Speaking in West Palm Beach, Florida at a Student Action Summit organized by Turning Point USA, a major pro-Trump and conservative youth advocacy group, the vice president urged the crowd "to stay in the fight in our election."
"As our election contest continues, I’ll make you a promise, we’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out," Pence said, repeating a line he has used frequently as he has campaigned in recent weeks in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, where the Republican Senate majority’s at stake.
Vice President Mike Pence arrives on the stage before speaking at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Pence’s appearance at the Turning Point USA summit came eight days after the Electoral College formalized President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Trump in last month’s general election.
But Trump refuses to concede to Biden as he continues to claim there was massive voter fraud in key battleground states where Biden beat him. On Monday, Trump and Pence met at the White House with a handful of top Trump supporters in the House of Representatives for a strategy session on how to protest the election results when a joint session of Congress meets on Jan. 6 to certify the Electoral College results.
Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, will preside over the session.
While Pence was flying to Florida on Tuesday, Trump tweeted, without offering any concrete evidence, that the presidential contest "WAS A RIGGED ELECTION!!!"
Pence avoids such charges and language in his speeches and comments. Instead, he spent much of 30 minute address praising the president and his administration’s accomplishments the past four years. And he saluted Trump as "the most pro-life president in American history."
The vice president told the crowd that "with your support, President Trump and our team received more than 74 million votes across America." But he omitted that Biden won a record breaking 81 million votes in the presidential election.
Pence also highlighted that "we flipped 12 seats in the United States Congress and the president actually received the greatest share of minority votes for a Republican in 60 years."
His comments sparked chants of "four more years" and "stop the steal" by the audience.
But in an indirect acknowledgement that the Trump administration would be coming to a close on Jan. 20 with Biden’s inauguration as president, Pence asked the crowd to "stay in the fight to defend all that we’ve done."
Josh Platillero, of Knoxville, Tenn. skates with flags in support of President Trump as people wait for the doors to open outside of the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The vice president told the audience of young conservatives, many of whom weren’t wearing masks or socially distancing, that "we need you to stay in the fight to be a check on what the Democrats and the radical left want to do and what they want to undo."
And Pence, who likely has presidential ambitions of his own in 2024, may have been looking to the future as he closed his speech by promising that "the best days of the conservative movement are yet to come."
