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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFormer President Donald Trump suggested in a statement Sunday night that then-Vice President Mike Pence should have “overturned” the election on Jan. 6, 2021, as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes by Congress.
Trump has expressed frustration before that Pence did not use his role to try to reject the electoral votes of several states that Joe Biden won. But the language in Sunday’s statement was among Trump’s most explicit in publicly stating his desire.
The statement came in response to ongoing efforts by Congress to make changes to the Electoral Count Act, a law that governs what Congress should do in the case of any disputes about which candidate won in a state. Among the changes under consideration is making it more explicit that the role of the vice president is merely ceremonial.
“If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?” Trump said in his statement. “Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”
There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in any states in which Biden prevailed, despite repeated claims by Trump to the contrary.
The statement also comes days after Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, testified before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. News of Short’s testimony was first reported by CNN.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is among the lawmakers involved in bipartisan talks about changes to the Electoral Count Act, an effort that has gained momentum in the wake of Democrats’ failure to pass sweeping voting rights legislation.
Raising the total number of senators and House members required to challenge a state’s count is also among the other changes under consideration.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday that Trump’s statement was “just a reminder of how unfit he is for office.”
“He even attacked his own vice president for not, in his words, having ‘overturned the election,'” Psaki said.
Psaki added that President Joe Biden is open to changes in the Electoral Count Act but does not view that as a substitute for passing voting rights legislation.
Pence is expected to address and defend his decision to certify the election during a speech Friday in Florida to the Federalist Society.
Short appeared before the Jan. 6 committee last week, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Pence does not plan to appear before the committee, but besides Short, Pence’s top lawyer, Greg Jacob, is expected to appear.
Trump and Pence are both expected to appear at a Republican donor retreat in New Orleans in early March. Pence allies have said he will consider a presidential bid, even if Trump runs for the White House again.
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., an outspoken Trump critic who voted to impeach him on a charge of inciting an insurrection, said in a tweet Monday that the former president would try to do it again.
“Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election. He’d do it all again if given the chance,” wrote Cheney, who is vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s latest salvo at Pence came a day after he dangled the prospect of pardons for rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection if he is elected president in 2024.
“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly,” Trump said Saturday near the end of a lengthy campaign rally in Conroe, Texas. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
The mother of Ashli Babbitt, the pro-Trump rioter who was fatally shot when she stormed the Capitol last year, has joined Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and others in urging Trump to defend individuals who were charged in the insurrection and are being held in the D.C. jail.
In his role as president of the Senate, Pence was at the Capitol to preside over the counting of the electoral votes on Jan. 6 when the pro-Trump mob breached the building in an effort to prevent him from officially affirming Biden’s win. Pence repeatedly told Trump in the lead-up to Jan. 6 that he did not have the power to overturn the 2020 election, and Trump would regularly ask him to listen to other advisers or read other arguments that said he did.
Members of the mob that day shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” and erected a gallows on the west side of the Capitol. As the building was under siege, Pence and his family were whisked into a hideaway, narrowly escaping the attackers, before being taken to a more secure location elsewhere in the complex.
Trump did not call Pence on Jan. 6 or in the days after to check in on his vice president’s well-being, prompting anger among many in Pence’s orbit. The two men have spoken occasionally since Jan. 20, 2021, but have not seen each other.
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Trump is an obvious criminal and should be arrested, tried, prosecuted and executed ASAP. He is the most pressing danger to the USA.
That’s pretty disgusting. You’re not a judge. You can’t sentence people to death because you don’t like their policies.
Tried, yes – but fairly.
No, the gullible people who fall for his “speeches” are the most pressing danger. If they didn’t pay attention to him, he’d just be a cowpie on the information superhighway and be ignored. Not far behind those voters are the Republicans who watch what he’s doing and take notes as to how to conduct their own campaigns…those are the true RINOs.
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And there’s always the old saying:
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“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”
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And those RINOs are the ones who demonstrate why a candidate should have to resign their current office to run for another one. DeSantis and Cruz are perfect examples which come to mind.
Trump is a sick man and bad for America.
It’s time for all those good Republicans to wise up and realize that to protect America, they must refuse to vote for Republican candidates as long as supporting this nonsense is required to be a Republican.
The only people that Republicans want to punish for January 6 is the people who dare to tell the truth.
Most Republicans I talk to do not want Trump to run again and do not support what he’s saying. Sure, he has his die-hard supporters, they are many and I have to watch what I say around them, but I would venture to say most Independents and a lot of Republicans are not on board with what he says or him running again. If it wasn’t for his giant-sized ego why in the world would he want to. Democrats will come after him with a vengeance and the country would be even more divided than it already is. Time for some new blood not named Trump, Biden or Clinton.
There is no freedom without truth and justice.
And there’s no need to “overturn” an election that was conducted freely, fairly, and accurately.
People who believe in free and fair elections don’t call up election officials and ask them to “find” the votes needed to make them the winner. That’s disqualifying behavior for an elected official. If you disagree or diminish or “what about” that, you don’t believe in democracy. Full stop.
What you want is the democracy that Putin has in Russia or Orban has in Hungary. Regardless of how badly Tucker Carlson is trying to whitewash it, neither of those are countries to defend or admire.
There is a major mental health problem in the U.S. and Trump is the poster boy.
The real question is when will Republicans in Congress quit enabling Trump? He was their “creation” in 2015 when they sat on the sidelines and dared not to criticize him as he racked up primary win after primary win even though they knew – or should have known – how his very visible character flaws would dictate how he would govern. Had there been a united force of Republicans on Capitol Hill and throughout the states to rebut his claim that Obama was not born in the US, or that the crowd at his 2016 inauguration was not the largest in history, things might be very different today. Unless and until Republican office holders disown Trump, and make it clear he is not welcome on the ticket, the GOP is nothing more than party headed for the cliffs.
Far too late, Brent. Those folks like Mitch McConnell who think they can manage Trump, or that they’re leaders of the Republican Party? They’re fools. It’s Trump’s party. All those people who made their deal with Trump to let him in their party have been replaced by Trump loyalists.
McConnell’s chance to take back the Republican Party was the second impeachment. History will judge him poorly for his mistake, more so than they will for politicizing and packing the Supreme Court. Mitch has well earned the tag “gravedigger of American democracy”.