The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal — a generally conservative publication — had harsh words for former President Donald Trump in a new article, flatly condemning the ex-president for his affronts against democracy. Recently, Trump has yet again brought up the argument that then-Vice President Mike Pence supposedly had the power to block the Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory while presiding over the certification proceedings last year. This assertion isn’t supported by legitimate readings of the legal provisions governing the process, and Pence frankly admitted that Trump was “wrong” in a recent speech to a conservative legal group. The Journal sided with the former vice president, pointing out that Trump is a “three-time election loser.”
Chris Christie, to @hughhewitt this am: "Let’s face it. Let’s call this what it is. January 6th was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week – overturn the election."
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 7, 2022
The three sets of elections that the publication referenced are those for the House in 2018, the White House in 2020, and Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats in 2021 — all of which broke for the Democrats. As the Journal put it:
‘Mr. Pence stands out as a rare Republican these days willing to stand up to Mr. Trump’s disgraceful behavior after the election. Too many in the GOP seem to have lost their constitutional moorings in thrall to one man. The conventional wisdom now is that Mr. Trump controls the Republican Party and can have the 2024 nomination if he wants it. But someone should remind voters that Mr. Trump ended as a three-time election loser. He mobilized Democrats against him in historic numbers to cost the GOP the House in 2018, then the White House in 2020, and finally the two Georgia Senate seats in 2021… [Pence] was loyal to Mr. Trump, and the President repaid him by pressuring him publicly and privately to commit an unconstitutional act. Loyalty has always been a one-way street for Mr. Trump.’
The key to the stories about Trump's serial violation of the Presidential Records Act is that he was repeatedly told he was breaking the law, but he kept doing it.
Same was true of the Hatch Act. His whole administration's attitude was that obeying the law was optional.
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) February 7, 2022
The Journal’s editorial board also insisted that Republicans who stick to Trumpism for future elections may end up mired in defeats similar to those that have defined Trump. As they put it, the paper “wrote often during his Presidency that Democrats couldn’t defeat Donald Trump, but Mr. Trump could defeat himself. He did, and his post-election behavior compounded the harm to his party. Republicans who want to repeat the experience may find the electoral result is the same—and this time without the fortunate presence of Mike Pence.” Pence’s correct observation that the power for the vice president to overturn the presidential election outcome simply isn’t there does not represent some kind of sudden epiphany within the GOP regarding the threats posed by Trump’s anti-democratic antics — many Republican leaders are sticking by the former president, even as he continues to try and basically excuse what happened at the Capitol last January.
NEW: The National Archives last month retrieved boxes from Trump's time at the White House that he took to Mar-a-Lago instead of handing over to the agency, WaPo reports.
They include notes with Kim Jong-un, which he once referred to as "love letters." https://t.co/4fGVorknFJ
— Axios (@axios) February 7, 2022
