The candidates on stage Wednesday night said,
Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6.
Do you agree?
>> Speaker 2: I would have done it very differently.
I think that there was a historic opportunity that
he missed to reunite this country in that window.
What I would have said is this is a moment for a true national consensus where
there's two elements of what's required for a functioning democracy in America.
One is secure election, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power.
When those things come into conflict, that's an opportunity for heroism.
>> Speaker 3: GOP presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswami believes that former
Vice President Mike Pence squandered an opportunity for
heroism on January 6 by basically coming back and
ensuring that he certified the election after the January 6 Capitol riots.
Now, with that said,
why don't we take a look at what Ramaswami claims he would do differently?
And try not to lose your mind over how ridiculous this is.
Let's watch.
>> Speaker 2: Here's what I would have said.
We need single day voting on election day.
We need paper ballots and
we need government issued ID matching the voter file.
And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory, and
we should not have any further complaint about election integrity.
So I would have done ir through the senate what would have driven through the Senate?
>> Speaker 2: So what would you have done with Mike Pence?
You would have certified the election.
>> Speaker 2: In my capacity as President of the Senate,
I would have led through that level of reform.
Then on that condition, certified the election results,
served it up to the President, president Trump then to sign that into law.
And on January 7, declared the reelection campaign pursuant to a free and
fair election.
I think that was a missed opportunity, but that's the kind of spirit we're gonna need
to unite this country rather than sweeping those concerns under the rug.
>> Speaker 3: That was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard,
a presidential candidate say.
And that's saying something, because lots of presidential candidates have
said all sorts of insane things on the campaign trail.
I don't understand,
I thought Republicans didn't believe in federalizing our elections, right?
I thought they believed that each state should have its own rules in regard to how
they conduct elections.
But on top of that, the naivete here,
that Donald Trump would say, okay, you know what?
Here are the reforms, I'm gonna sign them through executive order, and
then I'm good.
I'm good.
Then I'm gonna back off and accept that I lost the election.
>> Speaker 4: Not only that, look, he's purposely being a jackass.
None of that makes any sense.
First, let me just knock down his specific proposals.
So two out of three were same day voting and you need government issued ID.
Well, that would eliminate all mail in voting for no reason at all.
The Democrats are never gonna agree to that.
By the way, earlier before lunatic Trump,
the Republicans would have never agreed to that because a lot of their voters were
senior citizens who need to mail in their votes, right?
>> Okay, but what's amazing is that he's not even having a conversation about
Democrats or Congress.
He thinks that this could just happen with Donald Trump executing an executive order,
just signing his signature on a paper.
I mean, look, you're an outsider,
you have an extra responsibility to know what the hell you're talking about, and
you're unfortunately hurting other outsiders by being a clown.
And so you can't get the Democrats to agree to any of this, so
you obviously couldn't have passed it as a bill,
the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate at the time.
You can't do it through executive order, and you can't nationalize these elections.
So none of that makes any sense, but you were gonna do all of that, and
that was gonna be your compromise by January 6.
No. >> No, he was gonna get those concessions,
I guess, on some sort of document that Donald Trump would sign on January 6,
and then after he signs it, then they certify the election on January 7.
Also, what's left out of this conversation is the powers
that the vice president has and does not have.
He did not have the ability to avoid certifying the election.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, so those jackass ideas were just appetizers for the main meal.
The main meal is, I would have held up the certification until I got these demands.
You don't have that authority, it's a ceremonial role,
get it through your thick, thick head, okay?
And he knows that because he wrote it in his book, he's a giant liar.
He already knows that the vice president doesn't have that authority,
the vice president goes, it's like the guy who opens the envelope at the Oscars.
The voting already happened, you moron.
You can be like, well, Avatar won, but I didn't like that movie, so
I'm going to demand same day voting, and then maybe I'll let Avatar win.
That's not how it works, okay, .but he's getting more attention,
the more clownish he is, the more attention he gets.
So he goes home and chuckles anyway.
