Former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff did not mince words in a CNN interview Wednesday when it came to assigning blame for the attack on the Capitol Building in January 2021.
It was then-President Donald Trump’s fault.
Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Marc Short, “You see those pictures of the vice president of the United States and his family in hiding. What goes through your mind?”
Short said, “It was a tragic day on January 6.”
He continued, “I was there the whole day and whole night, and I think it was tragic to see the Capitol assaulted the way that it was.”
“I think that was very clear was that the vice president has always been a constitutional conservative. I think he knew what his constitutional duty was that day. He knew it from the beginning,” Short continued.
“I think he was clear with the president, and so was our office clear about what we viewed his role as. I think that, you know, for any limited government conservative, I don’t think he’d want the notion that our Founders would have thought any one person would have been bestowed with that much authority to overturn election results,” Short went on.
“So I think they he approached this was, what does the Constitution say, what does the Electoral Count Act say? He did his duty. He swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. He swore an oath to God to uphold the Constitution just as our men and women in uniform do.”
Blitzer asked, “At what point did it become clear to you on that day or the days afterward that the then-President Donald Trump wanted to do anything he could to stay in power no matter what?”
“I think I shared that I think the president was poorly advised by a lot of the people around him at that time. And it probably was more clear after December 14 that, of course, was the day the Electoral College meets,” Short continued.
“So at that point when it was not, I think it became clear there would be a lot more pressure applied to the vice president leading to January 6,” he noted.
Blitzer asked, “I just want to be clear, do you blame those surrounding the president for giving him bad advice, or do you blame the then president himself?”
Short said, “I think ultimately the buck stops with the president. I also think there’s people around the president I think served him very poorly, and I think gave poor advice.”
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