The Arizona GOP Asked People to Commit to Dying for Trump

The Arizona Republican Party tweeted a clip from Rambo IV and asked Trump supporters if they’re ready to put their lives on the line, and that was just a Monday in December 2020. 

The state party’s official Twitter account retweeted conservative activist, grifter, and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander Akbar, who posted Monday that he’s “willing to give [his] life for this fight.” 

“He is,” the Arizona GOP added to the tweet. “Are you?”

The state Republican Party’s official account also tweeted, and later deleted, a clip from the 2008 movie, along with a quote from Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: “This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something.”

The state GOP, which is chaired by far-right former U.S. Senate candidate Kelli Ward, has trumpeted President Donald Trump’s false claims that rampant election and voter fraud prevented him from winning. President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump in Arizona by a little more than 10,000 votes, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 24 years. 

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, certified the state’s election results with Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich in attendance. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican, said following the certification that he will not call a special session to overturn the results of the election. (The legislature is working remotely this week after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who met with Arizona legislative leadership earlier this month, tested positive for COVID.)

The offices of Ducey and Brnovich, the top two GOP elected officials in the state, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Arizona GOP’s remarks. 

Because Arizona Republican officials aren’t complying with Trump’s campaign to throw the election to him, they’ve been a target of ire from conservative activists like Ward and Arizona Republicans in Congress such as Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs. Gosar has tweeted in support of an effort to recall Ducey as governor, although the recall effort is over Ducey’s pandemic response.

Trump has criticized Ducey as well: he tweeted over the weekend that Ducey and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.”

After Ducey defended the state’s election last month, Ward tweeted at him to “#STHU,” or “shut the hell up.”

“Well I think what I would say is the feeling is mutual to her and practice what you preach,” Ducey responded during a press conference.