Former President Donald Trump told Arizona GOP candidate Blake Masters that if he wants to win his Senate election against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, he has to essentially repeat election denial lies and nothing else.
“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 in the days following Masters’ Oct. 6 debate with Kelly.
Videos by VICE
During that debate, Masters said that Joe Biden was “the legitimate president” and that he hadn’t “seen evidence” of the rigging of the vote count in Arizona in 2020, a significant departure from his previous comments. Comparatively, Masters ran an ad last year ahead of a contentious GOP primary that opened with him saying, “I think Trump won in 2020.”
The phone call, which was captured during the filming of a Tucker Carlson documentary about Masters that was posted online Tuesday, likely took place on October 8 due to their discussion of the debate and Trump’s mention of seeing Masters “tomorrow,” according to the Arizona Republic. Trump rallied for Masters in Arizona on October 9.
“If you want to get across the line, you’ve got to go stronger on that one thing,” Trump told Masters. “That was the one thing there was a lot of complaints about.”
During the call, Trump compared Masters to the party’s gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, Kari Lake.
“Look at Kari. Kari is winning with very little money,” Trump said. “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 told Trump. Later, after the two hung up, he said: “I didn’t think I went soft.”
The clip provided a rare firsthand glimpse into the balancing act between pleasing Trump, still the GOP’s acknowledged leader in spite of two impeachments and a lost presidential election, and actually winning in November. In Arizona, where President Joe Biden narrowly defeated Trump in 2020, Masters has struggled particularly with independent voters.
Though Arizona was one of the GOP’s biggest pickup opportunities in the Senate this year, Kelly—a moderate elected in a special election in 2020—has led Masters in polling throughout the campaign, even as Lake has held a slight lead over Democrat Katie Hobbs in the gubernatorial race.
Despite Trump’s annoyance at Masters’ answers on the 2020 election during the debate, Trump has continued to stump for him, and the former president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., released an ad Wednesday that attempted to tie undocumented people and Democratic immigration policies to fentanyl overdose deaths. (Most of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes through vehicles at official ports of entry, experts have said.)
“President Trump continues to keep the pressure on Mark Kelly and Joe Biden, highlighting their absolute failure at securing the border and dismal record of allowing cartels and fentanyl to flood into our communities,” a MAGA Inc. spokesperson told CNN. “Blake Masters will bring real change to Washington and stop the assault from the radical Democrat agenda.”
