A video of Fox News host Sean Hannity announcing the narrow defeat of Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in Arizona on Monday has become viral on social media, gathering over 476,000 views.
“Apparently, they did have a drop in Arizona, and Fox is projecting that Democratic Secretary of State—who should have recused herself—Katie Hobbs has been elected governor of Arizona,” Hannity declared, implying that Hobbs should not have remained election chief while running for governor.
The race was called on Monday by the Associated Press in favor of Hobbs, the Arizona’s secretary of state who fought against efforts by former President Trump’s allies to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
After the race was called on Monday, Lake failed to concede defeat, writing on Twitter: “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
Hannity, like Lake, has embraced the debunked conspiracy claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or stolen.
Only weeks after the 2020 election, Hannity was exchanging texts with Mark Meadows, then-White House chief of staff, saying that a Biden’s victory was “just mathematically impossible,” according to a report by CNN.
In another message, he wrote: “Everyone knows [the election] was stolen. Everyone.”
With nearly all of the ballots counted, Hobbs has obtained 50.39 percent of the votes, while Lake gathered 49.61 percent. The nearly 0.8-percentage point difference between the two candidates does, at time of writing, rule out an automatic recount, which would be triggered if Hobbs’ lead slips to 0.5 percent of the total votes cast, according to a new Arizona law.
But Lake could still contest the results.
In a post published on Trump’s Truth Social platform, the former president commented on Lake’s defeat, appearing to suggest some the vote-counting in Arizona has somehow cheated his pick out of victory.
“Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there!” he wrote.
The gubernatorial race in Arizona was one of the most high-profile in the country, and one that Trump likely counted on in the wake of a 2024 presidential campaign bid expected to follow the midterms.
Hobbs’ victory has flipped the state for Democrats, delivering another blow to former President Trump in the midterms, where many of his endorsed candidates have underperformed against their Democratic rivals and lost in battleground states.
Hobbs is the first Democrat to be elected governor in Arizona since Janet Napolitano in 2006. She is to succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.
Celebrating her victory on Twitter, days after the votes were cast, Hobbs wrote: “Democracy is worth the wait.”
