- Former VP
Mike Pence was booed and heckled with chants of "Traitor!" at a conservative conference. - Pence, widely expected to run for president in 2024, appeared at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event.
- Trump and his supporters have attacked Pence for not trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Former Vice President Mike Pence was booed and heckled with chants of "Traitor!" while speaking at a conservative conference in Florida.
Pence, who is widely expected to run for president in 2024, appeared at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to the Majority" conference in Orlando, Florida.
As Pence took the stage, the beginning of his remarks was drowned out by people in the crowd yelling "traitor!" But the crowd turned to applause when Pence said: "I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order."
-The Hill (@thehill) June 18, 2021
The "traitor" chants were likely in reference to Pence refusing to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he did not have the power to do.
For months and as recently as March 2021, former President
"It's too bad Mike Pence didn't go back, because you would have had a much different result had Mike Pence gone - he could have said, 'I'm sorry, but this was not approved by the state legislature, and according to the Constitution, it had to be,'" Trump told Fox News' Lisa Boothe in a March podcast interview, falsely tacking on: "Mike Pence could have sent it back. He could have said, 'I'm sorry, but you have to check this out.'"
In the weeks leading up to the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes on January 6, Trump used his now-suspended Twitter account to pressure Pence into subverting the election results.
And during the January 6 insurrection, in which a pro-Trump mob, rioters were heard making comments like "hang Mike Pence!" as they searched for the vice president.
But Pence did not have the power to reject entire states' electoral college vote certificates unilaterally or to "send back" the certificates in the hopes that state legislatures would override a vote from the electors of their states.
Also, Congress was not certifying the election, but rather counting certificates of the presidential results submitted by states.
Under the parameters of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, Pence only had a ceremonial role, as Senate president, to oversee the counting of certificates and to field objections to the counting of states' electoral votes from members of Congress.