Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year’s election.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Pence’s remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he’s been laying the groundwork to run.
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results. Pence refused, and when rioters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”
The House committee that investigated the attack said in its final report that “the President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President.”
With his remarks, Pence solidified his place in a broader debate within the Republican Party over how to view the attack. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, for example, recently provided Tucker Carlson with an archive of security camera footage from Jan. 6, which the Fox News host has used to downplay the day’s events and promote conspiracy theories.
“Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said in his Gridiron Dinner remarks. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.”
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to spread lies about his election loss. He’s even spoken in support of the rioters and said he would consider pardoning them if he was reelected.
Speeches at the Gridiron Dinner are usually humorous affairs, where politicians poke fun at each other, and Pence did plenty of that as well.
He joked that Trump’s ego was so fragile, he wanted his vice president to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” — one of the lines is “did you ever know that you’re my hero?” — during their weekly lunches.
He took another shot at Trump over classified documents.
“I read that some of those classified documents they found at Mar-a-Lago were actually stuck in the president’s Bible,” Pence said. “Which proves he had absolutely no idea they were there.”
Even before the dinner was over, Pence was facing criticism for his jokes about Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member in U.S. history.
Pence mentioned that, despite travel problems that were plaguing Americans, Buttigieg took “maternity leave” after he and his husband adopted newborn twins.
“Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets post-partum depression,” Pence said.
(AP)
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10 Responses
Bad gentile.
He can dream on. So far fact lead to his own judgment by History…
We need trump back.
This world has gone mad.
Trump 2024 !
“Bad gentile”
Sara Rifka: And you are an even worse illustration of a clear-thinking Yid. Pence is probably a more reliable supporter of EY than his vile predecessor and his conservative credentials are sterling. You seem to post from some dark cave detached from reality.
Pence would be a good president, and he’s generally right about things, but he’s exaggerating on this matter.
Nobody asked him “to overturn the election”. What Trump asked him to do, and what Trump’s legal advice was that he had the power to do, was to restore the election and stop it being stolen, by rejecting the votes of those electors whom he had reason to believe were not validly chosen as directed by their state’s legislature. Whether he actually had such a power is an open question. Eastman’s theory that he did is not obviously wrong. But neither is Luttig’s theory that he did not. And obviously he had to follow his own lawyer’s advice, not that of someone else’s lawyer. That’s just obvious, though Trump doesn’t seem to understand it.
And no, Trump did not put Pence or his family in danger. They were never in danger, nobody was going to harm them. Certainly nobody intended to hang him. That is very obvious, and the idea that there was some sort of lynch mob going after him is so obviously a blood libel that it speaks very badly of his judgment if he has fallen for it.
I’d still probably vote for him in the R primary, given the likely candidates as of now.
yanky77: YOU have gone MAD…
Eh.History can always be rewritten, as demonstrated by leftists and racist blacks.
I wonder whether Pence gets any of the jokes he told. I assume they were written for him.
Huju, Pence is more intelligent than you. If you got the jokes, you can be sure he did.
thank G-d your jewish routes were overlooked and you chose to be an Amalek