Ruben Gallego Traps Kari Lake With Crucial Question in Senate Debate

Kari Lake tried to run from her MAGA record during a Wednesday night Arizona Senate debate against Democrat Ruben Gallego. But she flailed spectacularly when asked one crucial question.

While discussing Lake’s climate change denial on Wednesday night, Gallego also called her out over her election denialism.

“She’s still in denial about climate change. We should not be surprised by this. She’s still in denial about the 2022 election. And now, I give you one minute. You have one minute. Will you finally tell the people of Arizona, did you win or lose that election?”

“Can we, can I talk about water really quickly?” replied Lake, dodging the question. “Because I thought we were gonna do water.”

Like Trump, Lake continues to claim she won the 2022 gubernatorial election—and two years later, is still attempting to overturn the election results.

Wednesday’s Senate debate was a disaster for Lake in other ways as well. She also tried to avoid harsh questioning about her stance on abortion. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Lake wanted the state to implement an 1864 abortion ban and then complained when the ban wasn’t able to be enforced to her liking. During her Senate run, she has tried to flip-flop and hide from this fact, but Gallego reminded Arizonans of the truth.

“She was disappointed to find out the 1864 law, again the one that had no exceptions for rape or incest, was not going to get enforced, she said I hope the sheriffs will do their jobs,” said Gallego during the debate.

“That’s not true,” responded Lake under her breath.

“We have it on tape,” Gallego shot back. 

While backtracking on the issues, Lake bragged about her relationship with the former president several times on the debate stage to try and save her performance. “President Trump, my good friend, has called me ‘Border Kari,’” said Lake. “I love the nickname, and I’m going to go there to Washington, D.C., and help him build that border wall and secure the border.”

“You’ve been to Mar-a-Lago more than you have to the border,” said Gallego.

Lake and Gallego are competing for the seat currently occupied by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who opted not to run for reelection. The latest polls show Gallego up seven points against Lake. The result of the election could determine if the Democrats can hold on to their majority in the Senate.

Donald Trump still hasn’t come to terms with his crowd size.

On Wednesday, the Republican presidential nominee’s appearance in Reading, Pennsylvania, featured a slew of plainly false, misleading claims, including that there were no terrorist attacks during his administration, and that school-aged children were receiving gender-affirming surgery without their parents’ consent.

But one mistruth that Trump couldn’t seem to let go of was the reality of how many people are actually turning out to his repetitive events.

“You know, we get up and we talk, we talk, and I noticed something, somebody was telling me the other day, we do a lot of these beautiful rallies and it’s so great. We never have an empty seat. Never have—Look at them, 100,000 people or more. Never have an empty,” Trump said.

But beyond the scope of the camera, there were empty seats—and a lot of them.

The arena reportedly had a capacity of 7,200 seats, according to The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, but even as Trump began to speak, a couple hundred of them remained empty behind the press risers.

And even in the middle of Trump’s speech, people began to leave, leaving chair gaps directly behind him while on camera.

Trump’s low turnout is significant for a candidate who has frequently attacked his political opponents for their inability to draw as many people as he’s historically attracted to his boisterous, sprawling campaign stops.

In 2016 and 2020, Trump relied on the visual logic of his loaded rallies—and, by extension, the relatively lackluster crowds attending his opponents’—as evidence of his titanic popularity among everyday Americans. But whether Trump is on a high or a low note with his supporters, he’s equally likely to stretch the numbers, even going so far in August as to claim that his January 6 crowd size was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington (photographic evidence proves it wasn’t even close.)

It turns out, Elon Musk’s gracious offer of “free” Starlink high-speed internet services for those affected by Hurricane Helene isn’t free at all, and may be a ploy to trap new customers.

Last week, Starlink posted a link on X to a website explaining its offer to those seeking Hurricane Helene relief. “For those impacted by Hurricane Helene, or looking to support response and recovery efforts in affected areas, Starlink is now free for 30 days,” the post read.

Musk reshared the post, adding, “Starlink terminals will now work automatically without need for payment in the areas affected by Hurricane Helene.”

A closer look at the website, though, shows that the offer comes with a few caveats.

“Please note: A Starlink kit is required to access this free service. If you do not already have a Starlink kit, you will need to purchase one,” the site explains.

So how much exactly does a Starlink kit cost? New customers will still have to pay close to $400 for a Starlink kit, including shipping and tax, according to Gizmodo. Starlink has also warned of significant delays that may prevent orders from arriving for weeks, and encouraged those seeking its services to buy a kit from retailers such as Best Buy or Home Depot. There, the kit will cost more like $350 not including tax.

