Donald Trump has said that his former ally Mike Pence can be blamed in “many ways” for the January 6 riots at the US Capitol.

“If he had sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with January 6,” the former president said on Monday. “So in many ways, you can blame him for January 6.”

Mr. Trump made the remarks while speaking to reporters on his personal plane while he was headed to a campaign event in Iowa.

Mr. Trump said, referring to the fact that the former vice president didn’t do what he asked Congress to do and make the electoral college votes illegal, “If he had sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, I think you would have had a different result.” But I also think you wouldn’t have had what we call “January 6.”

This comes just two days after Mr. Pence aimed at his former boss and said that he knows history will hold Mr. Trump accountable over the January 6 insurrection, amping up the tussle between them as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in the next year’s election.

“President Trump was wrong,” Mr. Pence told the politicians and journalists who were at the event on Saturday.

He also said, “I didn’t have the right to change the results of the election, and his careless words put my family and everyone at the Capitol that day in danger, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

The former vice president is probably thinking about running for president as a Republican in 2024. If he did, he would run against the former president.

Mr Trump responded to his former ally’s condemnation and said that Mr Pence’s single-digit outcomes in recent surveys on potential White House candidates from the Republican camp for 2024 elections.

“I guess he figured that being nice is not working. But you know, he’s out there campaigning. And he’s trying very hard. And he’s a nice man, I’ve known him, I had a very good relationship until the end,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr.Trump had strongly pursued and made attempts to convince his vice president to interfere in the election and attempt to overturn the results up until the very hours of the Senate’s meeting to certify his loss, despite all indications that Mr Pence had no intention of doing so.

The former president ran for a second term in office. On November 3, 2020, the Democrat Joe Biden won the electoral vote 306 to 232 and the popular vote 81.3 million to 74.2 million.

After Mr. Pence said no, some protesters broke into the Capitol, and as they did, they chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

Mr. Trump started saying right away, without any evidence, that the election was “rigged” by his opponents as part of a huge nationwide plot. He has stuck to this lie ever since and tried to get Mr. Pence on board.

On Monday, he insisted that the change in bipartisan legislation in December showed that Mr. Pence could have legally certified the electoral college results before the new law went into effect.

“He had the right to send them back, otherwise they wouldn’t have changed the Voting Act,” Mr. Trump said.

On the other hand, Mr. Pence doubled down on Republicans and right-wing media outlets accused of trying to downplay the insurrection on Saturday.

Mr. Pence remarked that tourists “do not injure 140 police officers by sightseeing,” adding that they also “do not break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials.”