It seems the Media Research Center’s Clinton Equivocation to deflect Donald Trump’s sleazy behavior has sprouted a corollary: the Gore Equivocation. Again, it’s in service of Trump.
As Trump faced increasing criticism for criticizing the legitimacy of the entire election process by screaming “Rigged!” at every opportunity and refusing to state at the final debate that he would accept the election results, the MRC was eager to change the subject:
- Nicholas Fondacaro criticized CNN commentator Van Jones’ “frustration with Trump’s refusal to say that he would accept the results of the election, but went on to praise Al Gore for dragging the country through months of chaos,” going on to huff: “Yet there are liberal [sic] to this day that refuse to accept the results of the 2000 election.”
- Kyle Drennen complained that Tom Brokaw ” defended Gore’s refusal to concede to George W. Bush for two months after the 2000 presidential election.”
- Clay Waters huffed: “Democratic candidate Al Gore lost narrowly in Florida, and thus lost the election to George Bush. Yet that didn’t stop Democrats from trying to overturn the results until the Supreme Court ruled in Bush’s favor.”
- Trump-fluffer Jeffrey Lord declared: “While Trump is being criticized for saying he would keep the media and the nation in suspense as to whether he would accept the results of the election, the hard fact is that Al Gore spent two months not accepting the election results.”
Fondacaro, Drennen and Lord are falsely overstating the amount of time Gore spent contesting the results of the 2000 election. In fact, it was just 36 days between the Nov. 7 election and Gore’s Dec. 12 announcement that he would accept the Supreme Court’s ruling suspending recounts in Florida — just over a month.
All of these MRC writers, however, ignored the fact Gore’s challenging an extremely close election and Trump undermining the entire process beforehand are two different things. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait explains, Gore did not challenged the validity of the process as Trump has, the 2000 recount exposed flaws in the voting process in Florida such as voters falsely disenfranchised because they were wrongly labeled as felons, and Trump’s attempted deligitimization of the process is based in wacky right-wing conspiracy theories.
But the MRC is all in for Trump, and it won’t correct any falsehoods that interfere with that.