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Mandel Ngan

So what did Mike Pence say about his former boss during that ballyhooed speech on Friday?

He said Donald Trump was wrong when he asserted that Pence had the right to simply reject electoral votes cast by states in 2020 when Congress began counting them on Jan. 6, 2021. This <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/04/incremental-change-means-less-when-youre-extreme/" target=_blank>he had said before</a>, although not with the same verbiage.

What Pence did not say, though, was that the rationale Trump offered for his demand — that fraud and irregularities tainted the election results — was unfounded. It would have been hard for Pence to say this, certainly, given that his position on the subject for months has not been that Trump was wrong in the breadth of his claims, but in the specifics. Mirroring others in his party who are not eager to invoke Trump’s wrath, Pence in March wrote that there were “significant” irregularities in the 2020 results, problems that he found “troubling.”

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And, in fact, there’s little indication that Pence’s position on this matter has changed. In an appearance on <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/news/meet-press-february-6-2022-n1288711" target="_blank">NBC News’s “Meet the Press”</a> this weekend, Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short made clear that, despite his moment of boldness, the former vice president is still in the go-along-to-get-along camp with his party’s central narrative.

“Why didn’t he say, ‘Look, it’s been a year. There’s just no evidence out there. This was a free and fair election. The Trump-Pence ticket lost,’ ” host Chuck Todd asked. “How come he didn’t go that far?”

“Well, Chuck, I think like a lot of people, the vice president has significant concerns about the election,” Short replied. “I think — and because of covid —”

“— because of covid, sure,” Short replied. “I think that a lot of us do.”

Later, he offered specifics: “I think there are significant concerns about what transpired in Pennsylvania, what transpired in Wisconsin, what transpired in Georgia,” Short said. “You had election officials overruling state officials and saying, ‘We’ll keep the balloting open,’ allowed universal access and mail-in balloting.”

The thing you will notice about that assertion is that Short is talking about votes cast by voters that accurately reflected their will. He is not saying that the election was tainted by rampant illegal voting that skewed the results. He is saying that people who wanted to vote were able to vote.

From the outset, such purported concerns were how Trump’s party tried to rationalize his obvious nonsense about voter fraud. As Jan. 6 neared, Republicans in the House began lining up to object to electoral votes cast by several states. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to keep his caucus from following suit, but Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/03/two-republican-lawyer-senators-look-loopholes-democracy/" target=_blank>figured out a loophole</a>: He would object not because of fraud but because (1) Pennsylvania expanded its voting rules in possible contravention of its state constitution and (2) because Big Tech. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), never one to be out grandstanded, quickly followed suit.

Hawley really set the pattern. His claims about Pennsylvania had already been considered by the courts, with the chief justice writing that even if the expansion of access (passed by Republican legislators in 2019, mind you) were unconstitutional, it shouldn’t invalidate votes cast under the existing rules. But as his party scrambled to figure out how to back Trump (and still stay in the good graces of Trump supporters) while not exposing themselves to the obvious looming refutation of Trump’s fraud claims, establishment Republicans settled on the idea that the election had been stolen not by nonexistent fraud but by unfair expansions of voting access.

This overlapped with the fraud claims; often, the expansions of voting access were interlaced with nebulous hand-wringing about the purported risk this posed. But given that states expanded access to mail and early voting in 2020 and that, thanks to Trump, those results faced unusual scrutiny <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/02/theres-new-evidence-showing-lack-fraud-2020-that-trumps-base-will-never-see/" target="_blank">without evidence</a> of anything other than insignificant fraud emerging, it’s easy to see the game being played. The concern is the legal votes cast.

“Stealing” an election by letting voters vote.

It’s useful to remember that the response here is driven not by observed concerns about voting access but by the desire to stand alongside Trump, though not too close to the edge of the cliff. As more powerful examples of “irregularities” emerge, then, they supplant the original one in the public consciousness.

So the B-side to Hawley’s original claims has gotten a lot of play of late, with a book written by a blogger from a <a href="https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1488581342224957446" target=_blank>small far-right website</a> getting traction on the right partly for its focus on how a nonprofit funded in part by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg aimed both to increase turnout and bolster the ability of local officials to run elections effectively. (Trump, happy to hype anything that raises questions about the election, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/28/three-10-republicans-think-maybe-trump-will-be-president-again-before-2024/" target=_blank>sent a copy of the book</a> to congressional Republicans.) And, again, we land in the same place: A group funded in part by a guy from Facebook encouraged more people to vote under existing laws, and, therefore, the election was rigged.

Space exists for this in part because the goal posts have been affixed to a self-driving car. Trump has probably made scores of claims about fraud since the election ended, none of which have been substantiated. So when there’s some new question that arises, the car scoots over there and Trump and those seeking to remain in his good graces dutifully point at it. A debunk, a scoot, a point; a debunk, a scoot, a point.

For example: You will probably hear about a new “documentary” from conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, who was pardoned by Trump after a conviction for illegal campaign contributions. At the time of the pardon, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/06/01/dsouza-in-relaying-pardon-trump-said-he-wants-him-to-be-a-bigger-voice-than-ever/" target="_blank">encouraged</a> him to be a “bigger voice than ever,” and D’Souza has certainly done his best to uphold that mandate. He was involved in putting together a video alleging that ballots in Georgia were collected by harvesters who placed them in drop boxes.

If that occurred, the collection violates state law. But as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/06/how-falsehoods-survive/" target=_blank>already made clear</a>, there’s no indication that the votes <i>themselves</i> were illegal or invalid. The self-driving car starts up its engine once again.

Consider the calculus for Pence here. He has finally decided to lean into Trump’s attacks on him, although, if he wants to remain in politics, he didn’t have much choice but to do so. What he didn’t do was break any new ground in rejecting Trump’s claims <i>broadly</i>. Saying that Trump is wrong about the specific boundaries of what a vice president can do but not about how Trump has tried to undermine confidence in the election results is to say nothing at all.

And that’s a silence to which most of Pence’s party is happy to contribute.

The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America

Ohio State University

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter <a href="https://wapo.st/3m3QTiy">How To Read This Chart</a> and is the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/">The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America</a>.

Philip Bump

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