Kari Lake Has a Terrifying Prediction Ahead of the 2024 Election

One of Donald Trump’s favorite acolytes, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, wants MAGA to be strapped in time for the elections coming up in November.

“We are going to put on the armor of God. Then maybe strap on a Glock,” Lake said to cheers at a rally Sunday.

“You can put one here,” she continued, touching her right hip. “And one in the back, or one in the front, whatever. You guys decide.”

The apparent call to violence comes alongside Senator Tom Cotton’s post on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday, in which he suggested that peaceful protesters who block traffic should be removed with physical violence. The rhetoric hints at possible violent reactions to the election results, whether they turn out good or bad for MAGA Republicans. Trump himself has warned that “it’s gonna be a bloodbath” if he loses in November (he later claimed he was talking about the automotive industry) and said that 2024 could be the “last election we ever have.”

The memory of the January 6 attack now looms large over every election in the United States, and right-wing figures are making no attempt to calm the mood. The fact that Trump’s trial over the insurrection has been held up by the Supreme Court also sends the message that encouraging violence carries little, if any, real consequences.

Lake is running to fill the seat vacated by the quixotic Kyrsten Sinema, who resigned from the Senate in March. Lake herself lost the race for Arizona governor in 2020 after running a hyperbolic, fearmongering campaign focused on voter fraud and the “Big Lie,” and refused to concede afterward. This time, Lake is up to her old tricks and has even been accused of blackmail by other Arizona Republicans.

But polls have her running behind Democrat Ruben Gallego in the Senate race, and the news that the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 160-year-old law banning nearly all abortions in the state won’t help Lake’s cause. As a result, she’s desperately flip-flopping on abortion, even trying to run away from her previous stance.

The jurors in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial are anonymous, with their names only shared among the trial’s judge and prosecution and defense teams. But some legal experts are still concerned about their safety.

Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori warned Tuesday that the onslaught of available information about the forthcoming jury—which included a Washington Post reporter outing one potential juror’s profession and identifying the businesses where they work—might be too much to keep them safe during the first criminal trial of a former president in U.S. history.

“What’s going through the minds of these jurors right now?” prompted CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

“I have some thoughts about the jury’s position here,” replied Khardori. “First of all, I imagine it’s somewhat surreal, right? To be selected. I am wondering if some of them are a little unhappy with the amount of information that is being made public about them.”

But Khardori doesn’t blame the press for their role in amplifying the sensitive details. Instead, he blames the gatekeepers of the information, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office and Judge Juan Merchan, for failing to safeguard it.

“Now, this is not the fault of the media. I wanna be very clear about this,” he continued. “Responsibility to guard all of the very specific information that we’re learning resides with the D.A.’s office and with the judge.”

“I’m a little surprised that we are learning all of this because I do not think this jury is gonna remain anonymous necessarily if they keep this up,” Khardori said.

“You’re worried about their safety?” asked Blitzer.

“Yeah, I’m worried about their safety,” Khardori said. “I mean, it’s up to them if they want to write a book after all this is said and done, but that’s their option. They shouldn’t be outed this way. They’re not supposed to be outed this way.”

There’s a reason that the potential jurists’ identities are supposed to be so carefully guarded. When Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted in Georgia, the people on the grand jury were kept anonymous. But when their names and other personal, identifying information about them began circulating on the internet, a wave of threats quickly crashed on top of them.

That prompted Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against Trump, to take extraordinary measures to help the jurists maintain their anonymity, including keeping them not just anonymous but also partially sequestered.

“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” Kaplan warned them after the trial ended in January.

Why did Donald Trump fall asleep during his hush-money trial? His lawyer, Alina Habba, has quite the excuse: “He reads a lot.”

Trump has been dogged by reports that he has dozed off in court both days so far of his hush-money trial. Habba defended him in an interview on Newsmax Tuesday evening.

