ETF Summary

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s campaign slammed Vivek Ramaswamy for supposedly flip-flopping on the issue of Jan. 6 on Sunday, highlighting the fellow Republican presidential candidate’s past comments that condemned the incident.

Pence’s campaign produced multiple instances in which Ramaswamy appeared to contradict his own past statements about the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

‘On August 4, 2023, [Ramaswamy] refused to say he would have certified the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021,’ the Pence campaign wrote. ‘Yet at Wednesday’s GOP debate, he raised his hand in support of what Mike Pence did in following the Constitution.’

The campaign cited a Jan. 11, 2021, op-ed Ramaswamy wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which he referred to the ‘disgraceful Capitol riot’ as a ‘stain on American history.’

The following day on Jan. 12, 2021, Ramaswamy referred to his op-ed in a statement: ‘What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple. I’ve said it before and did so in my piece.’

A litany of other examples followed. The Pence campaign referred to Ramaswamy’s own book, ‘Nation of Victims,’ which was published in 2022.

‘It was a dark day for democracy. The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again,’ Ramaswamy wrote. ‘I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.’

‘I was especially disappointed when I saw President Trump take a page from the Stacey Abrams playbook,’ Ramaswamy wrote. ‘His claims were just as weak as Abrams’.’

Ramaswamy’s tune on the Capitol riot seemed to change in June and July as he seemed to take a far more sympathetic view of the incident.

‘I will pardon *all* Americans who were targets of politicized federal prosecutions & those who were denied due process. This includes all peaceful Jan 6 protesters. It’s important that every candidate is clear about where we stand on the hard issues, not just the standard GOP talking points,’ he wrote June 8 on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The candidate emphasized that view again in mid-July, stating that ‘pervasive censorship’ caused Jan. 6.

‘You tell people in this country they cannot speak. That is when they scream. You tell people they cannot scream. That is when they tear things down,’ he said at the time.

Ramaswamy was asked about the issue again Sunday morning during an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ He said he would have championed ‘reforms’ to the voting process and made the certification of the election result contingent on passing those reforms.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, competing for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, sidestepped Sunday on whether he would support Donald Trump if the former president is convicted in any criminal case, arguing that President Biden, too, ‘has trampled on the Constitution of the United States.’ 

‘I signed a pledge to be on that stage to say I would support the Republican nominee. I remain confident, more confident after Wednesday night, that the Republican nominee will not be the former president, and we’re going to give the American people a standard-bearer for the GOP that’s going to be able to lead us to victory against Joe Biden and the radical left. I raised my hand to say I’ll support the Republican nominee,’ Pence said during an appearance on CBS’s ‘Face The Nation.’

‘I could never support Joe Biden,’ Pence continued. ‘I mean, Joe Biden’s policies have been disastrous. He and his family are under an ethical cloud themselves, and frankly, Joe Biden has trampled on the Constitution of the United States, he’s failed to faithfully execute our laws – the southern border of the United States created the worst crisis in American history, and that student loan giveaway where he was going to ask truck drivers to pay their taxes to pay off the student loans of graduate students was essentially an unconstitutional power grab that I rejected. So, I’ll support the Republican nominee, and I’m going to continue to work my heart out that it’s me.’

Pence said it was heartening to hear from fellow GOP contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, that they agreed he ‘did his duty’ or ‘did the right thing’ in certifying Biden’s election victory amid the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

During last week’s first GOP debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee, Pence argued that he believed Trump asked him to put him before the Constitution.

‘I’ve made it clear I had hoped that the issues surrounding the 2020 election and the controversies around Jan. 6 had not come to this, had not come to criminal proceedings. I would rather they had been resolved by the American people and the American people alone,’ Pence said on the debate stage Wednesday. ‘But no one’s above the law. And President Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence that every American is entitled to. And we will make sure and extend that to him. But the American people deserve to know that the president asked me in his request that I reject or return votes unilaterally, power that no vice president in American history had ever exercised or taken. He asked me to put him over the Constitution, and I chose the Constitution, and I always will.’

