Former Vice President Al Gore apparently took his 2000 election loss like “a man” unlike former President Donald Trump, according to a federal judge.
During a plea hearing for a January 6 Capitol Hill rioter, Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said that Al Gore “accepted” the results of the 2000 election and walked away.
“Al Gore had a better case to argue than Mr. Trump, but he was a man about what happened to him,” the judge said, according to CNN. “He accepted it and walked away.”
During the 2000 presidential election, Gore did not concede the race to former President George W. Bush for several weeks as he challenged for a recount in the state of Florida. His challenge was later shut down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore speaks as he debates Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush on October, 3, 2000, at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. (JOHN MOTTERN/AFP via Getty Images)
Though Gore did not pursue his case to the extent that Trump did, his supporters were adamant in the assertion that Bush stole the election. CNN’s Jake Tapper, for instance, penned the book Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, which claimed that “both sides, Democrats and Republicans, plotted to steal the presidency in 2000.” In his 2004 blockbuster documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, filmmaker Michael Moore also suggested that Bush, with a little help from Fox News, stole the election.
The plea hearing centered on Adam Johnson, who was seen carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) lectern through the Capitol building on January 6. Johnson was arrested two days after the riot and charged with “single counts of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or groups without lawful authority, theft of government property and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds,” according to the Hill. He pleaded guilty on Monday to “the charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.”
“What concerns me is that you were gullible enough to come all the way up here from Florida based upon a lie and then associate yourself because of that lie with people and try to undermine the will of the American public about who should be the president of the United States,” Walton said at the hearing.
“I have concerns about whether you will be gullible when something like this arises again,” he added. “That concerns me, it really does because we are in a troubled situation as a country.”
Johnson said he got “caught up in the moment.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.