Kari Lake making cynical bet on 2024 with her false fraud claims: columnist

Kari Lake is making a cynical gamble by challenging her Arizona gubernatorial election loss, according to one columnist.

The local TV news anchor-turned-conspiratorial Republican politician has her sights on the vice presidential slot on the 2024 ticket, regardless of who wins the GOP nomination, and The Bulwark columnist Dennis Aftergut said she thinks that calling fraud on her clear loss to Katie Hobbs is her best bet.

"The signs of Lake’s sub rosa vice-presidential campaign are clear," Aftergut wrote. "First, she took a few days to huddle with political advisers after her loss was clear and before she announced that she would go full election-denial. It seems likely that they were debating whether the midterms would be a death-knell for Trump’s future prospects."

Lake then paid a visit to Mar-a-Lago, banking on Donald Trump being the most likely GOP presidential nominee, and declared she would become governor by issuing a series of blatantly false claims about fraud and threatening to sue -- which seems aimed more at raising money and building mailing lists than succeeding in a courtroom.

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"A state-wide recount has about the same prospect of making Lake the winner as a camel’s odds of squeezing through the eye of a needle," Aftergut wrote.

"But as with Trump, all this noise from Lake isn’t really about overturning the election," he concluded. "It’s aimed at keeping Lake’s victimhood front and center with both Trump and his base, just as Trump’s election denial in 2020 was aimed at keeping his hold on the Republican party. Lake’s game is about getting herself on the 2024 ticket, one way or another, damage to democracy be damned."