Former President Donald Trump opined that Mike Pence, who served as vice president during his administration, was “ill-advised” when he refused to reject the 2020 election results. “In my opinion, he had the absolute right to return the votes to the legislatures,” Trump said in an interview with Tucker Carlson
Donald Trump, former President of the United States, reiterated again in an interview with Fox network host Tucker Carlson that, in his opinion, former Vice President Mike Pence could reject the results of the 2020 elections.
Trump claimed, as reviewed by The Hill news portal, that former Vice President Mike Pence received “very bad advice” when he refused to endorse Trump’s attempt to reject the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.
“You have to understand that, in my opinion, Mike Pence had the absolute right to return the votes to the legislatures,” Trump said in the pre-recorded interview offered to Carlson, which was broadcast on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter.
However, Trump acknowledged that lawyers were divided on whether Pence had the authority to do so, and the former vice president and his team have been adamant that it would be unconstitutional for the vice president to unilaterally reject electoral votes.
Likewise, Trump admitted that he has not spoken to Pence “in a long time.”
Trump was indicted on federal and Georgia charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and his lobbying campaign on Pence was part of both indictments.
After Trump was indicted in Georgia, former Vice President Pence reiterated that the election was not stolen and again insisted that he did not have the authority to reject votes for the president’s election.
“Despite what the former president and his allies have said for more than two and a half years, and continue to insist at this very moment, the election in Georgia was not stolen and I had no right to reverse the election on January 6. It’s a hard truth,” he asserted.
In early August, Pence even claimed that a group of “crackpot lawyers” wrongly advised Trump on what he could do about the 2020 election results.
“I’m a student of American history. And the first time I heard, in early December, that someone suggested that the vice president could decide which votes were accepted and which were rejected, I immediately knew this was false, and I immediately dismissed it. Unfortunately, the president (referring to Donald Trump) was surrounded by a bunch of crackpot lawyers telling him what he wanted to hear,” Pence said at a press conference at the Indiana State Fair.