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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Sunday that he would have certified the results of the 2020 presidential election and that then-Vice President Mike Pence missed a "historic opportunity" to initiate changes on Jan 6, 2021.

With Donald Trump absent at the first GOP presidential debate Wednesday, Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who has closely aligned himself with the former president, took center stage. He launched and received the most attacks during the debate, seizing on the opportunity to rise from relative obscurity to a notable contender.

Asked by NBC News' Chuck Todd in an interview on “Meet the Press” whether Pence had done the right thing on Jan. 6 by certifying the results of the election, Ramaswamy said: “I would have done it very differently. I think that there was a historic opportunity that he missed, to reunite this country in that window.

"What I would have said is: This is a moment for a true national consensus where there's two elements of what's required for a functioning democracy in America," he said. “One is secure elections, and the second is a peaceful transfer of power. When those things come into conflict, that’s an opportunity for heroism.”

Ramaswamy said if he had been in Pence's position, he would have pushed "reforms" through Congress before he certified the election.

“Here’s what I would have said: ‘We need single-day voting on Election Day, we need paper ballots, and we need government- issued ID matching the voter file.’ And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. I would have driven it through the Senate," he said.

“In my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then on that condition certified the election results, served it up to the president — President Trump — then to sign that into law. And on January 7th, declared the re-election campaign pursuant to a free and fair election,” he said. “I think that was a missed opportunity."

David James, press secretary for Pence's campaign, criticized Ramaswamy's remarks on “Meet the Press.”

Vivek’s statement today on January 6th is both shocking and concerning in its lack of understanding of how our system of government works," James wrote. "In one breathe he joins Nancy Pelosi and radical progressives in wanting to nationalize our election system, and in another he claims that the Vice President has unilateral authority to decide when to certify elections."

Pence’s campaign also pointed NBC News to an email it sent to subscribers following Ramaswamy’s remarks.

“Ramaswamy has flipped and flopped around the issue of January 6. His most recent comments are perhaps his most egregious, including on this morning’s edition of Meet The Press on NBC,” Pence’s campaign said in a statement. “On August 4, 2023, he refused to say he would have certified the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021. Yet at Wednesday’s GOP Debate, he raised his hand in support of what Mike Pence did in following the Constitution, despite his comments on MTP today.”

In response, Ramaswamy’s campaign pointed out that he did not raise his hand in support of Pence. During the debate, several GOP candidates were asked whether they believed Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum were among those who said he did. Ramaswamy was not asked the question.

Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign was up in arms on Tuesday after the conservative political network launched by the Koch Brothers threw its support behind former UN ambassador Nikki Haley's presidential bid.

In a new memo, the group stated that Haley had the political chops "to take on our nation's biggest challenges and help ensure our country's best days are ahead" and added that they believe the former South Carolina governor is best-positioned to take down Trump in the upcoming primaries.

The decision from Americans for Prosperity Action, which was reported by The New York Times, is a major blow to the Florida governor, as he's so far been unable to put a dent in former President Donald Trump's massive lead in the GOP presidential primary. In recent weeks, DeSantis seen his support stagnate nationally and in critical New Hampshire — where Haley has moved past him in most polling.

DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo on Tuesday took to X in an attempt to paint Americans for Prosperity Action as part of a political establishment that DeSantis has long railed against.

"Congratulations to Donald Trump on securing the Koch endorsement," Romeo wrote. "Like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president."

"Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign," he continued. "No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different."

The rise of Nikki Haley has energized the kind of Republicans who at one time thrilled to the sight of Jeb Bush and had begun to despair that they would ever see his like again. “In recent weeks,” the New York Times reported, “a number of chief executives, hedge fund investors and corporate deal makers from both parties have begun gravitating toward” Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. The powerful Koch network has thrown its weight behind her candidacy. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has made supportive noises, and billionaire Kenneth Griffin is “actively contemplating” a donation. (Wealthy people do nothing passively, not even contemplation.) Health-data executive Jonathan Bush — yes, of that Bush family — gushed, “It’s invigorating to be truly excited by a candidate again,” evoking the sensation of the wind rushing through his hair as he grips the helm of his yacht for the first voyage of summer.

