a brilliant state to start things off because they take the time and the energy.
I think for the most part, they're pretty well-educated people and common sense, hardworking people.
And they're a good judge of character.
That's why they like him.
And they like him because he's a fighter, for goodness sakes.
We're at a point right now, every conservative, every Republican I talk to says, I'm so sick.
We have a lot to fight for right now.
And I think that's why they like President Trump.
And frankly, I think that's why people like me, because they've seen that I'm not going to just back down when we've been done wrong.
What I find amazing in the media treatment of you is the constant demonizing as the election denier, as if we don't have enough information, to say that something went...
a foul with that election even if it's only to rely on the time article magazine say okay he got 81 million votes in that there might have been papers with signatures on them but if that resulted from changing the rules uh you know getting old people to fill ballots in at uh at old person nobody believes it was an authentic 81 million votes whether or not you believe that they stole votes or had you know I don't know who believes that he...
He went out and convinced 81 million people to vote for him.
I think you're right.
Maybe 81. I think he might have gotten 81 votes, but 81 million...
40% of the base would vote regardless.
But Trump got more than he got the last time.
But the media demonizing you as the denier, like what you are doing is tantamount to Holocaust denial.
That's how they frame it.
That's how they run it.
Everywhere.
How difficult has it been to deal with that?
In terms of you, having at one point been loved by the left and loved by the media and loved where you worked, overnight, when you decide you're no longer an ally, you become public enemy number one, how do you deal with that?
And how do you get through to people who, to them, that is, you know, uncontradictable truth?
Well, I'm not really worked up over it.
I mean, I did work in the media.
I didn't think they would treat me this poorly.
It's been 100% negative stories about me, and that's because I'm a threat.
At first, they didn't take me seriously, and then they went, oh my gosh, she's somebody to be reckoned with, and they started coming at me.
And, you know, I've got thick skin.
I don't...
A lot of people aren't reading the news anymore.
They're not watching the news.
So it's not as bad as it was when Trump started, back when people still believed the news.
And now, thankfully, he's woken us up to a lot of the shenanigans that the...
I don't get that worked up about it.
I don't really concentrate on that.
If they want to call me an election denier, fine.
I think I'm an election reform advocate.
It's more accurate, but they're not looking for accuracy.
I think in the end, when we win, and I pray that we do, our case is exceptional.
It's incredibly strong.
The question is, will we get a fair judiciary?
And when I got into this, I...
My goal was to root out corruption and get our state government, give it back to we the people.
And obviously I thought that was going to happen with just a decisive victory on November 8th.
I know we won in a landslide.
I know that with every fiber of my being.
Unfortunately, because of the corruption, that's not what the result has been yet.
But if my goal was to root out corruption, what better way to root out corruption than to watch this Crime play out right before our eyes and have not just me see it and feel it, but the good people of our state see it and feel it.
Nobody voted for Hobbes.
Independence didn't vote for Hobbes.
I mean, I had a huge win in independence over her.
I had Democrats voting for me.
I have Democrats come up to me every single day saying, I voted for you.
You were the first Republican I cast a vote for.
I can't believe what they did to us.
It hurts the people that this was stolen.
But because it was stolen in broad daylight, in 2020, it was kind of stolen in the dark of night.
We were trying to figure out what just happened.
We knew it wasn't right.
But we were ready.
We had people in place.
We had observers.
We had lawyers.
We had poll watchers and workers.
And we have evidence, and we have declarations, and we saw it play out.
And this is how you root out corruption.
Unfortunately, we have to go through the legal system now, and we're willing to do that.
You know, the success of rooting out corruption is going to take a little time.
That's how deep the corruption is.
It's not fun, but I'm strong enough to handle it, and I think God placed me here.
I never envisioned getting into politics.
I was going to get out of TV, and I figured I'd go work behind the scenes and just have a private life after being in the public eye for 30 years.
I was kind of looking forward to leading a private life.
God had different plans for me when the people recruited me to run.
And I just think I'm strong enough.
Everything in my background from my childhood until the second I stepped into politics has prepared me for every single thing they've thrown at me.
