Republican Kari Lake blasted Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) during Arizona’s U.S. Senate debate for trying to “reinvent himself” in a moderate light in hopes of winning the state.
Lake likened Gallego’s flip-flopping to an “extreme makeover” in her opening statement and called him out throughout the debate for waffling on key issues, including his support for a southern border wall after being an ardent critic of Trump’s efforts to build one:
“We are going to be hearing tonight from somebody who’s undergone an extreme makeover, to quote an old TV show,” Lake said.
She added Gallego “has voted with the most radical Democrats in Washington, DC, to tear open our borders that were delivered to him in a safe way with President Trump securing our border” and “has torn apart our economy and who has made our children and our lives less safe.”
“And so tonight, we’re going to watch as somebody tries to reinvent himself, somebody who used to be a member of the Progressive Caucus, somebody who has destroyed the very congressional district that he has served for the past ten years, where homelessness is on the rise,” she added.
Lake brought receipts to show Gallego’s flip-flopping on the border after he claimed Wednesday that he believes “a border wall is important” to a border security package.
“I just jotted down Ruben’s exact quote. He called it the dumb, stupid border wall,” Lake said. Gallego did say as much in 2017:
She also noted he authored a 2017 op-ed titled “Why we should not build Trump’s border wall.”
“We’re getting the Extreme Makeover version of Ruben tonight,” Lake said.
When the moderators shifted the topic to former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, Lake emphasized that Arizonans would “see the Extreme Makeover version of Ruben” when he answered:
“He’s going to say he’s now for the Trump tax cuts when he’s been against them,” she added.
Gallego, who in 2017 said the Trump tax cuts would be “stealing from the pockets of the middle class families and workers,” as the Arizona Republic noted, argued Wednesday for preserving middle-class tax cuts but raising taxes on corporations when asked about tax policy.
“We need to keep the middle-class portion of tax cuts. The tax cuts the corporations made billions of dollars off price gouging, those need to go up,” he said.
RELATED: Kari Lake Discusses Her Arizona Senate Race
M. Perdie, J. Knudsen / Breitbart News