Kari Lake to C&B: We’re Confident We Will Win

CLAY: We’ve got the next governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, joining us now. Kari, we’ve been talking about Arizona ever since the election ended. Thanks for taking the time to join us. How many ballots are outstanding? What in the world’s going on? What should everyone who is rooting for you to be the next governor of Arizona — which is pretty much everybody listening to us right now — know about the state of the race and where we’re headed?

LAKE: Well, I’m sorry we’re leading another embarrassing election. It’s disgraceful what’s going on here, and this is why we needed to reform our elections after 2020. And I kept talking about it. They called me all kinds of names, “conspiracy theorist,” and, you know, the media, fake news said, “You can’t talk about elections. You can’t bring up any issues! How dare you?” Well, this is why I was bringing up issues, because I was hoping we had leaders who would do something about it and restore some sanity, honesty, clarity, and transparency to our elections. And they failed us.

And here we are again, the laughingstock of the world. The world is watching this election, by the way, based on the amount of international news who’ve been following in our campaign. It’s the biggest political movement we’ve ever seen in the state with our campaign. And they can’t pull their head out and count ballots. They don’t know what the heck they’re doing. And we’re going to… When I get into office, we will restore faith in our elections immediately. Immediately.

BUCK: Kari, can I just —

LAKE: Let me just tell you what we have.

BUCK: Go ahead.

LAKE: Now, these are the numbers. We have 600 — more than 620,000 votes left to be tallied. This is at least what we’ve been given. And we’re told that of those 385,000, roughly, are mail-in ballots that people brought to the polling place on Election Day and dropped off. We think we’re going to get anywhere from 60 to maybe even as high as 80% of those, because these are people who don’t trust the system, don’t trust those drop boxes, didn’t want to put their ballot in a mailbox and hand-delivered it. The votes that are left to be counted, we believe, are going to go heavy to the Republican side. And so we’re confident we’re going to win. Of course, they slow roll the results, and it leads to a lot of distrust in the system. It’s disappointing.

BUCK: You know, Kari, it’s Buck. I just want to know, what are the things that could be done to fix this situation? I mean, you saw it before, you warned everybody, and now you’re living in it. We’re all living it with you because we want this thing to be over and for you to be the next governor of Arizona. It’s kind of just how is this so hard? I mean, that’s really the question here is what are they doing wrong? How can they make this so difficult?

LAKE: Well, it’s, you know, the early ballots. We have a lot of mail-in ballots that go out and some people get them right away and send them in and others think about it for a while and they decide they don’t want a mailman. Some of them walk them in because they don’t trust the drop boxes. They’ve done nothing to allow… Where people didn’t trust the drop boxes, the answer by our election officials was, “How dare you not trust the drop boxes?”

Rather than do something about it so that people could trust them, they just said, “How dare you ask questions?” And that has led to people showing up on Election Day with a mail-in ballot. The most we’ve ever received on any Election Day, we’ve received where they were handed off on Election Day. And that shows a distrust in the system because we weren’t to ask questions or even talk about it without the risk of being canceled and censored. So now we have a lot of mail-in ballots that (garbled) have signature verification be opened up and processed.

Not to mention I just got my hands on one of the election integrity hotline sheets that lists all the calls that came in, literally hundreds of calls that came in on Election Day. And, frankly, it is disturbing the things that people are reporting that they saw on Election Day. We’ve got to do better. We really do. We can’t have these elections being run like we’re living in a banana republic. And, you know, I just hope that they’re being honest down there, that there’s not any shenanigans being played down at Maricopa County. I’m so tired of Arizona being the laughingstock of elections, and we’re not just keeping the good people of Arizona waiting for allowed results.

The whole country is looking at us going, “Come on, we want to know where the balance of power lies. Did Blake win?” Blake is pretty close. If these ballots go heavy Republican, he could still win. And we’ve got eyes down there, but we can’t have eyes on every single person. And so, I just… I think your listeners can pray that God continues to have his hand over us, and we are going to continue having our attorneys down there every step of the way. And we will work hard to make sure that we get through this election and then we restore faith and honesty in future elections. I promise you, we will make that happen.

CLAY: Kari, I believe you’re like 8,000 votes behind with 30% of the votes still outstanding, as you said, potentially 620,000 votes outstanding. You mentioned Blake. How much do you think you end up winning Arizona by when all these vote tallies are out there? And how close do you think Blake Masters, who I think is trailing you by around four points…? How close do you think he may end up in terms of being able to flip a Senate seat for Arizona?

