Following the most corrupt election in American history this is the reported conversation from the book Peril
Oval Office Jan 5
Trump: If these people say you had the power, wouldn't you want to?
Pence: I wouldn't want any one person to have that authority.
Trump: But wouldn't it be almost cool to have that power?
Pence: No, I've done everything I could and then some to find a way around this. It's simply not possible.
Trump: No, no, no! You don't understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this."
And one spineless idiot calls another for advice
Quayle: Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away.
Pence: You don't know the position I'm in.
Quayle: I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That's all you do. You have no power.
Phone call Jan 6
Trump: If you don't do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago. You're going to wimp out.
Trump interview in June 2021
Brody: What's your take on Mike Pence and what's the relationship like?
Trump: Well, I've always liked Mike and I'm very disappointed that he didn't send it back to the legislatures when you have more votes than you have voters in some cases, and when you have the kind of things that were known then. I was disappointed that he didn't send it back. I felt that he had the right to send it back. He should have sent it back. That's my opinion. I think you may have found that you would have had a different president right now had he sent them back.

Mike failed to do his duty. Mike failed America. Mike is a traitor

Yepp, mister moral high ground himself couldn't stand-up when it mattered most.

Just for the record, who was in the Trump administration, or was placed into a non-administrative position by Trump, that didn't betray the country according to this forum?

Should be a short list?

I'm not happy about Biden, but Pence isn't the right scapegoat. Him not seating electors was a hail-mary which would likely have likely been pushed past and had no consequential result.

Once a state submits it's delegation - the fed should honor it. The time and place to fight that is BEFORE the state sends them, and unfortunately the courts punted this election HARD. (The moment that executives deviated from the legal process, the courts should have been down their throats to correct before they could incur fallout.)

Pence could not "send it back to legislatures"

Following the constitution is not being a "traitor"

aggiedent said:

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Just for the record, who was in the Trump administration, or was placed into a non-administrative position by Trump, that didn't betray the country according to this forum?

Should be a short list?

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I don't have the list of names but I don't believe everyone betrayed him. I do like how you have deflected from the actual topic. If mike pence had the power to do more and didn't then he sold trump and our country out. There was absolute fraud in the 2020 election.

On a side note I never liked pence he signed the TPP any politician that signed that sold our country out. So it appears pence sold us out not once but twice.

BMX Bandit said:

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Pence could not "send it back to legislatures"

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That would have happened if he refused to certify an election full of fraud.

Quote:

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I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this

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well if that didn't convince Pence, nothing would.

damiond said:

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BMX Bandit said:

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Pence could not "send it back to legislatures"

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That would have happened if he refused to certify an election full of fraud.

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the VP does not certify elections.

Why is it always the people trump selected that get blamed, never the person doing the selecting? How many people that he appointed, or put on his ticket, has he called morons/cowards/traitors?


There was never a scenario in which trump would have remained president following the calling of georgia and arizona. I think the election was swung with mail in ballots and vote harvesting, but this narrative is nuts.

Quote:

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Trump: No, no, no! You don't understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this."

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We're supposed to be believe he said this? That's the kind of thing my 6 and 3 year olds say.

I'm sorry. I agree with Pence. I don't want a single person to ever have the power to overrule an election like this. Anyways this would have been blatantly unconstitutional. Furthermore, you don't think the Democrats would immediately take advantage of that precedent and never again cede power? This is how you end up with banana republics and lots of dead people.

No the proper response is what a multitude of states have done by tightening voting laws to prevent the democrats from committing soft fraud through ballot harvesting and mass mailing of VBM ballots.

aginresearch said:

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I'm sorry. I agree with Pence. I don't want a single person to ever have the power to overrule an election like this. Anyways this would have been blatantly unconstitutional. Furthermore, you don't think the Democrats would immediately take advantage of that precedent and never again cede power? This is how you end up with banana republics and lots of dead people.

No the proper response is what a multitude of states have done by tightening voting laws to prevent the democrats from committing soft fraud through ballot harvesting and mass mailing of VBM ballots.

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That is not the situation or what Trump was asking him to do. Trump only wanted him to send the results of the fraud election back to the state legislatures so they could.

eta - it not a prefect system but that is the situation that democrats put us in with all their cheating.

