After debate, Trump urged Blake Masters to 'go stronger' on 'rigged' election claims

Former President Donald Trump pressed Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters to maintain the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” after Masters had conceded in a public debate he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud, a new documentary shows.

“I got a lot of complaints about that. I don’t know what you did with the debate, but I heard you did great in the debate, but bad election answer,” Trump told Masters in a phone call that was videotaped for “Tucker Carlson Originals,” a short documentary by the Fox News conservative commentator that posted Tuesday on the Fox Nation streaming site.

At one point on the tape, Trump said he would see Masters the next day, suggesting the call happened Oct. 8, two days after the debate with incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Libertarian Marc Victor, and just ahead of a rally in Mesa.

Previously: 4 takeaways from Kelly-Masters Senate debate

“You’ve got a lot of support. You’ve got to stay with those people,” Trump told Masters.

“Absolutely, we stay with those people,” Masters responded. “And it was a pleasure to put Mark Kelly on the ropes.”

The Masters campaign did not immediately clarify Tuesday whether he still acknowledges there was no evidence of widespread fraud in election administration, as he said during the debate. Masters has long held the election was “unfair” because reports of potential wrongdoing by President Joe Biden’s son didn’t receive more public attention, and has maintained that view after the debate.

Kelly’s campaign accused Masters of taking orders from Trump.

“Arizona deserves a principled Senator who always puts their interests first, not one who will sell out Arizona voters and cast doubt on our elections just because he was scolded on the phone,” said Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokeswoman for the Kelly campaign.

Trump’s interest in the 2020 election answer brings new attention to an issue central to Trump’s interests and something that Masters has faced questions about as well.

Masters recast his campaign website relating to the election after winning the August Republican primary. It had said, in part, “the 2020 election was a rotten mess — if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today and America would be so much better off.”

After the primary, it said, “We need to get serious about election integrity.”

On Oct. 12, the day early ballots went out in Arizona and after his phone call with Trump, Masters told Fox News that he still feels like Trump would be sitting in the White House “if everyone followed the law,” then outlined his long-held narrative of coordinated censorship that he said cost Trump the election.

Trump, meanwhile, is freshly facing a subpoena from the House special committee investigating the causes of the riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Several key witnesses have told investigators that Trump knew he lost the election early on but insisted in public that it was stolen.

Earlier in the Carlson video, Masters is shown in what appears to be his campaign van riding away from the debate. He says to his wife, “I said I saw no evidence of fraud. Some people really won’t like that.”

Sometime later in the edited video, Trump advised Masters again to embrace the stolen-election narrative that Trump has held and suggested it is the secret to Republican Kari Lake’s momentum in the governor’s race.

“If you want to get across the line, you’ve got to go stronger on that one thing. That was the one thing. There was a lot of complaints about,” Trump is heard saying.

“Look at Kari. Kari is winning with very little money. If they say, ‘How is your family?’ She says the election was rigged and stolen. You’ll lose if you go soft. You’re going to lose that base.”

“I’m not going soft,” Masters responded. A few seconds later, after Trump hung up, Masters turned to the camera and said, “I didn’t think I went soft.”

In Mesa, Trump declared, “Blake Masters absolutely annihilated Mark Kelly in their debate.”

During a 100-minute speech that often hovered over his false claims of a stolen election, Trump praised Masters at one point, saying he is a “tireless champion” for “election integrity.”

Masters didn’t raise the election issue in two sets of comments to the crowd that day.

During the debate three days earlier, Ted Simons, the moderator, asked Masters to clarify whether vote-counting or election results had been “rigged in any way, shape or form to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.”

“I haven’t seen evidence of that,” Masters replied.

He made that concession after outlining the narrative that the FBI, technology companies and the media effectively tipped the election by suppressing information about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who was linked in some media accounts to possible criminal activities.

“I think it’s a problem that the FBI forced Facebook — they pressured Facebook and other Big Tech companies — to censor true information about Hunter Biden’s crimes in the weeks before the 2020 election, and so millions of Americans didn’t get to read about that,” Masters said.

“When the media is lying to people, helping Big Tech, and apparently federal law enforcement, censor information about presidential candidates, well, I think people start to worry about the integrity of their elections,” Masters said.

Trump’s conversation with Masters is a reminder that the first-time candidate won Trump’s endorsement in the five-way Republican primary in June in part because of his willingness to claim the election was “unfair” or effectively stolen. Masters moved to the top of the GOP field only after securing Trump’s backing.

Trump had long telegraphed to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, another Senate candidate, that he was watching to see what the state’s top law enforcement officer would do with information collected as part of the state Senate’s partisan review of Maricopa County’s ballots in 2021.

GOP support: Rick Scott rallies for Senate hopeful Blake Masters

Brnovich’s office opened an investigation, but ultimately didn’t find widespread fraud and lost the primary with Trump’s public scorn.

The Carlson video also included a moment when Trump tells Masters to urge Peter Thiel, his mentor, co-author and former employer, to get more involved in the final stage of the election.

Trump asked if Thiel, who spent at least $15 million backing Masters’ efforts during the primary, is helping now.

“He is, a little bit more behind the scenes. I don’t know what happened there, but money is flowing in now,” Masters said. Thiel held a fundraiser for Masters after the primary.

Trump urged Masters to “Tell Peter to help you.”

Reach the reporter Ronald J. Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493. Follow him on Twitter @ronaldjhansen.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump urged Blake Masters to 'go stronger' on 'rigged' election claims