While the media has been framing Pence’s Friday night speech to top GOP donors as a huge rebuke of Trump, I’m not buying the claim that Pence indirectly called Trump an apologist for Putin. That said, Pence did mention the 2020 election, an issue that he and President Trump are undeniably at odds over.
President Trump has long insisted that Pence had the authority to prevent the certification of the 2020 election. Pence, however, has consistently and correctly pointed out over the past year that he did not. “But 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,” Pence said last month in a speech before a local chapter of the Federalist Society in Florida. “And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election’. President Trump is wrong… I had no right to overturn the election.”
However, one thing that they do agree on is that the election wasn’t entirely on the level. Pence has acknowledged there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election. “On January 6th, I said that I believe there were irregularities about which I was concerned, and I wanted them to have a fair hearing before the Congress,” Pence said in an interview with CBN News last year. “But from the founding of this nation forward, it’s been well established that elections are to be governed at the state level and that the only role that Congress has is to open and count the electoral votes that are submitted by states across the country. No more, no less than that.”
Also for Our VIPs: Did Pence Really Call Trump an ‘Apologist’ for Putin? I Don’t Think So.
But on Friday night, Pence said that it’s time to move on from 2020.
“Elections are about the future,” Pence said in his speech. “My fellow Republicans, we can only win if we are united around an optimistic vision for the future based on our highest values. We cannot win by fighting yesterday’s battles, or by relitigating the past.”
Let’s be honest. He’s right. Does that mean that we shouldn’t be concerned about the widespread election irregularities and fraud that occurred in 2020? Heck no. It’s still just as important today as it was a year ago. Americans’ faith in our elections is genuinely shattered. Democrats haven’t accepted the results of a presidential election that they lost since 1988. In 2000, 2004, and 2016, they challenged the results one way or another, and make no mistake about it; they’ll challenge the results of the next election they lose. In fact, back in January, Joe Biden preemptively cast doubt on the results of the upcoming 2022 midterm elections.
Democrats don’t have the moral high ground when it comes to accepting election results, but we don’t need to sink to their level. It is legally and constitutionally impossible for the results of the 2020 election to be overturned. Our goal moving forward shouldn’t be relitigating the 2020 election; it should be identifying the problems that made 2020 rife with fraud and irregularities and then fixing those problems so all Americans, regardless of political party, can trust the results of our elections, regardless of the outcome.
This means that if Trump wants to be our nominee in 2024, he needs to approach election integrity as something bigger than just the 2020 election. Election integrity is a winning issue for the GOP. Americans support commonsense laws to secure our elections, but Trump has to move past making this a personal issue for him. Was he robbed in 2020? For sure. Between election irregularities, fraud, and illegal changes to election laws in various battleground states, there are plenty of reasons to question the results of the 2020 election. That said, even if you believe he is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, we may never know definitively. So let’s focus on the future to stop the shenanigans. Americans support election integrity, so let’s keep it a winning issue for the GOP.
