YOU'LL LOSE IF YOU GO SOFT: Donald Trump wanted Blake Masters to lie more about the 2020 election.
The former president told Masters to be more like Kari Lake, according to footage from a new Fox News documentary. The Arizona Republican told the former president, "I'm not going soft."
Blake Masters said earlier this month in an Arizona Senate race debate against Democrat Mark Kelly that he thinks Donald Trump would still "be in the White House today" if the 2020 election had been fair. Kelly is running against Masters for the seat. But it looks like that comment wasn't enough to satisfy Trump's need to say that the last election wasn't fair. He wanted his candidate to talk more about the false idea that the last election was stolen. "I heard you did well in the debate, but your answer to the election question was not good. A lot of people helped you. "You have to stick with those people," Trump told Masters in a phone call after the debate that was recorded for a new Fox News documentary on Masters. "It's one yard from the goal. If you want to get across the line, you have to push harder on that one thing, because that was the one thing that got the most complaints.
Trump then told Masters to be as tough as Kari Lake, a Republican running for governor of Arizona. Lake has made hard-line election denial her main campaign issue. "Look at Kari. Kari is winning with only a small amount of money. And if they ask her how her family is, she tells them that the election was fixed and stolen. You'll lose if you go soft. Trump said, "You're going to lose that base." Masters got Trump's support in the primary after running ads that said the 2020 election was unfair in a vague way. He insisted that he was not leaving the right-wing group that doesn't believe the election happened. He told Trump, "I'm not going to give up."
Masters, who is currently behind Kelly in the race, said that Joe Biden was the "legitimate president" and admitted that he had not "seen evidence" of vote rigging in Arizona. He said that social media companies and the mainstream media had worked together to make Biden look better. Masters's campaign also took down a line from the candidate's website that said the 2020 election was a "rotten mess." (His campaign got rid of a line that seemed to support the racist "great replacement theory," and he also changed the way he talked about abortion.) Masters brushed off a question about why his campaign had changed the line when he talked to Fox News after the debate. When asked if he still thought Trump stole the election, the candidate said, "Well, I still believe it."
Still, it looks like Trump is still fully behind Masters's campaign. During the call, Trump told Masters to ask Peter Thiel, a longtime friend and mentor of Masters's who helped fund his campaign at first, to help his campaign more. Thiel had been Masters's mentor and a longtime friend. He also said that he would be a "rocket ship" to the Republican. The former president's super PAC, MAGA Inc., released a new attack ad on Kelly on Wednesday. The ad says that Kelly "gave up our border to the cartels" and is to blame for the rise in "overdose deaths" in Arizona.