Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Sunday refused to call out former President Trump for trying to get former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. This comes as Pence shot down Trump’s insistence that he could’ve overturned the election results.
During a Federalist Society conference on Friday, Pence rebuked Trump’s baseless claim that the former VP had the power to overturn the election results when he presided over the Senate on the day of the joint session of Congress last year to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone,” Pence said. “And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.”
In an interview on CBS on Sunday, Rubio dodged the question of whether he agrees with Pence’s remarks. Without a hint of irony, Rubio attempted to paint Vice President Kamala Harris as someone who would commit election fraud if Trump were to run for re-election in 2024 and win.
“Well, if President Trump runs for re-election, I believe he would defeat Joe Biden, and I don’t want Kamala Harris to have the power as vice president to overturn that election, and I don’t — that’s the same thing that I concluded back in January of 2021,” Rubio said.
Rubio then claimed that he “looked” into and “analyzed” the issue of whether a vice president can overturn election results before acknowledging that, in fact, it wasn’t possible.
“You know, when that issue was raised, I looked at it, had analyzed it and came to the same conclusion that vice presidents can’t simply decide not to certify an election,” Rubio said.
Asked whether Trump was wrong to claim that Pence could’ve overturned the results, Rubio didn’t address Trump’s unsuccessful pressure campaign to get Pence to do so, but instead pivoted to bashing Harris again.
“Well, as I said, I just don’t think a vice president has that power because if the vice president has that power, Donald Trump would defeat Joe Biden in four years or two years, and then Kamala Harris can decide not to overturn the election,” Rubio said. “I don’t want to wind up there.”
Rubio’s remarks come as Trump has suggested that the Jan. 6 Committee investigate Pence for doing his job to certify the 2020 election results, following the former president’s frank admission that he wanted his VP to overturn the results.
“The Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!” Trump said in a statement issued last week through his Save America PAC.
Trump’s statement continues his crusade against the bipartisan effort in Congress to reform the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the 130-year-old law he had tried to weaponize to pressure Pence into throwing out the 2020 election results. But despite Trump’s grievances, Pence never had the power to overturn elections.
Trump gave Rubio his “complete and total endorsement” of the Florida senator’s upcoming re-election campaign last year, following rumors of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, running for Rubio’s seat.
Trump’s endorsement of Rubio’s re-election bid came after Rubio enabled the former president to run wild with false claims of election fraud that eventually led to the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.
Watch Rubio’s remarks below:
