Fareed Zakaria calls Stacey Abrams an 'election denier' in a debate over Ronna McDaniel's firing from NBC
CNN host Fareed Zakaria argued Friday on HBO's "Real Time" that liberals should stop enforcing "double standards" on their platforms after the firing of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel from NBC.
NBC News terminated its contract with McDaniel after just four days. According to a memo and apology that NBCUniversial News Group Chairman Cesar Conde issued to staff, McDaniel's hiring was not conducive to a "cohesive and aligned" newsroom.
When asked to weigh in on the controversial decision, Zakaria pointed out that the arguments to remove McDaniel were not fair to both conservatives and liberals.
"They say, no, it’s not about that, it’s that she lied," Zakaria said of McDaniel's firing from NBC. "Well, Bill Clinton lied, under oath. I think, last time I checked, he’s been on MSNBC. They say, well, she’s an election denier. Well, Stacey Abrams was an election denier about her own election and they’ve had her on."
Abrams is a two-time failed gubernatorial candidate who famously refused to concede the election to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in 2018 and even suggested that Kemp, as then-secretary of state, enacted policies to suppress Georgia voters. She has since denied "challenging" the election and has acknowledged Kemp as the governor of Georgia "under the rules that were in place."
Zakaria also said that "liberals often trigger backlash when they use illiberal means to get to their ends."
"The way you’re going to defend [liberalism], the way you’re going to move it forward is by not cheating, not cutting corners, not having double standards, because if we have them, then what Trump says is, well, ‘you cut corners, I cut corners,'" he added.
Zakaria called out college presidents of elite universities for perpetuating the same double standards over liberal values.
"People said, wait a minute, you’re saying it’s okay to say nasty things about Jews," Zakaria said about the controversy at schools like Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania over antisemitism. "But wait, but when people said nasty things about African Americans, you said, oh no, that’s hate speech."
"You can’t have these double standards," he said. "If you’re going to apply a standard, just apply it consistently."
Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.