And I think they're nervous.
I really do.
Because they thought I wouldn't fight.
I had people who you would think were on our side who told me not to fight this.
Don't sue.
Just try to run again later.
And I said, hell no, we're going to fight this.
We have been wronged.
We've been the victim of a crime.
And I have to sue the people who victimized us, Maricopa County.
And guess what?
We, the people who were victimized, have to pay Maricopa County's attorneys as well because the taxpayer is footing the bill.
It's really sick and twisted, but I'm willing to stay in this fight and we'll take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if we aren't successful in Arizona.
You mentioned Iowa having a good BS meter and its political culture.
Joe Biden is the only person to ever occupy the White House after being rejected.
Not once, not twice, but...
Three different times by the state of Iowa in the various caucuses there.
We know a fool when we see one.
Exactly.
And now we all get...
I mean, Iowa was great as a gatekeeper to make sure idiots and incompetence didn't end up in the White House and its function was taken away from it in 2020.
And now, of course, Biden wants to take it away in 2024, move it to a different state where he has more political control.
But speaking of political culture change, you've seen Arizona sort of go through that over the time period you've been there.
Can you describe, because I think for external actors, they get confused when they see it's Republican apparatchiks within the Maricopa County system that are often complicit and participant in this system that denies democracy its function with the way the elections have been done, both in 2020 and again in 2022.
What have you seen in the change of Arizona's political climate and culture?
And how is it that, Part of the obstacle are people who go by the name Republican.
That's the hardest part of it, to be honest.
When I tell people and I go around the country and I say our elections were stolen and they go, oh, those darn Democrats.
I go, yeah, you know, the Democrats did their usual thing.
But guess who stole the election in Arizona?
It was Republicans.
Our party is full of swamp creatures and they are afraid, just as the Republican swamp creatures in D.C. that attacked and backstabbed Trump.
We've got them here in Arizona.
And I think it's almost as bad in Arizona.
We are a state with the mafias got control.
The cartels have control.
It's a very dirty, corrupt state.
And that's why the people were so excited about our movement.
When I jumped in, they went, oh, finally, somebody, A, we trust, who understands Arizona, who will fight for us.
She's one of us.
And that's when the political machinery started to chug and move.
And they went, how do we stop this woman?
Because we cannot have an outsider, a Trump-style outsider, come in and do to Arizona what Trump did to D.C. And that's why they...
Throughout all the stops to cheat, even if it meant it was done in a very obvious way and we could see who cheated and what they did.
It's always been a corrupt state.
I mean, we go back to kind of the McCain machine and the grassroots was always getting kicked in the mouth, told to sit down and shut up.
And when the grassroots would get excited about a candidate and the candidate would lose, they were told to fall in line immediately and support the establishment person.
Well, this time around, the grassroots are in charge and the grassroots got all of their candidates in me and Abe and Mark and Blake.
A lot of the establishment folks didn't want to fall in line and support the campaign.
But I will tell you this, which goes against the media's narrative.
We did bring in a lot of establishment types.
Because guess what?
I am out to help all Arizonans.
That's why I wanted to get in this.
And we agree on 90 to 95% of everything.
I even think we agree a lot with a lot of our Democrat friends on many things.
There's certain things that we can definitely work together with.
Water issues.
Last I heard, the Democrats drink water too.
When it comes to a secure border, I think Democrats actually wanted to have a secure border as well.
They're not crazy about their kids getting their hands on fentanyl.
They don't want to see our housing crisis made worse by hundreds of thousands of people pouring in and taking homes that they could be living in.
They want to have their kids get educated properly.
You know, I really did work to bring everybody together.
The narrative now is she was a terrible candidate.
She couldn't bring people together.
It's complete baloney.
It's complete garbage.
And it's a lie.
And we actually did bring people together.
Now, there's going to be people who just will never take an America first candidate.
They would rather...
Have their state falter and put their state in the hands of someone like Katie Hobbs or vote for someone like Joe Biden.
They have America First candidate and they got to do some soul searching.
