Kari Lake says she’s tired of ‘beta men’ and we need ‘alphas’ like Trump: Republican stirs up CPAC after bribery tape scandal and claims people ‘back east’, big pharma and Wall Street are running the country

Conservative hardliner Kari Lake said the nation needs more men like Donald Trump as she addressed a major MAGA rally on Saturday.

She described standing in the same spot a year ago and how a party official tried to bribe her to stay out of politics, before saying she liked the “bull in the china shop ideology.”

“We have far too many weaklings,” she told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

“Let me hear from the ladies out there. We’re tired of the beta guy. We want an alpha male. In Donald J. Trump we have a number one alpha male.”

Trump is the star on Saturday before heading to South Carolina, where he is expected to deliver another drubbing to Nikki Haley in the state’s Republican primary.

But Lake was another big draw for conservatives who gathered at CPAC. She emerged as a national figure in 2022 after losing her bid to become governor of Arizona and subsequently claiming the election was rigged against her.

Last year she launched a run for the US Senate.

In January, DailyMail.com published an audio recording revealing how the Republican Party chairman tried to get her to quit politics for two years in exchange for money or a job.

In it, Jeff DeWit was heard saying that he represented “powerful people in the East.” He resigned just days after the audio surfaced.

Lake cited the idea of ​​a “powerful hinterland” as why she should be elected to Washington.

‘Here’s the problem. Wall Street has very powerful people in the East making deals for them,” she said.

‘Big Pharma has very powerful people in the east who make deals for them. The Military Industrial Complex has very powerful people.

‘You know what? I think it’s about damn time that the people of this country, the American people, let some powerful people back east work for them.”

People write on a Trump-themed bus at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Maryland

CPAC has long been considered one of the most influential gatherings of conservatives in the world. Today it is part of former President Donald Trump’s power base

She spoke slightly ahead of Trump, who is expected to offer supporters a vision of four years into his presidency, compared to four more years under President Joe Biden.

“Believe me when I give you another warning: If Crooked Joe and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come,” he will say.

Polls show that South Carolina voters will give a huge boost to Trump on Saturday. An average from the FiveThirtyEight website shows that the former president could win by a 30-point margin in the state where Haley was governor.

She has vowed to fight on in the race no matter what, and has continued her attacks on the frontrunner.