While I regularly appear on Fox News — CNN and MSNBC rarely ask — I do not and never have worked for Fox.

One recent Saturday morning, I watched the CNN Michael Smerconish Show. I’ve always thought of Smerconish as fairer than most, at least by CNN standards. For example, he interviewed me during my campaign for governor and introduced me as a “Trump Republican.” To this I said, “I am a Republican. I voted for Romney in 2012. I voted for McCain in 2008. Was I supposed to vote for Biden or Hillary?” Why call me a “Trump Republican,” unless the label is designed to disparage my candidacy? He apologized. Like I said, Smerconish is fairer than most.

But on this Saturday show, Smerconish teed off on Fox News for supposedly promoting former President Donald Trump’s “conspiracy theory” that the 2020 election was “stolen.” According to Smerconish and based on court documents from the defamation lawsuit filed against Fox by the Dominion Voting Systems, Fox knew what CNN referred to as the “Big Lie” was false yet allegedly knowingly pushed it. Shame, shame, shame, argued Smerconish; how dare Fox act in such a reckless, partisan way? Because of vile “election deniers,” Smerconish said, “democracy was at stake.” The implication? CNN is NOT partisan and would never ever act in such a biased way.

As the show continued, I took to Twitter and sent Smerconish a series of public tweets about CNN’s blatant left-wing partisanship. I made the following points:

—Smerconish in a public forum told then CNN CEO Jeff Zucker that CNN “looked partisan” by dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” Zucker admitted no wrongdoing — and defended the dismissal of the story. CNN’s dismissal of the laptop story as “disinformation” likely changed the outcome of the election. How many Biden voters would have voted differently had they known that Biden, based on the contents of the laptop, lied about not knowing anything about his son’s foreign business dealings and about “10% for the Big Guy”?

—Project Veritas published an undercover video of CNN staffer complaining that Zucker “has a personal vendetta against Trump, a man he said Zucker "hates” and that Zucker “f—ing tells you what to do.”

—CNN misleadingly reported the $400 million (not $300 million as CNN reported) spent by Mark Zuckerberg in 2020 was for “enhancing access to voting.” No, the money was targeted to “enhance access” to DEMOCRAT likely voters to help Biden and hurt Trump. “Democracy at stake”?!?

—Do you think CNN’s two-year promotion of the bogus Trump-Russia collusion put “Democracy at stake”? About “obstruction of justice,” the Mueller report said: “We investigated a series of actions by the president towards the investigation. Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.” As to allegation of a Trump-Russia conspiracy of election interference, the report said: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

—CNN routinely used the term “Big Lie” to attack Republican election “conspiracy theorists” about 2020. When Dems call THEIR elections “stolen,” or that they lost because of “voter suppression” or because the Supreme Court “selected” the president — as argued by Hillary Clinton and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, respectively. They never call out their “Big Lie” about the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential contest. Former Virginia governor and former chair of the Democratic national committee Terry McAuliffe said, “(I wish) the United States Supreme Court had let them finish counting the votes” in 2000. Has CNN called THEM “election deniers”?

I DARED Smerconish to interview Trump lawyer John Eastman, a former dean and law professor at Chapman University School of Law in California, as I recently did for my Epoch Times TV show. Eastman faces disbarment for his “strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.” To be sure, Eastman’s arguments were not accepted by the courts. But since when do lawyers risk disbarment for committing the sin of advocacy on behalf of an unpopular client, whether the client is the Boston Marathon bombers, the terrorists held in Gitmo, O.J. Simpson or Donald Trump?

COPYRIGHT 2023 LAURENCE A. ELDER