Kerry, speaking of bullcrap, I'm just going to bring up this article real quick.
Maricopa County knew its voter signature review would be scrutinized.
Here's how it tried to improve.
Without getting into that rubbish, because it's nothing but rubbish, like NPR but NBR, there was a rumor going around that I saw it on Twitter.
It wasn't coming from you, but there was a rumor that you had definitively found conclusive signature match problems as per the portion of your appeal that was allowed.
Are you allowed or able to talk about that, confirm or deny or have no knowledge?
Well, we have evidence through whistleblowers that there were tens of thousands, upwards of 150,000 of...
Not matched signatures or ballots that got through, even though the affidavit, which is the envelope that the voter signs, had mismatched signatures.
So we have that evidence.
We want to actually get our hands on the envelopes and take a look at them.
And we're going to fight to make sure that happens.
We're going to sue and make sure we get that evidence.
And I sure hope, for Stephen Richer's sake and the people of this beautiful state, that they didn't...
Destroy those envelopes and destroy those affidavits.
We want to get our hands on them.
We have the right to see them.
And we're going to do everything in our power to get our hands on this because we want to prove to the people.
We don't want to just prove it to the judge.
That's fine.
But we also want to show the people what a sham this system is, what a joke our elections are, how they are mere theater to make us think that we have some sort of control.
And until we get to the bottom of this and dig through it and acknowledge we have problems and fix them, we're going to remain really enslaved by a system that doesn't care about us.
Specifically in the context of the appeal, despite you lost on most, as what the headlines were reading, you succeeded on that.
What is the current status of that?
It went back for reconsideration because the initial judge dismissed it on latches.
That is to say signature verification.
What is the actual like...
On the ground, what state of review of going back to court are you at right now?
Well, the judge actually had set a conference hearing, and you guys probably were aware of that, and then he rescinded it.
You remember that?
For people who are really following the minutia in this case, that happened, and then he rescinded it because there was that part of the sanction part of the Supreme Court ruling dealing with the 35,000 extra votes that came in, ballots that came in out of nowhere.
And so we just finished, we filed our response to that and said that the Arizona Supreme Court got it wrong.
They need to reconsider it.
That there are 35,000, minimum 35,000 ballots that just appeared.
No chain of custody.
Where did they come from?
And we want the Supreme Court to reconsider that.
Just last night, the other side responded.
And first thing this morning, we responded back.
So that is now in the hands of the Arizona Supreme Court.
My understanding is they're going to deal with that aspect of the ruling first, and then they're going to set up a time to take up the signature verification.
So we're in a little bit of a holding pattern on the signature verification part.
Other than dealing with the institutional nature of election integrity issues in Arizona, what else was the most surprising aspect for you in going into political campaigning?
What was it that you didn't anticipate or was very different, either positive or negative?
Well, I loved it.
I mean, I've always loved Arizona and I've loved the people.
I had the pleasure to cover this state as a journalist.
So this was kind of like getting out as a journalist every day.
I mean, it really, there's some similarities.
You know, the communication skills came in handy, obviously.
I have an ability to connect with people and I'm interested in listening to their story and their perspective.
I didn't feel that I needed to do a lot of polling because if you're a typical candidate, you just can't get in front of the numbers of people that I was able to get in front of because everywhere we went, lots of people would come and they wanted to come to our events.
So I got to poll real citizens every day wherever I was.
Most candidates, they might attract...
20 people to an event or 30 if they're lucky.
And because I had that long relationship, it was just such a beautiful thing.
That was kind of surprising how...
How much the skill set I used as a broadcast journalist helped in my skill set as a, I guess, politician.
I prefer to call myself a citizen politician.
So that was kind of surprising.
I was surprised just how nasty my opponents were.
But I guess when you're losing and you're being outsmarted and outwitted, you get desperate.
I was amazed at how much my Rhino opponents were willing to...
You know, how much money they were willing to just flush down the toilet for their political aspirations.
They were throwing tens of millions of dollars in bogus ads.
And I think, yeah, the election integrity issues.
Did come as a surprise.
How they cheated came as a surprise.
