GOP leaders silent on Trump’s claims that VP could overturn elections

Source: The Hill | February 1, 2022 | Mike Lillis and Cristina Marcos

Former President Trump drew howls from critics in both parties for endorsing the notion this weekend that vice presidents should — and do — have the authority to overturn election results.

But the response from GOP leaders on Capitol Hill has been something else entirely: silence.

Republican leaders remained mute on Monday as the outcry grew louder over Trump’s bid to empower vice presidents to reject electoral votes certified by the states.

In a statement Sunday evening, he hammered Mike Pence’s handling of that process in January of last year, shortly after President Biden’s 2020 victory, lamenting that his former vice president “could have overturned the Election” but simply opted not to.

That argument — the latest iteration of Trump’s false narrative that the 2020 election was “stolen” by a conspiracy of corrupt election officials, tech companies and foreign governments — has been roundly denounced by a long and growing list of legal scholars, good government advocates and lawmakers, who warn that Trump’s account is not only legally fallacious, but poses a direct threat to the core tenets of the American experiment.

Yet the top Republican leaders have declined to weigh in one way or the other. Asked Monday to comment on Trump’s proposal for overturning elections, the offices of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), head of the House Republican Conference, did not respond. 

A similar silence came from the offices of some of Trump’s most vocal conservative allies, including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). 

Aides to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has spent the past year at odds with Trump, also didn’t return a request for comment. 

The silence highlights the dilemma facing Republican leaders, particularly those in the House, who have designs to flip the lower chamber in November’s midterm elections and don’t want to agitate Trump, who remains the party’s standard-bearer.

But there are risks in that strategy, as well, since remaining in Trump’s good graces has meant endorsing, or at least indulging, the lie that his defeat was invalid and Biden’s victory felonious — a lie that’s eroded public trust in the nation’s election systems even as it’s become a litmus test for maintaining power in the House GOP conference. Take it too far, some Republicans are warning, and it will backfire on the party at the polls. 

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