Haley’s rise is the most interesting story in the Republican primary, the only previous drama being the slow, painful death of the Ron DeSantis campaign. Haley has surged past DeSantis into second place in some polls by consolidating what remains of the party’s Establishment wing: traditional conservatives, social moderates, the large-donor class, and other Republican voters who find Donald Trump’s antics mortifying.

The trouble for Haley is that the faction she is rallying is inherently bounded. The Establishment wing is limited not only in size but also by the intense hostility it inspires among the party’s Trumpier voters. She is following a formula that can propel her into consideration for the vice-presidency, or position her to step in if Trump is felled by heart disease, but gives her little chance to actually defeat the party’s reigning cult leader and self-styled president-in-exile. Whatever you might say about the hapless DeSantis candidacy, it is at least built upon a recognition of the actual state of the Trump-era GOP. Haley’s candidacy is less a way of dealing with the party’s problems than an attempt to pretend they don’t exist.

In April, Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark wrote what is still one of the most insightful reports about the Republican electorate. Longwell, strategic director of Republican Voters Against Trump, has sat through hundreds of focus groups to understand the mental state of the party. Her primary conclusion is that most GOP voters see the Trump era not as an interregnum but as a kind of revolutionary event she calls “Year Zero.”

“The Republican party has been irretrievably altered,” she wrote, “and, as one GOP voter put it succinctly, ‘We’re never going back.’” Such voters have bought into Trump’s argument that the party leaders who preceded him were weak losers. (This argument conveniently absolves Trump of blame for his own losses — he was sabotaged by the Establishment, you see.) “If you forged your political identity pre-Trump, then you belong to a GOP establishment now loathed by a majority of Republican primary voters,” she concluded. “Even if you agree with Trump. Even if you worked for Trump. Even if you were on Trump’s ticket as his vice president.”

Longwell laid out a roster of Republican politicians whom the voters could never accept for this reason. The first name on her list was Nikki Haley.

Haley’s relationship with Trump has been characterized by endless repositioning. Like most of the party’s pre-Trump governing class, she met his rise with horror and disbelief. “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we want as president,” she said in early 2016. And also like most elite Republicans, Trump’s surprise victory was enough to legitimize him in her eyes, and she found her way into his administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

After Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election result culminated in a forcible invasion of the Capitol, Haley depicted Trump as a victim (“They are beating him up after he leaves office”). But a couple of weeks later in an interview with Politico’s Tim Alberta, Haley said Trump “let us down.” She added, “And we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” In that same interview, Haley defended his claim to have won the 2020 election as his genuine belief,
blaming confidants for giving him bad advice. Asked by Alberta if she had given Trump better information, Haley admitted she hadn’t. A couple of months after that, she promised not to run against Trump. She reversed that position, too.

Yet for all her efforts to smooth over her disagreements with her former boss, Haley has not done what Longwell believes the base wants: Erase her pre-Trump history and remake herself in his image. Her platform has a Romney-esque tinge with staunch defenses of Ukraine and plans to raise the Social Security eligibility age. More important, Haley — unlike Trump but like every other presidential aspirant in history — talks about bringing the country together rather than humiliating and subjugating half of it.

Haley is following a very different strategy from DeSantis. The Florida governor has calculated that Trump skeptics are a minority of the party and that his path to victory requires him to envelop Trump from both sides, grabbing both the critics and the loyalists. Traditional ideology has limited value here because the questions at stake revolve around personality and power — specifically Trump’s. DeSantis accepts the premise that Trump’s presidency was sabotaged by a “deep state” cabal and that the principle objective of the presidency is to wage a political culture war by any means necessary. He is running as a more effective instrument of revenge against Trump’s enemies than Trump himself.

This is obviously a tricky message, and DeSantis has turned the difficult into the impossible by combining a lack of humor and warmth with chronic mismanagement. DeSantis outsourced his campaign strategy to an external organization, Never Back Down, which has been beset by infighting.

But just because he has failed to execute his strategy doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one. There simply aren’t enough votes in the Trump-skeptical wing to overtake Trump. If DeSantis can’t beat Trump, which apparently is the case, nobody can. Haley is having an easier time consolidating her base because her potential constituency is more internally coherent — because it is smaller.

