Speaker 1: Mike Pence is running for president. You may not have known that because his campaign
is extraordinarily low energy, although I will tell you he is actually ticking up a little bit in
Republican polling. We'll get to that in a moment. A visibly disturbed woman confronted Mike Pence at
a rally. Sorry, this is not a rally at a I don't know what to call this at an event where he spoke
to a small crowd. A crazy woman stood up and said it is his fault that Biden is president because
Biden is only president because Mike Pence didn't, quote, send the election back to the states. What
do they mean by that? I don't actually think they know. I'll explain that in a moment. But here is
this woman saying it is your fault that Biden is here because you didn't do it. You didn't reject
the election results. Let's take a listen. Speaker 3: If it wasn't for your vote,
we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. Right. Joe Biden should be there.
And all those wonderful things that you and Trump we're doing
together would be continuing and this country would be on the right path.
Do you ever second guess yourself? That was a constitutional right that you had to send those
folks back to the States. Speaker 1: Did he?
Speaker 3: It was not like you were going to personally elect him. We all know by the number
of votes that were there who. Speaker 1: Won that election.
The Constitution very clear. Speaker 2: My job was to oversee the session
in Congress where objections could be heard. Speaker 4: And I made sure that objections would
be recognized so we would hear whatever evidence or the debate there was. But the Constitution
says you open and count the votes no more, no less. Constitution of affords no authority for
vice president or anyone else to reject votes. Speaker 1: Or return votes from the states. Mike
Pence is correct here on this issue. It doesn't mean I agree with him on abortion or taxes,
but he is correct on this issue. Never been done. Speaker 4: Before. We should never be done with
you. I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's actually what the Constitution says. No vice
president in American history ever asserted the authority. Now, you have been convinced by here.
But I want to tell you, with all due respect, I said before, as it were, right now, President
Trump was wrong about my authority, that he still. Speaker 1: Mike Pence is completely correct.
He's correct. Think about it for a second. Like we'll get into the law in a moment. The
law is clear, but you don't even need to look at the law. Just apply common sense. Apply common
sense directly to your forehead and think about it. What does it mean to send it back
to the states? The states send their results. Arizona sends their results. And they say Biden
got more votes. So Arizona's electoral votes go to Joe Biden. Great pen stands up and says,
no, I don't accept these. I am sending these results back to the states. And the state goes,
okay, Joe Biden won. We're sending it back to you again. Only if you think that upon sending
it back to the States, someone will intervene and send fake electors, which they wanted to do.
Could you get it into your brain that sending it back to the States is a real thing? Now,
if you look at the Constitution, Mike Pence is completely correct. The Constitution, the law
gives the vice president the role of opening and counting electoral votes that have been certified
by each state. The president, the vice president, rather functioning as the president of the Senate
in that situation has no authority to change or reject the electoral votes that have been
sent there by the states. If Mike Pence had tried to do that, it would have violated the democratic
principles and the norms and the law of American government. Trump got this idea from that infamous
legal memo from John Eastman, the deranged lawyer, law professor who was advising Trump.
What might you be able to do? And the Eastman memo had a number of ideas. This was one of them.
And as far as this idea is concerned, the memo argued Pence can use an obscure law called the
Electoral Count Act of 1887 to reject some of the electoral votes and create a situation where
no candidate has a majority. In other words, if Pence rejects enough, Biden states that neither
can that it gets to to 70, then it would throw the election to the House of Representatives.
That interpretation was widely rejected by every serious legal expert, historian and lawmaker from
both the Republican and Democratic parties as unconstitutional, baseless, and a completely
wrongheaded interpretation of the 1887 Electoral Count Act. So the woman's wrong. It's interesting
that she's even out of Pennsylvania. I don't know if she considers herself a supporter of Pence.
You'd think not. If she thinks that this is what Pence should have done. Presumably she supports
Trump and not Mike Pence on this issue. And Mike Pence, I think, is a disgusting guy
in just about every way on this issue. Mike Pence is uncontroversial, non-controversial,
and incontrovertibly stating what the law is, and that is it. And for that, I guess
he deserves praise. The bar is that low with this Republican Party that we can praise him for that