Terry McAuliffe, Who Repeatedly Called 2000 Election ‘Stolen,’ Tries to Tie His GOP Opponent to Trump’s Election ‘Lies’
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe released a campaign ad last week accusing his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin, of “repeating Donald Trump’s lies” including the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president – yet McAuliffe has a history of lying about the 2000 election that he falsely claimed was stolen by Republicans.
“Growing our economy. That’s Job Number One. But not for Glenn Youngkin,” states a narrator, followed by a clip of the Republican nominee saying, “Our election integrity task force was launched week one. This is the most important issue we’re going to talk about.”
The narration states, “For Youngkin, the most important issue isn’t jobs. It’s repeating Donald Trump’s lies,” followed by a soundbite of Youngkin radio interview where the candidate said, “President Trump represents so much of why I’m running.”
“No wonder Trump gave Youngkin his ‘complete and total endorsement,’” said the narrator, who ends the ad with “Glenn Youngkin: He’d take Virginia backwards.”
While accusing Youngkin of embracing Trump’s election lies, McAuliffe conveniently omitted his own history of election lies.
During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press in 2001, McAuliffe, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that if all the votes in Florida had been counted, Democratic nominee Al Gore would have won the 2000 election and therefore George W. Bush stole the election.
“If all the votes were counted in Florida, that Al Gore would be president today and George Bush would be back in Austin,” said McAuliffe.
McAuliffe repeated the false claim that the 2000 election was stolen from Gore that included McAuliffe accusing the Supreme Court, which declared Bush the winner, of having “tampered” with the election.
In June 2001, at the 20th anniversary dinner of the Democratic Business Council, McAuliffe said, “Folks, you know it, I know it, they know it, we won that election and let’s never forget it.”
While unsuccessfully running for president in 2004, McAuliffe said, “Let’s go back to Florida. We actually won the last presidential election, folks, they stole the last presidential election.”
Watch McAuliffe’s ad above.
