Former vice president Mike Pence on Saturday dismissed former president Donald Trump’s claims that Pence could have stopped Joe Biden from becoming president. He slammed his former boss by saying that he was wrong to suggest to overturn the election.
“President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And, current vice-president Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Mike Pence was quoted as saying by news agency BBC.
“There is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” he further added, according to a separate report by AFP. Pence was addressing a Federalist Society event in Orlando.
Trump, since losing the election, falsely claims that he was the rightful winner and the election was stolen from him. He continues to make the same claims at rallies he has held recently. The claims that Pence could have overturned the polls also were made by Trump as recently as last week.
“Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election,” Trump said at a rally in Texas. He earlier in an interview with news agency ABC’s Jonathan Karl defended the January 6 Capitol Hill rioters who were chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence’. “Because it’s common sense,” Trump said when Karl interviewed him for his book.
Donald Trump continues to, however, maintain an iron grip over the Grand Old Party (GOP) as it censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their anti-Trump stance. Trump is by far the Republican favourite for the 2024 presidential elections and is the biggest fundraiser for the party- amassing $122 million. The Republicans claimed that Cheney and Kinzinger were helping Democrats persecute ‘persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse’ – referring to their participation in the panel probing the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2020.
The Republican Party in a bid to do damage control later said that they were referring to the people unhappy with the election results as ‘ordinary citizens’ and not the ‘rioters’ but the ambiguity in the statement has led observers to believe that they may have referred to both.
Cheney and Kinzinger have criticised their own party for submitting to Trump. “The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon 6 January defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy,” Cheney said. Similar concerns were echoed by Republican lawmaker Mitt Romney.
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