Former GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has topped the iTunes chart with a song promoting the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from ex-President Donald Trump.
Titled “81 Million Votes, My A**,” the song is credited to Lake and a group dubbed “The Truth Bombers.” Some of those involved in the making of the song were also behind “Justice for All,” an anthem performed by January 6 convicts, according to Forbes.
The song, which failed to hit No. 1 when it was first released this month, was sitting in 22nd place at the time of publication. It had briefly reached the top spot a short time earlier, according to a Friday article published by The New York Sun.
“81 Million Votes, My A**” takes its title from a remark Lake made at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in March, in reference to the number of votes President Joe Biden secured in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won 81.2 million votes, 7 million more than Trump’s 74.2 million.
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“Now we have stumbling, bumbling Joe Biden,” Lake said during her CPAC speech. “81 million votes, my a**. They must think we just fell off the turnip truck. We don’t buy it, don’t insult our intelligence!”
Despite the former president and many of his supporters claiming that Biden’s vote tally was fraudulent, no credible evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome in any state has emerged in the more than 2 1/2 years since the election ended.
Lake, who also baselessly claims that her own 2022 loss to Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs was fraudulent, does not sing during “81 Million Votes, My A**” but is instead featured in a series of spoken audio clips.
“If you would have told me two years ago, three years ago, that I would be in the middle of a political movement, I’d have said, ‘put down Hunter’s crack pipe,'” Lake says during a clip played at the beginning of the song, referring to the current president’s son.
While speaking about her involvement in the song during an interview on the right-wing Real America’s Voice network this month, Lake said: “I want to send a message to the technocrats, to the tyrants, that we’re on to what they’re pushing. We’re on to this B.S. system.”
“81 Million Votes, My A**” is the latest in a series of right-wing anthems to reach or approach the top of the iTunes chart. Last month, a song referring to the anti-LGBTQ+ boycott of Target—titled “Boycott Target“—reached the top of the chart, knocking pop star Taylor Swift down to the No. 2 spot.
Summiting the iTunes chart may be considered a significant achievement by some. However, the chart is calculated based on sales, an outdated metric in the era of streaming. Since most listeners stream songs rather than buy them, tracks can reach the top of the chart with a surprisingly low number of sales.
According to the website Jezebel, Kid Rock’s anti-Biden song “We the People” was able to top the chart in January despite selling only 5,200 digital copies on its first day. On the day after the release, Rock tweeted to boast that he had received a phone call from Trump, who purportedly said he was “proud” of the song’s performance.
Newsweek has reached out via email to Lake and the White House for comment.
