Blake Masters/Twitter
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | Arizona Republic
Former President Donald Trump called into Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters’ campaign event Saturday night, where he said the country is “going to hell” given the war in Ukraine and high inflation, and praised Masters for showing up to his own event to talk about election-integrity issues.
Trump said he broke away from a 500-person wedding at his Florida resort to call into Masters’ campaign event, held outdoors at a Chandler business near Arizona Avenue and Highland Street and attended by more than 100 people.
Masters, a venture capitalist, had challenged state Attorney General Mark Brnovich to debate his office’s handling of an investigation into the 2020 election, where Trump lost Arizona by 10,457 votes to Joe Biden. Many of Trump’s supporters think Brnovich’s action in the matter could lead to a reversal of Trump’s loss, and Masters’ remarks stoked their beliefs of a stolen election.
Brnovich was never expected to attend the event and did not.
“I just want to thank you all, you’re an incredible group. I heard Blake was the person that showed up and I want to thank Blake,“ Trump said through a cellphone to a cheering crowd, baselessly asserting there were millions of corrupt votes in 2020.
Trump claimed Brnovich wanted “to take that middle path” with his recent “interim report,” which made no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of any individuals and did not cite specific instances of possible crimes. It did, however, note that the “investigation is still developing in material ways.”
Trump said of Brnovich: “He found all sorts of things, but he didn’t want to do anything about it.”
A spokesperson for Brnovich did not immediately respond to Trump’s remarks. The attorney general has previously said he would follow facts and evidence “and do what the law requires” for his investigation.
Days after the 2020 election, Brnovich rejected claims of election fraud in Arizona during an interview on Fox Business. He attributed Trump’s loss to voters who split their tickets, voting for Democrats in the presidential and U.S. Senate races and for GOP candidates down the ballot.
