Former President Donald Trump on Sunday admitted in a written statement that he wanted his former Vice President Mike Pence to “overturn the election” and railed against efforts to put laws in place to prevent something like that from ever happening.
“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?” Trump said in the statement, continuing to peddle his lies that the 2020 election was not secure.
“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!”
He was apparently referring to the push to reform the Electoral Count Act.
Both Democrats and Republicans have indicated they would like to correct ambiguities in the 1887 law, which Trump exploited to try and pressure Pence to block the certification of the election on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence refused.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said last week that “We need to clarify: What is the role of the vice president precisely, make it clear that it’s ministerial.”
Critics and legal experts piled onto Trump’s statement. Conservative attorney George Conway said it was already clear from a legal standpoint that the vice president’s role in that setting is merely ceremonial, “but sometimes we want to make laws even clearer so that even semiliterate psychopaths have a chance at understanding them.”
Others observed that Trump was now openly admitting his desire for Pence to overturn the election in his favor.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
