Arizona politician Kari Lake had a turbulent encounter with the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this week at an airport in Florida.
Lake recounted her version of events on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday. In her account, Lake approached Joe Scarborough and his wife Mika Brzezinski at a Florida airport in order to humanize herself despite frequent criticism from the MSNBC hosts.
“I was leaving [the airport] and I happen to see Joe Scarborough, so I turned around and got on the escalator down,” Lake told Bannon.
“I just said look, I’m the person behind the face you guys like to bash 24/7 and that’s okay, but I just wanted to introduce myself,” Lake continued.
However, Lake alleges that the encounter became testy when Brzezinski began to record the encounter from her cellular phone,
“I said, ‘Are you recording me?'” Lake recounted, adding that Scarborough told his wife “Don’t do that” as the interaction continued. “He was a little bit perturbed that she was recording,” Lake added.
The interaction took an even worse turn when, in Lake’s account, a “handler” accompanying the MSNBC hosts began hurling insults at her, calling Lake a “liar,” an “election denier” and “delusional.”
Lake initially attracted national attention from her role as the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election in which she acquired a reputation as a conservative firebrand and a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump.
The state of Arizona recognized Lake’s opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs, as the winner of that election, but Lake has refused to concede defeat, citing ballot printing issues and long lines in conservative parts of Maricopa County. Lake has filed multiple lawsuits contesting the results, all but one of which have been dismissed by Arizona’s courts.
It is this skepticism of the official election results which has resulted in Lake becoming a subject of derision on “Morning Joe,” with the program’s hosts suggesting that Lake’s claims of fraudulent elections are disingenuous and dangerous. And despite the gubernatorial candidate’s apparent overture of friendliness, the recent airport interaction appears unlikely to smooth over the controversies between her and the cable TV pundits who oppose her.
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