I'd like to know Woodward's source for that fanciful-sounding "conversation."

who is Quayle?

mr potatoe head

Cassius said:

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who is Quayle?

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This is a joke, right?

Man, I'm old.

I guess we have to show the youngin the video

I'm skeptical that is an accurate verbatim of the discussion between Trump and Pence, but Pence's alleged comments are correct. He did not have the power to send the votes back to the legislatures that had already certified their votes, and no true patriot would think that he could.

BusterAg said:

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Cassius said:

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who is Quayle?

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This is a joke, right?

Man, I'm old.

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no, honest Q.

Surely not Dan Quayle?!

BMX Bandit said:

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Pence could not "send it back to legislatures"

Following the constitution is not being a "traitor"

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Such staunch constitutionalists on this forum. They have made Trump their golden calf.

In my opinion you can't:

1) Have a strict constructionist viewpoint on how to read the constitution; and
2) Believe that Pence had any authority at all to do what Trump was asking him to do.

Holding both of those opinions at the same time is either uninformed or intellectually dishonest.

The reading of the constitution that would allow Pence to do anything at all is so twisted and knotted and strained, that if you applied that type of analysis to other parts of the constitution, you might as well throw the entire document away.

There may be some of you that think we are already there, that we might as well trash what remains of the constitution in order to fight this fight, but I am not one of them.

In my opinion, Pence is an unsung hero. He stood up for the constitution under overwhelming pressure. I am not happy about the result of the fraud election, but I thank Pence for doing the principled thing.

Cassius said:

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BusterAg said:

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Cassius said:

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who is Quayle?

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This is a joke, right?

Man, I'm old.

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no, honest Q.

Surely not Dan Quayle?!

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Yes.

Dan Quayle. Former vice president, was a practicing lawyer for a time. Seems like a reasonable person for a vice president to ask for advice.

Quayle has a negative public persona because he is a victim of being very inarticulate at times, and was lambasted by the press for such. He was actually a pretty staunch supported for conservative social values, which is why he was chosen as a running mate for Bush. He is definitely a globalist, though.

BusterAg said:

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In my opinion you can't:

1) Have a strict constructionist viewpoint on how to read the constitution; and
2) Believe that Pence had any authority at all to do what Trump was asking him to do.

Holding both of those opinions at the same time is either uninformed or intellectually dishonest.

The reading of the constitution that would allow Pence to do anything at all is so twisted and knotted and strained, that if you applied that type of analysis to other parts of the constitution, you might as well throw the entire document away.

There may be some of you that think we are already there, that we might as well trash what remains of the constitution in order to fight this fight, but I am not one of them.

In my opinion, Pence is an unsung hero. He stood up for the constitution under overwhelming pressure. I am not happy about the result of the fraud election, but I thank Pence for doing the principled thing.

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I guess I'm uninformed or dishonest, but I don't see how you can call it a fraud election and yet say that the "principled thing" to do was to certify said fraud.

I disagree with the OP. The election was fair and it was Trump who was trying to steal it. Pence was a "yes man" enabler until the very end, and couldn't believe how Trump turned on him for having integrity instead of blind loyalty to one man over the U.S. Constitution.

Pence finally acted like a patriot.

BusterAg said:

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Cassius said:

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BusterAg said:

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Cassius said:

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who is Quayle?

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This is a joke, right?

Man, I'm old.

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no, honest Q.

Surely not Dan Quayle?!

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Yes.

Dan Quayle. Former vice president, was a practicing lawyer for a time. Seems like a reasonable person for a vice president to ask for advice.

Quayle has a negative public persona because he is a victim of being very inarticulate at times, and was lambasted by the press for such. He was actually a pretty staunch supported for conservative social values, which is why he was chosen as a running mate for Bush. He is definitely a globalist, though.

