Sen. Vance says he would have killed democracy

Ohio senator making a bid to be Donald Trump's vice presidential pick says he would have tossed out the voters' choice in 2020 and made Congress choose the president

Even in today’s whack-a-doodle political world, Sen. J.D. Vance made a jaw-dropping confession Sunday by saying he would have tossed out the voters’ choice in 2020 and ended American democracy had he had the power.

Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Vance said if he had been Vice President Mike Pence, he would have thrown out the results in several states and forced Congress to pick the president.

See video here.

It was an ominous comment from a member of Congress who seems to be vying to be the next vice president for Donald Trump, a candidate who has pledged to terminate the Constitution to undo what he baselessly considers to have been election fraud. And it came in the course of an interview where Vance also said Trump would have the power to defy Supreme Court decisions.

It was a total shredding of Vance’s oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and another sign that a Trump presidency could end democracy.

Vance’s remarks were in response to Stephanopoulos asking if he would have certified the 2020 election results had he been Pence.

“Oh George, this is such a ridiculous question,” Vance said. “And I know you guys are obsessed with talking about this.”

But when Stephanopoulos pressed, Vance said:

If I had been Vice President, I would have told the states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors. And I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that's what we should have done.

In other words, Vance would have treated fake electors assembled by Trump’s campaign to be legitimate. Trump currently faces felony counts in a District of Columbia court for fraudulently concocting those slates of fake electors and for pressuring Pence to defy the law by single-handedly overturning the election.

It was, of course, firmly established before January 6, 2021, that there were no legitimate problems in the election. Trump’s team, led by Rudy Giuliani, filed 62 lawsuits challenging the results prior to Jan. 6 and lost 61 of them. There was only one ruling that made concessions so minor they had no impact on the results.

What was truly disturbing about the 2020 election was that Trump’s team fabricated so many baseless conspiracy theories that members of Congress later relied on to challenge the certification of the votes.

The claims were so specious that at one point, Giuliani admitted to U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann that his amended complaint didn’t actually allege any fraud at all. In his decision, Brann wrote, “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.”

Vance’s arguments for a rigged election were every bit as weak as Giuliani’s. In his ABC interview, Vance relied on two debunked arguments, one of which had nothing at all to do with counting ballots and the other which was grossly misleading.

Do I think there were problems in 2020? Yes, I do. Do I think it was a problem that big technology companies working with the intelligence services censored the presidential campaign of Donald Trump? Yes.

This was an obvious allusion to Twitter temporarily suppressing a tweet from the New York Post’s article on Hunter Biden’s laptop. This decision was made and reversed without any input from then-candidate Joe Biden. There’s also no evidence that intelligence services were censoring Trump’s campaign. But even if it were true, it is not election fraud.

Vance’s other basis for tossing out the voters’ choice was just as weak.

“Do I think it's a problem that Pennsylvania changed its balloting rules in the middle of the election season in a way that even some courts in Pennsylvania have said was illegal? Yes.”

This is a reference to the Republican legislature changing the rules in 2019 for voting by absentee ballot, allowing anyone to vote by mail. While a lower court at one point said that the 2019 law was unconstitutional, that decision was later reversed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

So in the end, the absentee ballots were legal under state law. And at the time of the election, courts had upheld the law.

Some have argued that judges never ruled on the merits of Trump’s fraud arguments. But this is false. In fact, in 30 of the lawsuits, judges ruled based on the merits of the evidence, according to the January 6th Select Committee report. According to the report:

Judges across the nation did evaluate President Trump’s claims that the election was stolen. As longtime Republican election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg testified before the Select Committee, the President’s camp “did have their day in court,” it’s just that “in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real.”

Last month, Rep. Elise Stefanik said on Meet the Press without any proof that Democrats stole the 2020 election and that she would not certify an election that was unconstitutional. Stefanik is also considered to be interested in being Trump’s pick for vice president.

In the ABC interview, Stephanopoulos also asked what advice Vance would give Trump. He responded with a proposal that Trump should violate a past Supreme Court decision.

I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts – because you will get taken to court – and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say “The Chief Justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

Stephanopoulos, at that point, cut off the interview. “You've made it very clear you believe the President can defy the Supreme Court. Senator, thanks for your time.”