LAKE: You know, you’d have to talk to his war room. I think that we could win anywhere between two-point victory to a six-point victory, depending on how these votes go and maybe even greater than that. So, it just depends how these votes go. These people who dropped off their mail in ballot at a voting spot, were they voters who are distrustful of the system and fed up with the way the elections are run? I believe and our team believes they are. We also have 17,000 of those drawer three… Remember, we had more than a third of our polling places on Election Day.

We’re not ready for game day. The machines were not working, and people were disenfranchised, and so they were told to vote and put their ballot in a drawer, and they would take those ballots and they would count them down at the county. They’re telling us there’s only 17,000 of those votes and they’re going to have to count those. We believe those are going to go heavy Republican as well. And then there’s a couple of other categories of votes to be counted. I think that, Blake… If those votes go heavily our way, maybe up to 80% our way. I think he’ll win handily. But if it goes a little bit on the lower end, just over 50%, it might be a tougher road for him. I’m very optimistic, though, for Blake.

CLAY: Kari, you tweeted out Marco Rubio who pointed out — and we’ve been talking about on this program — in 2000, Florida embarrassed the nation. Right. Regardless of what you think of the outcome there. They couldn’t get their vote tallies. We end up with all the counts, people holding up the punch cards to see whether or not there was ballot intent, all of those things. Why in the world after 2020 did this not get fixed in Arizona? And what does it even say that Katie Hobbs, who is your opponent to be the next governor of Arizona, didn’t recuse herself and is now overseeing the election like this? I mean, this makes me want to pull my hair out.

LAKE: (laughing)

CLAY: I can’t imagine for people who are in Arizona how they are reacting.

LAKE: Well, exactly. And this is why we called for her to recuse herself. Back in July of last year, when we got into the race, talk about unethical and improper. But, you know, she wouldn’t do it. And so we’re going to have troubles with that, and who knows what she’s capable of doing, but we’ll hope for the best from that. Why didn’t it get fixed after 2020? Why didn’t it get fixed? Here’s why. Because we weren’t allowed to talk about it. We were censored. Our First Amendment rights were taken away.

The shameful fake news called anybody who questioned what happened in that election “conspiracy theorists.” They questioned people who signed affidavits and said, “This is what I saw happen. This is what happened to me.” They called them conspiracy theorists. They canceled people for speaking out about it. They cut their ability to speak out about it by taking away their profiles on social media. This is why we’re still having this problem. And ladies and gentlemen, if we do not fix it — and fix it quickly — we won’t have a country much longer. We can’t have our elections run this way. We need transparency, honesty, and faith in our elections restored ASAP.

BUCK: Kari, for those listening, especially those Arizonans who are just hoping and praying that you’re going to come out on top here, what do you say to them?

LAKE: Well, I should come out in a landslide victory. I’m just going to tell you that. I know what I’ve seen on the ground for 525 days, I campaigned across the state, worked harder than any other candidate. We drew crowds like they’d never seen before in Arizona politics. We have a movement. My opponent hid in her basement, didn’t debate the Democrat, didn’t debate the Republican couldn’t string two words together, can barely articulate an idea. And everyone in this state knows she lost. And the result will be that we won.

And if it’s anything other than that, I think the people of Arizona will know how bad our elections are. I believe by what I’m looking at in front of me, which is what is left to be counted, these are going to go heavily in the Republicans advantage, which means we will win. And I assure the people of Arizona, we will have a day of reckoning when it comes to what’s happening on our border, when it comes to what’s happening in our elections. We’re going to turn this around and restore good days in Arizona where every vote — every legal vote — counts. It’s easy to vote, but impossible to cheat. I assure the people of Arizona that.

BUCK: Kari, thanks.

CLAY: For Maricopa County people, Kari, last question. They’re saying it might take into next week before these votes are tallied. Are you being given a timeframe of when this might be resolved?

LAKE: We’re hearing the same thing, and that’s frustrating. I mean, all hands on deck, get this done, but let’s realize that I don’t want to put all the blame there. It’s frustrating, but it’s because we didn’t do anything to change the system, because our lawmakers weren’t able to get anything done. They didn’t have… You know, there were Republicans who didn’t want to do anything. And now when we get into office, we will get something done, and we will call out lawmakers who are not willing to make sure we have secure and honest elections. We don’t have a choice to keep kicking the can down the road and having elections run this way. It truly isn’t fair for the people of Arizona, nor is it fair for Americans who find themselves waiting on Arizona to see what’s going to happen.

CLAY: Kari Lake, we will hopefully get you back on next week to announce you’re officially the governor. But keep up the fight.

LAKE: Thanks, guys.