The former vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, has been handed a courage award for his January 6 actions.
Mr Pence was awarded the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Sunday for refusing to go along with President Donald Trump‘s attempts to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election.
The former VP said the US constitution was what “binds us all together” and that Americans had to “find common ground”.
The award recognises Mr Pence “for putting his life and career on the line”, the JFK Library Foundation said.
During his 10-minute speech, Mr Pence said he hoped his presence at the ceremony was “a reminder that whatever differences we may have as Americans, the constitution is the common ground on which we stand”.
While he made several references to the Trump administration, he made no mention of Mr Trump himself.
Mr Pence referenced “divided times” and “anxious days” in his speech, and acknowledged that while he probably had differences with the Democrats in the room, he also differed with his own Republican Party on a number of issues.
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Those issues of contention included “spending, tariffs and [his] belief that America is the leader of the free world and must stand with Ukraine until the Russian invasion is repelled”.
On 6 January 2021, Mr Trump pressured Mr Pence to reject election results from swing states where the Republican president falsely claimed the result was illegitimate.
Mr Pence refused and narrowly avoided a confrontation with a mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol building, some of whom chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence”.
President Trump wrote on X at the time that Mr Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution”.
Mr Pence rejected advice from the Secret Service that he leave the Capitol and instead stayed to continue the certification of Joe Biden‘s presidential victory.
In his address on Sunday, Mr Pence said what happened that day was “tragic”, but that it became “a triumph of freedom”.
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JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, who presented the award along with the former president’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, said Mr Pence’s “act of courage saved our government and warned us about what could happen and is happening right now”.
Previous recipients of the award include former US presidents Barack Obama, George HW Bush and Gerald Ford.
