Donald Trump has pushed the GOP so far to the right that it’s getting hard to distinguish candidates who were once mainstream Republicans from Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and other Q nutters. Here in Arizona, Karrin Taylor Robson, a developer, used to be a sensible Mitt Romney Republican, but now that she’s running in the GOP gubernatorial primary, Robson appears in commercials blasting shit with assault weapons, if she’s not at the border hating on brown people.
A bigger flip flop might be Robson’s GOP opponent in the gubernatorial primary, Kari Lake, a former news anchor in Phoenix who’s earned trump’s endorsement. Back in her TV days Lake was a Democrat, even donated to Obama and supported sensible immigration reform, but somewhere along the line she dipped her toe into Q scum, and her ads today are the same as every other bonkers Republican’s: something gun, something god, something gays. Case in point:
I don’t know who “They” is who kicked God out of schools, but “They” must be pretty darn powerful to pull off something like that against the Omnipotent One! I guess it’s the same “They” who replaced the Stars and Stripes with a gay flag at all government buildings, because according to Kari Lake the Red, White & Blue is no more! Lake’s also gone all gun-hugger, appearing in ads with an AR-15 and bragging about her “lifetime membership” in the NRA, when she just joined last year (short life, I guess).
There’s simply no room for an Arizona Republican who doesn’t embrace guns, a stolen election, LGBTQ hating, abortion bans (no exceptions), and more god. That was never Kari Lake the broadcaster, but that Kari Lake, one who evidently had a smidgeon of humanity, one who counted drag queens among her friends, could never win a Republican primary.
One of Lake’s former friends has called her out. Richard Stevens is a popular drag queen artist in Phoenix, having performed as Barbra Seville for more than 25 years. He’s had enough of Lake’s bullshit, especially after the tweet above about schools replacing god with drag queens:
Stevens shared pictures and texts from Lake in several social media posts and said Lake had attended countless shows and private events over the decades of their friendship. He said he had performed as Marilyn Monroe in front of Lake's daughter when she was 9 or 10 years old
Several photos of Lake and Stevens, both in costume, are featured in the Arizona Republic story, and a screenshot of Richard Stevens’ Facebook page with photos (Lake as Elvis) can be found at this Huffpo link. Local NBC reporter Brahm Resnik also unearthed a 2014 Instagram post from Lake, where she thanks her friend Barbra Seville for teaching her about makeup.
You rarely hear Lake or any other Arizona Republican propose solutions to inflation, the war in Ukraine, gun violence, Covid, or the severe drought strangling their state. No, it’s all CRT, the “invasion” at the border, and suddenly the threat presented by drag queens. WTF? The Arizona legislature is even considering a bill that would prohibit anyone under 18 from attending a drag show.
The final straw, [Sen. Vince] Leach said, was seeing an Indigenous drag show at the Heard Museum in Phoenix earlier this month.
I’d encourage the Senator to study Native American history, where he’ll find most tribes here accepted gender fluid people, who had special names and roles to play. Today, the Senator’s children can attend a WWF match, see bones broken and blood splat, and shout “kill ‘em” along with thousands of other kids, but a man dressed as a woman, spreading love instead of violence, is so damaging it must be banned.
I guess Kari Lake has threatened Stevens with a lawsuit, being the trump clone she is. He says go ahead, all she’ll get is 66 pairs of high heels, 112 wigs, a rescue dog, and his mom’s ashes.