YouTube suspends 'Louder with Crowder' over video featuring Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake, says it included 'false claims' about 2020 election

BlazeTV host Steven Crowder has been temporarily suspended from YouTube again for a video featuring Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who said President Joe Biden is in charge of an "illegitimate federal government."

On Wednesday, Crowder announced that his Aug. 11 video featuring Lake as a guest was removed from YouTube because of comments she made advancing disputed claims about the 2020 presidential election. He shared a screenshot of an email from YouTube that said his video violated the platform's "misinformation policy."

"Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube," the company said.

Crowder said he will be unable to livestream on YouTube for two weeks.

During an interview on "Louder with Crowder" that was posted to YouTube last week, Lake said that the Biden administration is "illegitimate" and stated she does not believe that Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election.

"I don't believe Joe Biden won the election," Lake told Crowder. "And we had problems with the 2020 election, I've talked about that. They've criticized me for that. But I've looked at the facts, I have looked over our forensic audit, I've looked over all kinds of evidence. We had a botched, corrupt election in Arizona and in many other states."

Crowder's video was subsequently removed from YouTube.

YouTube's misinformation policies prohibit content that calls the results of any past U.S. presidential election illegitimate or fraudulent. Content that violates this policy will be removed from YouTube, which implements a strike system to punish accounts that repeatedly violate its policies. Any channel that earns three strikes for repeatedly violating YouTube's policies will be terminated.

Lake reappeared on Crowder's show Thursday and discussed YouTube's actions.

"It's insane," she told Crowder, adding that if elected, she will enact a law to constrain the ability of social media companies to censor content.

"I"m going to do what Governor DeSantis did. You're not going to take away people's freedom of speech in Arizona," Lake said.

She was referring to a law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed last year that permits state residents to sue Big Tech companies and creates transparency requirements for content moderation policies on social media platforms. A federal appeals court blocked the law from going into effect in May, finding it unconstitutionally violated the First Amendment.

Lake, a former local news anchor who became the Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee on Aug. 5 , has previously said she would not have certified Biden's 2020 victory in Arizona and repeatedly claimed the election was fraudulent. She has cited a "forensic audit" conducted by Republicans in the Arizona state Senate to support her claims — but that ballot review said a hand recount of ballots confirmed the election-night results in Maricopa County, where Biden defeated Trump by about 45,000 votes.

The Kari Lake campaign was reached for comment but did not immediately respond.