GOP Senate Candidate Struggles to Explain Why She's Campaigning with Alt-Right Lunatic

Arizona Republican candidate Dr. Kelli Ward is currently locked in a fierce three-way death match with concentration camp enthusiast Joe Arpaio and Rep. Martha McSally for her party’s nomination to fill outgoing Senator Jeff Flake’s Senate seat.

On Sunday night, however, Ward did herself no favors by appearing on MSNBC where, try as she might, she simply could not offer a reasonable explanation as to why she was so gleefully campaigning with friend to women and pizzagate conspiracy loon Mike Cernovich.

After some lame equivocating about the supposed similarities between the alt-right (which is real) and the “alt-left” (which isn’t), Ward—herself no stranger to batshit conspiracy theories—was asked by anchor Kasie Hunt why Cernovich was joining her on an upcoming campaign bus tour.

Here’s Ward’s reply:

Mike Cernovich has an audience that we want to reach and that includes Republicans, conservatives, liberals, Democrats, people of all ilks. And so if he’s coming on the bus tour I think he’ll have a voice and he’ll have something that he wants to say.

And here, via the Southern Poverty Law Center, are just some of the things Cernovich has wanted to say in the past:

• “Rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape. We can’t really understand this, as our culture is too detached from instinct.”
• “Today we have a moment of silence for Trayvon Martin’s rape victims. Kidding! He got got before he was able to rape anyone.”
• “I went from libertarian to alt-right after realizing tolerance only went one way and diversity is code for white genocide.”
• “You know, I fucked a girl, she said I raped her, that cost me 50 grand, it cost me five years of my life … yeah but now look at me now. What if I’d not fucked her? Maybe I’d be some fuckin’ schlub dude living a life of quiet desperation with three kids and a wife that hates me.”
• “The ‘alt-right’ hasn’t killed anyone, but #BlackLivesMatter regularly slaughters the innocent. Know the real threat. Think! #Dallas.”

Most polling shows Ward running a distant—but not insurmountable—second to McSally in the Arizona Republican Senate primary. It remains to be seen if reaching Cernovich’s “audience” will help close that gap.