They've said this week that all they asked of you, that is to say the president, was to delay the proceedings to allow states to conduct an audit. Is that a truthful representation of what you were asked to do, Mr. Vice President? FORMER VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Major, that's not what happened. And, you know, as I wrote about in my book, as I've spoken about very openly, and- and frankly, as is recounted in aspects of the pleadings that were filed this week. From-from sometime in the middle of December, the president began to be told that I had some authority to reject or return votes back to the states. I had no such authority. No vice president in American history had ever asserted that authority and no one ever should. Your viewers can go to Article II of the Constitution and see that it's very clear. It says that the vice president, as president of the Senate, should preside over the House and Senate in a joint session, and that the Electoral College votes shall be opened and shall be counted. There was no discretion ever given to the vice president in history, nor should there ever be. I had no right to overturn the election and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024. But look, I- I- I stand by the facts as they occurred. I mean, it ebbed and flowed between different legal theories, but at the end of the day, I know we did our duty. I know we kept our oath. But I- I truly do believe that, you know, no one who ever puts himself over the Constitution should ever be president of the United States. I mean, our Constitution is more important than any one man and our country is more important than any one man's career. And, you know, I'm running because, not just I kept faith with the Constitution every day for those four years, but also because this country is in a lot of trouble. And frankly, I know the media is preoccupied with this issue and virtually everything having to do with my former running mate, but as I travel around New Hampshire, as I was in Iowa over the last week, people are struggling in this economy. They're worried about the world becoming more dangerous by the day. They're seeing energy prices spike. And we're gonna focus on those issues even while making the
