Opinion Kari Lake’s sugarcoated Trumpism is scarier than the original
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.
Let’s start with democracy. Pressed on whether she would accept the November election results, Lake refused to say, declaring: “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result.” (Lake also spewed nonsense about election fraud in 2020.)
But Lake recast her contempt for democracy in softer terms than Trump’s, saying that “people don’t trust our elections” and that she merely wants to “make sure our elections are safe and secure for Democrats, independents and Republicans alike.”
The state of Arizona recently passed a law requiring proof of citizenship to vote, which the Brennan Center for Justice called “one of the worst voter suppression laws in the nation.” That law was passed in the name of achieving “election integrity.” Mysteriously, however, Lake is still declaring with direct-to-camera sincerity that people continue to have good reason to doubt election outcomes, even to the point of justifying her refusal to commit to accepting a loss.
All this once again confirms that the “election integrity” goal is a pretext for voter suppression, but in Lake’s hands, it’s even worse. With other GOP gubernatorial nominees adopting a similar posture, it lays the groundwork for drawn-out contested election outcomes in 2022, in a bunch of mini versions of 2020, all delivered in sugarcoated packaging.
Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill captured Lake’s CNN interview perfectly: “The soft focus lens, the closeness to the camera, the falsehoods and outrages offered with preternatural calm and sincerity, really chill me.”
With Lake edging ahead in polls, it’s unclear whether she will face any political penalty for her open suggestion that future election losses should and will be subject to nullification.
On immigration, in true Trumpist style, Lake suggested that as many as 1 million migrants “with criminal records” might have recently entered the country to roam free, and she linked migrants to fentanyl flowing across the border, even though the fentanyl trade is overwhelmingly an affair among U.S. citizens.
When CNN’s Dana Bash tried to fact-check Lake, she rolled right over it:
DANA BASH: DHS says less than 1 percent of migrants encountered at the border have a criminal record
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2022
KARI LAKE: I have to disagree with you on that figure ... we have murders coming in, we have people with rape records
BASH: The stat that I just cited comes from DHS pic.twitter.com/7Rdq8jEgbw
But note this: When Lake was asked whether asylum seekers who “meet the criteria” should remain in the United States, she declined to answer. If Lake won’t say people who qualify for asylum merit it, that hints at support for rolling back the right to apply for it, which would be a radical break with U.S. laws and international human rights commitments.
Once again, Lake served her extreme position with creme brulee-style topping. She insisted we have a “very generous legal immigration system” but that “we can’t afford to take on the world’s problems.”
Lake is telling swing voters that in their hearts they are generous people. At the same time, she is appealing to people’s zero-sum instincts, seemingly entertaining a dramatic rollback of the asylum right while portraying migrants as (at best) uniformly subtracting from voters’ well-being or (at worst) a violent threat to their communities and lives.
In all this, Lake appears — to some degree, at least — to be moving Trumpism forward in a new way. Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia gubernatorial race as a Republican by keeping his appeals to the Trumpist base carefully disguised. By contrast, Blake Masters is running for Senate in Arizona by supercharging the Trumpist appeals with almost cartoonish debasement.
Lake is making similar gestures, while casting them as an effort to appeal to people’s better instincts. That’s a departure from Trump, whose innovation was to communicate to voters they should not be ashamed of their xenophobic, antidemocratic — even cruel and malevolent instincts — but should wear them proudly.
As The Post’s Ruby Cramer reported from the campaign trail, Lake has become a “phenomenon” among Trump voters by portraying Democratic election victories and immigration alike as dire, even existential threats, while using her skills as a former TV anchor to make voters comfortable with her political and ideological presence.
If that works in a swing state that was thought to be trending Democratic, it will be sobering for democrats of both the small-d and large-D variety alike.
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