Say what you will about Kari Lake, but she comes prepared. At a press avail on the campaign trail in Arizona, the Republican gubernatorial candidate got asked repeatedly about being an “election denier,” part of the Democrats’ attempt to make “threats to democracy” the main issue in the campaign. Lake knew it was coming, however, and had one of her staffers collate a few receipts from Democrats’ election denials over the last few years.

“You did better research,” Lake told her 20-year-old staffer Anthony, “than half of the reporters here.” She then reminded the gaggle of what took place between 2016 and 2019 (via Real Clear Politics):

Let's talk about "Election Deniers."
I brought receipts. ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/0vzg0ecdx3

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 18, 2022

KARI LAKE: Let’s talk about election deniers. Here’s 150 examples of Democrats denying election results. Look at this, this is from Joe Biden’s Press Secretary ‘remember Brian Kemp stole the gubernatorial election from Georgians and Stacey Abrams.’ A Democrat was saying that, is that an election denier? Oh look at this, ‘just heard Republican Ryan Costello said it would be difficult for Stacey Abrams to win because she lost her state bid, but she’s still claiming she never lost.’ Hillary Clinton: ‘Trump is an illegitimate President,’ is she an election denier? This on says ‘was the 2016 election legitimate? It is definitely a question worth asking.’ That was the Los Angeles Times. So it’s okay for Democrats to question elections but it’s not okay for Republicans? It’s crock of BS, everyone knows it, we have our freedom of speech and we’re not going relinquish it to a bunch of fake news propagandists. If you want a copy of these I’m sure Anthony will help you get a copy and help you learn how to journalist but look it up. It has been happening for a long time.

Since 2000, people have questioned the legitimacy of our elections. And all we are asking is in the future we do not have to have that anymore. When I’m governor we are going to make sure we have honest elections. We want the Democrats, the Independents, and the Republicans to all know that their vote counted. We want fair, honest, and transparent elections and we are going to deliver that for the people. Hillary Clinton says ‘George W. Bush was selected president not elected.’ So if you are going to start throwing around terms like election denier, lets remember who the other election deniers were Hillary Clinton and all the Democrats.

Lake makes the same point I made in my VIP column in response to the Washington Post. Aaron Blake echoed other Democrats in claiming that election-denying campaigns from Clinton, Abrams, and the entire Russia-collusion contingent among House Democrats had nothing to do with Donald Trump’s election denialism, but that’s absolutely false. Democrats have been undermining election credibility since 2000, as Lake points out (and I neglected to mention), including the stupid Electoral College challenges in 2004’s election (which I did mention and Lake overlooked, understandably so in the extemporaneous event).

Even the idea that this can be disconnected from the January 6 riot is false. All of these “stolen election” claims helped fuel the riot in Washington DC on Inauguration Day 2017, a riot also designed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power between administrations. Not only has that largely been memory-holed, so has the declaration by numerous Democrats to be part of “The Resistance” to Trump, a term associated with the rejection of legitimacy of the current government. This election denialism didn’t get rebuked by the media; in fact, the mainstream media adopted the same pose, especially the Post, which added its narcissistic “Democracy Dies in Darkness” logo shortly thereafter.

And let’s not forget the insurrections that took place in the months preceding January 6 in major American cities, which apologists then rushed to call “mostly peaceful” while buildings burned around them. Denialism and political violence only count when the less-favored causes adopt them, apparently.

Anyway, Lake probably won’t win that argument to the point where the media narrative of “election denier” goes away completely. She does show, however, how to deal with it — directly, and with receipts.