>> Speaker 3: Now, earlier this month, by the way,
Vivek Ramaswami reportedly sidestepped questions asked by Politico about whether
he would have certified the election results.
He told Politico, quote, I would have never let it get to that point.
I would have never put myself or
been part of an administration if I was in a serious position of
leadership to ever have allowed us to have gotten to that doorstep.
>> Speaker 4: Please, tell me what you would have done with Donald Trump.
>> Speaker 3: Please, pleass. >> Speaker 4: Actually don't,
it only embarrass yourself like you did earlier.
>> Speaker 4: No, I would love that.
Tell me how you would have forced Donald Trump to accept those results.
I would not have been part of this, so would you have quit, and
would you have resigned saying, it turns out the president is a giant cheater.
We know we didn't win, but he's pretending that he won.
By the way, Vivek wrote that already in his book,
so he knows it's true so you wanna say it again, bitch?
Say it again.
Say it on TV.
No. You're trying to kiss up to Trump voters
and Maga guys,
and you haven't found a place on Donald Trump's body to appease yet.
So all of a sudden, the great, wonderful Donald Trump.
Loser, total careerist opportunist, slimy loser, Vivek Ramaswamy.
>> Speaker 3: Now, Chuck Todd, who I've definitely had issues with,
did a pretty good job in referencing Ramaswami's book and
what he said about Donald Trump and the 2020 Presidential Election in
the book versus what Ramaswami is now saying publicly on the campaign trail.
And so there were multiple examples of this, but
I wanna sshow you my favorite example.
Let's take a look.
>> Speaker 1: You're referring to Republicans, we use stolen election
theories as a backdoor to embracing our own victim identity path,
pursuing an easy path to power.
Throughout this entire book, you mock the entire January 6 aspect.
You absolutely criticize Donald Trump for being a sore loser, you write about
it in a way of making your point that we've become a nation of victims.
And right now on TV, you're doing the exact opposite.
>> Speaker 1: Chuck, I'm actually wanna be very clear.
>> Speaker 2: I preached to conservative audiences last,
I was in Iowa over the last two days, and what do I tell them?
We're not gonna be victims, we're going ro be be victorious.
Whether I'm talking to the left or the right, I say the same thing.
I've also been very clear, Chuck, and I wanna be clear today,
that I would have made very different judgments than Donald Trump did that
day and on many of the matters in his path out of office.
But there's a difference between a bad judgment and a crime.
And what I've been clear about is when we criminalize those bad judgments,
that's an abuse of the justice system.
It undermines trust not only in our elections, but in our justice system.
>> Speaker 3: By the way, he also, earlier in that interview,
argued that it was not a free and fair election because
of the censorship of the New York Post Hunter Biden story.
I don't really think that made that much of a difference.
I think voters were more concerned about Trump's handling of the coronavirus
pandemic and how much he essentially bungled the response to it.
But I do agree that it was wrong for that New York Post piece on
Hunter Biden's laptop getting censored in social media platforms.
They should not have done that,
despite the lies that were told about where it actually came from.
Nonetheless, Cenk, was that convincing, his defense of what he wrote in his book?
>> Speaker 4: So, first of all, by the way, on the Hunter Biden thing,
that was totally unclear about any effect that it had.
But the Anthony Weiner laptop thing that James Comey
came up with the last second of the election in 2016,
there was excellent evidence that that cost Hillary Clinton the election.
Is anybody on the right wing complaining about that election interference?
>> Speaker 3: Of course, not.
>> Speaker 4: Of course, not.
Okay, so we'll call that even and move on.
Look, last thing here, Vivek.
So, is Donald Trump a sore loser?
>> Speaker 1: Answer the question.
>> Speaker 4: Super easy question.
I mean, you alluded to it in your book,
now you're flopping around like a fish out there, flip flopping, flip flopping.
I love mega, I love mega!
But, let me be really clear.
No, you haven't been clear at all, brother, you haven't been clear at all.
Is Donald Trump a sore loser?
Answer the goddamn question, he will never answer that,
all he'll give you is slime coming out of his mouth in both directions.