There are two things the press loves more than anything. The first is obviously January 6th, which has become an absolute obsession at this point. The second thing is virtue signaling against those who question the 2020 election, even in the mildest terms. If you don’t believe that Joe Biden is the greatest president in history, elected in the most secure election ever held despite many of the rules being changed just months prior to voting, you are an “election-denier.”

That’s how you still get questions from reporters like the one Kari Lake was faced with on Thursday. Jeremy Duda, who works for Axios, decided to confront Lake, not with something relevant to her campaign for Governor of Arizona, but with another convoluted query about 2020.

This is one of the best answers to the media’s 2020 election questions I’ve heard. pic.twitter.com/yYni3wwjhi

— Realignment Politics (@politicsrea) September 2, 2022

Duda may be a perfectly nice guy, but his question doesn’t even make sense, and it feels like a really convoluted way to try to ask about Lake’s views on 2020, which are already well known, without just directly asking about it. How does having concerns about some of the processes that occurred during the 2020 election equate to Joe Biden sowing division by labeling half of the country a threat?

And I’m not even writing this piece to argue about those processes. That’s been done to death, and people know where I stand on the last-minute voting changes that occurred. What I am saying is that even if someone doesn’t agree with any of the critiques regarding the 2020 election, that’s still not a direct attack on the very being of tens of millions of Americans.

Regardless, Lake’s answer is perfectly formulated, even looking past the “owning the libs” part of it. You don’t have to be a fan of hers to respect how she took a volatile question about a topic that has so long been a “gotcha” and answered it in a way that not only has wide appeal but doesn’t feed into the more hysterical proclamations of the press.

I’m taking the risk of being accused of hating on Donald Trump to say this, but I wish he had the ability to answer questions about the 2020 election the way Lake does. Maybe it’s her background as a news anchor coming through, but she knows how to frame controversial topics, and that’s a real asset to her campaign. It should be abundantly clear why her opponent, Katie Hobbs, is refusing to debate.

For all the commentary surrounding Lake, I think she’s running a good campaign. She’s managed to zero in on the issues Arizonans care about the last few weeks and her ability to handle the press has been fun to watch. Republicans should rally behind her, even if she wasn’t their first choice. The stakes are too high to hand Arizona over to a far-left Karen like Katie Hobbs.