‘Trump Is Wrong’: Mike Pence Slams Effort to Overturn Election
Former Vice President Mike Pence in a speech before the Federalist Society on Friday responded to former President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks against him for not stopping the certification of the 2020 election results last Jan. 6. Pence argued, simply and correctly, that he had no legal right to do so.
“This week, our former president said I had the right to ‘overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong,” Pence said Friday. “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.”
“Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” he added. The remarks are the former vice president’s strongest rebuke of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results and defenses of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, during which rioters chanted for Pence to be hanged.
Former Trump issued a statement Friday night responding to Pence’s comments, calling the former vice president “an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President.”
“I was right, and everyone knows it,” Trump added. “A great opportunity lost, but not forever, in the meantime our Country is going to hell!”
Pence has been one of Trump’s favorite punching bags as the former president continues to complain about losing the 2020 election. Trump said earlier this week that the Jan. 6 committee should be investigating the former vice president because he “did not send back the votes for recertification or approval.” A few days before that he griped that Pence “could have overturned the Election!” The day before that, Trump floated the prospect of pardoning Jan. 6 rioters should he win back the White House in 2024. “If I run, and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” the former president on Saturday in Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons”
Pence during his speech on Friday described the attack on the Capitol as a “dark day.”
Multiple reporters noted that the crowd at the legal-minded Federalist Society erupted in applause after Pence slapped down the idea that he could have stopped the election certification.
This post has been updated.