Wednesday night was the only debate between Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) and Trump bootlicker and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who are competing to fill the Arizona Senate seat of the retiring waste of space Kyrsten Sinema. Lake was put on the defensive and predictably invoked transphobia.
Abortion is a key issue in the race given that the state currently has a 15-week ban and Lake has previously praised both the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the temporary enforcement of a near-total ban from 1864, before Arizona was a state. Lake—who again, lost in 2022 months after the Dobbs ruling—has flip-flopped to now say that she supports the 15-week ban, modeling Trump's "let the states decide" claim, which is actually bullshit. But it's shaky ground for Lake given that she was so gung-ho for total bans just two years ago and that polls show voters strongly oppose abortion bans.
Politico reporter Alice Ollstein flagged one of the debate's most telling moments: "Asked about the state's current 15-week abortion ban, Lake argues that it is not a ban and then pivots to trans issues." The moderator asked about Arizona's abortion ballot measure, which she said would override the state ban, and Lake responded, "We don't have a state ban, we have a 15-week abortion law." (The exchange happens at 26:30 on the C-SPAN video.)
Lake then took a hard turn to change the subject and I truly need to print this conservative-who's-behind-by-7-points Mad Libs which included a woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant, trans girls competing in school sports, and censorship:
"I will not pass a federal abortion ban in the United States Senate. Ruben Gallego wants to take the choice away from us. He doesn't really care about women's rights. If he cared about women's rights—first of all I'm astounded that he actually knows the difference between a woman and a man, because I thought there were, what, 147 different genders? I do care about women's rights, because I come from a family of women, and I have a daughter of my own, many nieces and nephews. And I care about Laken Riley's right to exist and live and be safe, but his votes have caused it it where people are pouring across their border, dangerous people taking away the lives of women. I care about the ability for our daughters to be able to participate in athletics. He doesn't want that. And he doesn't care about your First Amendment right. To the women out there who might disagree with him politically, he wants to censor you. So let's talk about women's rights. Women care about a lot of different issues, Ruben. I know you spent, what, $40 million on attack ads regarding abortion. Think about how many lives could have been saved and how many women could have been helped with $40 million and think about what we could have done to help make our country a better place with all those attack ads.
That's the confident message of someone who's definitely not going to lose! (Please still vote, Arizonans.) Hilariously, Lake also referred to IVF as "UVF" several times when talking about how much she cares about families.
Apparently, Lake is on a mission to rebrand Arizona's 15-week ban as just "a law." The Arizona Democratic Party recently noted that, during a Tuesday interview with NBC News, Lake accidentally repeated the reporter's phrase when answering a question. "I think the 15-week abortion ban—not abortion ban—the 15-week abortion law that we have is actually a good law," she said. That distinction without a difference mirrors the strategy of Trump's running mate JD Vance, who continues to insist that a federal 15-week ban would not be a ban, but simply a "national minimum standard."
Trump is also trying to change the subject around abortion by pivoting to transgender people, as he did during his only debate with Kamala Harris. She hammered him on abortion and he twice failed to say that he'd veto a national ban, but he did accuse her of supporting "transgender operations on illegal aliens." And at his rallies, he's been saying that schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries on kids during the school day, when in fact schools need parental permission to give kids Tylenol.
Trump, Vance, and Lake all know that abortion is a losing issue for them, so they'll say anything else if they think it will help them win. Lake's desperate, rambling answer sums up the 2024 election pretty perfectly.
