PHOENIX It was a sweltering Arizona evening in late June, and Kari Lake was standing on a stage in a church community center in front of a giant poster of Kari Lake.

The promotional material for Lakes campaign for governor featured Lakes head and shoulders, floating alongside Donald Trumps head and shoulders, with a quote from Trump: Kari Lake is fantastic. She is going to win big.

Trumps endorsee was about to be interviewed by a reporter for a Japanese TV station in Gold Canyon, an upscale Phoenix suburb at the base of a mountain. Lakes own video team hovered in the background, capturing her every move. It was a million degrees and Lake was dry as a cactus.

It wasnt long into the interview that Lake turned to two of her favorite subjects: Trump and the media.

People of this country love Donald Trump, Lake said. Its the corrupt, rotten media thats been trying to tell them and brainwash them into believing that people dont like him.

Lakes remarks about a corrupt and rotten media are especially breathtaking considering the source: a former newscaster who, less than two years ago, was still delivering the news in one of the nations largest media markets.

I want you to know if the Arizona Repugnant, as Ive taken to calling it Lakes derisive nickname for the Arizona Republic newspaper if CNN and MSNBC are attacking people, those are the people you want to vote for, Lake told the crowd at a candidate forum just prior to her interview with the Japanese station.

How Lake came to leave the media or at least the story she tells about why she left the media is the foundational story of her outsider campaign for governor. It also mirrors the trajectory of the far rights accelerating break with reality during the COVID pandemic and in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a rupture driven by actual fake news and propaganda.

Lake, whose previous job involved discerning fact from fiction, is now closely aligned with the cowboy-hat-sporting state lawmaker Mark Finchem, a Trump-backed promoter of election falsehoods running for the role of chief elections officer. Together they help form the ranks of candidates who claim the 2020 election was corrupt and stolen, and both recently suggested , without credible evidence, that 2022s results may be compromised, too. Lake has also been endorsed by a slate of extremist figures tied to Trump, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.), MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, and Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers the fringes of the fringe.