We knew they were going to cheat, and we knew we had to have a big pad.
Our polling was showing us up by 11 points.
We felt that was a big enough pad.
But we did not expect them to rig the printers so that they would print the wrong image on election day.
That just went above and beyond even the most diabolical idea that I could have even thought up.
So that was a surprise.
Like Lily Tomlin said, no matter how cynical you get, it's tough to keep up.
You can't keep up with the scoundrels if your brain doesn't work like a scoundrel.
That's right.
And we don't work that way.
We're honest people.
I'm probably one of the few honest people who's gotten into politics.
But I can fight.
This is the question, though.
This is the ideological question that divides a lot of people on the right, or even just politically.
If you're not willing to play as dirty, some people say you're never going to win.
You're fighting against people who are literally coming after kids for all sorts of nefarious reasons.
You're fighting people who are willing to lie, cheat, steal in order to win.
And unless you're prepared to do that, how do you ever expect to win?
What is your position?
I know what my answer to that is, and some people don't like it.
What's your response to that argument?
Well, let's say we had fair elections, okay?
Then I would have won in a landslide.
So we were up against cheaters and liars and scoundrels, and I didn't have to stoop to that level because I was able to communicate solutions.
To the problems that we've had for decades.
As a journalist, I watched as we had the same problems.
We'd get a politician who would promise to do something.
They never did anything.
And so we just brought out great policy.
And you don't have to stoop to that level when you're able to communicate why that side is wrong.
And so I think my communication skills, much like Reagan, who came in and was able to communicate and talk to people and explain what was going on and explain how we could get out of this and see our better and best days ahead of us.
I'm not sure if I'm answering the question you're asking.
The question is, if you're fighting cheaters, how do you beat the cheaters without being compelled to cheat yourself?
I think you just outsmart them, and you have better policies, and that's how you do it.
That's how we did it, because I was fighting cheaters.
What's your answer?
I don't have a good answer because I don't believe you can become the monster that you're fighting and then say, look, I've beaten the monster by becoming the monster.
No, you can't.
Be honest.
You have to be honest to a point of fault.
And I think I always have been.
I just speak the truth.
It's so much easier than trying to memorize a bunch of garbage that...
DC consultants try to jam into your brain.
I never had a stump speech.
I still don't.
I'm terrible at memorizing speeches.
I just go out and speak from the heart.
And I like to take questions from people, even if they're nasty questions.
And I also think that my ability to go after these...
Really horrible, sometimes horrible, fake news reporters endeared me to the people because they went, yes, finally somebody who went after these people.
And so I think a lot of those kind of viral moments that I had, remember, we didn't hardly spend any money in TV advertising, even though we had probably 50 or 60 million between the primary and the general in a tax spent on us.
We just went out and we created viral videos.
We went out and talked to the people and spoke directly to them, like I did for so many years when I was on television.
When you were going through this whole process, was there any point in time where you thought, I should really retire, politics sucks, the media sucks, that life would have been a lot easier not being in the middle of this?
No, I never thought of quitting.
I got into it and I said, boy, this is dirtier than I thought.
Right away, we were up in the polls and they started freaking out and going after us and attacking us in the most dishonest ways.
And that was a bummer.
Because, hey, listen, attack me all you want for something that's valid.
And I will, you know, I will respond to that.
But when you just start lying, they resorted to just plain lies that were so far from the truth that wasn't any truth to it.
I read so many stories where it's just, it's 100% false.
And it is printed and put out online.
So that was a bummer.
But, you know, nothing made me want to quit, even when they stole the election.
Did I have a few days where I wanted to lay in bed and not get out of bed?
Yes, if I'm being honest.
There were days I thought, okay, I don't want this fight.
Because we did 525 days of the most intense campaigning.
I acted as if every day was the last day of the campaign.
I rarely took a day off at all.
And so then, you know, I went into election day pretty wiped out.
And then to have to pivot and go out and start a street fight.
It was a little bit unnerving.
I didn't want to have to do it, but I prayed a lot and I just said, God, I know you put us here.
