Trump slams Pence for Jan. 6 comments in GOP debate

Former President Trump lashed out Wednesday night at his former vice president, Mike Pence, over an answer Pence gave during the first GOP primary debate.

“The American people deserve to know that the president asked me, in his request that I reject or return votes unilaterally — a power that no vice president in American history had ever exercised or taken — he asked me to put him over the Constitution. And I chose the Constitution, and I always will,” Pence said during the debate, which Trump did not attend.

Trump, who did not post on social media throughout the two hour event, used his first post-debate comment to attack Pence for his answer.

“I never asked Mike Pence to put me above the Constitution. Who would say such a thing? A FAKE STORY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Pence has made a similar case since the day he launched his campaign for the White House in June, arguing that Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, was unconstitutional. Pence has asserted that Trump’s defiance of the Constitution makes him unfit to serve another term in the White House.

Instead of attending the debate, Trump sat for a pre-taped interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who asked the former president about Pence.

Trump reiterated his belief that Pence should have returned the electoral votes from the 2020 election to certain state legislatures rather than certifying them, something Pence and numerous legal experts said the vice president did not have the authority to do.

Trump told Carlson that he has not spoken to Pence in quite some time.

Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence to overturn or reject the results are featured throughout a federal indictment against Trump filed earlier this month in Washington, D.C.