Controversial MAGA media czar Kari Lake took potshots at a Democratic Senator on X and got herself almost immediately burned right back.
“Behold: [Senator Ruben Gallego] and his Cartel Daddy,” Lake’s official team account, Kari Lake War Room, posted on X Tuesday afternoon, accompanied by a picture of Gallego and his father. “One trafficked drugs. The other traffics bulls–t. Aren’t genetics fascinating?”
Arizona Sen. Gallego was having absolutely none of it and returned fire, reminding her he was living the American Dream.
This the beauty of America. You can be the son of a drug dealer. Reject his evil ways and end up a Senator by beating a 2nd rate newscaster that never got promoted to a national news desk. https://t.co/mdBYAQqr9x
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) September 9, 2025
“This is the beauty of America,” the Arizona Senator responded. “You can be the son of a drug dealer. Reject his evil ways and end up a Senator by beating a 2nd rate newscaster that never got promoted to a national news desk.”
It is not the first time Lake, a former Phoenix newscaster whom Gallego beat in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, has blasted her erstwhile Democratic opponent over his family’s history.
While there’s zero evidence the Iraq War veteran’s dad was ever involved with cartels, he’s spoken candidly in the past about how his father’s crimes are “a stain that our family has had to carry,” and how he believes this is “why my mom, my sisters and myself have worked our entire life to really live the American Dream.”
Following her loss to Gallego, Lake has assumed a new role in the second Trump administration—first as a senior adviser to the United States Agency for Global Media, and since July as the organization’s acting chief executive.
Her tenure at USAGM has also been marred by controversy, with the former local news anchor overseeing hundreds of layoffs, crusading to shut down Voice of America, and even proposing the total elimination of the agency in a move slammed by critics as a blatant attack on press freedoms and U.S. media influence abroad.
Lake’s loss to Gallego followed her unsuccessful 2021 Arizona gubernatorial run, for which she won the Republican nomination with the endorsement of President Donald Trump. She was hit with a handful of controversies, including her promotion of baseless claims that Trump had, in fact, won the 2020 election.
She also called for the imprisonment of those who accepted Trump’s defeat, among them her Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Katie Hobbs, and filed multiple legal challenges against her loss to Hobbs that lasted for two years before eventually being rejected by the Arizona state courts.
The Daily Beast has reached out to both Lake and Gallego’s offices for comment on the online spat.
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