Kari Lake uses militarized rhetoric about the border, defends Jan. 6 rioter

Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake used militarized rhetoric to describe illegal immigration from Mexico, which has approached record highs in recent months, and cast those prosecuted for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as "political prisoners."

Lake made the comments on Fox News in a weekend interview with Maria Bartiromo, host of one of the channel’s Sunday morning public affairs shows.

Lake is widely seen as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the race for Arizona’s Senate seat, and Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is considered the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who last year switched her party affiliation from Democratic to Independent, is considering a reelection bid as well, which would create a historic three-way race.

The contest is one of the more closely watched in the country, as it is among a handful of races that could decide the partisan tilt of the U.S. Senate.

In the Sunday morning interview, Lake described people entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico as “a foreign army,” saying the U.S. is being “invaded,” and saying that “the majority of these people are fighting-age men,” contesting the idea that most immigrants are families.

According to the Pew Research Center, about 52% of recent Hispanic immigrants were men, and 48% were women as of 2021. 91% of Mexican migrants encountered by Customs and Border Patrol at the border in 2022 were single adults, according to the human rights organization Washington Office on Latin America.

Lake referenced the ongoing violence in the town of Sasabe, Sonora in Mexico, where fighting between rival criminal gangs has raged for more than a month. Asylum seekers from the border town have begun to wait in Sasabe, Arizona for U.S. authorities to pick them up, according to Arizona Republic reporting.

She referenced a recent video that circulated last week showing migrants crossing through holes cut in the border wall, a regular occurrence since former President Donald Trump first built the barrier in 2019.

Bartiromo raised the topic of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying that some people who “had nothing to do with” the violent attack were receiving “terrible treatment.” Some Republicans, including Lake, have portrayed the event’s perpetrators as victims of politically motivated prosecutors, despite a wealth of evidence, and court judgments, to the contrary.

“It’s terrible what happened,” Lake responded. “This, to me, is one of the great injustices in American history.”

Lake mentioned by name Edward Jacob Lang, whom videos posted to social media captured repeatedly swinging a baseball bat at police officers, thrusting a riot shield in their direction, and boasting online about his involvement in the attack, according to court papers.

“The First Amendment didn’t work, we pull out the Second,” Lang said in a video streamed to Instagram, which is quoted in the court papers. “No one wants to take this and die for our rights, but dying for our rights is the only option that any person with a logical brain sees right now.”

In 2021, Lang was charged with a number of federal crimes, including civil disorder, assaulting police officers, and entering restricted grounds. His trial is stalled as his appeal makes its way to the Supreme Court, causing Lake to say he was “rotting in prison.”

Lake closed the interview in a dark tone, echoing the words used by Trump to describe his own criminal prosecution: “They’re not really after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake uses militarized tone on border, defends Jan. 6 participant