Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake makes only one appearance in the 2,319 text messages former President Trump’s last chief of staff Mark Meadows provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. However, Lake’s cameo provides an especially vivid example of how the challenge to Trump’s 2020 loss helped spur the creation of a new political movement that remains a force in American politics.
Does explain how Lake was groomed for the run for governor…
This paragraph stood out to me:
TPM is not identifying the man because he is not a public figure. Reached via phone on Thursday, the man declined to comment about whether he communicated with Lake or if he believed modems had impacted the election nationally.
(emphasis mine)
I would add not a public figure, YET. Once the texts get more broadly shared, his name will come to light.
They’re all liars and frauds. I don’t think 2% of them really believed that the election was stolen. It’s just the phrase they use to justify the fact that they’re mad their guy lost.
Actually I think they really do believe much of the fraud is really true. Like the followers of Hitler’s “Big Lie,” they repeat and repeat and repeat it so often they convince themselves its really true. Kar Lake and all her fellow Rethuglican GQPers are nothing but ignorant traitors.
Agreed. When COVID first broke out, I got into a fairly animated discussion with another person at an event I was attending (Houston Rodeo), when I mused that I expected for things to get shut down within 48 hours based on the trend in infections (at that time it was barely 500 nationwide). This person tried (valiantly) to argue statistics - even though I have an economics degree with a specialty in trend analysis.
Even after I laid out the stats – geometric growth, etc. – he just would not believe it. (Hours later, they called it.) I think we underestimate the election deniers and MAGA folks’ willful ignorance as a response to facts and circumstances they don’t want to be true.
I still have people trying to get me on the crypto bandwagon after FTX. Victims of fraud will stubbornly refuse to acknowledge they got fleeced because they don’t want to admit they got conned.
Hmmm groomed? During the campaign it was uh, exposed that only a few years ago that she was a frequent attendee at drag queen shows. I think she even brought her children along.
That’s as a American as apple pie. There is an episode of that in Huckleberry Finn. Huck and Jim had been basically kidnapped by the Duke and the King a troupe of sorts who performed a sham play, those in attendance even though they realized they had been “sold”, went and told his friends that play was good just so they wont be the only ones ripped off.
You are both correct. There are a bunch of both, they don’t all come in one size fits all. Neither group is willing to accept reality. That’s their common bond.
@edhedh’s assessment is accurate: Neither group is willing to accept reality. That’s their common bond. They wanted so badly that the election results would turn out to be a fraud, they first had to convince themselves.
A psychiatrist would call it cognitive dissonance: “cognitive dissonance” is behind the reason why we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves untruths. When we experience cognitive dissonance, we feel an uncomfortable tension between who we believe we are and how we are behaving.
Or Lake is simply the most ambitious talent-free woman in the country and wanted recognition she’s never get.
Musk was OK commenting snark that there might be more to the story when an 82 year old man was attacked by a home invader in his bedroom with hammer blows to the head. Oh yeah it was Nancy Pelosi’s husband - so that’s OK.
Or maybe Dr Fauci should go to prison.
