Trump Mulls Pressuring Mike Pence To Block Election Certification In Senate

President Donald Trump is accusing people in his inner-circle of not supporting him, as he continues lodging lawsuits in federal court and retweeting insults about former allies.

Vice President Mike Pence has joined the list of supporters that Trump has accused of turning against him after a heated pre-holiday meeting. Despite both men expressing public support for overturning election results, at a White House meeting behind closed doors on Wednesday, Trump sought to push the vice president to do more. 

Recently, Trump has repeatedly complained about Pence and wondered why Pence would not overturn the election results on Jan. 6 when Congress meets to affirm the election results. Pence and White House aides have attempted to explain that Pence, despite being president of the U.S. Senate and presiding over the proceedings, cannot reject any of the Electoral College votes. Trump has also recently brought up an ad by the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican super PAC, that claimed that Pence was “backing away” from him.

Now that the Electoral College has confirmed Biden as the president-elect, Trump is trying a long-shot bid to have his right-wing congressional allies to help flip the result on Jan. 6, when a joint session will assemble to certify the vote count.

At that bicameral session, Pence, in his role as the vice president and Senate president, is expected to certify Joe Biden as president-elect and Kamala Harris as vice president-elect.

Pence publicly made pro-Trump remarks on Tuesday to a group of young Florida conservatives, which showed support for the president’s fight to overturn the election results, by saying, “Stay in the fight for election integrity. Stay in the fight to defend all we’ve done.”

Pence continued, adding that the administration will “keep fighting until every legal vote is counted” and “every illegal vote is thrown out.”

Trump spent much of Christmas Eve tweeting grievances, including one aimed at Senate Republicans, vowing that he will “NEVER FORGET!” what he sees as their abandonment.

Article by Emily Bevacqua