Meghan McCain Laughs at Kari Lake Getting Booed in Arizona GOP Meeting

Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Senator John McCain, shared a laugh on social media on Sunday after Kari Lake was booed by some onstage at an Arizona GOP conference.

First gaining recognition as a longtime news anchor in the Phoenix area, Lake gained national notoriety when she ran for governor of Arizona in 2022 as a strongly pro-Trump Republican. Despite hopes for her success within the party, Lake ultimately became one of the many Trump-endorsed candidates in the last midterm cycle to come up short, losing the office to Democrat and former secretary of state Katie Hobbs. Claiming election fraud for losing, Lake and her legal counsel have filed and lost numerous lawsuits that were ultimately dismissed by the courts due to a lack of evidence

Lake has since then remained a vocal figure in GOP political spaces, making numerous public speaking appearances at conferences. She is also currently running for Senate in Arizona for the seat held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an independent. Polls have for a long while shown Lake coming up short against the Democratic candidate, Representative Ruben Gallego, but more recent polls have shown the candidates neck-and-neck or have given her the edge.

A survey conducted from January 5 to 6 by Public Policy Polling and the Replace Sinema PAC showed Gallego at 36 percent, Lake at 35 percent and Sinema in a distant third at 17 percent. In a two-way contest between Gallego and Lake, the GOP contender was narrowly ahead by 1 point. Gallego had the support of 45 percent of respondents whereas Lake was at 46 percent. The poll included 590 Arizona voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.

One of the many prominent targets Lake went after during her entrance into the political realm was John McCain, the one-time GOP presidential nominee and senator for Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018, with the former anchor painting him as a symbol of traditional GOP politics that she and Trump stood in opposition to. This often raised the ire of conservatives in Arizona, where he remains a well-liked figure, and with his surviving family members, most notably his daughter, Meghan McCain.

On Saturday, a clip made the round on social media of Lake onstage at a meeting of the Arizona Republican Party, during which she received a notably mixed reception, with many audible boos mixed in with cheers, when she decried Arizona's elections as "a corrupt mess."

"You may not agree with me on everything," Lake said onstage. "But what we can agree on is that elections in Arizona are a corrupt mess election. Can we agree that elections are a mess in Arizona? No"

On Sunday, Meghan McCain shared the clip to her account on X, formerly Twitter.

"Interesting reaction by AZGOP to Kari Lake," Washington Post reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez wrote in the initial post.

"Hahahahahahahaha - Kari Lake getting booed by the Arizona GOP is hilarious," Meghan McCain wrote in her response.

Newsweek reached out to the Lake campaign via email for comment.

After Lake lost the governorship to Hobbs in 2022, Meghan McCain celebrated her defeat in a social media post.

"Beautiful morning to all of you," she wrote at the time, which included a National Review article headlined, "McCain Republicans Vote, Too."