Dennis Interviews Kari Lake, running for Senate in Arizona

It's rare for me to have candidates on my show or any politician. It is not a statement about politicians. They're extremely important. There's just a statement of the nature of my show, which is more the forest than the trees. So I make exceptions on Election Day or very near Election Day. Kari Lake is running for the U.S. Senate in the open seat in Arizona. Kari Lake is running against a man who my producer says is to the left of Tammy Baldwin. I didn't know there is a left to the, to the, to the left of Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. But that gives you an idea. Kari Lake, welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show.

He's the most far-left candidate ever, I think. I mean, he's to the left of AOC. He's to the left of the Squad. It's really crazy. And nobody really knows his name because he doesn't make a huge impact. But unfortunately, he's trying to reinvent himself now and say he's a moderate.

Yes, it's very depressing to me that Americans buy that, whether it's Kamala Harris or any other Democrat. Give us some examples of how left he is.

Well, he's voted with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden 100% of the time. So every single issue that they are for, he is also for. He was part of the leadership of the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives. That's where all these crazy ideas come from that we as Americans scratch our head and say, who came up with this stuff? He's voted to allow our children, young minors, to get sex change operations, to allow schools to give them puberty blockers behind their parents' back. He's voted for federal dollars to go to sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. Every single open border policy that has come down the pike, he's voted in support of. Thus empowering the cartels. He was also the co-sponsor, Dennis, of the George Floyd legislation. He wanted to get rid of the filibuster in the summer of 2020 when our cities were burning and there was rioting happening and police precincts were burning to the ground in places like Minneapolis. At that moment, he wanted to get rid of the filibuster and jam through this piece of George Floyd legislation which would have defunded the police nationwide and gotten rid of qualified immunity. It would have made our streets so much less safe. So I could go on for hours with you. I don't know if you have hours, but I can tell you how radical we are. I'm proud to tell you what I wanna do, which is secure the border, restore a strong economy, make sure that as parents, we get to choose what school we send our kids to and our tax dollars follow the student. Not the school, and stop these endless wars. That's what I would like to do when I get to Washington, D.C.

So wait, you implied in this last statement that he's against school choice. Is that accurate?

Oh yeah, he goes with the Democrat line on everything. He's opposed to federal dollars following the student. Now here in Arizona, We already have our state tax dollars that follow the student, but we wanna get into the federal government and make sure the federal tax dollars, I'd like to see that we just get rid of the Department of Education. It was a terrible idea to start with. It was one of Jimmy Carter's, you know, plans. And he brought us that ridiculous department that has done nothing except make our schools, I think, pushing the curriculum that's less helpful for our children.

So I raised this because I don't know what the percentage of voters in Arizona is Black, but I don't know why that's not sort of determinative for Black voters that somebody opposes school choice.

I think it is. I'm talking to a lot of Black Arizonans and Hispanic Arizonans, and parents here love the fact that we have school choice in Arizona. They absolutely love it. They wish that all of the tax money we put into education was following their student, but unfortunately right now it's just our state tax dollars that are following. And you're right, I mean, this is how education is the great equalizer. If we are getting a proper education, That is how we equalize our children and make it so that we're all doing better. The left wants to have terrible education and no options for parents and then use DEI to help people get ahead rather than meritocracy. When we have a good quality world-class education, all of our kids will do better no matter what this becomes.

So I'm in Arizona frequently. I have a lot of listeners in Arizona, but I have no answer to the question, how did Arizona become a toss-up state?

Well, you know, a lot of people like to blame the Californians who moved here. I don't tend to do that because I know a lot of Californians who are political refugees. They escaped the terrible Democrat policies of California. They uprooted their lives and moved here to our beautiful Arizona. You know, I think for a number of years, I don't want to bash elections constantly, but we've had some pretty shady, shoddy elections here. And unfortunately, that has played into people that are representing us in many, many of these government roles. But Arizona is a common sense state. And that's why I love the America First movement. It's really just common sense, Dennis. We're not at a point anymore where we're Democrat versus Republican. We're really, it's Americanism versus globalism or communism. And I believe the people of Arizona wanna choose Americanism. And our rights and our freedoms and common sense solutions to some of these problems like the open border and the economy and crime on our streets.

Do you feel, as pollsters claim, that the abortion issue might be determinative?

You know, it's interesting. We have— we're deciding in many states what the abortion law will be. And the Supreme Court handed that back and said the states will decide. And so we're at that moment now where many states are deciding with a proposition on the ballot, and we're gonna see some Arizonans vote for it, some vote against it. But I actually know some people who are voting for this proposition that are also voting Republican. So I don't think necessarily if you are voting for that proposition, that means you won't vote Republican. The people who are for that proposition, I think, still wanna have a secure border. They still wanna have fully funded police departments. They still want to see a wind down to some of these endless wars. So I think that assuming that everybody who is voting for this proposition on abortion is anti-Republican is an assumption that you shouldn't make.

Have you two debated?

We did. We had a debate a few weeks ago, and everyone says that I clobbered him in that debate. I must agree. I think I did. And so unfortunately, he won't do another debate because it was really bad for him.

So you—

and the good news is I think it really was a debate that woke people up who were undecided. They said, oh, I didn't know all of that about him. And I didn't realize that Kari's policies were so common sense. They're just America First policies to get us back on track.

So it is— is it clear to Arizonans you want another debate and he does not?

Well, we've made that clear from the beginning. We actually offered him because he was running $40 million in abortion attack ads on me. I offered for him to do a 1-hour debate on just that one issue because it seems to be— Wow.

Really? That's fascinating.

That he would do 10 minutes. He said no, he didn't want to do a debate.

And then forgive me, I just want to— I want to interrupt for a second. That is so instructive. Given the passion that Democrats have on pro-choice, you would think that if a pro-life candidate wanted to debate it, they would run at the opportunity.

I offered to clear my schedule on Mother's Day weekend. I even said I would give up time on Mother's Day and offered him a 1-hour debate on the issue of abortion because, as I said, he's $40 million in attack ads. Imagine all of the women that that money could have helped. But he spent $40 million attacking me. And I said, you know what, let's actually debate. We'll do a full hour. We can do more if you want. And let's debate this issue. And then I offered— there was a debate on PBS that he skipped out on. So I ended up doing an interview with the moderator, which turned out me having to debate the moderator. And then he finally did show up to one debate and it did not go well for him. I mean, Dennis, he had to memorize his life story. His first 2 minutes, you know, if I asked you, Dennis, tell me a little bit about yourself, give me 2 minutes.

Yeah, I wouldn't need notes.

You could just rattle it off. He had to memorize his life story. And it's because his life story is not true. He's lied about so many things. He lied. He didn't tell the people that his dad was a convicted felon, Mexican drug trafficker. And that his family has ties to the cartel. He left that all out of his bio. And, you know, we've had to wake people up to the danger of having somebody with those kind of ties in the U.S. Senate.

All right, Kari, I want— all right, tell people how they can contact you.

They can go to karilake.com. Go to karilake.com. We're still getting the message out today about who he is. If you can help us out with a donation, just a prayer, we can help you as well. And if you're here in Arizona, make a plan to vote on Tuesday. We need to swamp the vote to take back this beautiful state of ours.

Good luck, dear Carrie.