Kari Lake keeps making money off of her MAGA celebrity brand

• Kari Lake has never won an election — but she’s quickly become one of MAGA’s biggest stars.
• In just the last five months, she made $20,000 from one paid speech and $27,000 from book sales.
• She’s also invested between $1,000 and $15,000 in Trump’s “Truth Social.”

The GOP’s hopes of retaking the Senate rest in part on Kari Lake, the former TV broadcaster and 2022 gubernatorial candidate who’s poised to become the party’s Senate nominee in Arizona.

But Lake keeps spending lots of time outside the state, much to the chagrin of Republicans — including former President Donald Trump.

As it turns out, she’s making some extra money by doing it.

Lake was paid $20,000 by to appear at the the St. Joseph County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner in South Bend, Indiana, according to a financial disclosure filed at the end of June.

The Arizona Republican previously filed a disclosure in January, revealing that she had given several paid speeches, totaling $75,000, in the year before she announced her campaign in October 2023. The new April payment appears to contradict her campaign’s previous statement that Lake “doesn’t [charge] a speaking fee.”

In the five months since filing her January disclosure, Lake also brought in an additional $27,738.77 from sales of her book, “Unafraid.”

Her June disclosure also included further details of her agreement with the agreement she made with right-wing publisher Winning Team Publishing in 2023: a $100,000 advance, plus $25% of net profits beyond that.

The candidate’s assets are largely the unchanged from January, aside from one notable addition to her stock portfolio: Between $1,000 and $15,000 in stock in Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that run’s the former president’s “Truth Social” platform.

Lake’s campaign did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

The GOP candidate is all but certain to face Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego this fall in what will be a key race for determining control of the Senate.

Plenty of politicians in both parties have found ways to cash in on their celebrity brands, most often through book sales that can sometimes exceed their official salaries. But Lake has yet to win an election, and some Republicans have grumbled about the fact that she’s spent a significant amount of time out of state.