Kari Lake keynote speech at CPAC Hungary 2023: transcript

Key points

• She left her news career during COVID because she felt the coverage was not fully truthful, and she cited a Bible verse as her sign.
• Her campaign in Arizona focused on securing the southern border, stopping fentanyl and cartels, strengthening families and ending street homelessness.
• She said Budapest reflects the policies she wants for Arizona, and she praised Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
• She read headlines about CPAC Hungary and argued that media attacks show who is fighting for the people.
• She closed by saying God put the audience here for this fight and thanked Hungary and the organizers.

Chapters

1. 0:00Leaving journalism after COVID
2. 1:03Deciding to run for office in Arizona
3. 2:21Border security, family policy and Budapest
4. 3:35Strong leaders and the fake news
5. 5:37Reading headlines about CPAC
6. 7:39Ukraine war funding and peace talks
7. 8:53Closing call to keep fighting

Full transcript

0:00It changed all of our lives. COVID struck. And as I was reading the news and explaining what was happening to the good people of my state, I started to realize that some of that news wasn't really true, that there wasn't the full story being told. And so I made a very difficult decision to walk away from my career that I love so much. I just decided that if I can't be fully truthful with the people, then I don't want to lend my heart, my soul, my voice, and frankly, my reputation to propaganda. which is what it was becoming and so it took a great a great deal of courage to step away because i'm going to be honest i was walking away from a large paycheck and that was not easy to do to walk away from that but i i prayed to god and i said god give me a hint give me a sign if i'm doing the right thing the one day in my office i opened up my bible and the first verse i saw was first Timothy chapter 6 verse 7 you bring nothing into this world and you take nothing out of it and I thought what good is a paycheck if we're losing our

1:03country so with that I walked away I stepped away from my career and I really never regretted it for a second but the amazing thing happened I put a video out to the people of Arizona telling them why I was leaving and they said thank you for being honest we've appreciated your coverage you've been one of the the bare ones. Would you please consider running for office? Would you consider getting into politics? To which I immediately thought, well, they must hate me. If they want me to leave the corrupt world of news and go into the even more corrupt world of politics, they must think I'm crazy. But I decided this is really what our founding fathers in America had planned. They planned for real moms, dads, citizens to step forward and run for office.

1:50And so I took a great leap of faith. I stepped into the political arena and we created the greatest movement of mama bears and dads and a great political movement where all kinds of people got involved. Students got involved. It was truly one of the greatest political movements the state of Arizona had ever seen because it was really set up with policy similar to what you're doing here in Hungary. I had no idea when we decided that our top priority was going to be to secure our southern border, to stop the invasion at Arizona's border.

2:21Our borders in Arizona, at the time, were being controlled by the drug cartels in Mexico, and the fentanyl was pouring across and was killing our babies, our children. And I said, this is nuts. We've got to stop this. And so with that, I said, we're going to build a wall. We're going to protect our citizens. I want to be that mama that would protect my family, and I want to be that kind of a governor for Arizona. So we had an amazing movement, and we were going to do all kinds of great things to strengthen the family, much like what you're doing here, so that families were able to work and raise their family and have a healthy environment for the children and have an education where our kids are not being indoctrinated, but rather they're getting skills training so that when they get out of school, they can go out and be contributing members.

3:05We also have a plan to end homelessness and chronic street homelessness so that our streets are safe. Little did I know I would walk into Budapest and basically see all of the policies that we dream for in Arizona, right here in this beautiful city. My daughter came along with me. She's somewhere. She's right here in the front row. And unfortunately, the airlines lost her bags. So she spent the day roaming the beautiful streets of Budapest, shopping and gathering a few things to wear.

