With the VP possibilities floated so far, don’t rule it out
The 2022 midterm elections were a huge shock to a lot of people for a lot of reasons.
For me, one of the biggest surprises was that, with one notable exception, all of the 2020 election deniers who ran and lost also accepted that loss and conceded their respective races almost immediately.
That one notable exception was Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
Her entire campaign platform can be summed up with “the 2020 election was stolen” and not much else. It was the only issue for her, and she vowed to never let it happen again once she was elected.
Not if she was elected. That was never a question. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked the former TV news anchor if she planned to accept the results if she lost, Lake replied with this:
“I’m going to win the election and I’m going to accept that result.”
Well, she didn’t win the election, and as such, she has not accepted that result. Not yet, anyway. A day before the election was certified, Lake’s team tweeted this.
So, if nothing else, she’s been elected to join the esteemed ranks of 2022 Republican candidates who have no idea what “Banana Republic” actually means.
But she’s still not the governor of Arizona, and she is not happy about it. The tweet above, as you’d expect, is just one of several claiming massive amounts of malfeasance in her November loss to Democrat and Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
There are also all the claims about “disenfranchised voters” in Arizona and “hundreds of thousands” of votes that were counted illegally. All the hits you’d expect!
Lake has also seized on the not-at-all shocking news that Hobbs’ office flagged two tweets for promoting election misinformation (claiming Arizona’s “entire election system” is “foreign owned”) the day after the Capitol riots as proof that her opponent was conspiring with Twitter to “silence dissent” for her own political gain.
That’s a claim that several folks who think exactly like Kari Lake have weighed in to support.
These claims aren’t going away anytime soon, either. Sure, the election has been certified, but that just means the lawsuits are about to start. Just as she promised, Kari Lake filed her first of presumably many lawsuits this past Friday.
Unfortunately, there’s at least one highly important figure who is not laughing Kari Lake’s claims away. That would be outgoing Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (not a typo), a Republican whose office has already hinted that they think something might have been amiss about the 2022 election results in Maricopa County.
A letter sent to county officials from the AG’s office talks of receiving “hundreds of complaints” about how the election went down.
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law. Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of Title 16. These issues relate to Maricopa County’s ability to lawfully certify election results.”
If that doesn’t work, Team Lake has called on Brnovich to investigate the claims about Hobbs conspiring with Twitter to silence her election competition.
No matter what path they choose, one thing is pretty clear…Mark Brnovich is not a fan of Katie Hobbs. That was evident when the two gathered for the certification of Arizona’s 2022 election results. Here’s what he said when it was his time to speak:
Yikes! Of course, the Attorney General getting snippy with the governor-elect in public isn’t a guarantee that Kari Lake’s election challenges have any merit or chance of being successful, but I also don’t think that’s really the point.
The most alarming thing Kari Lake did after losing her bid for Governor of Arizona wasn’t denying the results of the election. Everyone had to see that coming. No, the truly troubling move was her visit to Mar-A-Lago to meet with Trump once it became clear she wasn’t going to win.
When asked about the possibility of a VP run with Trump during her campaign, Kari Lake was all “I’ll only lose if there’s a bunch of fraud” confident and said she wasn’t interested because she planned to serve eight years as governor of Arizona.
Given all of her protests about election integrity, it might not seem like that plan has changed, but it has obviously changed. The new plan is clearly to snag that oh-so-coveted VP spot on Trump’s 2024 campaign, and she’s gonna do it by proving she can be every bit the misinformation-peddling election denier that he is.
That was probably the plan all along. From the very start, Lake ran her campaign like she was vying for the title of “Lady Trump” above all else. Before voting even started, she claimed any loss would strictly be the result of fraud, and she’s clinging to that for dear life now that voting has ended. Just. Like. Trump.
For his part, Trump has chimed in with his approval and stated that Lake should be “installed” as Arizona’s governor.
Meanwhile, all sorts of pundits have taken to the airwaves and the socials to express their belief that Kari Lake would be the perfect running mate for Trump.
