Screenshot via Fox News.
One of the more infuriatingly baffling aspects of this current Trumpian era of our politics is the stubborn insistence by former President Donald Trump and his supporters that events from just a few years ago — many of which America witnessed on live television — did not happen. On Monday, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld did his best to earn a gold medal in the MAGA Amnesia Olympics, absurdly arguing with guest Bill Maher that Trump didn’t actually refuse to concede the last election.
Gutfeld had the Real Time with Bill Maher host on his eponymous show Gutfeld!Monday evening and the panel discussion turned to the topic of Trump.
“I agree that it’s great that we’re talking. I agree that we agree on some things,” said Maher. “We’re not exactly aligned on the most important things, which is, basically, Trump is someone who does not concede elections. That’s the most important thing. You don’t seem to see it that way. That’s the most important thing that’s going on in this country. He didn’t concede the last election. He’s not going to concede this election –”
“You don’t know that!” Gutfeld interjected as Maher scoffed. “You don’t see into the future, Bill. I don’t see your crystal ball.”
Maher laughed and pointed out that before the 2020 election, he had in fact predicted Trump would refuse to concede if Joe Biden won. He joked that at the time his critics said he was smoking too much pot, but in hindsight, “it turned out, I smoked just the right amount of pot.”
Maher continued, “Can you really picture this guy going, ‘You know what? I lost. That’s it.’”
“He did!” Gutfeld retorted. “He left! He left!”
“He left because he had to leave,” Maher replied, drawing a mocking comment from Gutfeld asking if he thought Trump was going to try and board up the White House and barricade himself inside.
Maher brought up Trump’s infamous phone call when he demanded Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find 11,870 votes” — enough to flip the state after Biden won it.
“He said ‘find,’ he didn’t say ‘create,’ he said ‘find,'” Gutfeld argued.
“Well, that’s the same thing,” said Maher.
“No, it’s not,” Gutfeld insisted. “You don’t say on an Easter egg hunt, I want you to create the Easter eggs.”
What Gutfeld’s cutesy Easter egg hunt metaphor is missing, of course, is that when you send the kiddos outside to scramble around the backyard to go “find” the Easter eggs, those eggs actually exist. Someone was up the night before assembling them, putting candies and stickers and other trinkets inside the plastic egg shells, and then went out and hid them in flower pots and under bushes. The eggs are real, they exist, and there is a known and defined number of them.
That was not the case in Georgia. The count, followed by a manual hand recount of the paper ballots, and then an audit — all supervised by Republican elected officials — confirmed that Biden won the Peach State. There were no extra votes for Trump that Raffensperger or any Georgia election official could “find,” much less 11,870 of them.
That one phone call alone shows Trump’s undeniable intention to subvert the rightful election results, and pales in comparison to the multifaceted scheme that unfolded over months, illustrated by the hours upon hours of testimony and reams of evidence collected by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee and Special Counsel Jack Smith for one of the four criminal prosecutions currently swirling around the ex-president.
Trump is literally facing prison time for his refusal to concede the 2020 election and his efforts to overturn the results, including making unfounded legal claims, recruiting fake electors to file alternative Electoral College votes in states he lost, attempting to badger Georgia officials and then Vice President Mike Pence to breach their constitutional duties, and finally inciting the Jan. 6 violence to disrupt the proceedings. A significant amount of the evidence against Trump is his own words, many of which he said in public (often on live television) or posted on his social media.
For Gutfeld to argue that Maher is wrong that “Trump is someone who does not concede elections” invokes the classic Monty Python’s Flying Circus“Dead Parrot” sketch, in which the shopkeeper insists that a parrot is “just resting” and “stunned” as the irate customer whacks the clearly deceased bird on the counter.
“This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be!” the bereaved customer shouts. “This is an ex-parrot!”
The evidence of Trump’s refusal to concede is far more glaring than a room temperature Norwegian Blue nailed to its perch, as the ex-president has continued to make his baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election at his campaign rallies, in Truth Social posts, and in interviews so many times I wouldn’t even know how to begin to tally the number.
Trump’s faux victimhood cries have been a central theme of his 2024 campaign, and some of his harshest jabs are for Republicans who refuse to indulge him in his denial of reality, or merely urge the GOP to move on from the 2020 loss. Under the watchful eye of Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, the RNC is asking job applicants if they agree the 2020 election was stolen. Trump has continued whining that the 2020 election was “rigged” throughout this year — including on Gutfeld’s own network.
As a quick reminder, Trump lost over 60 lawsuits that were filed in state and federal courts across the country attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, many of which were in courts with Republican-appointed judges, some even by Trump himself. Not one case found sufficient arguments to move forward to even consider overturning the results in any precinct, much less an entire state, and certainly not the multiple states needed to flip the Electoral College tally from Biden to Trump.
In the ensuing years, not only have Trump and his claque of tin-foil hatterscompletely failed to present any viable evidence the 2020 election was stolen, many of them have gotten absolutely hammered in the courts with crushing defamation verdicts for promoting pernicious election fraud lies, including Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft and Rudy Giuliani.
And then there’s the whopping $787.5 million dollars that Fox News paid to settle the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems the morning the trial was set to begin. Fox News denied the allegations in Dominion’s complaint, as well as similar ones in a separate $2.7 billion defamation complaint filed by Smartmatic, but prior to the case settling,pre-trial discovery uncovered a shocking trove of communications between Fox’s executives and on-air talent, admitting that they knew Trump had lost the election and his claims of fraud were unfounded. In March 2023, the judge issued a summary judgment ruling that was broadly viewed as devastating to Fox, finding that all twenty of the statements Fox made on air about Dominion were statements of fact and not protected opinion, and that it was “CRYSTAL clear” (emphasis in original) they were all false and constituted defamation per se.
For Gutfeld to sit there in his posh studio provided by the cable network that forked out a bazillion dollars last year over the same lies Trump continues to peddle, and claim Trump didn’t refuse to concede is more pathetic than claiming a dead parrot is merely “pining for the fjords.”
And I haven’t yet brought up the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
The rioters who knocked down barricades, smashed through windows and doors, brutally assaulted police officers, chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” after they built a gallows for him, streamed through the Capitol hallways calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and delayed the certification of the Electoral College votes were not there to complain that the “fake news” liberal media had written mean things about Trump or any of his other various grievances. They were there to stop a constitutionally-created legislative process to certify the results of an election they believed was stolen, spurred on by the words of Trump and his acolytes in their speeches that day at the Ellipse and in the weeks preceding that horrible day in American history.
We know this from the extensive evidence collected by federal prosecutors in the criminal cases against the rioters, from the video taken that day, the social media posts and text messages from the rioters themselves, and their own sworn testimony. Trump said the election was stolen and they believed him — and he’s still saying it.
Trump has said, over and over and over and over and over again, that he thinks the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” (often misspelled as “stollen”) and that he actually won. Those are his words that he has chosen to say and write. We don’t have to rely on testimony from anyone else. We can Google Trump’s own words and see that he has said — and continues to say — these false claims.
Gutfeld! has been a ratings juggernaut for Fox News, frequently walloping its late night competition. Monday’s episode drew the highest ever ratings in the show’s history, averaging 2.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, and coming out on top in the 25-54 year old demographic prized by advertisers.
This show’s massive audience means what Gutfeld says has a real world impact, and should not be shrugged off as mere hyperbole or nonsensical jokes from a comedian. People are in jail and some even lost their lives because of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and he’s hellbent on continuing to screech these same baseless claims as November looms ever closer.
The parrot is dead, Greg. You’re doing Fox News viewers a grave disservice to tell them otherwise.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
The headline of this article has been updated.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