You put me here with a huge movement to prove that they're still stealing elections in Arizona because it was so obvious to me, to you, to every Tom, Dick and Harry on the street.
My dog even knows the election was stolen.
I mean, Katie Hobbs knows the election was stolen.
Everybody knows the election was stolen.
And you've got to have populist candidates to reveal that kind of election theft.
And so I never thought of quitting, though.
Maybe I should have, but if you quit, you lose, right?
Yeah.
Or if you never try in the first place, you never have to quit.
But that's the worst advice.
But you had lived through the 2020 presidential elections and what we saw with the court system.
Were you surprised at how captured the judicial system is from a political perspective with your experience in the court?
I'm not going to get too much into what my thoughts are on our judicial system in Arizona for obvious reasons.
I'm currently working in that system.
And as you know, I'm sure if you had a client, it's best that the client doesn't...
Speak disparagingly toward the judicial system while they're in the judicial system, right?
So I haven't been thrilled with all of the rulings, but I'm hopeful that the judges in our cases will realize the weight that is on their shoulders and that the weight of the republic is on their shoulders and that the people can't take much more of this kind of election theft and this kind of crime.
And that their courage is needed so much right now to save our country.
And that's actually the angle that I was getting at in terms of, like we saw with the COVID cases, where all the judges seem to think it's politically acceptable to have certain leanings.
And then as the tide changes a little bit, you get...
One judge Stickman in there, one judge who says, we're going to look a little more and we're going to peel back this layer of the onion.
Then the courage becomes a little bit more contagious.
It becomes politically acceptable to say, no, we're not just operating on this fair, complete matter of fact.
Elections are undeniable, unquestionable, despite what we've seen throughout the history of America and the world.
Once you realize that the public opinion is already tipped, public opinion, people don't think the elections are fair and it's not just Republicans.
And I think as each day goes on and more is revealed, we're seeing the corruption in the judiciary with President Trump's cases.
We're seeing this judicial system that goes after one ideological party versus the other.
It's a two-tier justice system.
And there's eventually going to be a judge who says, I'm the one who can do something about this and I'm going to do the right thing.
And we're just praying we encounter that judge.
Now, as a final wrap-up question, other than continuing to expose the issues and fight for election integrity in Arizona, what next is up for you?
Well, this is my focus.
And, you know, it's been being in limbo.
I'm kind of in limbo when you're waiting for a case.
As you guys know, your attorneys, you don't have control over how fast things move all the time.
And that's a difficult, that's always been a difficult thing, that kind of patience for me.
So I'm very thankful to God that he's giving me this lesson.
I've learned a lot of patience and that I just have to trust and trust in the system and trust in...
And the truth.
And be patient.
And during this time, I've spent time writing a book, so that'll be coming out hopefully in the coming month or two.
I'm looking forward to that.
That was a great way to kind of, on those moments where I was feeling very stressed, have something to focus on.
Politically, I don't know.
I never got into politics to become a politician.
I never wanted to be a politician.
I don't even consider my...
I'm just a mom who's really fed up.
But I will say this.
If the...
Political elite is so afraid of me and my fellow mama bears and dads and students out there that were part of our movement, our massive historic movement.
If they're so afraid of us that they're willing to steal an election from us, then that tells me I need to stay involved.
And I need to stay in politics because they're so afraid of what good I would do for the people that they have to steal it from us.
So I am inclined to stay involved.
And if we, for some reason, take it all the way to the Supreme Court, we can't get fairness in the judicial system.
I might just stay and be a thorn in their side and I might run for something else.
Senate, there's a Senate seat that's up right now and I'm considering that, but we're not going away.
Let me ask you the question that I'm not sure if I'm allowed asking you.
In the hypothetical worlds, you could be the governor, the senator, Or the VP in the next election, Trump's VP, is it a no-brainer which one you'd pick?
Yep, it's a no-brainer.
Governor of Arizona, which is what the people elected me to do.
And one more question that I'm not sure if I'm allowed to ask.
There's a heated division among the conservatives between DeSantis supporters for the nomination for 2024 and Trump.
