Joe Kernen said Democratic Party chiefs were “harvesting votes” in 2000 to claim victory for Al Gore and likened the alleged effort to Donald Trump contesting the 2020 result.
The right-leaning CNBC host pushed the conspiracy theory that Democrats were vote stealers in a heated discussion on Squawk Box early on Election Day with William Daley, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, who chaired Gore’s campaign 24 years ago.
George W. Bush won the 2000 vote after being adjudged to have taken the deciding state of Florida by just 537 votes, but Kernen said the Democrats put the country through the same ordeal then as Trump did when he was beaten by Joe Biden in 2020.
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“There’s still a narrative that Al Gore won because if you were running things down there, you had two very Democratic counties, you had Miami-Dade and Broward, and you were harvesting votes and you were going to count them until you won,” Kernen told Daley.
“Thank God the Supreme Court and courts finally stepped in for that,” he added.
“I was there,” Kernen continued, his hands in the air and looking skyward. “I remember the people looking like this, looking up at the chads… here’s another Democratic vote,” he said, referring to the name for incompletely punched paper ballots that were at the center of the dispute over the close count.
“The country didn’t need to go through that, and maybe Trump put us through something four years ago, but you… and everybody else put us through something back in 2000, too.”
Daley insisted that was the “process” at the time.
“That was the process in 2020, too,” interrupted Kernen. “They were harvesting votes. They were harvesting votes in two Democratic counties.”
Co-host Becky Quick jumped in to try and calm the debate, saying: “The courts weighed in and Al Gore conceded based on what the courts had done.”
“Yeah, the courts said stop counting and stop harvesting,” said Kernen.
“Joe, Joe, Joe,” said Daley.
“If you would have kept going you would have won,” Kernen continued, undaunted.
“That’s a lie,” said Daley. ”Absolutely untrue. Absolutely untrue. That’s not true. No one was ‘harvesting votes.’ That word implies people were finding votes.”
“If you decide a hanging chad is a Democratic vote instead of a vote for George Bush, you can do that until you find enough. Five weeks,” Kernen insisted.
Earlier, Quick had asked Daley if he thought either Trump or Harris would accept defeat in the 2024 presidential election. “Part of the reason the system worked in 2000 was Al Gore conceded and he wishes he would have not done that,” she said, “and do you think either candidate will concede if it’s close?”
“If there’s a recount in a certain state like there was last time, the process will work,” said Daley. “We went, as I said, five weeks with the chad craziness in Florida, and in the end, President Bush won when the count was stopped. Just because it’s very close by Saturday, let’s say, where most of the votes are counted and there’s a recount, that doesn’t mean there’s nefarious action going on.”
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