Also, during the ‘Face The Nation’ segment Sunday, Pence condemned the recent mass shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, as ‘evil,’ vowing that if elected president he would expedite the death penalty for mass shooters. He also went after Biden for his record on inflation, record-high mortgage rates and the Afghanistan withdrawal, among other issues.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday that many Black Americans live every day with the fear of becoming victims of ‘hate-fueled gun violence’ in response to a gunman in Florida opening fire in a Dollar General and killing three Black people.

Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, arrived at a Dollar General in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, Glock handgun and tactical vest. Palmeter then shot and killed three victims in what Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters described as a ‘racially motivated’ attack.

On Sunday, Harris released a statement about the shooting in which she condemned hatred and violent extremism in America, and said that Black people are often concerned about racially motivated gun violence against them when they leave their homes.

The vice president pointed out that the shooting Saturday afternoon was happening as many Americans were celebrating the anniversary of the March on Washington, the 1963 march by activists demanding civil and economic rights for Black Americans.

‘Already, federal law enforcement has opened a civil rights investigation into this attack and is treating it as a possible hate crime and act of domestic violent extremism,’ Harris said.

‘As we allow that investigation to proceed, let us continue to speak truth about the moment we are in: America is experiencing an epidemic of hate,’ she continued. ‘Too many communities have been torn apart by hatred and violent extremism. Too many families have lost children, parents, and grandparents. Too many Black Americans live every day with the fear that they will be victims of hate-fueled gun violence—at school, at work, at their place of worship, at the grocery store.’

Harris also urged congressional lawmakers to ban assault weapons and pass ‘other commonsense gun safety’ measures.

‘Every person in every community in America should have the freedom to live safe from gun violence,’ she said.

The victims of the shooting on Saturday were 52-year-old Angela Michelle Carr, 19-year-old Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., and 29-year-old Jerrald De’Shawn Gallion.

According to officials, Palmeter was once involved in a 2016 domestic violence incident and was once involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for examination. Images of the shooting shared on the sheriff’s Facebook page also show white lettering and symbols painted on the gunman’s AR-15 rifle, including what appears to be a swastika.

Waters addressed calls for firearm bans in a news conference held Sunday afternoon.

‘The story’s always about guns. People are bad,’ he said. ‘This guy’s a bad guy. If I could take my gun off right now and lay it on this counter, nothing will happen. It’ll sit there. But as soon as a wicked person grabs ahold of that gun and starts shooting people with it, there’s the problem. The problem is the individual.’

President Biden also released a statement Sunday decrying White supremacy.

‘Even as we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white(sic) supremacy has no place in America,’ Biden said. ‘We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. Hate must have no safe harbor. Silence is complicity and we must not remain silent.’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican presidential candidate, called the shooter a ‘scumbag’ in remarks on Saturday.

‘This shooting, based on the manifesto they discovered from the scumbag that did this, was racially motivated,’ DeSantis said. ‘He was targeting people based on their race. That is totally unacceptable.’

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Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will appear in court in Georgia for the first time Monday, making a bid to transfer the case against him to federal court.

Meadows, who faces charges of interfering in Georgia’s 2020 election, argues that he was acting in his capacity as a federal official at the time and is therefore immune to prosecution.

Meadows’ attorneys plan to request that U.S. District Judge Steve Jones move the case to the federal system, at which time they would then move to have the case dismissed, according to the Washington Post.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicted 18 people in addition to former President Donald Trump earlier this month. Four of those have adopted Meadows’ strategy of attempting to push their case into federal court, including former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer.

Prior to his surrender last week, Meadows had filed an emergency motion seeking to prevent his ‘imminent arrest,’ which was denied. Meadows had sought to stall his arrest pending the outcome of an evidentiary hearing over the possibility of his RICO charges being moved from state to federal court, FOX 5 Atlanta reported.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was also notified last week that he will be subpoenaed to testify during Monday’s court hearing.

Willis’ indictment against Meadows cited a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call in which Trump requested that Raffensperger ‘find votes’ to overturn the state’s election results. Meadows was on the phone call as well, and Willis argues that his participation constituted illegal solicitation of a state official to violate his oath.

Lawyers for Meadows have responded that the actions he took were ‘directly related’ to his role as White House chief of staff, and that the case constitutes ‘state interference in a federal official’s duties.’

Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.