Kari Lake once supported transgender youth. Now she denies they exist

OPINION: Kari Lake faints at the thought of “transgender bathrooms” and has repeatedly attacked the transgender movement. But she didn't always feel that way. So which is the real Lake?

Laurie Roberts
Arizona Republic
Kari Lake listens as Ted Simons, moderator and Arizona PBS host, explains the rules before a debate with Republican candidates ahead of the Aug. 2 primary election for the Arizona governor's office in Phoenix.

The unmasking of Kari Lake continues.

We already know this Republican candidate Arizona governor was for Democrats, supporting the likes of John Kerry and Barack Obama, before she was against them.

We know she supported amnesty before she began hyperventilating about “invaders” and “rewarding noncitizens for breaking our laws”.

Drag queens? She used to hang around with them and even allowed her young daughter to watch one perform at a baby shower. Now she claims they’re plotting to turn our children into sex demons.

Which brings us to transgender youth.

We all know what Lake thinks of the issue. She faints at the mere thought of “transgender bathrooms” and she’s pretty sure that “woke” teachers across the land are engaged in a campaign to turn our third-grade sons into daughters.

“A child’s gender is determined by God at conception, NOT by some Woke Teacher in the 3rd grade. This insanity must end,” she recently tweeted.

'Absolutely rooting' for transgender people

Yet CNN reports that just a few years ago Lake posted comments that were supportive of people undergoing gender transition.

“I am absolutely rooting for anyone who makes the difficult decision to transition,” she wrote in a 2015 Facebook comment about Caitlyn Jenner receiving an ESPYS award. “It is a decision that is never made lightly.”

Lake went on to express support for transgender youth.

“There are a lot of young people coming up today facing the same difficult dilemma needing support so we don't have so many suicides in this group of individuals,” she wrote, in response to someone. “No one is asking you to transition, they are just asking for a little bit (of) understanding or support."

In another 2015 post, Lake lauded the “inspiring journey” of a woman she’d profiled for FOX10 – one who’d made the transition from male to female.

"A big thank you to Juli Myers for her honesty and candor in explaining what the transgender experience is all about," Lake wrote. "I really enjoyed hearing about her interesting and inspiring journey."

Lake also has made a transition of sorts of her own on the issue of abortion.

Should abortions should be allowed?

These days, she’s a staunch opponent, calling abortion “the ultimate sin.”

"I always have and always will fight for the unborn!" she wrote on Facebook just a few weeks ago.

Yet six years ago, Lake was pondering whether a fetus at risk of serious birth defects should be aborted.

"Deep question of the day," she wrote in 2016. “With the Zika Virus expected to spread ‘explosively’ around the world and cases popping up already here in the US will this devastating virus change your stance on abortion?

“The virus stunts the skull development and thus brain development of a growing fetus. Causing their brains to be only half the size of a healthy human. The human toll of tens of thousands of ‘Zika babies’ is already alarming. The babies will face enormous medial problems and never develop normally. The medical, emotional and economic affect (sic) of the Zika Virus is going to be astronomical.

“Should abortions be easily attained for pregnant women who find out they're caring (sic) a baby affected by Zika?”

Kari Lake circa 2016 wondered whether there are devastating circumstances in which terminating a pregnancy should be allowed.

Kari Lake circa 2022 would take that decision out of the hands of a woman, her family and her doctor. Because she and the state, apparently, know best.

“Just because the baby is inside the womb and not outside the womb doesn’t make it any less valuable as a human being,” she told KTAR’s Mike Broomhead in May.

The Lake campaign didn’t respond to my question about how she reconciles her old face with her new face – or which of those two faces is, in fact, her real face.

Amnesty for immigrants here illegally 

I’ll admit I sort of like the 2016 model. That Lake had ripples of empathy and compassion, hinting at an undercurrent of compromise.

Consider her 2016 amnesty plan for the estimated 11 million immigrants here illegally:

“It would be impossible to deport that many people,” she wrote at the time. “Let’s just admit that up front. IMPOSSIBLE.”

She went on to outline her amnesty plan – “a way that wouldn’t uproot families, wouldn’t create a modern-day Trail of Tears. But would allow us to know who is here in our country, and get them on the rolls to pay into the system.”

These days, candidate Lake screams invasion and marches in lockstep with the rock-hard right.

“Except for an all-too-brief period under President Trump’s leadership, much of Washington D.C’s focus on immigration and border issues has been about incentivizing continued illegal immigration to satisfy big business’ lust for cheap labor, rewarding non-citizens for breaking our laws so that political leaders can virtue signal in the false name of compassion, and crassly pushing mass amnesty for millions of non-citizens as a means of solidifying a permanent political majority,” she wrote, on her campaign website.

I wonder what Kari Lake circa 2016 would think of Kari the candidate.

More importantly, I wonder whether her supporters ever stop to ask themselves the question:

Which one is real?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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