Donald Trump ignored pressure from some fellow Republicans to avoid repeating his false claims about a stolen 2020 election on Tuesday.
Mike Pence, who was vice president under Trump and may seek the White House in 2024, distanced himself from Trump’s repeated election falsehoods, saying at a separate event earlier in the U.S. capital that conservatives needed to focus on the future to win.
“In order to win, conservatives need to do more than criticize and complain. We must unite our movement behind a bold, optimistic agenda,” he said. Last week the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol depicted Trump as ignoring pleas of family and aides to intervene as he watched his supporters on live TV attack the seat of Congress for hours in a failed bid to stop certification of his loss.“They really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you. And I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Trump said.
The Jan. 6 committee is trying to build a case that Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020 constitute dereliction of duty and illegal conduct, rendering him unfit to return to the White House.