Mike Pence Added ‘Trump is Wrong’ to Speech Only After Trump Attacked Him, Per Report

Former Vice President Mike Pence did not originally intend to so sharply rebuke former President Donald Trump in his speech last Friday, according to a report by CNN, and only added the stunning comment that “Trump is wrong” after the former president had issued a statement attacking him.

The instigating attack happened on Jan. 30, in a “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,” the emailed diatribes to which Trump has been reduced since his Twitter account was permanently squashed in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the statement, Trump claimed that Pence “could have overturned the Election!”

No, he could not have done that. And that’s exactly what Pence himself said in a speech at the Federalist Society’s annual conference in Orlando, Fla. last Friday:

And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election.

But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there’s no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

CNN’s John King introduced reporter Gabby Orr with what he called a “fascinating” report on Pence’s decision to rewrite his speech.

“Those strong words were not part of the original speech plan,” said King. “Gabby, why — why did Mike Pence go to rewrite and deliver a much tougher speech?”

That “rather stunning rebuke” of Trump, said Orr, “was included after the former president issued two statements last week, once again falsely suggesting that Mike Pence had the authority on January 6th to reject certification of certain ballots confirming the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Orr added that one Pence adviser told her that after the former veep had included “this very strong rebuttal” of Trump in his remarks, that he had heard from “numerous” Republican lawmakers, donors, and top conservative leaders “who privately applauded him for doing so.”

“And what that really says is there are several Republicans behind the scenes that still agree with Mike Pence and want people to speak out and say Donald Trump is wrong but they, themselves, aren’t willing to do so publicly,” said Orr.

King asked if this meant that Pence did this just once because he was reacting to Trump’s attack or if he planned to “keep doing it.”

Orr characterized the situation as Pence’s team having “left the door open to future comments in line with what he said last Friday.” Another source close to Pence told her “quote, he is not looking for this to be a main storyline, but if something is falsely said about him, he is going to correct it.”

“So we may expect him to say some things like this in future speeches, but at the moment it’s not for certain,” she concluded.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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