Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake asked her opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), to clarify what he means by the “election denier” label he has frequently branded her with. Lake pointed to a number of social media posts from Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in which he referred to then-President Donald Trump as “illegitimate” and spread the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that he was working with the Russian government.
Throughout the 2022 primary cycle, Gallego frequently referred to Lake and other statewide Republican candidates, including Blake Masters, Mark Finchem and Abe Hamadah, as “election deniers.”
“Yawn.. election denier being an election denier,” Gallego wrote in response to a video statement from Lake in which she vowed to challenge the results of Arizona’s gubernatorial election in 2022. “She will never learn.” Gallego has also referred to his political opponents as “MAGA extremists” and “Trump cultists.”
On Wednesday, Lake asked her far-left opponent to clarify his position in an X post of her own. “@RubenGallego MUST explain why questioning the results of an election disqualifies ME from serving the people of Arizona as their Senator,” Lake wrote. But not HIS colleague @RepJeffries to be third in line for the presidency of the United States of America,” she continued, tagging Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“Ruben, can you please clarify your position on this for us?”
.@RubenGallego MUST explain why questioning the results of an election disqualifies ME from serving the people of Arizona as their Senator.
But not HIS colleague @RepJeffries to be third in line for the presidency of the United States of America???
Ruben, can you please clarify… pic.twitter.com/HGi0GHaTM0
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 18, 2023
The Republican Senate hopeful attached a number of X posts from Jeffries in which he referred to Trump’s presidency as “illegitimate” or spread Russian collusion conspiracy theories.
“Let’s be clear donald. The only person trying to steal the election is YOU… (and your buddies in the Kremlin),” Jeffries wrote on June 8, 2020, long after Special Counsel Robert Mueller confirmed that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
“The more we learn about the 2016 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes. America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE president in the Oval Office,” Jeffries wrote in another post on February 16, 2016. After the 2020 election, the New York congressman told Trump that “history will never accept” him as a “legitimate president.”
Jeffries and Gallego are far from the only elected Democrats with a history of “election denialism” while calling Republicans “extremists” for questioning elections. A number of Democrat members of Congress, including January 6 Committee member Jamie Raskin, objected to election results in 2016.
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