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Quayle was shown to not be the greatest intellectual around, ideology notwithstanding. Unless he majored in conlaw, I'd probably be getting my advice elsewhere on that issue.



eta: I'm not sure I believe any of this crap anyway

Quote:

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Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors. The Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the Hall of the House of Representatives at the hour of 1 o'clock in the afternoon on that day, and the President of the Senate shall be their presiding officer. Two tellers shall be previously appointed on the part of the Senate and two on the part of the House of Representatives, to whom shall be handed, as they are opened by the President of the Senate, all the certificates and papers purporting to be certificates of the electoral votes, which certificates and papers shall be opened, presented, and acted upon in the alphabetical order of the States, beginning with the letter A; and said tellers, having then read the same in the presence and hearing of the two Houses, shall make a list of the votes as they shall appear from the said certificates; and the votes having been ascertained and counted according to the rules in this subchapter provided, the result of the same shall be delivered to the President of the Senate, who shall thereupon announce the state of the vote, which announcement shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons, if any, elected President and Vice President of the United States, and, together with a list of the votes, be entered on the Journals of the two Houses. Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any. Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received. When all objections so made to any vote or paper from a State shall have been received and read, the Senate shall thereupon withdraw, and such objections shall be submitted to the Senate for its decision; and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, in like manner, submit such objections to the House of Representatives for its decision; and no electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, but the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified. If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed, if the determination in said section provided for shall have been made, or by such successors or substitutes, in case of a vacancy in the board of electors so ascertained, as have been appointed to fill such vacancy in the mode provided by the laws of the State; but in case there shall arise the question which of two or more of such State authorities determining what electors have been appointed, as mentioned in section 5 of this title, is the lawful tribunal of such State, the votes regularly given of those electors, and those only, of such State shall be counted whose title as electors the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide is supported by the decision of such State so authorized by its law; and in such case of more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State, if there shall have been no such determination of the question in the State aforesaid, then those votes, and those only, shall be counted which the two Houses shall concurrently decide were cast by lawful electors appointed in accordance with the laws of the State, unless the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide such votes not to be the lawful votes of the legally appointed electors of such State. But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted. When the two Houses have voted, they shall immediately again meet, and the presiding officer shall then announce the decision of the questions submitted. No votes or papers from any other State shall be acted upon until the objections previously made to the votes or papers from any State shall have been finally disposed of.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 644, 62 Stat. 675.)

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3 U.S.C. 15.

And no, that is not a formatting error on my part. That huge paragraph is the way the statute was written. Anybody reading that and saying it is not confusing and ambiguous, that it is clear cut black letter law is crazy, IMO.

Arguing about what Pence could have done on January 6th is not really the point, anymore. As the above statute exemplifies, our election laws largely suck.

And those laws have allowed for states to outsource our elections to private entities with no accountability, ever. Maybe ever again.

IronAg45 said:

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Sully Penny said:

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I disagree with the OP. The election was fair and it was Trump who was trying to steal it. Pence was a "yes man" enabler until the very end, and couldn't believe how Trump turned on him for having integrity instead of blind loyalty to one man over the U.S. Constitution.

Pence finally acted like a patriot.

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It's funny how quickly the left went from calling Pence a homophobic psycho to a patriot.

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1) I'm not left.
2) He's not homophobic, he's prejudiced against homosexuals.
3) Neither he nor Trump are psycho, though Trump is either a narcissistic sociopath or just acts like one, all the time, throughout his adult life.
4) Pence did finally turn into a patriot but it took a long time.

So people still think this was a possibility... LOL

Sully Penny said:

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IronAg45 said:

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Sully Penny said:

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I disagree with the OP. The election was fair and it was Trump who was trying to steal it. Pence was a "yes man" enabler until the very end, and couldn't believe how Trump turned on him for having integrity instead of blind loyalty to one man over the U.S. Constitution.

Pence finally acted like a patriot.

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It's funny how quickly the left went from calling Pence a homophobic psycho to a patriot.

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1) I'm not left.
2) He's not homophobic, he's prejudiced against homosexuals.
3) Neither he nor Trump are psycho, though Trump is either a narcissistic sociopath or just acts like one, all the time, throughout his adult life.
4) Pence did finally turn into a patriot but it took a long time.

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So how was Pence not a patriot before that point in time?

its quite the long paragraph, but when broken down into "steps" nothing in it supports that Pence could "send it back to the state legislatures"

I agree arguing about what Pence could have done is no longer the point, but the OP started this thread so apparently people are still confused on what the constitution and law permitted.

Sully Penny said:

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I disagree with the OP. The election was fair and it was Trump who was trying to steal it. Pence was a "yes man" enabler until the very end, and couldn't believe how Trump turned on him for having integrity instead of blind loyalty to one man over the U.S. Constitution.

Pence finally acted like a patriot.

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This is gonna need a bookmark. We'll revisit at a later date.