If you had to try and convince...
Those who support DeSantis, why they should turn their support to Trump unequivocally.
I actually just presupposed that that would be your answer.
Who should they support and what would you tell the DeSantis supporters as to why they should support Trump now?
That's the question.
Okay.
Well, we already know with President Trump what his success...
What his success rate is.
We've seen how he turned an economy around.
He gave us the best economy that any president had given us for all people, all walks of life.
He was able to get us on solid footing on a world stage and make sure that we ended wars and brought peace to nations that we never thought we could see peace.
And he has a success story to tell from his four years in office.
And he did that while taking incoming from the most unfair yellow journalists in the world and also taking incoming from the swamp and people in his own party.
So we know that he can do it.
He can do something.
Positive for us immediately on day one.
And it's going to be a learning curve with Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis has been an effective governor.
He just got reelected.
I believe the people of Florida probably would like to see him remain there for some time since they just elected him.
And I think he's 10 years younger than me.
I think he's in his 40s, his low 40s.
He's got a lifetime ahead of him.
And I think he should run in 28. And I think he would do quite well, but not if he's going to stab President Trump in the back.
If he stabs Trump in the back right now, there's going to be MAGA voters who will never go over and side with DeSantis.
And I think he's probably realizing that right now.
We know Trump can solve these problems.
We know he's been fighting for us.
He never stopped fighting for us.
And I'll be frank and honest.
I'm a little bit concerned at some of the people that DeSantis has surrounded himself with.
You know, these are people who push war.
The Bushes, Karl Rove, Ryan.
Paul Ryan, these are people who are pushing war, who are pushing a globalist agenda, who are not about we the people.
And I think that should be a red flag.
And I also think somebody should ask him if he thinks the 2020 governor's race in Arizona was stolen.
And I'll bet you a million bucks he's very mom on that.
I bet he tries to avoid answering that question.
Because the question's answer is our election was stolen.
And a lot of these Republicans don't want to talk about that.
And that makes me...
Give great pause to whether they should even be elected.
Thank you very much.
Maybe as a going away gift, what would be your greatest white pill experience through going all of this, through all this insanity?
Your greatest positive, encouraging thing.
Okay, yeah, I'm like, what do you mean by that?
Yeah, it's a bit of a cultural reference, Drew.
I don't like to take pills, so.
Just an encouraging thought.
Oh, gosh, I have so many of them.
First of all, wake up every day and just honestly feel so lucky.
And we are so lucky that we are here at this moment.
This isn't some, you know, neutral, crazy, easy moment in history.
This is one of the hardest moments we've ever faced.
This is one of the most pivotal moments in history.
And that we're lucky enough to be here in the middle of it.
And able to fight to save this great country, I think it's the most exciting time to be alive.
And when you remember that every day and you remember that God picked you and chose you to put you here at this moment, that's all you need to get up with a smile on your face and say, all right, give me what you got.
I'm ready to go fight.
And I think we win.
I really do.
I don't think we win.
I know we win at the end of the day.
I know for a fact that we're going to win this.
Will it be tomorrow?
Will it be a week?
Will it be months or years?
I don't know.
But we will be victorious in this.
Carrie, not that anybody needs to know where to find you, but where can they find you?
How can they support you?
They can go to CarrieLake.com and you can follow me on all of the social media.
I'm on Truth.
I'm on Twitter, which is much improved under Elon, although I think I have more trolls than anybody on Twitter.
And you can find me on Getter and Facebook and all of those things.
And you can also go to Save Arizona Fund if you want to learn more about our court case, if you want to donate to help pay from our attorney fees.
But I also know we're in Joe Biden's economy and that's not easy for everybody.
So if you don't want to do that, just send prayers to our attorneys, our whistleblowers and the judges.
The judges just pray that they realize that they actually can do something to help turn this country around.
Amazing.
Stick around.
We'll say our proper goodbyes.
I'm going to end this for everybody.
Everyone out there, thank you for being here.
Carrie, Lake, thank you very much for coming on.
Thank you.
Stick around.
We'll say our proper goodbyes.
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