Vice President-elect Mike Pence has a lot to answer for since his running-mate no longer talks to the press. For instance, President-elect Donald Trump has been called out repeatedly for lying to the American people.
The media accused Trump recently of making false statements about voter fraud via Twitter. His compulsive lying has been consistent throughout the campaign, to the point where the media have increased their fact-checking abilities.
This Week with George Stephanopoulos pinned down the Vice President-elect Sunday morning over a controversial tweet.
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
Mike Pence and all Republicans have claimed time and again that massive voter fraud exists. Every year, Republicans gerrymander districts nationwide to gain more for their party, claiming they’re fighting voter fraud.
More recently, Republican-led states have even written laws to suppress votes. Even then there is no evidence to show that it’s true. Even federal courts have cracked down on those states, calling their effort discriminatory.
George Stephanopoulos Increases Fact-Checking Pressure
George Stephanopoulos asked Mike Pence if it was acceptable for President-elect Trump to spout out unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. Pence continued to say that there was evidence of millions of inaccurate voter registrations by the Pew Research Center. But he would not answer the question Stephanopoulos asked about Trump’s irresponsible claims.
Fact Check.org published a report specifically on these claims, which links to the PDF report by the Pew Charitable Trust. This is the same report that Mike Pence was referring to. Reading the report, one concludes that Trump has either misread the study or manipulated the language for his own gain.
It’s said that Trump doesn’t like reading, which might explain that he — at the most — glanced at the study. But then it appears that Mike Pence didn’t care much about reading either because he too claimed there was evidence.
George kept trying to get a straight answer on his original question:
“That claim is groundless; there’s no evidence to back it up.”
When Stephanopoulos presses him a second time, Pence tried to deflect the question to talk about the popular vote.
Mike Pence Tried To Deflect Questioning
Hillary Clinton popular vote lead now officially 2.5 million. 48.2% to 46.3%. Now clear national polls were more accurate than in 2012.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) December 3, 2016
Donald Trump won the electoral vote, but Hillary Clinton won the popular, now said to be at over 2.5 million more votes than Donald Trump. Mike Pence then blamed partisans frustrated by the outcome of the election. He said that if their campaign had gone after the popular vote, they would have campaigned more in liberal states and then added a fake chuckle.
But he couldn’t shake-off George.
“And no one is questioning victory. Certainly, I’m not questioning victory. I’m asking just, about that tweet…”
Throughout the questioning, when the program did a split-screen, Pence seemed not to be paying attention to a tweet being read. This was apparent again when Pence went back to quoting the same report and George, again, told him that it wasn’t true a few more times.
Still, Mike Pence would not allow George to tame him and stuck with “evidence” from the same report, a third time, even saying that George didn’t know if it was true or not. Of course, if Stephanopoulos doesn’t know if it was true, then surely Mike Pence does and can continue to treat the report seriously enough to spout off false claims.
In fact, he was so certain that his misreading of the study was true that it’s enough to use the power of lawmaking to stop it.
Other News Shows Go After Trump Surrogates
In the meantime, on Face The Nation, John Dickerson confronted Reince Priebus with the tweet. The new White House Chief of State also did his best to deny the facts. He settled for adding value to liar-in-chief, Trump’s, false statements by claiming that they started a revolution and triggered discussion.
He too said to John Dickerson — the host of that program — that he (the host) didn’t know if the claims were true or not either. It’s in this case that one must consider how much Priebus knows if Dickerson doesn’t. John Dickerson could have responded by asking Priebus: “If I don’t know, then how do you know!?”
Even without this brief exchange, it was clear that Trump’s team are the only ones who know the existence of millions of illegal voters. It seems, however, that there are rewards for “circling” Pence because, towards the end of the interview, Mike Pence said that the tweet was the liar-in-chief’s opinion.
Mike Pence was also a guest on Meet The Press, where the topic-of-focus was on false claims. During the opening of the show, Chuck Todd played the clip of Corey Lewandowski saying that the media doesn’t know how to interpret what Trump says. Todd did not press Pence on the same tweet, but during the panel discussion, Chuck Todd said that he found Corey’s statement to be ludicrous.
National Review editor Rich Lowry said that America needs to get used to Donald Trump because he “communicates differently.” At the end of Mike Pence’s conversation with George Stephanopoulos, Pence collapsed under the pressure and finally admitted to the same fact.
“He’s gonna say what he believes to be true. And I know that he’s always going to speak that way as president.”
Here is the discussion between George Stephanopoulos and Mike Pence on the tweet that had false information.
Featured Image: Screenshot Via YouTube Video.
