Current Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has caught some flak lately. It turns out that by implementing any COVID safety precautions whatsoever, Republican Ducey angered the Trump base here. And even though Joe Biden unexpectedly won in the state a year ago (and won even bigger after the audit Trump demanded), Arizona Republicans want to move even further to the right.

Enter Kari Lake, a Phoenix-area former TV personality who couldn’t be closer to Donald Trump if she tried.

That is, of course, closer in political affiliations. Trump doesn’t even get “close” to his own wife, let alone someone as trivial as a former news anchor from a southwestern state he’s rarely been to. But he has endorsed Lake.

Lake is the frontrunner in the GOP primary for the 2022 AZ gubernatorial race. And the reason she’s out in front is that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party of Arizona thinks politics here just aren’t conservative enough.

Never mind the fact that two of the biggest promoters of the Big Lie, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, represent the state. Kari Lake makes those two look like amateurs.

After she very loudly quit her news anchor job, Lake began her campaign with just what the GOP ordered: More garbage about a “stolen” election. But she escalated things pretty quickly, moving on from Twitter and Facebook to Parler and Gab, the latter of which is essentially a haven for white nationalists tired of being “censored” on other social media sites.

Now CNN reports that Lake has been upping the ante with appearances alongside QAnon figures and even a Nazi sympathizer who once called Hitler a “complicated historical figure” who people simply “misunderstand.”

In August, she appeared in a video with the founder of the “Anti-Maskers Club,” Ethan Schmidt-Crockett, and Greyson Arnold, the Third Reich fan who praised Hitler. Lake later told Arnold it was a pleasure meeting him after he posted the video of their encounter online.

In October, Lake posed for photos with QAnon enthusiast Ron Watkins, the conspiracy theorist that many people believe is the actual guy who posts as “Q,” the voice of the movement.

It looks like Republicans across the country are trying to out-crazy one another in their upcoming campaigns for public office. They’ll have a hard time staying even with Kari Lake.

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