As reported earlier, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped a four-count indictment on former President Donald Trump.

Legal experts Jonathan Turley and Andrew McCarthy immediately ripped it apart for the flawed spectacle and attempt to twist the law that it was. Turley pointed out how they were trying to criminalize “alleged misinformation,” and McCarthy said that they were trying to stretch the law to apply to Trump because this was a proxy for not being able to get him through impeachment. McCarthy also blasted the Special Counsel for his “demagogic” statement on the matter.

The best response from among Trump’s fellow candidates goes to Vivek Ramaswamy for a powerful rebuke of the new indictment. He also urged all the other candidates to join him in condemning the move and the effort to take Trump out by the Biden administration. He said they were using their power to try to eliminate their top political opponent from the contest. “It is a political persecution, through prosecution,” Vivek declared.

The corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved their mission: eliminate Trump. This is un-American & I commit to pardoning Trump for this indictment. Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic & pervasive censorship of… pic.twitter.com/c1OpZNOl6c

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 1, 2023

Ramaswamy acknowledged it would be easier for him to win if Trump were gone, but he said that wasn’t how he wanted it and that it was about “first principles.” He said we do not want to become a country where “the party in power uses banana-republic-like tactics to eliminate its political opponents.” But he said, “That’s exactly where we are.”

Vivek pointed out how Trump had “specifically told protesters to behave peacefully” — yet the media and the Democrats always leave that out. Not just peacefully, but also “patriotically.” He also pointed out that in the lead-up to this, there was all kinds of suppression of speech, that prevented people from finding out the truth, such as the shutdown of the Hunter Biden laptop story, that Twitter even shut down the account of the NY Post.

Ramaswamy said he was afraid that we might be approaching something even worse if these issues were not addressed.

“But the first and most important step that we as candidates can take in this race is to speak — and to speak forcefully — on the side of principle. To say that even if we’re competing against Donald Trump, as I am, I do not want to see him eliminated from competition using these politicized tactics. It is wrong for our country, it is wrong for our future. I call on my fellow candidates to condemn it.” He also called on Joe Biden “to do the right thing and drop these politicized charges” as the first step to “uniting our country.”

Unfortunately, one of the other candidates wasn’t listening to Vivek. Mike Pence seems intent on further doing in his campaign. He imploded during his interview with Tucker Carlson during the Family Leadership Summit in July. He doubled down on bad with what he said, in response to the Trump indictment on Tuesday, in a Twitter thread.

Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.

I will have more to say about the government’s case after reviewing the indictment. The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions.

As Americans, his candidacy means less attention paid to Joe Biden’s disastrous economic policies afflicting millions across the United States and to the pattern of corruption with Hunter.

Our country is more important than one man. Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career.

On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will.

As your president, I will not yield an inch in defending America, our people, or our values, and I promise you: I will do so in a way consistent with my oath to the Constitution and the character and decency of the American people. We will restore a threshold of integrity and civility in public life so we can bring real solutions to the challenges plaguing our nation.

Way to sink your campaign still further. Somehow, even the random person on the street knows that we are at a precarious time with the government being weaponized against us—and that we need to stand together against it if we are to uphold the rule of law and the protections of the Constitution. But Pence doesn’t seem to get it, even as he talks about the Constitution. That’s a huge problem.

Pence may not even make the cut for the second GOP debate. But he’s also not making it with many people with this kind of response. He’s just stuck another fork in his campaign.