But that’s not all users will have to pay. “After 30 days, we will move you to a paid Residential subscription,” the SpaceX site reads. A paid residential subscription costs $120 per month, a significant upcharge from a typical internet service, which could cost around $40 per month.

So Musk’s offer isn’t much different from a typical free trial for his expensive internet service.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump patted himself on the back for getting Musk to provide Starlink services to the areas affected by Hurricane Helene, noting that he wasn’t actually sure “what the hell it is.”

Last week, SpaceX sent more than 10,000 Starlink terminals to North Carolina and other areas affected by Helene, according to The Hill. One Starlink terminal was planned to be deployed in each county.

In response to Hurricane Milton, Musk announced Wednesday that SpaceX and T-Mobile had accelerated the rollout of their direct-to-cell services, which will be “provided free of charge” to those “affected by hurricanes.”

Like Trump, Musk has been smearing federal hurricane relief efforts, claiming on X last week that FEMA employees were “actively blocking” Starlink terminals from being deployed.

A new poll shows that Kamala Harris has taken the lead among suburban and middle-class voters over Donald Trump.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows 47 percent of suburban voters supporting Harris versus 41 percent supporting Trump, a nine-point improvement for Harris over President Biden, who was behind Trump by a 43 to 40 percent margin. Harris also now leads Trump by a 45 to 43 percent margin among middle-class voters (people earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year), a reversal of Trump’s seven-point lead over Biden.

In 2020, Trump won middle-class voters by 52 percent to 47 percent, while Biden won in the suburbs by six points. Trump still leads Harris on who is better on the economy by 8 points, 46 percent to Harris’s 38 percent, according to Reuters. But gains in the suburbs are definitely a positive sign for the vice president, on top of other polls showing that she’s gaining support from working-class voters.

Overall, among registered voters, Reuters’s poll has Harris with a narrow 46 to 43 percent lead. Harris is also ahead of Trump in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, and she’s even making inroads among people who describe themselves as Republicans. The Reuters poll follows The New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this week, which shows a similarly narrow 49 to 46 percent lead for Harris.

Harris has a long way to go to ensure victory, with the election less than a month away. The polls don’t count everyone who will be showing up to vote in November, especially people who didn’t vote in 2020. Despite the record turnout four years ago, one-third of eligible voters didn’t vote back then. Polls show that Harris could make significant inroads with them if she pushes harder for a cease-fire in Gaza and an arms embargo against Israel.

Donald Trump played a strange video at his rally Wednesday meant to criticize Kamala Harris’s plan to increase taxes for the middle class. But a closer look at the video finds that none of the clips included advocated for increasing taxes on the middle class.

“She’s the taxing queen. She’s going to raise your taxes, where you’re going to be at least paying at least three thousand dollars a year more. Take a look,” Trump said before referring to the screen behind him.

Behind him, Trump played a video that edited together different times Harris had announced her plan to “get rid of that tax bill” and “get rid of that tax cut,” referring to the corporate tax rate cuts Trump had installed during his time in office. In fact, two of the included clips are of Harris explicitly talking about corporate tax rates.

Originally, the Trump administration had claimed that the corporate tax rate cuts at the center of his 2017 tax bill would boost household income by a “very conservative” estimate of $4,000 per household, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

In reality, workers who earned below an average of $114,000 saw no change in their earnings as a result of the corporate tax rate cut, while wealthy business owners and top executives reaped the benefits. Harris plans to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

The video also contained footage of Harris saying that estate taxes “are going to have to go up.” Harris has proposed a plan to lower housing costs that would be funded primarily through changes to the federal estate tax law and an increase to the corporate tax rate.

Harris has yet to publish a proposal for increasing the yield from estate taxes, whether it would mean upping the rate or lowering the exemptions. Currently, only 0.2 percent of U.S. adults are subject to the federal estate tax, according to IRS data.

The video also contained footage of Harris’s campaign co-chair, Chris Coons, defending her plan for a 25 percent tax on unrealized capital gains. It contains another clip of Bharat Ramamurti, President Joe Biden’s former National Economic Council deputy director, explaining that the plan would only affect those with a net worth of more than $100 million, or less than 1 percent of taxpayers—a fact that Trump’s video carefully elides.

The video also contained footage of Harris advocating for a carbon tax, which would penalize big polluters. While this could potentially increase energy costs for consumers, it is not a tax on the middle class.