As I’ve often said, the mainstream media is nothing if not predictable, and few things exemplify that more than the various “worse than Trump” narratives they’ve tried to push regarding prominent Republicans who have further asserted themselves in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidency.
We’ve seen it repeatedly in their write-ups on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, first in April of this year. They revived it over the summer and once again last month after DeSantis flying two planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard sent them over the edge.
And now, with just three weeks to go before an Election Day where a red wave has been predicted – at least on the House side – the media are trotting out the “worse than Trump” card on another outspoken Republican, Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
Exhibit A comes courtesy of a column written Monday by left-wing Washington Post columnist/Plum Line writer Greg Sargent, who tells us that Lake is an even “scarier” version of Trump because, unlike Trump, she allegedly pretends “to appeal to people’s better angels”:
It sounded very much like Trumpism. Appearing on CNN, Kari Lake defiantly refused on Sunday to accept the results of the Arizona gubernatorial election. She fearmongered about the southern border, insisting hordes of criminals are invading the country.So this means Lake is imitating Donald Trump’s unabashed abandonment of democracy and his demagoguing of migrants as criminals, rapists and drug dealers, right?Well, yes, but with a twist.Lake might be finding a new way to move Trumpism forward in the post-Trump era. It replicates the venomous nature of his rhetoric while pretending to appeal to people’s better angels (something Trump ostentatiously avoided). In its cunning and deceptiveness, this version is scarier than the original rendition.
Exhibit B comes from The Atlantic, where writer Elaine Godfrey suggested that in Lake, “Trumpism Has Found Its Leading Lady”:
The way Lake has imitated Trump’s rhetoric is obvious, but as I’ve followed her in the months since, something else has become clear: She is much better at this than Trump’s other emulators. That makes sense, given her first career in front of the camera, cultivating trust among thousands of Maricopa County viewers. But this is more than imitation: Lake has made MAGA her own. She’s agile as a politician in a way that other high-profile Trump-endorsed candidates, like scandal-plagued Herschel Walker and crudités-eating Mehmet Oz, are not. Lake is more likable than Senate hopefuls like Blake Masters or J. D. Vance. And she bats at the press with a vivacity unmatched by anyone but the big man himself.[…]“She’s using 25 years of high-level journalism to present an idea,” another former Fox 10 colleague told me. “And she’s smart! She’s not dumb. Which makes her frickin’ dangerous, if you ask me.”
Former Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill also echoed the predictable media talking point during a recent appearance on MSNBC:
As the case was with their attacks on DeSantis, there is an obvious panic that has taken root in elite Democrat/media/Never Trump circles because Lake, who is both an effective messenger for right-wing ideals and unapologetically conservative, has given her all against her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs in a swing state that is showing signs they favor Lake over Hobbs.
For that, Lake must be destroyed, and playing the “Trump” card and throwing out “election denier” accusations is the course of action they’ve decided to take at this point in the game in hopes that it will scare independent voters into opposing Lake.
But Lake is giving them hell on that front, too, as shown in the below video clip where she takes on a swarm of reporters who were pressing her on the “election denier” accusation, only to be informed that if they were going to throw around the term then they should talk about Democrats like failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who continues to be in denial about what happened in 2016.
Stacey Abrams, who lost the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018 and who still to this day as the 2022 nominee denies she lost that election, was also given a shout-out by Lake:
In my opinion, this is how it should be done, because the “election denier” and Trump cards have been played too long and without enough forceful pushback from the Republican party, which is incredible when one recalls how loudly and how often both Clinton and Abrams denied their election results, and how some of the same House Democrats who led the effort to impeach Trump over his Jan. 6 speech acted just a few years earlier to try and deny his electoral vote certification.
It’s impossible to predict whether Lake will win her race next month, but one thing is for certain: Like DeSantis, she is paving the way forward for future generations of Republican leaders on how to effectively use the Democrats’ own words against them while at the same time countering bogus media narratives before they can take root, two very important qualities for Republicans to hold at a time when political activism in the mainstream press continues to get worse.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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