‘Retaliation’: Media outlet airs election loss for Kari Lake after Lake’s public criticism

With nearly two weeks to go until Arizona’s gubernatorial election, Fox 10 appeared to announce the election results Thursday with a graphic showing Republican Kari Lake losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs, who “won” 53% of the vote. 

Current polls have Lake leading Hobbs by nearly 3 points. 

Fox 10’s error, which lasted for 30 seconds during a segment on rising rent prices, came hours after Lake singled out the news outlet during one of her signature assaults on the mainstream media. 

Lake, once a Fox 10 employee, torched the media at a press conference Thursday for aggressively running a story about a robbery at Democrat Katie Hobbs’ campaign headquarters. Hobbs released a statement suggesting Lake was behind it, a false claim which was nevertheless bolstered by news outlets. 

The alleged thief, Daniel Mota Dos Reis, was arrested Thursday. Police say the crime was not politically motivated. 

“My desperate opponent, who is sinking like lead weight in water, pulled a stunt, and you guys fell for it,” Lake told reporters at a press conference Thursday. “She put out a defamatory statement, and you all ran with it. You didn’t do your journalistic duty. It was malpractice of journalism that I’ve never seen before.” 

“I have a story for you,” she challenged. “We had an incident this morning at our campaign headquarters. Now, I didn’t go crazy and I didn’t throw a bunch of statements out, but we had an incident where somebody was seen rummaging in our campaign office. And I have evidence to believe it may have been Katie Hobbs herself who was involved in this.” 

Then, she called out her former employer, Fox 10. 

“And so I want you to take the same vigor you put into the story, the lies that were spread yesterday, and I want to make sure you guys — I saw last night — Fox 10 News, my old employer, wow,” Lake continued. “They actually did more to protect the criminal in this case, they blurred his face.” 

“They protected Katie Hobbs because they’re carrying her water, and they defamed me. They put defamatory statements, lies about me,” she said, before saying the reason was due to her lead in the polls. 

“The reason that they did that is that this was the real news yesterday that none of you wanted to cover,” she said holding up the latest poll results. “We’re up 11 points. You’re in a frenzy panic because your chosen candidate is not winning. You didn’t wanna cover [new polls] so you had to run with a completely garbage, bulls*** story.” 

Hours later, Fox 10 was reporting Lake’s election loss. 

“WOAH.. right after my press conference going after the Media,” Lake tweeted above a clip of the Fox 10 segment. “Retaliation?” 

Fox 10, also known as KSAZ-TV, released a statement about the error. 

“At 5:50 [p.m.] during the Fox 10 newscast today a small graphic appeared on the lower left side of the screen showing test results for the upcoming election,” the statement read. “These were generated by the Associated Press which distributes results to clients. This graphic was never meant to go on air — the numbers were only part of a test. The station has taken steps to make sure this cannot happen again.”