Trump Chastised Blake Masters for Not Pushing 'Rigged' Election in Debate

Former President Donald Trump called Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters to complain that he did not adequately push false claims of a "rigged and stolen" 2020 election in a debate this month.

Masters, who is hoping to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, received the call from Trump two days after the October 6 debate, according to a Tucker Carlson Originals documentary produced for the Fox News streaming platform Fox Nation. Trump has endorsed Masters and appeared with him during multiple rallies in Arizona.

While Masters has pushed the former president's repeated false claims that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him, including in campaign ads that aired before the Republican primary, he described President Joe Biden as the "legitimate president" and admitted that he had not "seen evidence" of massive fraud during the debate.

"We got a lot of complaints about that, I don't know what you did with the debate," Trump told Masters after the debate, according to a clip of the documentary shared to Twitter by NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard.

"I heard you did great on the debate, but a bad election answer," Trump added. "You've got a lot of support, you've got to stay with those people."

Masters replied by insisting that his campaign would "absolutely stay with" those who support 2020 election falsehoods, before boasting about having "put Mark Kelly on the ropes."

Trump agreed that Kelly's debate performance was "terrible" and praised Masters for his "excellent" showing before urging him to follow the example of Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who has frequently pushed election fraud claims during her campaign.

"If you want to get across the line, you gotta go stronger on that one thing," said Trump. "Because that was the one thing we got a lot of complaints about. Look at Kari—Kari's winning with very little money. And if they say, 'how is your family,' she says, 'the election was rigged and stolen.'"

"You'll lose if you go soft," he added. "You're gonna lose that base ... I've never come in to do a rally where the person lost, not once."

According to an average of recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, Masters was trailing Kelly in the Senate election by 2.5 points as of Tuesday. However, the site has also predicted that Masters will win the election, based on a model that assumes polls are underestimating support for Republicans.

The polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight projects that Kelly is "favored" to retain his seat, giving the Democrat a 74 percent chance of winning the election and Masters a 26 percent chance.

During a campaign event in the week following his debate with Kelly, Masters reportedly predicted without evidence that "machines" could ultimately rob him of victory in November, according to The Daily Beast.

Newsweek has reached out to the Masters campaign and Trump's office for comment.