Kari Lake Bombshell ‘Backfires’ As False Claims Add Up

Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, is under fire this week after falsely accusing her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs of voting to remove the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from schools in the state.

Lake teased the bombshell on Twitter on Monday, saying, “I just got some really painful, hurtful news about @Katie Hobbs. My team is triple-confirming its [sic] true. Tomorrow I will be releasing. Bad stuff!”

Local Arizona news station KTVK, among others, fact-checked Lake’s claims and noted that the Republican apparently doesn’t understand how a bill becomes a law.

“Now that bombshell is blowing up, sparking a whole new set of questions. Our political editor, Dennis Welch, is in the Newsroom to explain,” the local anchor began introducing the segment.

“And this is just one example of the hundreds of bills sent to the governor’s office every single year. And now there is a real big question in this year’s race. If one of the candidates doesn’t understand what to do with it,” said Welch.

“In Hobbs’s Arizona, your kindergartner wouldn’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance,” Lake can then be heard saying in the video she released to Twitter.

“As a legislator, Hobbs actually voted to block the Pledge of Allegiance, our national anthem, our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and even the Mayflower Compact, from being taught to the next generation of Americans right here in Arizona,” Lake continues.

“To back up her shocking claim, her three-minute video showed a bill that Hobbs voted against four years ago, but the bombshell claim that Lake promised isn’t true,” Welch explains.

“Voting against this bill would not be voting against the national anthem,” then says Wes Gullett.

“Wes Gullett served as the chief of staff to former Republican Governor Fife Symington. Gullett points out that the bill Lake refers to only covered, adding the state motto ‘Ditat Deus,’ which means God enriches and the national motto of ‘In God We Trust.’ It would not have purged anything from the approved list of materials that could be read and posted in classrooms,” Welch continues, adding:

The wild claim has led to speculation that Lake doesn’t understand how laws are created. That’s a big problem for someone whose job it would be to sign or veto them.

“That’s why we have campaigns because we see if people are qualified to be governor. Reading bills is a qualification of being governor. You have to know what a bill says, how bill changes, how a bill becomes law. Those are fundamentals that Kari Lake doesn’t understand,” Gullett concludes.

“Today, Lake doubled down on Twitter, referring to a pair of other bills that she claims support her accusation. But those bills don’t refer to the Pledge of Allegiance or any other founding document,” Welch adds, concluding:

Kari Lake also claimed in that video that Hobbs supports teaching sex education to kindergartners. We look back into the record and found that in 2016, Hobbs did support or sponsor legislation that would have required medically accurate and age appropriate sex education be taught in K-12 schools. In the Newsroom, Dennis Welch, Arizona’s family.

Watch the full clip above via KTVK

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