Just when you thought no one could be more Trump than Trump, in walks Kari Lake, a toady MAGA fawner like no other. Proclaiming to “change the narrative,” the former FOX News anchor is running for Arizona governor with the same old GOP playbook—denying President Biden’s win, railing against mask and vaccine mandates, supporting QAnon, raging against what she calls “woke” culture, and publicly thanking a Nazi sympathizer for his support.

Sounds like a Republican front-runner to me. And, of course, she’s endorsed by Herr Donald Trump.  

Lake is frightening; she often and loudly uses her GOP dogwhistle. She has repeatedly called for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state and the likely Democratic candidate for governor, to be arrested after certifying the 2020 election. And during an August rally, she targeted journalists, calling them the “corrupt media,” saying many of them should be jailed for “lying about COVID, the election, the audit.” 

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Lake “came out of the gate full speed ahead and captured the Trump persona, the message, and the approach. She’s got it all dialed in,” Chad Campbell, an Arizona-based political consultant and former elected official in the state, told Daily Beast.

She has taken her anti-masking, anti-vaxxer message to colleges such as Arizona State University, urging students to defy mask mandates, calling it “child abuse” to make children wear masks. She recently tweeted: “The COVID vaccine is a nightmare that will NEVER stop.”

Lake’s background is a winning narrative for Trump’s most ardent supporters. She’s a fallen-away journalist who left the world of media because of “fake news.”

She’s gained the support of such Trump winningest losers as Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser turned deranged conspiracy theorist to MyPillow guy Mike Lindell; and Rep. Paul Gosar, who recently posted an anime video showing himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But, Lake pushes the envelope by shmoozing with fringe Trumpers as well. 

In October, Lake posed for a photo with Ron Watkins, a MAGA conspiracy theorist, responsible for cultivating and escalating theories of the violent far-right QAnon conspiracy across social media. And at a campaign event in late August, Lake posed for a photo and video with far-right personalities Ethan Schmidt-Crockett, founder of the AntiMaskersClub, known for targeting a wig store that primarily sells to cancer patients for its position requiring customers to mask up, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer with a history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic, and pro-Nazi statements, including calling Adolf Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”

“For someone who’s never run for office before, her instincts about what to say and when to say it are about as good as anybody I’ve ever seen,” Republican political consultant Nathan Sproul tells the Arizona Mirror. “She has a very instinctive understanding of what her voter wants to hear and when.”

But for Arizonians, it seems, Lake’s endorsement from Trump has put her in a class all by herself. 

“Kari Lake got endorsed by President Trump, so I know she’s going to be for the people.” Stacey Goodman, a Cave Creek resident and retired police detective from Long Island, New York, told the AZ Mirror. 

Lake has been packing crowds in her home state.

“I’ve never seen hundreds of people go to an event over a year out,” said Tyler Montague, a longtime Republican operative from the East Valley told AZ Mirror. 

George Khalaf, a GOP political strategist and whose father is the treasurer for Lake’s campaign wonders if Lake can keep up the pace going into the 2022 elections. 

“Right now, the momentum seems decently unstoppable,” Khalaf, tells AZ Mirror.