Salmon proves it’s Trump’s GOP
Former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon better come up with a better stunt than sucking up to Steve Bannon to peel off MAGA votes from Trump protégé Kari Lake.
Salmon over the weekend shared a photo of him cozying up to his “friend” Steve Bannon and calling him “a true patriot and a tireless fighter for our country.”
That Bannon, who first helped Trump rise to power through the rightwing media outlet Breitbart, then as the president’s top aide until Trump fired him in 2017 and who’s now facing a criminal contempt of Congress charge for stonewalling the inquiry into the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Sucking up to Bannon is just a desperate attempt to catch up to Lake, the former TV news anchor who already snatched Trump’s endorsement by mimicking him on everything from campaigning style to spewing all sorts of conspiracies.
Salmon is one of multiple candidates seeking the Republican nomination for Arizona governor in 2022 to replace outgoing Gov. Doug Ducey.
Salmon has been a fixture in Arizona Republican politics and has the backing of a ton of fellow Republicans, judging by the long list of names on his “Finance Committee” that he unveiled on Monday.
That committee is led by Tom Hatten, the founder and CEO of Mountainside Fitness, who said the “momentum is behind Matt Salmon’s campaign.”
Good Lord. Hatten must live in a fantasy land where the name of Kari Lake must be fake news made up by conspiracy theorists (pun intended).
Lake has bewitched MAGA voters, not just with her videos karate-kicking and smashing TVs, but because she’s one of them.
Everyone else, including Salmon, is blowing hot air into Trump’s world hoping to catch the crumbs left by Lake.
“The future of the AZ Republican Party believes in defending our freedom, protecting our sovereignty, and putting #ArizonaFirst,” Salmon said in the same tweet where he’s pictured sucking up to Bannon.
That statement itself would have been fitting for a conservative Arizonan who has been a state senator, U.S. representative and gubernatorial contender.
But now, that kind of rhetoric linked to Bannon and Trump means spewing lies of a stolen presidential election, conspiracy theories and an America First agenda where apparently only white Americans matter.
Some conservatives privately lament the fact that GOP gubernatorial hopefuls have gone down the MAGA rabbit hole. Besides Salmon and Lake, they include Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, state treasurer Kimberly Yee, businessman Steve Gaynor and Southern Arizona restaurant owner Jorge Rivas.
Their private lament, though, makes them complicit. They have essentially bowed to Trump’s Republican Party, which has all but crowned Kari Lake as its nominee. And that makes Salmon’s sucking up to Bannon most pathetic.