Donald Trump to Blake Masters: "That 2022 ad where I thought you were going to go down on that pistol in the desert was really hot, bigly hot, but you lost, so I'm going with the other creep this time."
There are too many stories today about Democratic infighting, so ...
The only thing that could make this primary race for a House seat in Arizona more creepy and disgusting would be to insert two more creepy and disgusting creatures who each back a different candidate. The race is Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, and the seat is open because current incumbent Debbie Lesko is retiring. If you know her name at all, it’s only because she was a rubber stamp for Trump. You certainly don’t know her from any meaningful legislation she championed in her four House terms.
Two Republican losers are getting most of the attention, and the race has gotten just as ugly as when they both challenged and lost to Democrats in 2022. Mark Kelley beat Blake Masters for the U.S. Senate race, and Kris Mayes beat Abraham Hamadeh for Attorney General. That was a great night for Arizona Democrats, who won Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and U.S. Senate! Remember the red wave?
Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance is supporting Masters in the primary. That’s no surprise since they are both spawns of billionaire nutter Peter Thiel. If people remember anything from Masters’ 2022 race against Mark Kelley, it’s probably an extremely icky ad where the gun-hugger gets his rocks off shooting a pistol in the desert—for a very long time, that’s the whole ad. He traveled to Milwaukee this week to get this.
Donald Trump also endorsed Blake Masters in the 2022 Senate race, just like he endorsed every one of the other statewide losers in Arizona (although if you talk to Kari Lake, she’s the Governor). In this year’s Republican primary for CD8, however, Trump has endorsed Abraham Hamadeh who, like Kari Lake, filed a shit-ton of appeals after he lost to Kris Mayes and they were all denied, just as Lake’s were (although she filed another appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court last week, seriously).
Probably because Hamadeh and Lake share a talent for filing frivolous lawsuits that the courts deny, she is backing him, and because Kari Lake is supporting Hamadeh, Donald Trump has endorsed him too. “No VP for you, Kari, but I’ll back your guy.”
Masters was forced by the Trump team to take down his campaign signs and ads that said, “Trump Endorsed Masters.” Yeah, he did, in the 2022 race, not this year. But here’s where it gets even squirrellier. Look at who else is in Blake Masters’ corner, one of the guys, so we’re told, who talked Trump into selecting Vance:
So, Vance and the big game killer support Masters, and Trump is in Hamadeh’s corner. Awkward! And it’s gotten really ugly, with Masters’ campaign signs showing images that make Hamadeh look like a Muslim extremist, and Hamadeh claiming Masters joined a vegan nudist colony. It’s all lies, of course, although I’d probably think more highly of Masters if he did play volleyball in the buff while munching tofu. It beats that 2022 gun fetish ad.
Now, in case you haven’t had your fill of the cray, there’s a clown car of other Republicans in this primary, including Anthony Kern, an indicted fake elector who is at the RNC and who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6; and Trent Franks, one of the most bonkers names from Arizona’s political past. I’ve shaken hands with less creepy reptiles, and most don’t have hands, that’s how creepy he is. Franks is a former Arizona congressman who resigned in 2017 after two of his staffers said he offered them millions of dollars to carry his child, and when they refused he retaliated. That’s when there was a House Ethics Committee that meant something.
I almost hesitate to mention the Democrat running in CD8 because he’s just not f*cking crazy enough, and I don’t want any of the above to spill over onto him. But if you want to help out a good guy, Gregory Whitten is a graduate of the JFK School of Government who worked in the Pentagon on nuclear defense programs, so he probably knows a lot about weapons, but I’ll doubt we’ll see him in an ad stroking one.
Please, Republicans, beat the hell out of one another, and you too Trump and Vance. In fact, J.D., maybe you can remind voters leaning toward Hamadeh what you once called the man who’s endorsing him—America’s Hitler.