Cable news ratings; ABC’s Karl presses Lake over 'stolen' election claims; MSNBC’s Cross makes ugly comments about Kanye and Carlson

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl faced off with Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, regarding baseless claims she's made about the 2020 election being "stolen" from Donald Trump.
On Sunday, Karl asked Lake if she would try to change the election laws as governor, but she declined to give specifics.
He continued to press the candidate, asking if she would "look to limit early voting and mail-in voting in Arizona." Lake responded by claiming she would ensure "our elections are honest and transparent."
Karl tried again, and Lake responded with an untrue accusation: "Let me just give you a couple of facts: Two thousand mail-in ballots were accepted by Maricopa County after Election Day in 2020. After Election Day."
Karl ensured to report that election officials in Maricopa County said this was “just not true."
Narrating the interview, Karl shared, “Lake offered other unsubstantiated and disproven claims," noting that Arizona’s election in 2020 was “the most scrutinized in the state’s history, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud.”
"740,000 ballots violated the chain of custody requirements in Maricopa County," Lake later said, prompting Karl to reply, "I mean, first of all, it’s, it’s not true."
When ABC contacted Maricopa County officials about this claim, they pointed to a statement they had issued last May “saying that the county always had control of the ballots, adding they, quote, were sealed in envelopes and secured in boxes that bipartisan couriers are prohibited from opening.”
Props to Karl for holding Lake accountable for pushing false claims about the 2020 election and continuing to press her despite her tendency to avoid specific answers.

MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross floated the theory that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is “elevating” Kanye West because the two share the same “mental challenges.”
West publicly shared that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017 and that he was placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold in 2016.

Cross made the comments while discussing Carlson’s interview with West, who now goes by Ye. The rapper has always been controversial, but he’s faced more scrutiny than ever after his repeated anti-Semitic rants.

“We have rarely heard a man speak so honestly and so movingly about what he believes,” Carlson said of Ye, praising him against accusations that he's "crazy."

Cross accused the GOP and Carlson of “elevating” people like the controversial rapper who are “just not coherent.” She also suggested that Carlson and West might suffer from mental health challenges they have in common, arguing that the right-wing host talks about the rapper in a drastically different way from anyone else reporting on or reacting to him recently.

“Because they’re elevating people like this, I wonder if Tucker doesn’t find Kanye to be, to have some mental challenges, maybe because it takes someone else with the same challenges to understand him," Cross said.
"Because everybody else has concluded this person is — honestly, mental health is a serious thing in the country, and [West is] clearly problematic, but this is who the GOP chooses to put out front."

She also threw in a dig at Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who, like Ye, has been open about his past struggles with mental health.

While Carlson's defense of Ye was questionable, and even landed him in Mediaite's loser column, it's incredibly irresponsible for Cross, a news host, to suggest Carlson has bipolar disorder.