Senator J.D. Vance is openly embracing the idea of a coup in a pathetic bid to become Donald Trump’s vice president.

Senator J.D. Vance is openly embracing the idea of a coup in a pathetic bid to become Donald Trump’s vice president.

Senator J.D. Vance has essentially admitted he would have carried out a coup during the 2020 election if he could have, in a bald-faced attempt to be chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate.

The Ohio Republican has been floated alongside Representative Elise Stefanik as a possible Trump vice presidential pick. And in an effort to outdo his reported competition, Vance gave a full-throated defense of autocracy during an interview with ABC on Sunday.

When asked if, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have certified the election results, Vance said he would have done things a little differently.

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said, referring to the fake pro-Trump electors that some states’ Republicans tried to send to Washington.

“That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    182·
    10 months ago

    So we’ve just been doing it completely wrong for the past 225 years?

    I mean, broadly speaking he ain’t wrong. The electoral college system is dumb and broke. It exists to dilute the power of the popular voter and centralize authority to select the President in the hands of State Secretaries and their election-administering deputies. That’s why Katherine Harris was such a BFD in the run up to Bush v Gore.

    The actual elections don’t matter and Congress just gets to appoint the President?

    No no no. The actual elections don’t matter and state legislatures get to appoint the electors who get to pick the President. But then their seats are gerrymandered, so really the governor’s guy in charge of writing state senate maps gets to select the state legislators who get to appoint the President.

    And all that power is rolled up behind big lobbying groups, who get to bankroll the elections of these governors and their state senate allies.

    So really its these Chamber of Commerce / Wall Street cartel / ALEC motherfuckers who get to select the President. Which is kinda how it already was, but now we cut out the voter entirely rather than doing the “Beauty Pageant in a Few Primary / Swing States” Kabuki Theater that gets people like Trump and Sanders within striking distance of a major party nomination ahead of insider loyalists like Jeb Bush and Nikki Haley and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.