Anti-Trump, former CNN host John Avlon loses congressional race
Former CNN anchor and political analyst John Avlon, who was among the network’s fiercest critics of former President Trump, lost his bid to represent New York’s 1st Congressional District.
Avlon announced in February that he would exit CNN to "defeat Donald Trump" and "his MAGA minions" by seeking office as a Democrat, but ultimately lost to Republican Rep. Nick LaLota. Avlon conceded the race before midnight on Election Day, keeping the district located in the eastern part of Long Island red.
LaLota won easily, earning an 11-point victory with nearly all votes reporting as of Wednesday morning.
Avlon pitched himself as a moderate, "common-sense" Democrat, getting the "centrist" label in favorable profiles from New York Magazine and Vanity Fair, as well as a derisive one from the far-left Intercept. Avlon, whose wife Margaret Hoover is a conservative PBS host and the great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover, quickly mentioned Trump when asked about the issues he was running on during an April profile in New York Magazine.
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"The No. 1 issue is affordability. There’s Donald Trump, defense of democracy, and there’s affordability and abortion," Avlon told the outlet.
Avlon called on Democrats to "reach out" to independents and the "center-right" in his Democratic primary victory speech in June, noting he was running in a swing district.
"I'm a common-sense Democrat," he said. "We're liberal patriots and pragmatic problem-solvers."
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Avlon’s disdain for Trump and his supporters runs deep and began in 2015 when he was the editor-in-chief of the far-left Daily Beast. At the time, Daily Beast writer Noah Shachtman said that anyone renting in a Trump building or playing a round of golf at a Trump resort is "supporting racism and neo-fascism."
Avlon rushed to his staffers’ defense, saying Shachtman was entitled to his opinion and the organization’s mission includes standing up to "bullies, bigots and hypocrites."
After Trump won, The Daily Beast declared it would be part of the "loyal opposition" against the president. He even insisted the outlet would refrain from covering Trump on Sunday mornings, calling it "Sabbath for sanity."
In 2018, Avlon gushed about how The Daily Beast "roared back and took on Trump."
"The dark, surreal rise of Trump from reality show star to Wingnut populist to President of the United States was right in The Beast’s strike zone - a story that combined politics, pop-culture and power," Avlon wrote.
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That same year, Avlon became a full-time CNN analyst at the height of the network’s Jeff Zucker-era pivot to anti-Trump opinion programming. Avlon fit right in where his "Reality Check" segments were frequently used to bash Trump, regularly insisting the former president was a threat to democracy and that "derangement syndrome" had infected his supporters.
Avlon also praised the infamous letter from former intelligence officials making evidence-free claims that Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020 was a Russian disinformation operation.