Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said then-Vice President Mike Pence missed a “historic opportunity” to push “reforms” through Congress before he certified the 2020 election.
Appearing on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Ramaswamy was asked by host Chuck Todd if Pence had, in certifying the election, done the right thing on January 6, 2021.
(Video: NBC)
“I would have done it very differently,” the nation’s first Millennial to run for the White House replied. “I think that there was a historic opportunity that he missed, to reunite this country in that window.”
“What I would have said is: This is a moment for a true national consensus where there’s two elements of what’s required for a functioning democracy in America,” Ramaswamy continued. “One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism.”
Had he been in Pence’s shoes that fateful day, Ramaswamy said he would have made the certification of the election contingent upon “election integrity” reforms.
“Here’s what I would have said: ‘We need single-day voting on Election Day, we need paper ballots, and we need government-issued ID matching the voter file.’ And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity,” he said, adding, “I would have driven it through the Senate.”
“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the president — President Trump — then to sign that into law. And on January 7th, declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election,” he stated. “I think that was a missed opportunity, but that’s the kind of spirit we’re gonna need to reunite the country rather than sweeping those concerns under the rug.”
Ramaswamy’s remarks drew criticism from Pence’s campaign, which argued that the entrepreneur lacks an “understanding” of how things work.
“Vivek’s statement today on January 6th is both shocking and concerning in its lack of understanding of how our system of government works,” David James, press secretary for Pence’s campaign, wrote in a statement to NBC News. “In one breathe [sic] he joins Nancy Pelosi and radical progressives in wanting to nationalize our election system, and in another he claims that the Vice President has unilateral authority to decide when to certify elections.”
According to PJ Media’s Matt Margolis, Ramaswamy’s idea sounded great, but it would have never worked.
“On the surface, it sounds like a great concept, but under scrutiny, it falls apart rather quickly,” Margolis wrote. While these reforms would help secure our elections and increase confidence in the results, the big problem with Ramaswamy’s idea is that Democrats had control of the House of Representatives at the time, and they would never have passed reforms to make elections more secure.”
“Democrats consistently have opposed these reforms in the past, and, upon Biden taking office with both Houses of Congress in Democrat hands, they tried to codify the exact opposite,” Margolis noted. “Everything that made the 2020 [election] susceptible to fraud would have been enshrined into federal law, had they gotten their way.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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