Kari Lake’s appearance at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference is a concise case study in how thoroughly the MAGA movement depends on right-wing media to spread its lies, all while proclaiming a devotion to the truth.
Lake is an Arizona MAGA activist and failed candidate for governor and U.S. Senate. In December, President Donald Trump announced that he wants her to lead the Voice of America, a global news agency funded by the federal government.
At CPAC on Friday, Lake praised “Elon and the boys” for the work being carried out by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Lake claimed that DOGE has exposed that the government has been paying “social security benefits to 150 year-olds…and apparently there’s millions of them.”
That’s false.
Lake was amplifying a bogus claim that Elon Musk made at his Oval Office press conference a week earlier. “While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets,” noted WIRED magazine’s David Gilbert.
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News viewers Monday that “Elon Musk and the DOGE team” hadn’t “dug into the books,” but said “they suspect there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent social security payments.”
The next day, Trump himself repeated the claims about “millions and millions” of people over 100 years old fraudulently collecting benefits.
According to business journalist James Surowiecki, “It’s not just false, it’s absurd.”
As Gilbert and other journalists have explained, Musk’s claims may have been based on his young operatives’ unfamiliarity with older computer languages, or their ignorance of safeguards currently in place that automatically prevent such payments.
Or maybe it’s just made up to justify cuts to Social Security, the way the administration is using bogus fraud claims to justify mass firings and drastic cuts to scientific research, national parks, humanitarian assistance, and more.
DOGE claims don’t add up, but Lake claimed they had uncovered “the biggest fraud ever perpetuated on humanity.”
While promoting false claims about Social Security, Lake railed against the mainstream media. She complained about the Associated Press, which has been denied access to White House events for refusing to give in to Trump’s demands that they call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. “They’re criminal, they are,” said Lake, complaining about “fake journalists” who refused to recognize the “impossibility” of Biden’s 2020 popular vote total.
Lake gloated about the movement’s success at convincing MAGA supporters to rely on right-wing outlets for their news, saying “We rendered the fake news worthless and useless.”
Lake may be hoping that her praise of DOGE will change Musk’s declaration that the VOA should be shut down. She said at CPAC she understands why some people might want to close down the VOA, but that it is “soft power” for the U.S. and “worth trying to save.” She promised, unconvincingly, that under her leadership VOA “won’t become Trump TV.”
“We are fighting an information war and there’s no better weapon than the truth,” she said.
Lake, a former TV journalist, made unsuccessful runs for governor of Arizona in 2022 and U.S. Senate in 2024. She refused to concede her 2022 loss and waged a long and unsuccessful legal battle to overturn the results. Last year, she settled a defamation suit brought against her by a local election official she falsely blamed for her defeat. She continues to back Trump’s claims about the 2020 election.