“I wasn’t there. I find that a remarkable story, at best. President Trump, he reads a lot,” she said. “He’s been sitting there, as he’s forced to, at the threat of going to jail if he’s not sitting there, for what I assume would be a very mundane day.

“Look, I wasn’t there, so I can’t comment on that,” Habba continued. ”I find that to be a ridiculous thought, though.”

Habba’s presence in court notwithstanding, what we know about Trump’s reading habits calls her words into question. When he was in the White House, memos and policy papers were kept to a single page, with plenty of graphics and maps to hold his attention, according to accounts from back then. His name was included multiple times in briefing documents so he wouldn’t lose interest while reading them.

In fact, even in his younger days, Trump didn’t seem to read much and was even caught in a lie when asked about his favorite book in a 1987 interview on CNN. The one thing he is credited with avidly reading? Clippings of print media.

“I call the president the two-minute man,” one source close to Trump told The Washington Post in 2017. “The president has patience for a half-page.”

Of course, Habba has always staunchly defended Trump to the press regardless of the latest reports, even comparing him to Nelson Mandela on Tuesday. She may need to brush up on her legal expertise, though, as she thinks Trump being legally required to attend every day of his criminal trial is a violation of “due process.”

One of Donald Trump’s former attorneys advocated for the removal of the court-induced gag order on the GOP presidential nominee in his hush-money trial, arguing that it’s actually completely within Trump’s rights to intimidate witnesses and family members of court staff.

Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday, constitutional attorney Alan Dershowitz claimed that Trump shouldn’t be prevented from lobbing threats and insults at the adult film actress he allegedly paid off ahead of the 2016 election, or presiding Judge Juan Merchan’s  daughter, who runs a political campaign firm that has worked with Democrats.

“The gag order is unconstitutional,” Dershowitz said. “You cannot prevent a defendant from attacking the witnesses, from attacking the judge’s daughter if the judge’s daughter could be a basis for disqualification.”

Merchan, meanwhile, has already refused to recuse himself, arguing that his daughter’s work holds no bearing on his own—which is exactly what a judicial ethics commission concluded last year.

“There’s no agenda here,” Merchan told the Associated Press in March. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.”

The partial gag order—which Trump and his current staff of lawyers have repeatedly condemned—formally forbids Trump from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, or any of their family members. Comments about jurors are also prohibited, as well as comments about witnesses, but wiggle room still exists within the order that allows Trump to attack Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, or anybody else, for that matter, including his political rivals.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Trump from violating the order. On Monday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office signaled that it is pursuing action to hold Trump in contempt of court for continuing to make veiled threats against participants in the case on his Truth Social account—including one post that was made after court had already begun for the day. The former president will have to appear for a contempt hearing on April 24 to determine whether his online language violated the order.

During jury selection in a criminal trial, it’s important that prospective jurors be screened for any potential biases toward the defendant or prosecution. In Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, this meant the former president had to sit through the second day of proceedings listening to jokes and memes publicly posted on social media at his expense.

Some jokes were dated, as even six-year-old social media posts were read out in court.

It wasn’t all bad for the former president: Some jury candidates read Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, and one was even a fan of The Apprentice, Trump’s reality TV show.

Prospective jurors in the hush-money case had to fill out a questionnaire that included questions about what kind of media they read and watch, and whether they’ve supported far-right groups such as the QAnon movement or the Proud Boys.

In March, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that identities of jurors in this case, for their own safety, should be kept completely secret from the public—but not Trump and his defense attorneys. It’s for good reason: The grand jury in Trump’s election interference case in Georgia were doxxed by far-right conspiracy theorists. The jury in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against the former president were kept fully anonymous, and partially sequestered too.

It remains to be seen if Trump will be able to follow Merchan’s instructions and refrain from exposing any of the jurors in his first criminal trial. His many gag orders show that he has trouble keeping his mouth shut, and his supporters aren’t known for respecting the legal process, either.