Trump Reacts After Rebuke From Pence

Update: On Friday, ex-Vice President Mike Pence rebuked former boss Donald Trump over his thoughts on the certification of the 2020 election. Fox News reports Trump has responded, unsurprisingly doubling down. "Just saw Mike Pence's statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible," Trump said in a statement. He claimed that "Democrats and RINOs" are working in tandem to change a law that would've allowed the VP to send votes back to the state legislatures, which he called an "appropriate" move when dealing with "fraud or large scale irregularities" (of which there hasn't been widespread evidence). "In other words, I was right and everyone knows it," Trump wrote. "A great opportunity lost, but not forever, in the meantime our Country is going to hell!" Our original story from Friday follows:

Former Vice President Mike Pence has presented his strongest, clearest contradiction yet of his former boss's false claim that he could have thrown out the Electoral College results in the 2020 election. "President Trump is wrong," Pence said Friday, the New York Times reports. "I had no right to overturn the election." Trump said last weekend that Pence, as president of the Senate, had the authority to kick back the results to the states on Jan. 6, 2021—as Trump had pressured him to do—but refused.

Until now, Pence hasn't addressed the issue so directly, saying he and Trump won't ever "see eye to eye about that day" and the like. But in speaking to the Federalist Society on Friday near Orlando, Pence didn't hedge. Although some Republicans believe he had power over President Biden's victory, Pence said, "Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election." Legal scholars and leaders of both parties agree with Pence's interpretation of the Constitution, per the Times. Similarly, he told the conservative legal organization, per the Washington Post, "Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024." (More Mike Pence stories.)