Donald Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, refused to say if Trump should be barred from returning to the White House if he is convicted on any of 91 criminal charges against him.
“I think that he’s to be left to the American people,” Pence told ABC’s This Week, on Sunday. “Let’s have the former president have his day in court. Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence.”
Trump faces charges concerning federal and state election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to a porn star. He also faces civil cases involving defamation, alleged rape and his business affairs, contributing to a schedule of trials in the election year.
Nonetheless, he leads polling by wide margins nationally and in key states.
On Sunday, ahead of the first debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, CBS News released a new poll. Among Republicans, a whopping 62% picked Trump to just 16% for Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor in second place. Pence received 5% support, placing fourth.
Pence and other qualifiers for the debate – a contest Trump will skip for an interview with Tucker Carlson – have backed a Republican National Committee pledge requiring support for the nominee.
On ABC, Pence was asked about the case of James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat who in 2002 became one of only five people ever expelled from the US House after being convicted on corruption charges. Then a congressman from Indiana, Pence voted for that expulsion.
Pence’s host, Jon Karl, asked: “Would you hold that same standard for the White House?”
Pence said: “I would tell you that it is the function of the Congress to determine membership where there’s ethical violations and I remember the Traficant case from 20 years ago, it was really quite outrageous.
“But if you’re saying would I apply that to my former running mate in this race, look, I think that he’s to be left to the American people. Let’s have the former president have his day in court. Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence and in this matter, and any other matter that unfolded this week here in Georgia” – a reference to Trump’s state-level election subversion case – “but I’ve said many times, I would have preferred that these matters be left to the judgment of the American people.
“No one’s above the law. But with regard to the president’s future, my hope is when we get to that debate stage, and I’m still kind of hoping maybe he’ll come, is that we can really have a debate about the challenges facing the American people.”
Elsewhere, the former Arkansas governor turned Trump critic Asa Hutchinson said he had qualified for the debate and would sign the pledge. Insisting that Trump would not be the nominee, Hutchinson refused to say what he would do if he were.
Speaking from Des Moines, Iowa, Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union: “I am pleased to announce that we have met … the polling criteria and now we have met the 40,000 individual donor criteria. We submitted to the RNC 42,000 individual donors and I’m delighted.”
FiveThirtyEight.com puts Hutchinson at 0.7% support – to 53.7% for Trump.
“I’ll sign the pledge,” Hutchinson said. “I’m confident Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the party. And I’ve always supported the nominee. So I’m gonna sign the pledge.”
Pressed on whether he would support the man who sought to overturn the 2020 election and incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Hutchinson repeated: “I’m going to support the nominee of the party. I do not expect it to be Donald Trump. And that I’m sure question will come up in the debate, so stay tuned for that.”’
Conviction would not disqualify Trump from the presidency. But some say the US constitution might.
Hutchinson said: “You can’t be asking us to support somebody that’s not perhaps even qualified under our constitution. I’m referring to the 14th amendment. A number of legal scholars said that [Trump] is disqualified because of his actions on January 6.”
The 14th amendment says: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice-president … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same … ”
Hutchinson said: “There would have to be a separate lawsuit that would be filed, in which there would be a finding that the former president engaged in insurrection, and that would disqualify him. That’s one avenue. The other way would be that if a specific state made that determination on their own … Either way … I think it’s a serious jeopardy for Donald Trump.”
Trump’s longtime leading challenger, DeSantis, has long been falling back. No dominant alternative has emerged but Hutchinson insisted his party was not risking a repeat of 2016, when voters did not coalesce around one alternative to Trump.
“I don’t see that happening,” Hutchinson told CNN. “First of all, it’s really early. I talked to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire and they’re gonna be late deciding, and that’s why you’re gonna see in Iowa, where Trump’s numbers come down first, it will be here.
“… This debate is important … this is really a reduced number [of candidates] from 2016 with eight or nine on the stage. We’ll see who else qualifies for it but the voters are gonna be able to lock in on it, make decisions, and they’re not gonna be in a hurry to move. So everybody needs to be patient, including the media, and let this unfold over the next three or four months.
“The right alternative to Donald Trump will surface.”
