{"id":77402,"date":"2022-11-08T18:56:31","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T18:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/after-debate-trump-urged-blake-masters-to-go-stronger-on-rigged-election-claims-the-arizona-republic\/"},"modified":"2022-11-08T18:56:31","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T18:56:31","slug":"after-debate-trump-urged-blake-masters-to-go-stronger-on-rigged-election-claims-the-arizona-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/after-debate-trump-urged-blake-masters-to-go-stronger-on-rigged-election-claims-the-arizona-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"After debate, Trump urged Blake Masters to 'go stronger' on 'rigged' election claims – The Arizona Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former President Donald Trump pressed Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters\u00a0to maintain the 2020 election was \u201crigged and stolen\u201d after Masters had conceded in a public debate he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud, a new\u00a0documentary shows.
\u201cI got a lot of complaints about that. I don\u2019t know what you did with the debate, but I heard you did great in the debate, but bad election answer,\u201d Trump told Masters in a phone call that was videotaped for \u201cTucker Carlson Originals,\u201d 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\u00a0Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Libertarian Marc Victor, and just ahead of a rally in Mesa.
Previously:<\/strong>\u00a04 takeaways from Kelly-Masters Senate debate<\/a>
\u201cYou\u2019ve got a lot of support. You\u2019ve got to stay with those people,\u201d Trump told Masters.
\u201cAbsolutely, we stay with those people,\u201d Masters responded. \u201cAnd it was a pleasure to put Mark Kelly on the ropes.\u201d
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 \u201cunfair\u201d because reports of potential wrongdoing by President Joe Biden\u2019s son didn\u2019t receive more public attention, and has maintained that view after the debate.
Kelly\u2019s campaign accused Masters of taking orders from Trump.
\u201cArizona 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,\u201d\u00a0said Sarah Guggenheimer, a spokeswoman for the Kelly campaign.
Trump\u2019s interest in the 2020 election answer brings new attention to an issue central to Trump\u2019s 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, \u201cthe 2020 election was a rotten mess \u2014 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.\u201d
After the primary, it said, \u201cWe need to get serious about election integrity.\u201d
On Oct. 12, the day early ballots went out in Arizona and\u00a0after his phone call with Trump, Masters told Fox News that he still feels like Trump would be sitting in the White House \u201cif everyone followed the law,\u201d 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, \u201cI said I saw no evidence of fraud. Some people really won\u2019t like that.\u201d
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\u2019s momentum in the governor\u2019s race.
\u201cIf you want to get across the line, you\u2019ve got to go stronger on that one thing. That was the one thing. There was a lot of complaints about,\u201d Trump is heard saying.
\u201cLook at Kari. Kari is winning with very little money. If they say, \u2018How is your family?\u2019 She says the election was rigged and stolen. You\u2019ll lose if you go soft. You\u2019re going to lose that base.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m not going soft,\u201d Masters responded. A few seconds later, after Trump hung up, Masters turned to the camera and said, \u201cI didn\u2019t think I went soft.\u201d
In Mesa, Trump declared, \u201cBlake Masters absolutely annihilated Mark Kelly in their debate.\u201d
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 \u201ctireless champion\u201d for \u201celection integrity.\u201d
Masters didn\u2019t 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 \u201crigged in any way, shape or form to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.\u201d
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen evidence of that,\u201d 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\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, who was linked in some media accounts to possible criminal activities.
\u201cI think it\u2019s a problem that the FBI forced Facebook \u2014 they pressured Facebook and other Big Tech companies \u2014 to censor true information about Hunter Biden\u2019s crimes in the weeks before the 2020 election, and so millions of Americans didn\u2019t get to read about that,\u201d Masters said.
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d Masters said.
Trump\u2019s conversation with Masters is a reminder that the first-time candidate won Trump\u2019s endorsement in the five-way Republican primary in June in part because of his willingness to claim the election was \u201cunfair\u201d or effectively stolen. Masters moved to the top of the GOP field only after securing Trump\u2019s backing.
Trump had long telegraphed to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, another Senate candidate, that he was watching to see what the state\u2019s top law enforcement officer would do with information collected as part of the state Senate\u2019s partisan review of Maricopa County\u2019s ballots in 2021.
GOP support:<\/strong>\u00a0Rick Scott rallies for\u00a0Senate hopeful Blake Masters<\/a>
Brnovich\u2019s office opened an investigation, but ultimately didn\u2019t find widespread fraud and lost the primary with Trump\u2019s 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\u2019 efforts during the primary, is helping now.
\u201cHe is, a little bit more behind the scenes. I don\u2019t know what happened there, but money is flowing in now,\u201d Masters said. Thiel held a fundraiser for Masters after the primary.
Trump urged Masters to \u201cTell Peter to help you.\u201d
Reach the reporter Ronald J. Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com<\/a> or 602-444-4493. Follow him\u00a0on Twitter @ronaldjhansen<\/a>.<\/em>
Support local journalism<\/strong>. Subscribe to azcentral.com<\/a> today.<\/em>
Subscribe to our free political podcast<\/strong>, The Gaggle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former President Donald Trump pressed Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters\u00a0to maintain the 2020 election was \u201crigged and stolen\u201d after Masters had conceded in a public debate he had seen no evidence of widespread fraud, a new\u00a0documentary shows.\u201cI got a lot of complaints about that. I don\u2019t know what you did with the debate, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}