For the past year, Donald Trump has been cosplaying as Webster Dictionary’s definition of a “sore loser” but his latest remarks — first at a rally held in Texas, then in a press release issued Sunday night — have left lawmakers and political pundits shocked. That’s because, for the first time, Trump is blatantly admitting to attempting to pressure his former Vice President Mike Pence into overturning the 2020 Presidential Election.
In a statement released by his team, Trump addressed bipartisan efforts to update the Electoral Count Act of 1887 in order to make it clear that no vice president has the right to change the outcome of an election. Trump sees this proposal as proof that Pence did have the power to call the 2020 Presidential Election in his favor (he didn’t) and Pence simply chose not to.
“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,” Trump wrote. “Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”
Trump has made it known that he believes voter fraud and other forms of election tampering caused him to lose the presidency but this marks the first time he’s admitted to actively trying to pressure a sitting vice president into overturning the vote, not just investigating it or refusing to certify the vote. Even more troubling, during a rally held over the weekend, Trump called on his supporters to rise up should he find himself in any legal trouble for his latest comments with the Jan. 6th Committee currently looking into his role in the insurrection.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had — in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt,” he told the crowd.
CNN’s John King covered the recent rally and interviewed New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman about what Trump’s latest speech means and she had a fairly bleak interpretation of the former president’s mindset.
“He’s in, John, burn it all down mode and has been for some time,” Haberman said. “You take all of that together and you see the portrait of somebody who really doesn’t care anymore … who knows he can keep pushing the bounds and there haven’t been that many penalties.”
Watch the full segment below:
(Via RawStory)