00:00Mr. Chair, Ms. Lake, in response to a question from Senator McCormick, you said that you were
00:05proud of the way you ran your campaigns in 2022 and 2024. I want to ask you a question. On
00:11September
00:1127, 2024, you gave a TV interview about your opponent, then House member, now our colleague,
00:18Senator Gallego, in which you said he is, quote, controlled by the cartels. His own father was a
00:25Colombian drug trafficker, and so he's got links to the cartel. A PolitiFact article on October 3,
00:32a few days later, rated that pants on fire. And the title of the article, and I'd like to submit
00:38it
00:38for the record, Mr. Chair, is in Arizona Senate race, Carrie Lake fabricates link between Ruben
00:45Gallego and drug cartels. Now, this is pretty undiplomatic behavior. And just for my colleagues,
00:53I hope you might read this story. Ruben, our colleague, has written a memoir about his
01:01very troubled upbringing and about the fact that he was abandoned by his father, who then did get
01:07into criminal trouble. He was abandoned by his father. He had to be raised by his mother. He was
01:12so furious at his father that he changed his last name to be his mother's maiden name, not his
01:18father's father's name. He talks about graduating from boot camp as a Marine. And after years of
01:25abandonment, his dad tried to show up and take credit for his own graduation from Marine boot camp. And
01:32he writes about how furious that made him and still makes him. He writes about how ashamed he is of
01:38his
01:38father, how angry he is of his father. Abandonment by a father is one of the most seminal tragedies of
01:46life.
01:46I mean, go back to the biblical phrase, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? This is not
01:51something
01:52to fool around with. Ms. Lake accused one of our sitting colleagues of being controlled by the
02:02cartels. You had no evidence then, nor do you have any evidence now that our colleague Senator Gallego is
02:08controlled by cartels. Do you, Ms. Lake? Well, we provided the receipts. The father was
02:16a high level drug trafficker trafficking hundreds of thousands. You said that Ruben Gallego was
02:22controlled by the cartels. You provided no evidence. This was rated pants on fire a lie.
02:30You had no evidence then, and you have no evidence now that Ruben Gallego is controlled by cartels.
02:38Isn't that right? Thank you for the question, Senator Cain. I do appreciate it. I don't know,
02:44and I'm not here to do reputational control or reputational repair. How about an apology to our
02:49colleague? If you made that claim he was controlled by cartels, and now you're saying you don't know
02:54what the facts are, then you're acknowledging that your charge was wrong. How about apologizing to our
03:00colleague? I don't believe my charge was wrong. Ruben Gallego's father is a high level trafficker.
03:06That's not the question I asked you. He was a felon. That's not the question. You asserted he
03:10was controlled by cartels. You had no evidence then. You have no evidence now. You're unwilling
03:16to admit it. And here's something that's even worse, Mr. Chair. That was during the heat of a
03:21campaign. Sometimes we say things during campaigns that we go too far. She's continued to repeat this
03:27as a sitting member of the Trump administration. A couple months ago, Ruben Gallego put out a tweet
03:33against the invasion of Venezuela. He didn't mention Ms. Lake. He just said he was against it.
03:40And she, at 2.35 in the morning, the following day, responded, you are a member of a Mexican cartel
03:47family. You are also a fraud. No one is surprised by your take. She's continuing to repeat a lie.
03:55She just told the committee she has no idea whether it's true or false, but she was glad to say
04:00it,
04:00and she won't retract it now. That should be disqualifying.
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