The GOP’s Kari Lake, who lost her race for Arizona governor and has denied the result since, seemed to be in denial about Donald Trump’s treatment of CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a town hall this week. Lake on Thursday said the former president was “very kind” to the moderator. (Watch the video below.)
At the town hall, Trump called Collins “a nasty person” simply because she pressed him for an answer. He interrupted, spewed lies, dodged questions and remained combative throughout, and the network received considerable criticism for its handling of the event.
But Lake, floated as a possible vice presidential running mate for Republican front-runner Trump, saw it otherwise on the “War Room” podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
“President Trump, he held his fire. I was really impressed,” she said in a clip reported by Mediaite. “You know, he was very kind considering what she was doing and how biased she was. There was no interest in just talking about policy and letting people decide, it was definitely agenda driven. Complete nastiness.”
In one of his attempts to steamroll Collins’ fact-checks, Trump completely denied asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” more than 11,000 votes to overturn the 2020 results in that swing state ― even though there’s audio proof.
“I didn’t ask to find him anything,” Trump said.
“We’ve heard the audiotape, Mr. President. There’s an audio of you asking him to find you 11,000-something votes.”
“I said you owe me votes because the election was rigged,” Trump replied. “That election was rigged. And if this call was bad, why didn’t him and his lawyers hang up? How dare you say that. This was a perfect phone call.”
The former president, however, did tell Collins she did a “good job” at the end.