A federal judge appointed by former President George W. Bush said his 2000 election opponent, former Vice President Al Gore, took his loss like “a man” compared to former President Donald Trump.
“Al Gore had a better case to argue than Mr. Trump, but he was a man about what happened to him,” said Senior District Judge Reggie Walton, according to CNN.
Back in 2000 Bush, a Republican, narrowly lost the popular vote to Gore, a Democrat. However, Bush won the election with electoral college votes. This happened again in 2016, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular election but lost to Trump due to electoral college votes.
Since the 2000 election was so close, it took weeks to determine the winner with mandatory recount in Florida slowing the process further. A little over a month after the election, Gore gave a concession speech.
“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country,” he said. “Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended, resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy.”
Trump, on the other hand, did not acknowledge that Joe Biden would become president until Jan. 7, the day after a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Pro-Trump rioters sought to prevent Congress from ratifying Biden’s votes.
Walton made his statement about Gore Monday during a plea hearing for 36-year-old Capitol riot defendant Adam Johnson, who was photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern through the Capitol building. Johnson pleased guilty to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.
“He accepted it and walked away,” said Walton of Gore.
Unlike the 2000 or 2016 elections, Joe Biden won both the popular and electoral college votes last year.
However, Trump had begun a campaign to throw results of the 2020 presidential election in question before results came in last year.
Although no evidence of voter fraud has been uncovered, Trump continues to claim that the election results are not legitimate.
For example, he referred to the “Rigged and Stolen Arizona Presidential Election,” in a statement posted Tuesday to the Trump website.
“What concerns me, sir, is that you were gullible enough to come to Washington, DC, from Florida based on a lie,” Walton said to Johnson, “and the person who inspired you to do what you do is still making those statements, and my concern is that you are gullible enough to do it again.”
Johnson said he accepted responsibility for getting “caught up in the moment.” He said that a “hard couple of years” led him to spend a lot of time “listening to a lot of information and reading things” online.
Another federal judge Monday ordered two attorneys who filed a class action lawsuit alleging voter fraud to pay defendants in the suit more than $180,000. They have appealed the order.
Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter said that the attorneys were guilty of “prematurely repeating in court pleadings unverified and uninvestigated defamatory rumors.”
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