He has never contradicted Donald Trump more clearly: Mike Pence, former number two behind the former US President, has clearly opposed Trump’s statement that he could have overturned the result of the 2020 elections.
Mike Pence, ex-US Vice President, has contradicted statements by former head of state Donald Trump that Pence could have overturned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. “Under the constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election,” he said on Friday. pence’ Comments made clear the split within the Republican Party over absentee ballots. Just hours earlier, the Conservative Party’s National Committee had described the violent storming of the Capitol as “legitimate political expression.”
Trump and Pence are considered presidential candidates for 2024
To date, Trump has not acknowledged his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and regularly spread allegations of voter fraud. After the election, he asked Pence to block the formal confirmation of Biden’s victory in Congress. However, Pence, who had been loyal to Trump until then, had refused.
“President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election, but President Trump is wrong,” Pence told the conservative Federalist Society in Florida on Friday. He had done his constitutional “duty”.
Pence had made similar statements in the past, but he had never contradicted Trump as clearly as on Friday. “Frankly, there is no more un-American idea than the idea that a single person could elect the US President,” Pence added.
Both Pence and Trump are considered potential presidential candidates for the 2024 election. According to observers, with his clear positioning against Trump, Pence is positioning himself for the race for the Republican Party nomination.
Storming the Capitol: a ‘dark day in history’
On January 6, 2021, when Biden’s election victory was to be certified by Congress, radical Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. The storming of the seat of Congress with five dead caused horror around the world. Pence called Friday’s attack a “dark day in the history of the US Capitol.”
The National Committee of the Republican Party declared the storming of the Capitol in a resolution on Friday a “legitimate expression of political opinion” and punished two prominent critics of Trump’s party. A formal reprimand was issued against Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Their behavior is “destructive to the US House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic”.
The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and the representative from the state of Illinois had become the harshest Trump critics in their own ranks after the Capitol was stormed. Together with the Democrats, they voted for an – ultimately unsuccessful – impeachment process against Trump and are currently the only Republicans on the parliamentary investigative committee investigating the attack on parliament.
Republicans are cracking down on Trump critics within their own ranks
In its Friday resolution, the National Committee described the investigation as a “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens.” Republican Senator and Trump critic Mitt Romney, on the other hand, condemned the actions against Cheney and Kinzinger as a “shame” for his party.
After the Capitol was stormed, large sections of the Republican Party turned their backs on Trump, who was voted out. However, the right-wing populist was able to regain power over the party in the weeks and months that followed. The 75-year-old, who is still enormously popular with the grassroots, is openly flirting with another presidential candidacy. Meanwhile, Republicans are taking tough action against Trump critics in their own ranks.
In view of the pressure, Kinzinger has already announced that he will not run for the House of Representatives again in the midterm elections next November. Cheney, in turn, has a Trump-backed challenger in her party’s congressional primaries.
Source: Stern
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