South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem continued the GOP’s ostracism of former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday after declining to say whether she would have fulfilled the vice president’s constitutional role of certifying the presidential election results before Congress on Jan. 6.
“I think that he’s failed President Donald Trump since that day because he certainly does not recognize that we need someone in the White House who needs him out on the trail advocating for him instead of constantly criticizing and going back and ripping him apart,” Noem told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Moderator Dana Bash pressed Noem, a contender for Trump’s vice president slot, on whether she would’ve either certified the 2020 election results that day or joined fellow potential picks like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) or Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) in a refusal to do so. Noem said she didn’t know how she would have based her decisions using “the information that he had at that time.”
“We did not do justice by our country by showing and fighting over that day,” Noem said. “We should focus on our freedoms and continue to uphold our constitution. So, you know, talking in hypotheticals is not something that I do. I deal with the reality of what I’m dealing with today and every single day, and what I’m going to do from now on until we get to November is continue to go across this country and talk to people about Donald Trump.”
Pence has maintained that the information he had on Jan. 6, the information that guided his decision-making and that prompted legions of Trump supporters to call for his death, was the U.S. Constitution.
“By God’s grace, I did my duty that day,” he told the Des Moines Register in an interview in August. “I had no right to overturn the election. And the American people deserve to know that the president asked me to choose him over keeping my oath to the Constitution, but I chose the Constitution. And I always will.”
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