Trump is reportedly considering Kari Lake as ambassador to Mexico

AP Photo/Julio Cortez

President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly being considered Kari Lake as its ambassador to Mexico, Semafor reported Monday.

Lake, a former television news anchor in Arizona, rose to political prominence when she secured the state’s 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination, narrowly losing Katie Hobbs. Trump supported Lake’s run for governor and her unsuccessful 2024 Senate run, in which she lost to Rep. Ruben Gallego in the federal election.

“Kari Lake is a leading candidate for the nomination to be Donald Trump’s ambassador to Mexico, two people familiar with the situation told Semafor,” the outlet reported.

She made the southern border and immigration broadly a focus of her campaigns and advocated building a border wall along the entire U.S. border with Mexico. It also supports the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to remain in that country until their cases are reviewed and decided. She also supports Trump’s plan to mass deport immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Last month, Mediaite reported that Lake was in “active negotiations” to join the right-wing cable network Newsmax. She also recently settled a defamation lawsuit filed by a former Maricopa County elections official Stephen Richerwho sued her in June 2023, claiming Lake falsely accused him of “intentionally sabotaging the election” in her 2022 gubernatorial campaign.

Richer stated that “both sides are happy with the outcome.”