Trump’s election advisers were like ‘snake oil salesmen’, ex-Pence aide says

Mike Pence's former chief of staff Marc Short joined several senior Republicans in rallying to defend the former vice-president on Sunday in his escalating feud with Donald Trump over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Some of Trump's advisers on the 2020 election were like "snake oil salesmen", Short said on Sunday.

Pence angered the former president this week by rejecting Trump's false claim that he had the power to overturn Joe Biden's victory by refusing to accept results from seven contested states.

At a conference hosted by the conservative Federalist Society in Florida on Friday, Pence delivered his strongest rebuke to date of Trump's election lies, declaring that it was "un-American" to believe that any one person had the right to choose the president.

On Sunday, Short, and Republican senators John Barrasso, Lisa Murkowski and Marco Rubio, were among senior party figures who backed Pence's position, adding their voices to a backlash by other prominent Republican figures apparently growing weary of Trump's continued obsession with his election defeat and subversion of democracy.

"There's nothing in the 12th amendment or the Electoral Count Act that would afford a vice-president that authority," Short told NBC's Meet the Press, describing advisers who told Trump that Pence could send election results back to the states as "snake oil salesmen".

"The vice-president was crystal clear from day one that he didn't have this authority."