3:35and i didn't worry about her for one second i knew she was exploring this beautiful place and that's the kind of safety and security that every mother should be able to see for her children. And we can do that if you put forth stronger leaders. Unfortunately, like your Prime Minister, Victor Orban, who had the great pleasure to meet yesterday. What a gentleman, what a kind man, what a hardworking man. And President Trump, who we heard from earlier. The people who are the truth-tellers and the peacemakers who are being destroyed by the fake news. We call it fake news, and I think you call it that as well, right? And we have to push back against this megaphone for the globalists. They will destroy our globe if we allow them to. You know, it's interesting because I've worked in the media. It's always opposite day in the media. If they say that what you're doing

4:35is bad, it's probably good. If they say that what's being done is good, it's probably bad. And I always said on the campaign trail, before they stole our election from us in Arizona on November 8th, I said, you need to vote for the people who the fake news is attacking. Those are the people who are fighting for you. The Viktor Orban's of the world. the Donald Trumps, the Cary Lakes, the people who are willing to take the hits in the media. It's almost gotten to a point where if you're not strong enough...

5:05To take criticism from the fake news. If you're not strong enough to not worry about being cancelled on social media, then maybe you're not strong enough for the fight. And so we need to get strong. We need strong leaders. We need strong mothers and fathers who aren't afraid of the criticism. Who aren't afraid to be called names because they stand up for their children, their children's education. They don't want their children to be indoctrinated in school. And we have that. That's growing in America. I'm so happy. You know, one of the things my team does every day is they print out the news headlines.

5:37I haven't gotten cold and heavy, the headlines real quick. It's almost comical. Hang on. Every day they print out the headlines, and I feel like I'm a planet crazy. I call it planet crazy because if you believe what the fake news says, you really do start to think we're on planet crazy. Here we go. This is just on CPAP. Hungary hosts European CPAP in hopes of rallying global far right. Orban's vilification of migrants as that center stage in CPAP returns to Hungary.

6:11I mean, this is crazy stuff. Vilification? How about Orban is pushing an agenda that helps the people of this country, that protects the people of this country? That's how that headline should have been written. Hungary's autocratic leader tells U.S. conservatives to join his culture war. Now, I would write that with a strong leader like Viktor Orban encouraging. Mothers and fathers and people around the globe to protect their families. Let's see, this is one of my favorites.

6:52Congressman Paul Gosar, one of the greatest congressmen to walk the halls of Congress in our great country. Paul Gosar to share stage with members of party founded by Nazis. This is insane stuff. I'll get to the last one here. They call this ultra-conservative. You know what? I've been called worse. Here's one, and this one hits us. Carrie Lake and Paul Gosar to appear with far-right politicians. You know what? I'll take that. So far, we have been right. We continue to allow them to bully us with their propaganda, which frankly is garbage.

7:39Thank you. Our children's future. So we need to fight. What the media is saying is all lies, and they wonder why we don't believe them when they start to talk about the war in Ukraine. We start to really wonder, but they're telling us the truth about everything. I'm going to tell you right now, and I'm out of time, but as a mother from Arizona, we've sent $170 billion to Ukraine while we have a wide open border and we have drug cartels running our state. We can't afford to do that anymore. We need to invest in America.

8:22and I believe that the first way out of this war to bring the peacemakers in and I understand that Prime Minister Orban has offered up this beautiful city for peace talks the only way to stop that war is to turn off the money to it and I believe that in America we need to turn off the money to this war and bring together Zelensky and Putin sit them down here in this beautiful country in this beautiful city and sit them at a table and say come to peace we need peace in this world The mothers demand peace for our children.

8:53I thank you so much. It's because I know that God doesn't make mistakes. God put each and every one of us here, each and every one of us here at this pivotal moment in human history, in American history, in Hungarian history, that he put us here for this fight. We are fully equipped for this fight. And everybody can play a part in it. So let's continue fighting for our children and for our countries. Thank you, Hungary. Thank you, Miklas. And thank you, CPAP, for inviting me.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Kari Lake - keynote speech at CPAC Hungary 2023.ogg by Elekes Andor (2023-05-05), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. The transcript, summary and chapters on this page are shared under the same licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.