What’s concerning about this to me is that I honestly believe we have finally reached the point in history where Trump getting the Republican nomination in 2024 is a little unrealistic. Not for good reasons. I just think the Republicans would be out of their collective goddamn minds to not nominate Ron DeSantis in 2024.
While Republicans all across the country were losing or, at the very least, struggling mightily to retain their seats, Ron DeSantis won his election for Governor of Florida with approximately 126 percent of the vote, and he did it without cow-towing to Trump or spreading lies about the 2020 election.
He’s the nightmare we’ve all known was coming someday — Trump values, but in an effective politician. DeSantis doesn’t have young person energy, but he is still relatively young (44). He also graduated from Yale and followed that up by graduating from Harvard Law School. He’s all of Trump’s “potential for an immigrant genocide” with none of the other deep and obvious flaws.
Again, he is the nightmare. Especially the part where Republicans will offer him up as some kind of “moderate” alternative to Trump, when all they really mean is that he doesn’t vehemently deny the results of the 2020 election. Everything else about him is Trump as fuck.
So where does that leave Trump? Whether he gets the Republican nomination or not, Donald Trump is running for president in 2024. Which means, assuming he doesn’t get the nomination, he’s gonna have to run as an independent candidate.
The CIA, er, sorry, the Democrats backed an independent candidate in the Utah Senate race this year and, even though Evan McMullin didn’t win, his showing at the polls does speak to there being some possibility that an independent candidate could make some waves in 2024.
If Trump ends up being that independent candidate in 2024 and runs with Kari Lake on a “your votes don’t count because the system is rigged” platform…buckle up, America.
Kari Lake would actually be the slightly more moderate choice compared to another name that’s been floated as a possible Trump VP pick…Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She would be a way riskier choice, so much so that I can’t see it actually happening, but the fact that Trump hasn’t loudly rejected MTG as a person in general is enough of an endorsement to get him the Qanon vote in 2024. That’s not nothing, seeing as how Qanon claims as many adherents as some major religions in the United States now.
I know it’s the kind of thing the late night TV hosts who dictate our political discourse in this country will chuckle about for the next two years, but Donald Trump and Kari Lake running as an independent ticket supported by the Qanon electorate is a terrifying proposition.
I say that for one obvious reason…January 6th.
As I write this, Marjorie Taylor Greene is just a few hours removed from telling a crowd in New York that if she and Steve Bannon planned the Capitol riot, they would’ve brought guns and they would’ve won.
Let’s say the 2024 presidential election does end up being a three-way race that ends close enough for Trump and Lake (or Greene) to claim they’ve been robbed. And let’s say they do claim they were robbed. What happens next?
I honestly don’t know if there is any outcome in 2024 that would prevent another Capitol riot, short of Trump winning. I sure as shit don’t want that to happen. So…I guess we should start speculating on how that riot will go down?
If it does come to pass that another attempted insurrection happens at the Capitol in 2024, there will be one important difference. Trump will not be president when it happens.
Yes, he’d already lost the 2020 election by the time January 6th happened, but he was still president at that point. So, how the military responded was literally up to him, the Commander In Chief of the United States military. On account of how the people rioting were doing it on his behalf, the response from President Trump was minimal-bordering-on-supportive.
That could give our next batch of Capitol rioters a heaping helping of unwarranted confidence that ends with them being mass slaughtered on the Capitol steps by Law and Order Joe before they ever breach the building.
But would the military actually go for that? Shooting protesters is a line the United States often calls out other countries for crossing.
Did you ever see what happened to Nicolae Ceausescu when he was finally deposed from power?
You’d think the military would’ve stepped in to help him. Instead, the military joined the protesters. I know we’re talking about Romania in the ‘80s so it’s not even close to an exact comparison, but still, human history has proven that sometimes regimes change violently.
Yes, Donald Trump and Kari Lake are absolute clowns who no sane or normal person would ever vote for, but also we’ve passed the point in history where things like that matter. The 2024 presidential election will not be one defined by previous election norms. We haven’t had one that was in a long time.
I know it sounds crazy, but there’s a very fair chance we are two years removed from a violent overthrow of the government in this country, and a Trump/Lake 2024 ticket would be a roadmap to get us there.
God dammit