CNN anchor Michael Smerconish admitted that the mainstream media's “constant bullying” of conservatives backfired and contributed to President-elect Trump's big victory last week.
During an interview with Mediaite.com editor Aidan McLaughlin on the “Press Club” podcast, The CNN pundit said voters rebelled against the media's constant demonization of people who support the president-elect.
“It's like a lesson for parents. The more you tell people what they can't do, what's intolerable, you shouldn't do this, the more they will rebel,” he said.
WIN THE 'CATBIRD SEAT' FOR THE 2028 GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION, BUT THESE REPUBLICANS CAN RUN TOO
CNN anchor Michael Smerconish said he had a feeling the media's “constant intimidation” of Trump supporters would be counterproductive for the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. (Slavic Vlasic / Stringer)
McLaughlin asked Smerconish what he thought was the big takeaway from the 2024 presidential election. The CNN host began by admitting, “I've had to think about it a lot,” and stated that the way the media was authoritative about Trump as a threat to the country was “at the top of my list.”
He wondered if perhaps if people had been left to make their own decision about Trump without the media telling them how to vote, “they would have come to their own conclusions and rejected Donald Trump.”
“But I think the constant intimidation and the combination of media influence and the four accusations, one conviction and showing, you know, that awful Madison Square Garden joke a week before the election on a loop, and I felt it and I said it,” he told his host Mediaite.
Smerconish was referring to the controversial anti-Puerto Rican joke made by comedian and Trump supporter Tony Hinchcliffe during Trump's rally in New York last month, in which he called the US territory a “floating island of garbage.”
The media characterized the joke as a major insult to the Puerto Rican community coming from the Trump campaign just days before the election.
BILL MAHER PANS MEDIA EXCUSES FOR KAMALA HARRIS'S DEFEAT: AMERICA JUST 'DON'T LIKE' HER
US President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute Gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump has been announcing a series of nominees to fill out his next administration. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
President Biden would go on to make the most controversial moment for the Democratic Party when he appeared to call Trump supporters “trash” in response to the joke, a clip the Trump campaign used for its own benefit.
Smerconish noted that he had not made any predictions about whether Trump would win in the run-up to the election, but said the media's relentless denials of Trump gave him the sense that they could backfire.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE MEDIA AND CULTURE COVERAGE
“I can't sit here, Aiden, telling you, well, this is how I called the election, but I definitely felt the potential for a boomerang effect, and I think it came true. I really do.”
In August, Smerconish said Friday that Trump had a significant lead over Vice President Harris in politics.
“So the question of the race will be about personality. If so, he loses,” Smerconish said of Trump, adding that Trump would nevertheless “probably win” in a battle over policy with Harris.
Liberal pundit Bill Maher, an HBO host, recently gave the reason he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump: that the Democratic Party is too radical. “You wear 'Queers for Palestine' t-shirts and masks two years after the pandemic ended. And you can't define a woman. I mean 'person who menstruates,'” she said during Friday's episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “.
He added: “You are the educational party of the teachers union and you have turned schools and universities into a joke. You just lost a crazy contest to a real crazy person.”
– Fox News' Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
