Al Gore was once the vice-president of the United States, as much as we may wish to forget that fact. He surfaced on CNN Sunday to do what he does best these days, which is to bash Republicans. Thanks to Liz Cheney and her remarks to Axios political reporter Jonathan Swan, Al got a few minutes of coverage on the cable news network.

Liz Cheney told Swan that Al Gore did the right thing for the nation and conceded the election. She recalled sitting on the platform during the 2001 presidential inauguration and seeing Gore. She said she knew he thought he won the election but he conceded to George W. Bush. “He did the right thing for this nation.”

Gore sat down with CNN’s Pamela Brown to talk about Trump and his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. Brown asked him about remarks Liz Cheney made to Swan and what was going through his mind as he conceded the race. First Gore wanted to express his “gratitude and admiration for Liz Cheney” for speaking up against “the craziness in her party.” He then went on to say after exhausting all recourse, he conceded because it was best for the country. Good Lord. I’m old enough to remember those many weeks of post-presidential election craziness in 2000. Al Gore only conceded when he was shamed into it.

The presidential election that year was held on November 7, 2000. It took Gore until December 13, 2000, to concede. The Gore campaign disputed the election vote count in Florida and both his and W.’s campaigns camped out in the state until all of Gore’s legal options were exhausted. He went to only Democrat-friendly counties to request recounts of the ballots. Remember the debacle of hanging chads? Good times. It was high drama and the height of Democrats trying to steal elections until 2020 came around. To deny there were irregularities in the 2020 election is disingenuous. There are always irregularities, true, but there were some squirrely things happening on election night 2020. Mostly due to the coronavirus pandemic and how so many people voted with mail-in ballots, it appeared that liberties were taken that hadn’t been taken in past elections. For example, in my own county, the Democrat Clerk of Court tried to send out mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter, regardless if they requested one or not, though that is against state election law.

Gore was given the opportunity to wag his finger at Republicans, but mostly it was at Trump. He faults so many Republicans for their continued favorable support of Trump. And he referenced the Arizona audits.

The former vice president also denounced Trump’s continued spreading of false conspiracy theories and enabling by Republican leaders and voters.

“The refusal of the former president to acknowledge that he lost by 7 million votes — it wasn’t close for God’s sake — and apparently a majority of his party is still so enthralled to him that they still believe that the American people did not make the judgment that they clearly made,” Gore said during a Sunday interview on. “This is very damaging to our democracy.”

“We keep getting this nonsense,” Gore said in reference to the ongoing third ballot audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, calling the effort “absolutely nuts.”

Gore notes the popular vote yet it was the Electoral College that gave Biden his victory, as Gore well knows. The Electoral College victory wasn’t such a huge victory when you consider that it amounted to a total of 44,000 votes in three states out of a record of almost 160 million ballots cast.

Gore was a sore loser and did not exhibit grace in defeat until he had to do so. Spare me the kudos for his patriotism. He divided the country and kept political junkies agitated for weeks after the election. Trump isn’t the only person to lose and not do so in a graceful way. Remember Hillary Clinton in 2016? In another big election, think about Stacey Abrams who still refuses to admit defeat. Let’s not huff and puff about Trump behaving in a way that hasn’t been done before. Hillary still talks about the 2016 election and cashes in on paid speeches and books. She’ll be talking about it for the rest of her life.

Al was no doubt spurred on by Trump’s rally in Ohio on Saturday. Trump did as he has been doing, rehashing the election and its results. He speaks as he always has and says the Democrats cheated to victory. None of Trump’s statements have changed over the course of time. Al Gore says he wanted to concede to promote unity in the country. Malarkey. He’s been nothing but hyper-partisan his entire political career. He took the chance to generalize about Republicans because he could. He wanted to call Republicans crazy.

“I’m hoping that this craziness will fade over time,” Gore told CNN.

“We hear about ‘AI’ standing for ‘artificial intelligence.’ They’re putting another kind of AI out: artificial insanity,” Gore said. “They’re putting out messages that create an alternate reality, and people get into these echo chambers on the internet, and it’s all they hear, and they begin to believe the alternate reality.”

Al Gore is a master huckster. He morphed himself into a climate change expert and cashed in. Democrats fell for his phony science and called skeptics flat earthers. Now he wants us to believe he magnanimously stepped aside in 2000 for the good of the country. And CNN is only too happy to let him do it.

I have wondered so many times how things would have been different if Al Gore had become our President. Imagine the impact of his Presidency on climate change alone. pic.twitter.com/DYj9dTiPhT

— When there are nine (@nine_when) June 28, 2021