If you’re trying to imagine what a two-person race between her and Trump would look like, Haley is what Trump would call a foil straight out of “central casting.” All her traits — female, nonwhite, Establishment darling, former Trump subordinate — make her an ideal target for his bullying.

The outcome of such a contest seems so obvious that one wonders if even Haley thinks she can win. Of all the limp gestures the Republican Establishment has made to rid itself of Trump over the past eight years, the Haley candidacy may be the most preordained to fail.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered the clearest indication yet that he would pardon former President Donald Trump if he were to be convicted on the multiple criminal charges he faces, clarifying previously murky answers on how the Republican governor would use his pardon powers if elected president.

In an exchange with reporters after a campaign event in Iowa on Friday, DeSantis said when asked about a pardon for Trump that he had "already said that long ago."

"I think we got to move on as a country and, you know, like Ford did to Nixon, because the divisions are just not in the country’s interest," he said

A prominent Republican National Committee member is proposing two resolutions that would put some distance between the national party and former President Donald Trump — at least for a little bit longer.

The first resolution from Henry Barbour — a longtime member from Mississippi — would prohibit the national party from coordinating with Trump or fundraising with his campaign until he wins enough delegates to be the party’s presumptive nominee.

The draft resolution, in part, states: “The Republican National Committee and its leadership will stay neutral throughout the Presidential primary and not take on additional staff from any of the active Presidential campaigns until a nominee is clearly determined by reaching 1,215 delegates.”

Trump has already proposed that his current campaign co-manager, Chris LaCivita, take the reins of the RNC as its chief operating officer. This proposed resolution, if passed by the RNC’s 168-member body, would slow down the process of Trump’s team effectively taking over the RNC.

Unlike the Biden campaign and the DNC, the Trump campaign and the RNC have yet to launch a joint fundraising committee, which allows the two entities to better coordinate and advance mutual financial interests.

The Trump campaign released a statement Saturday expressing its disapproval of Barbour's measure.

“The primary is over and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House," LaCivita said. "Efforts to delay that assist Joe Biden in the destruction of our nation. Republicans cannot stand on the sidelines and allow this to happen.”

Late last month, another RNC member had floated a resolution to declare Trump the party’s “presumptive” nominee. After some controversy — and Trump himself weighing in on social media that the RNC should not adopt it — the member withdrew it.

Barbour is also proposing a second resolution that would bar the RNC from paying Trump’s legal bills. If passed, it would declare: “The Republican National Committee will not pay the legal bills of any of our candidates for any federal or state office, but will focus our spending on efforts directly related to the 2024 election cycle.”

Before a campaign rally for Trump on Friday, LaCivita also committed that the RNC would not pay for Trump’s legal-related expenses when the campaign and the RNC merge their efforts.

The RNC’s members will convene in Houston on March 7 and 8 and could potentially vote on the pair of resolutions at that time.

It is also unclear when, or if, Ronna McDaniel will resign from her post as chairwoman. In early February, Trump called for her to be replaced by Michael Whatley, a RNC member from North Carolina, but it is up to McDaniel to resign — or for the RNC members to remove her from her position.

The RNC members could also vote on new party leadership in Houston.

But there’s a further potential complication facing Trump allies to take over the RNC: If McDaniel resigns, Trump-endorsed Whatley could face a challenge by current RNC co-chair Drew McKissick for the party’s top spot.

When asked repeatedly by NBC News in an interview on Saturday whether he would rule out his own bid for the chairmanship, McKissick declined to explicitly take such an effort off the table, though he acknowledged that whoever the Republican Party’s presidential nominee will be has a “big say” in the matter.

“I’m with the team when it comes to this,” McKissick said. “This is all about putting together who’s going to be in the best slot to do whatever we need to do to win, and the nominee has a big say in that.”

McKissick has already reached out to other RNC members to gauge their interest in supporting him for the RNC chair position. One year ago, McKissick handily bested Whatley — who also had Trump’s endorsement then — in the RNC vote to serve as the party’s co-chair.

McKissick declined to say whether he’d endorse Whatley’s bid for RNC chair, instead calling the North Carolina Republican “a good friend” and embracing Trump’s role in ultimately determining RNC leadership.