On Sunday, Donald Trump said bluntly that what he wanted out of Mike Pence on Jan. 6 was an overthrow of American democracy. Trump claimed that Pence had the authority to singlehandedly overturn the results of the 2020 election and install Trump as an unelected ruler. But Pence had let him down.
”Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome,” Trump wrote in a statement, “and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”
On Friday, Mike Pence finally spoke up to address this claim. He completely denied the assertion that he had the authority to ignore the results of the election, and didn’t shy away from addressing Trump’s claim directly.
“President Trump is wrong,” said Pence at a conference hosted by the ultra-conservative Federalist Society. “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."
“There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes,” said Pence. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.”
Pence also moved on to the obvious conclusion that Trump apparently never considered, saying that Vice President Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election in 2024, ”when we beat them.”
Who “we” is, in this case, wasn’t clear. What is clear is that with Trump pressing for a pardon of Jan. 6 defendants and claiming that Pence had unilateral authority to declare a winner, while Pence is saying there is “no idea more un-American,” and the RNC is censoring Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kitzinger for being on the January 6 select committee while upholding the violence of that day as “legitimate political discourse” the week is ending with the Republican Party deeply divided.
The Trump faction—which has become the Republican base—is solidly behind the assault on the Capitol, believes the Jan. 6 defendants were either innocent or justified, and thinks that Pence betrayed them at the critical moment. The Republican leadership that is not Donald Trump is increasingly aware that it has a wolf by the ears, and can’t make up its mind whether to hang on or try to get away.
Meanwhile, more and more information on Trump’s coup is coming out, and it just might be that some of the Republicans are getting a clue about what comes next.