Mike Pence cornered by CNN's Bash over why he stayed quiet about Trump's election theft plans
On Sunday morning, CNN host Dana Bash put former vice president Mike Pence on the spot over his initial silence about Donald Trump's election theft plot that could have helped get the former impeached and banned from running for office again.
Pence, who has still not qualified for the August Republican Party debate, spent the first part of his "State of the Union" interview making his case that Trump is unsuitable to be re-elected because he "put himself above the Constitution" in his bid to overturn the 2020 election results.
That led Bash to ask him why he remained silent for so long after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"I hear you talking about this and I know you've also said that you wished that there were no criminal charges that had to be filed as what happened this past week but do you ever wonder what would have happened if you would have come forward with the specifics that you were just talking about, just now?" the CNN host prompted. "The pressure campaign that you got from the then-president, from his attorneys, and talked about that in the days after January 6th. Now he's really solidified his grip on your party and helped lead the party's view of his unconstitutional actions; a vast majority of Republican voters think he actually won in 2020. Do you wish you said what you're saying today sooner?"
"I don't know, Dana," he replied. "I've been saying this for year. After leaving the White House and moving home to Indiana, it was on the 100th day of the Biden administration that I spoke about this issue. I've given countless interviews and wrote an entire book telling our story now more than a year ago."
"But I understand that the news events of this week have caused renewed focus on this issue. and in some respects, I welcome it," he conceded. "Not because I welcome the indictment; I had hoped it hadn't come to this. I had hoped there were questions about the president's conduct on January 6th had been left to the judgment of Republican primary voters and the American people, but now that this has come, I've had people coming up to me ever since that day, and in some respects telling me that they didn't know, they didn't know what we went through, they didn't know about the stand that we took."
"Exactly," host Bash pressed. "And do you think if you would have said so publicly, you would have been for example to be able to influence your fellow Republicans in the Senate. If he was convicted in the impeachment trial, he wouldn't even be able to run for president."
"I mean, come on, Dana," he protested. "We lived through the Russia hoax, the president being impeached for a phone call, the day after January 6th Nancy Pelosi tried to distort the 25th amendment to get us to remove the president. And then to go through a process of impeaching the president of the United States after he left office was just one more effort by the Democrats."
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