Lake, an ex-Phoenix newscaster, released a pseudo-country track, “81 Million Votes, My Ass,” on June 2. The song’s title is a reference to Lake’s titular quote from a CPAC dinner on March 3, where she doubled down on former President Donald Trump’s election lies and expressed skepticism about the vote tally President Joe Biden reached in the 2020 election.
Lake has appropriated Trump’s riff about the “Big Lie” and is leaning full tilt into the conspiracy theory despite the former president facing prison time for dozens of felonies in New York and this week becoming the first U.S. ex-president to face a federal indictment.
When asked about her new song, Lake took the opportunity to insult Phoenix New Times and promote her new book “Unafraid: Just Getting Started,” which ships later this month. Apparently, the book mentions the time she said “fuck them” when referring to us on a hot mic in 2019 before departing from Fox 10.
“If you like the song, you’re going to love the book that comes out on June 27,” Lake told New Times. “Most people have forgotten your rag of a paper even exists, but I do you guys a favor by mentioning you in the second chapter. Enjoy!”
Lake fans ‘hungry for this kind of music’
“81 Million Votes My Ass” was written and performed by Jeffrey Steele, a prolific Nashville singer-songwriter who has crafted chart-topping hits for artists such as Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Billy Ray Cyrus.Steele's performance is assisted by a little-known band called The Truth Bombers, whose first single in the style of The Marshall Tucker Band opens with Lake saying, “If you would have told me two years ago, three years ago, that I would be in the middle of a political movement, I would have said, ‘Put down Hunter’s crack pipe right now.’”
Much of the song denigrates President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who’s been the center of controversy and right-wing conspiracy for years. Lake’s not-so-family-friendly track also features a lyric about Hunter Biden’s “hookers and booze and crack.”
Lake promoted the song on her Twitter account and is credited as an artist on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. “Our elections are corrupt,” Lake tweeted Tuesday. “This song lays it out.” While she didn’t perform on the track, it’s laden with her sound bites from public speeches, including “I am not suicidal” and “We’re living on planet crazy.”
Well said, Kari.
The song was first uploaded to YouTube on June 2, and comments were disabled.
Conservative ex-journalist Ed Henry, who was fired from Fox News in 2020 after the network investigated sexual assault allegations against him, owns the Mailman Media record label that signed Lake and The Truth Bombers. On a June 2 podcast, Henry noted that LJ Fino, the music exec behind Trump and the J6 Prison Choir’s “Justice For All,” was a collaborator.
Lake’s fans “were just hungry for this kind of music,” Henry said on the podcast. However, the comments under Lake’s promotional tweet, which features images of Lake and Trump engulfed in flames as President Biden falls down the steps of an airplane, are mostly negative.
Mailman Media will earn money whenever the song is streamed — as of Friday morning, it was played 85,000 times on YouTube and 10,000 times on Spotify — but it’s unclear where the profits will go. Mailman Media claimed to have donated proceeds from “Justice For All” to the families of people who were imprisoned for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
On its website, Mailman Media also is peddling shirts and ball caps adorned with the song’s title, The Truth Bombers logo and Lake’s highly retouched face. You can even get vinyl records of the song for $100 a pop.
“We’re going to start releasing more of these songs,” Henry said on the recent podcast, speaking of Lake and The Truth Bombers. He said the songs would focus on themes of election fraud and conspiracy theories.
So if you enjoy the clever rhyming of “Democrats” with “my ass,” stay tuned — if we’re lucky, there could be an album on the way.
