January 31, 2022 10:03 AM UTC

Trump: John Eastman's Plan Would Have Worked

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post’s John Wagner reports, after a wild weekend rally at which former President Donald Trump teased the idea of pardoning January 6th insurrectionists and running again in 2024, Trump issued a new statement last night claiming in no uncertain terms that he should still be President:

Former President Donald Trump suggested in a statement Sunday night that then-Vice President Mike Pence should have “overturned” the election on Jan. 6, 2021, as he presided over the counting of electoral college votes by Congress.

Trump has expressed frustration before that Pence did not use his role to try to reject the votes of several states that Joe Biden won. But the language in Sunday’s statement was among Trump’s most explicit in publicly stating his desire…

“If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had ‘absolutely no right’ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election?” Trump said in his statement. “Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”

What former President Donald Trump is describing here, as readers know, is the plan laid out by then-University of Colorado “conservative affirmative action” professor John Eastman in the days before January 6th, calling for Vice President Mike Pence to choose from a range of options that would result in the election not being duly certified on that day–up to and including simply throwing out states “in dispute” and handing the election to Trump. Since that time, Eastman has variably tried to walk his plan back as “crazy,” and also defended it with what Eastman thought was a friendly audience.

The 2020 election is over. It’s in the past & Joe Biden is the (very unpopular) president. If the Dems are asking if we have confidence in our elections, the answer is yes. We have complete confidence we will win this upcoming election. See you on the campaign trail! #copolitics

— Kristi Burton Brown (@ColoradoKbb) January 18, 2022

There’s little denying at this point that the former President and the chair of the Colorado Republican Party have adopted mutually exclusive positions. From there, we must ask the next logical question: is Donald Trump or Kristi Burton Brown the leader of the Republican Party? As soon as you resolve this question with Kristi Burton Brown, it’s time to ask Eastman’s enthusiastic supporter CU Regent Heidi Ganahl. Then the Republicans running in CD-8. And on down the line.

It’s a conversation smart Republicans don’t want to have. But Trump isn’t giving them that choice.