Newsmax host and staunch Trump defender Greg Kelly whined on Wednesday about former Vice President Mike Pence saying he would consider testifying before the House Jan. 6 committee if asked to do so.
Pence, according to Kelly, shouldn’t appear, in part because the committee said “not a word” about Ashli Babbitt, the pro-Trump rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer (who was later cleared of any wrongdoing) while attempting to breach the Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6.
“This guy—forgive me—is wooden and weird and not ready, just not ready,” Kelly said of the former vice president. “And how dare he entertain going to this crazy, undemocratic Jan. 6 committee, which didn’t even ask [about or] raise her name: Ashli Babbitt. Not a word about Ashli Babbitt.”
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Pence told a New Hampshire crowd at a Politics & Eggs event that he would think about appearing before the committee, which received testimony in January from Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff.
“You know why he wants to go to this committee?” Kelly said. “Because once again they’ll talk about what a hero he was in the basement on the phone. Did you see? I don’t know what the big deal is about that picture, do you?” Kelly said as a photograph showed on screen of Pence in a secure location during the insurrection. The Jan. 6 committee found that rioters, some of whom had called for Pence to be hanged, at one point came within 40 feet of him. That was apparently lost on Kelly.
“I am still disappointed in Mike Pence,” griped the Newsmax host, who then pivoted to defending those who sought to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence “had more options” on Jan. 6 than what he ended up doing, Kelly asserted, despite the widespread agreement among legal experts that the vice president did not have the authority to do what former President Donald Trump demanded of him.
“It’s perhaps debatable but it’s not un-American to say that these votes—certain concerns—in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, making sure the electors were sound, sending them back to the state capitals—that’s not necessarily overturning an election,” Kelly insisted, once again doing Trump’s bidding. “That’s making sure the election was actually free and fair and valid.”
