The Transformation Of Kari Lake

A renowned journalist turned Donald Trump protégé, Kari Lake's career trajectory took a sharp turn ever since publicly endorsing the Republican president. Lake has had a slew of tragic moments during her career, especially after stepping down from her position at the Fox affiliate in Phoenix, KSAZ-TV, to focus on her political ambitions. After unsuccessfully running for Arizona governor and a seat on the U.S. Senate, Lake found her way back to broadcast journalism. Trump picked her to head Voice of America (VOA), an international news organization part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lake addressed the concern that VOA will become Trump propaganda in an interview with The Epoch Times, saying: "Somebody said to me: 'You're just gonna turn it into Trump TV.' No, that's not what I want, I don't believe that's what President Trump wants, and I don't think the American people want that, but what we do want... we want the world to be tuning in and getting a fair and accurate portrayal of this great nation of ours."

Lake's career has certainly come full circle and has seen quite a transformation over the years.

Journalism wasn't Kari Lake's first career idea, but she became interested in the news after regularly watching it with her brother-in-law. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a communications degree in 1991 and began working for a local station as a production assistant before moving to her hometown station in Illinois. She transferred to NBC's News 12 station in Phoenix, but took a hiatus from Arizona to work at WNYT in New York.

In 1999, Lake found her cemented place in journalism when she joined the evening anchor shift at Fox 10 Phoenix, or KSAZ-TV. For 22 years, Lake was the face every Arizonan saw on their television in the evening, as she covered stories from a slew of burglaries to a good Super Bowl Sunday recipe. "Journalism is more than just regurgitating facts. It's also about connecting with people so that they're willing to share their stories with you," she wrote on Facebook in 2024.

Her decades-long stint on Fox 10 has mostly been overshadowed by her far-right, election-denying beliefs, but said beliefs were not always Kari Lake's preferred political stance. According to public records detailing Lake's voter history, the former news anchor registered as a Democrat the day after former president Barack Obama won the 2008 Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses, per NBC Arizona affiliate KPNX. Records suggest that Lake wasn't a quiet voter, either.

According to OpenSecrets.org, a campaign finance data logger run by the Center for Responsive Politics, a donor under the name K. Halperin of Phoenix, Arizona gave $350 to Obama in 2008. Halperin is the married name of Lake, who wed her husband, Jeff Halperin, in 1998. Under the employer column, the records listed ZenVideo, a company owned by Lake's husband. However, Lake has denied ever donating to Obama's campaign, claiming that Jeff made the donation on her behalf. The records obtained by KPNX report that Lake once again registered as a Republican in 2012.

The face of Arizona's evening news casually pulled a grenade pin with her teeth and exploded her entire career as a prestigious journalist. Kari Lake veered from co-anchor of Fox 10 Phoenix to social media provocateur when she tweeted baseless claims about the Red for Ed movement calling for a nationwide salary increase for teachers across America. In 2018, Lake wrote in a since-deleted post to X (then-Twitter): "What did I say? #RedForEd is nothing more than a push to legalize pot. Check this out," adding a screenshot of a T-Shirt emblazoned with a marijuana leaf and the hashtag "#GREENforED, which was being sold on the online marketplace TeePublic (via Phoenix News Times). "This is a big push to legalize pot and make it more savory by tossing teachers a bone with a substantial raise," she added, with the hashtag "#IHateTheDishonesty."

"2018 was kind of her demise, the end of her relationship with the station," Diane Pike, a former Fox co-worker of Lake, told Phoenix Magazine. "Her thing became, 'It's freedom of speech, I have the right to say what I want to say.'" Other co-workers insisted that the ideals Lake began spewing were new and shocking, and certainly not characteristic of the old peer they knew. "Her saying that abortion should be illegal — absolutely not," local Phoenix anchor Stephanie Angelo told The New York Times. "The Kari I knew would never have said that, and she wouldn't have believed it either." Lake's controversy as a journalist was highly accepted by the radical right political sphere that she admired, which catalyzed her switch from news to government.

Kari Lake announced that her anchor chair would be filled by a new face in 2021, when she decided to step down to focus on her political career and run for governor — deemed one of Lake's most controversial moments. "Sadly, journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom, and I'll be honest, I don't like the direction it's going," Lake said in a video announcing her retirement at Fox. In June 2021, Lake announced her gubernatorial bid on X, then centered most of her campaign around her unabashed claims that the 2020 election was rigged — for which she trended on X. She caught the eye of Donald Trump, who endorsed the GOP candidate because of her loyalist views.

She was a predictable page out of the MAGA playbook during her run for governor, promising Arizonans higher border security, refuting mask and COVID vaccine mandates, and praising pro-life legislature on abortion. Though she won the Republican primary race for governor, Lake eventually lost to Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs in 2022. Still, Lake wouldn't concede and even challenged the results in court, but failed to prove they were inaccurate. Her push to hold a place in government didn't stop there.

She may have lost in the race for governor, but her prominent space in Donald Trump's orbit led her to launch her 2024 bid for U.S. Senate for Arizona. "I am not going to retreat. I'm gonna stand on top of this hill with every single one of you, and I know you're by my side as I formally announce my candidacy for the United States Senate," Lake said in her 2023 announcement speech, per CNN. She doubled down on her resistance to the 2020 presidential and 2022 Arizona governor results, making it a centerpiece of her run for Senate.

"I am never going to walk away from the fight to restore honest elections," she told supporters during her campaign (via Roll Call). "I don't care who you vote for. If you vote Democrat, if you vote Republican, that's between you, God and the ballot box, OK? You vote how you want, but I want your vote to count. I even want those fake news fools back there, I want your vote to count as well." Like her failed gubernatorial race, Lake won the Republican nomination,but eventually lost the seat to Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego. And with that, Lake was right back where she started.