(PresidentialWire.com)- President Donald Trump banned Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short from the White House on Wednesday shortly after the VP said that he would certify the Electoral College results.
Pence announced that he would not send electors back to the states to allow state legislators to decide whether the votes were legitimate shortly after the president gave a speech to a rally on Capitol Hill stressing the importance of election integrity.
Short announced the president’s decision to RealClearPolitics, saying that the president was blaming him for giving advice to Pence.
“CONFIRMED: Short tells me he is not allowed back on White House grounds,” RCP reporter Philip Wegmann said on Twitter.
The “he” here is Donald Trump.
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) January 7, 2021
President Trump spent weeks publicly indicating that Vice President Pence had the constitutional authority to reject electors and request state legislators take back their power to choose presidential electors instead.
Pence argued the case that he didn’t have the authority to do so in a January 6 statement, and said that it was his duty to “preside when the Congress convenes in Joint Session to count the votes of the Electoral College.”
— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 6, 2021
“I ask only that Representatives and Senators who will assemble before me approach this moment with the same sense of duty and an open mind, setting politics and personal interests aside, and do our part to faithfully discharge our duties under the Constitution,” he added.
During the president’s speech on the same day, he spoke directly to the vice president.
“Mike Pence, I hope you get to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country,” he said. “And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”
Evidently, the president was disappointed.
Congress ultimately certified the Electoral College votes, despite substantial evidence of widespread misconduct, irregularities, and fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the election and now, President Donald Trump has some big decisions to make.
