How the Arizona GOP is 'keeping MAGA nation in a fevered lather' with their 'Trump Denial Syndrome'

Three Trump-endorsed Republicans running for statewide office are suffering from "Trump Denial Syndrome," an Arizona Republican columnist wrote in a column published only on Tuesday afternoon.

Columnist Laurie Roberts described the infection, which she abbreviated as "TDS," as "a condition in which a politician or political activist abandons all logic and reason and irrationally promotes the fantasy that mysterious and as yet unidentified nefarious forces conspired to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The condition can be identified by a decided tendency to have little regard for facts. TDS is especially prevalent among Arizona Republicans running for public office this summer."

The first candidate she examined is Trump pick to be Arizona's governor.

"This former news anchor-turned-politician has made 'the steal' the centerpiece of her campaign for governor. She has spent a year telling us that the election was rigged and calls Joe Biden 'the illegitimate president.' She has complained that the Jan. 6 defendants “are being held in prison without being charged” and dismisses the House Select committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection as a smear job," Roberts explained. "Had she bothered to watch any of the first two [Jan. 6] hearings, Lake would have seen a number of Republicans – many of them from Trump’s inner circle and administration – whose testimony should prompt anyone not wholly infected with a raging case of TDS to wonder whether they’ve been deceived."

The second candidate she discussed is the man Trump wants to replace Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

RELATED: 'Anything but impartial': Arizona election 'auditors' emails ‘reveal a tangle of partisanship, irony and deceit’

"The venture capitalist who is Trump’s pick to fill Arizona's Senate seat has been bashing his campaign rival, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, for doing nothing about the widespread election fraud that no one seems to be able to find. Like all Trump endorsees, Masters believes that Trump was cheated but offers no evidence. He suggests that the Jan. 6 insurrection might have been a false-flag operation set up by the FBI," she wrote.

Finally, Roberts turned her attention to GOP state Rep. Mark Finchem, whose bid for secretary of state has Trump's endorsement.

"This Oro Valley legislator is one of the state’s loudest Stop the Stealers, a guy who is hoping to howl his way into the Secretary of State’s Office so he can oversee elections in one of the country’s key swing states," she wrote. "Finchem was at the Capitol for the Jan. 6 riot then later ran around the country calling for the election to be decertified based upon the Arizona Senate’s Cyber Ninjas audit that turned up no evidence of widespread fraud. While encased in all that armor, I hope he caught Monday’s videotaped testimony of senior Trump campaign officials who said a drunk Giuliani convinced Trump on election night that the election was being stolen – prompting the president to turn a deaf ear to his advisers who thought otherwise."

Roberts reminded that there has never been evidence of fraud.

"Which matters not a hoot to Lake or Masters or Finchem or any of the army of Trump candidates who curiously have no interest in a hearing that could finally inoculate the public against the TDS. There is, after all, money to be made and power to amassed by keeping the MAGA nation in a fevered lather," Roberts said.

The GOP primary is Aug. 2.

Read the full report.