Trump: Pence Couldn't Cross Line to Do What Was Right

Former Vice President Mike Pence "couldn't cross the line" to do "what was right" after the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

"He had the right to go and put him before the legislatures and have them reassess, because they found out a lot of bad things. And he had a lawyer that said he didn't have that right, but he did have that right," Trump said during an appearance on the Flagrant podcast.

"I think he's a good man," Trump said. "Unfortunately, I wish he would have had the stamina — maybe courage, maybe both — to go further, because we have to have honest elections in our country. And if we're afraid to challenge an election, we're in a big trouble."

Pence, who had long been seen as one of Trump's most loyal defenders, broke with his two-time running mate when Trump and his lawyers asked him "to literally reject votes," Pence said last August.

"I think it's important that the American people know what happened in the days before Jan. 6," Pence said. "President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes. I had no authority to do that."

Congress in 2022 gave final passage to legislation changing the law that governs the certification of a presidential contest, the strongest effort yet to avoid a repeat of Jan. 6, 2021.

The provisions amending the 1887 law — which has long been criticized as poorly and confusingly written — won bipartisan support.

Under the new rules, one-fifth of each chamber would be required to force a vote on states' slates of electors.

The new provisions also ensure only one slate of electors makes it to Congress after Trump and his allies unsuccessfully tried to create alternative slates of electors in states President Joe Biden won. Each governor would now be required to sign off on electors, and Congress cannot consider slates submitted by different officials. The bill creates a legal process if any of those electors are challenged by a presidential candidate.

The legislation would also close a loophole that wasn't used in 2020 but election experts feared could be, a provision that state legislatures can name electors in defiance of their state's popular vote in the event of a "failed" election. That term has been understood to mean a contest that was disrupted or so in doubt that there's no way to determine the actual winner, but it is not well-defined in the prior law.

Pence has declined to back Trump as he runs for the White House again.

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