The press conference you should’ve been paying attention to while Trump rambled on about nothing

Just as former president Donald Trump wrapped up his stemwinder of a grievance-filled press conference 2,300 miles away, one of his most devoted disciples fought to show signs of life as she runs significantly behind the former president.

Two years ago, Republican Kari Lake, the news anchor-turned-election denier, lost the governorship in Arizona by 17,117 votes. Since then, she’s filed lawsuits to overturn the results while at the same time announcing that she will be running for the US Senate seat Kyrsten Sinema will vacate at the end of this year.

“We are in a difficult time in our country and it seems that Arizona is kind of right there at ground zero for a lot of the problems that people are facing,” she said to open a press conference at the Maricopa County Republican Party office on Thursday. “Whether it be the inflation and the cost of living that has soared under the Biden-Kamala regime or whether it be the wide open border that used to be secure and is no longer secure in America.”

Lake’s press conference was an attempt to turn the heat up on Vice President Kamala Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz, who will be in Phoenix on Friday as part of their swing through battleground states. Harris is also making a play for Maricopa, a county that could make or break the election.

But Lake faces a huge problem that many other Republicans running downballot in other crucial swing states share: she is underperforming Trump. Even before Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election amid his lagging poll numbers, candidates like Lake continued to fall behind.

«She's kind of a drag on [Trump], because the main issue with Lake is that she's very much defined,» said Mike Noble, the founder of Noble Predictive