U.S. Sen. John Barrasso did not agree with former President Donald Trump’s comment that rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 chanting “Hang Mike Pence” was “common sense.”
During an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Barrasso initially avoided the question from host George Stephanopoulos, but did ultimately say that he did not agree with Trump on everything.
“I agree with him on the policies that have brought us the best economy in my lifetime,” he said during the interview. “And I’m going to continue to support those policies and continuing to work to stop what Joe Biden is doing to this country, which I believe is almost irreversibly bad.”
According to Newsweek, the issue arose recently when the former president was asked during an interview about whether or not he felt that Pence was safe during the assault on the Capitol.
“I thought he was well-protected and I had heard that he was in good shape,” Trump said.
When asked specifically about rioters chanting “hang Mike Pence,” the former president supported the notion and tied it back to his widely disproven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“Because it’s common sense,” Trump said. “If you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?”
People focused on Pence in particular, since, as president of the U.S. Senate, he could have voted against certification of the vote in the presidential race between Trump and current President Joe Biden.
When asked if Barrasso condemned the rioters, office spokeswoman Laura Mengelkamp pointed Cowboy State Daily to the statement he made the day of the attack.
“This violence and destruction have no place in our republic,” Barrasso wrote in a Twitter post on Jan. 6. “It must end now.”
