“The Daily Show” put together a supercut of clips from just a couple of years ago that shows conservatives singing a very different tune about accepting election results.
In the montage of videos from after the 2018 midterm elections, Fox News hosts and Republican figures ― including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro and Greg Gutfeld ― complained that Democrats were being sore losers following disputes in Florida and Georgia.
“Democrats, more so than Republicans, seem to have a problem conceding defeat,” Laura Ingraham said at the time. “Either the election system broke down or some mystery votes are hiding somewhere.”
“Democrats are being sore losers, and they refuse to acknowledge they lost the election. So what do they do? They cry malfeasance, wrongdoing, criminality, fraud,” said White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee at the time.
And Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro bashed Democrats for “refusing to accept the declared results of the national media” ― exactly what President Donald Trump and his allies are doing now that Democrat Joe Biden has been declared the 2020 winner by all the major networks.
In a remarkably dishonest press conference on Monday that even Fox News declined to carry, McEnany claimed Democrats were welcoming fraud and illegal voting, and spouted other misinformation about the integrity of the election, without any evidence. Trump’s closest allies on Fox News are still pushing false narratives that he could still win, even though the network has already called the race for Biden based on official vote counts from each state.
In 2018, Stacey Abrams, who ran against Brian Kemp in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, refused to concede after accusing her opponent of voter suppression. Kemp oversaw the state’s elections as secretary of state during the campaign, and The Associated Press revealed that his office was holding up 53,000 voter applications, mostly from Black residents, prompting accusations that he sought to suppress minority votes in doing so.
And in Florida, recounts took place for two tight races. One for the Senate, between Republican Gov. Rick Scott and incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, and one for the gubernatorial race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum. However, due to technical glitches, the numbers were submitted minutes after the deadline and were rejected. They would likely not have changed the final results, which saw both Republicans take office.