Former Vice President Mike Pence has forcefully pushed back on his one-time boss, calling former President Donald Trump’s scheme to stop the Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 win “un-American.”
“I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence told a conservative conference in Florida.
“The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone,” Pence continued, adding “Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President.”
For over a year, Pence has sustained relentless insults from Trump, who wanted his running mate, in his capacity as president of the Senate, to reject the Electoral College votes from key swing states that cemented Biden’s victory.
On Friday, Pence explained why he rejected his boss’s constitutionally dubious plan: “The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or political fortunes. If we lose faith in the constitution, we won’t just lose elections. We lose our country.”
Bloomberg reports:
Pence, who is considered a possible presidential contender even as Trump teases a run of his own, was speaking in Orlando at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society’s Florida chapters. Notably, when Pence said Trump was wrong, there was no immediate response from the crowd. The audience didn’t applaud until Pence said Vice President Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election “when we beat them in 2024.”
Bloomberg adds:
Pence has defended his actions on Jan. 6, saying in interviews and in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last June about the future of the GOP that he was proud to have fulfilled his oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution — even if it means not seeing “eye to eye” with Trump and there are political consequences.
Trump has said he’d choose someone else as his running mate if he makes another White House bid in 2024, and Trump supporters have shown their displeasure with Pence over Jan. 6. Hecklers even shouted “traitor” at the start of Pence’s speech at a conservative event last June in Florida.