Failed Arizona Republican candidate Kari Lake is a top contender to become President-elect Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico.
Citing two sources, Semafor reported Monday that Lake is being considered for what could be one of the most taxing ambassadorships of Trump’s term.
Lake heralds from a border state but was twice rejected by Arizona voters.
She ran for governor in 2022 and lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs and then lost her Senate race in 2024 to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Lake pushed that her 2022 election was rigged, after parroting Trump’s false election fraud claims after he lost the 2020 White House race to President Joe Biden.
Her embrace of Trump’s ‘big lie’ made her a MAGA celebrity and frequest guest at Mar-a-Lago.
Lake was a local television reporter before launching her political career.
The U.S.-Mexico relationship stands to be contentious under Trump.
Kari Lake (left) is being considered to be President-elect Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico. She lost an Arizona Senate race in November after losing her gubernatorial race in 2022, falsely claiming the election had been stolen
Kari Lake (right) campaigns with now President-elect Donald Trump (left) in Arizona in October. Lake heralds from a border state and shared similar views on immigration as the incoming president
Already he announced he would levy a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports if Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum doesn’t do more to control the flow of migrants over the Mexico-U.S. border.
Trump made the same threat to Canada, where there’s a lot less foot traffic over the border.
He said the Mexican and Canadian tariffs would apply to ‘ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders.’
‘This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!’
Trump spoke by phone to Sheinbaum on November 27, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid a trip to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump the day after Thanksgiving.
Additionally one of Trump’s major campaign promises is a mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
Sheinbaum said Thursday that she wants to strike a deal with the Trump administration in order to limit the number of third-country deportees that end up in Mexico.
A similar deal to sent deportees to their country of origin is already in place with the Biden White House.
Many migrants that have come over the border in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and during Biden’s tenure have come from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Lake softened her position on abortion during her 2024 Senate run, but stayed an immigration hardliner like other members of the MAGA movement.
She backed finishing Trump’s border wall, increasing the number of asylum judges and quickly deporting migrants who cross into the United States between ports of entry.
During a debate with Gallego in October, Lake blasted her Democratic opponent for not wishing to deport any illegal immigrants, while he pushed that she wanted to deport ‘Dreamers,’ undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children.
Lake said the country needed to be ‘dealing with the people who’ve poured in during the Bidenvasion, the 20 million people who have come in unvetted to our country, we must deal with them in order to save our homeland.’
‘We must send them back to their homeland,’ Lake said.
