Lake’s relationship with the station didn’t sour until the end of the 2010s, when some of her comments on social media drew local headlines. In 2016, she defended Trump’s comments on a secret Access Hollywood tape, where he bragged about sexually assaulting women. “I think DT is talking ‘big’ to fit in with the guys,” she wrote on her Fox 10 Facebook page, “but I do see how it could offend many people.” In 2018, Lake described a movement to increase pay for teachers as “nothing more than a push to legalize pot.” And in 2019, she joined Parler, initiating what would become a protracted back-and-forth with Channel 10. When station leaders told her, “ ‘Hey, you can’t do this. You’re Kari Lake, Fox,’ ” according to Pike, who said she witnessed the exchange, Lake replied that she could because of her First Amendment right to free speech. “That’s when all of this started going downhill,” Pike said. Channel 10 received complaints. Lawyers got involved. Lake was off the air and viewers didn’t know why. It was around that time, “after I got canceled,” Lake tells me, that her daughter asked her to wear a cross “for protection.” On the campaign trail, the silver necklace is visible daily. “I started wearing it from that moment on. I’ve never taken it off,” she says.