Ronna McDaniel, currently in the fight of her life to remain head of the Republican National Committee after a surprisingly bruising midterm election for the GOP, dismissed fellow Republican Kari Lake for losing her race for governor of Arizona.
In an appearance on Newsmax, McDaniel assessed the Republican Party’s performance in last month’s midterms, in which the party gained enough seats to flip the House but failed to wrench Senate control from Democrats.
“It’s roundly accepted at this point that the performance should have been better,” Newsmax host Rob Schmitt asked McDaniel on Tuesday night, before pinning the blame on the GOP “ground game.”
McDaniel defended her work in the midterms by pointing out GOP success in Florida, and blamed the failures on “ticket-splitting” as a consequence of bad candidates.
“Republicans are cannibalizing each other,” she said.
McDaniel proceeded to take a direct shot at Lake, who has yet to concede the election she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs last month. (Lake has, predictably, insisted the election was stolen, despite the utter lack of evidence supporting that claim.)
“Look at Arizona,” she said. “You’ve had the state party at war with the governor in that state for four years. The two candidates for governor, one wouldn’t endorse the other. You had one candidate saying, ‘If you’re a McCain voter, get the hell out of my rallies.
McDaniel is referring to Lake’s repeated attacks on the late John McCain, a hero to Republicans in Arizona but a villain to the pro-Trump right.
“We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we? All right, get the hell out,” Lake told a crowd last year. “Boy, Arizona has delivered some losers, haven’t they?”
Lake ended up losing her bid for governor, but remains an influential voice in the Republican Party thanks to her continued insistence, à la Trump, that she actually won the election. Both McDaniel and Lake are allies of the former president.
Watch above, via Newsmax.