Kari Lake deflects when conservative journalist questions her impossible math

Republican Senate hopeful Kari Lake this week deflected after being asked by National Review reporter Audrey Fahlberg about her contradictory campaign pledges when it comes to America's finances.

During a lengthy interview with Lake, Fahlberg went through various pledges on Lake's website that included making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, not touching either Social Security or Medicare, and balancing the federal budget.

Fahlberg pointed out that the math involved in keeping all three promises was seemingly impossible given that the only way to even conceivably come close to keeping all of those pledges would be to decimate American defense spending.

Lake, however, was unmoved.

"Well it’s going to be difficult," she said. "I mean, we’re in a dire situation, I don’t think there’s a lot we can do. This is gonna be difficult to pull ourselves out of this. And we’re gonna have to get very creative. And I’m not going to be able to sit here in three minutes and tell you how we’re going to fix the problem. If it were a problem we can fix in three minutes, it probably would have been fixed, but we’re certainly not going to do it on the backs of the hard-working American citizens who have worked hard and paid into this."

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She then suggested that America could fund tax cuts, the military, Social Security and Medicare by bringing back manufacturing jobs.

"I think a lot of the things we need to do is increase revenues by bringing manufacturing home, bringing back some high-paying jobs," she said. "All of the things that Joe Biden has done have hurt American workers. He’s on the verge of sending our auto industry overseas with these EVs to China. President Trump wants to make sure we’re keeping those good jobs here."

Of course, the revenue from such jobs would be limited given how much the 2017 tax cut drastically slashed corporate taxes.

Elsewhere in the interview, Lake struggled to answer how she'd respond if China were to invade Taiwan.

"We could sit here and look at every hypothetical and that could happen before I’m elected," she said. "We don’t know what’s going to happen. So I’m not going to sit and speak on everything that I would do. But I will tell you this: We need to take a stronger stance against China. We need to start investing in America. I support President Trump."