'Um, wow': How CNN's Kyung Lah took on Kari Lake 'relentlessly repeating misinformation'

We’ve asked this question a lot in the last few years but it bears repeating: How do you report on politicians who are seemingly disconnected from reality?

More dangerous still, what about when they are gaining traction among potential voters?

The question matters in Arizona more than ever, not just because of the amateur-hour “audit” that’s kept the state in the news so often the past few months, but also because of candidates like Kari Lake embracing the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

He didn’t. Joe Biden did. End of story.

Of that story, anyway, but the beginning of many others.

Lake was one of the Arizona candidates who appeared in a report on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°” on Wednesday. The segment was devoted to candidates in Arizona who continue to wrongly claim that Trump won.

It was pathetic.

CNN's Kyung Lah conducted her Kari Lake interview just right

There’s always an outcry when late-night comedy shows like “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” or “The Daily Show" skewer Arizona over things like the “audit.” The complaint is often masked as “we don’t care what outsiders” think, but it’s actually thinly veiled embarrassment.

This was far more humiliating. Because there was nothing funny about it.

The segment, reported by Kyung Lah, began with footage of Lake, a former Fox 10 news anchor running as a Republican for Arizona governor in the 2022 election, saying, “No masks in here? Another round of applause.”

Perfect.

“Of course the media’s all masked up,” she continues. “They want to spread the fear.”

No. They want to stop the spread of COVID-19. Absurd claims like that may play well in the short term among a certain crowd. But how do you justify it?

“This is our introduction to Kari Lake,” Lah said, calling her a “rising star of the right wing and proud spreader of lies about the 2020 election results.”

Is voter fraud a problem? Election crimes amount to 0.0001% of ballots cast in Arizona, but claims of fraud appear here to stay

Lah also touched on Mark Finchem, who's running for secretary of state, and later conducted an interview with Ron Watkins, who some believe to be “Q” of QAnon infamy, who recently moved to Arizona to run for Congress.

But it’s Lake who has gained the early attention, Lah noted. Lah sat down for an interview with her — with a crowd standing behind Lake recording it, if all this wasn’t creepy enough already.

Lah did what a good reporter is supposed to do: She challenged Lake’s lies.

“The system is corrupt,” Lake said. “Have you not followed what’s happened in our election here?”

“Absolutely,” Lah said. “I covered the audit," thus shutting down Lake's attempt to discredit her.

'Um, wow,' Cooper said of Arizona's candidates. That's one word for them

Lah noted that Lake is “relentlessly repeating misinformation.”

This led into Lake asking Lah about the false claim that election files were deleted before the audit.

“That was roundly debunked,” Lah said. As Lake started to protest, Lah said, “Not by the press, but by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office.”

This is where Lake, unarmed in a battle of facts, just starts saying stuff.

“Well you’re buying everything they say,” Lake said. “I know what you guys are trying to do. You don’t give a damn about our elections. You’ve got a narrative and you’re trying to push it.”

This fake tough act based on nothing can be tough for reporters. It’s like nailing Jell-O to a wall. How to you gain any traction? But Lah played it just right.

“And what is that narrative?”

Lake fell back on meaningless platitudes.

The scary thing is Lake supporters doubtless think this was a big score for their candidate, that she really showed the media what’s what. In reality she looked foolish, and on some level she must know it. She used to do this for a living, after all.

When the segment ended and Lah went back to Cooper, he sighed, shrugged and said, “Um, wow.”

Wow is one word for it. Embarrassing is another. 

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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