Here’s The Latest ‘Statement By Donald J. Trump,’ This Time Whining That Pence ‘Could Have Overturned the Election!’ (No, He Could Not)

Sarah RumpfJan 30th, 2022, 8:58 pm
 
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Win McNamee/Getty Images

It’s a day ending in “y,” so of course former President Donald Trump is complaining that he really did win the 2020 election and the only reason he isn’t still president because all these awful mean people stole it from him. On Sunday, he once again focused his ire on former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to help him steal it back.

Deprived of his Twitter megaphone after the collective social media world recoiled in horror to the violence of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump has been issuing his commentary in tweets from his spokeswoman Liz Harrington and emailed to reporters with the header “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.”

The text reads as follows:

If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had “absolutely no right” to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!

This is, of course, far from the first time Trump has attacked his own former VP for refusing to ignore the Constitution and federal law to throw out validly cast and certified votes in states that went to Joe Biden.

Just a few days ago during a Fox News appearance, Pence admitted that he and Trump had not spoken since last summer.

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 was cited in memos drafted by Trump advisers after he lost the 2020 election, claiming that Pence could summarily reject certified slates of electors from states that voted for Biden, and then either recognize “alternate slates” of electors from those states, or just refuse to include those states in the overall Electoral College count, and thereby give Trump the majority.

This law is presumably the subject of Trump’s complaint in his latest “Statement,” and despite Trump’s protestations to the contrary, it does not actually grant any powers that would have allowed Pence to have “change[d] the outcome” or “overturned the Election!” as Trump claims. Efforts are underway to revise the federal statute to be even more clear and affirmatively state that this sort of nonsense is not allowed.

Former Pence Homeland Security adviser Olivia Troye was scathing in her reaction to Trump’s latest attack on her former boss, noting that Trump was “boasting” that “the goal was to overturn the election” just one day after “touting at his rally that he’ll pardon Jan. 6 insurrectionists,” and saying that GOP candidates should have to “go on record” with whether or not they agreed with Trump.

UPDATE: This tweet by George Conway was just too good not to include. The Electoral Count Act as currently written, along with the Twelfth Amendment, wrote Conway, “already make it entirely clear that the Vice President merely opens the envelopes.”

“But sometimes we want to make laws even clearer so that even semiliterate psychopaths have a chance at understanding them.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.