Ivanka, Mike Pence Saved Day On 1/6 Heroically, Like Heroes, Say Ivanka, Mike Pence

It's book-readin' time!

Slow fuckin' clap for Ivanka and Mike Pence, we guess. After more than five years standing shoulder to shoulder with an unstable tinpot dictator as he spewed a constant stream of lies and invective like acid on the American body politic, they found an iota of courage to do the right thing on January 6, 2021. So let's give them the round of applause they so clearly believe is their due for that belated display of integrity.

Or not.

The Washington Post published a second excerptfrom reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig's upcoming book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," and this installment focuses on the interplay between the White House and Congress on the day of the insurrection. It features a fearless Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump, the lone patriots in the White House willing to put party over country and tell the president the truth that he had lost the election.

Oh, wait, just kidding! They never did that either, since fealty to objective reality was a bridge too far. But they did eventually lift a pinky finger to rein in the people who believe his Big Lie. It was the very least they could do, and they did it.  

The story begins in familiar territory: the party tent where the Trump family and their acolytes had gathered to watch the festivities. Deej is babbling, Kimmy G is dancing, the mood is jubilant as they prepare for the president to address the mob. Only Ivanka is worried.

"This is not right. It's not right," she says, furrowing her sculpted brows over the deranged lies being poured into the simpleton patriarch's head by his demented consigliere Rudy Giuliani. Her heart aches to see poor Vice President Mike Pence abused. On hearing her father accuse his loyal veep of lacking "the courage to make a hard decision" to overturn the election in defiance of reality and the Constitution, she shouts, "Mike Pence is a good man!" at the top of her delicate lungs.

HAHA! We are silly on Fridays. No, our little mermaid whispers it to Keith Kellogg, the national security advisor to the vice president, having traded her voice for her very soul. Presumably.

Our selfless heroine is described as having reluctantly attended the rally, although she refused all entreaties to speak, "tending her father" heedless of the cost to her own personal brand and "only because she had hoped to calm the president and help keep the event on an even keel." Unlike her wicked stepmother, who stayed behind at the White House to scoop up more photos for a planned coffee table book.

Watching the violence unleashed by her courtiers, the Princess Feckless grew ever more concerned, going so far as to leave her palace quarters multiple times to seek an audience with the king.

As soon as she saw on the television in her second-floor office that the rioters were inside the Capitol, Ivanka Trump said to her aides, "I'm going down to my dad. This has to stop." She spent several hours walking back and forth to the Oval trying to persuade the president to be stronger in telling his supporters he stood with law enforcement and ordering them to disperse.

So the nepotism hire whose actual job title was "advisor to the president" ... advised the president? What a modern day Queen Esther!

Just when Ivanka Trump thought she had made headway and returned upstairs, Meadows would call her to say that the president still needed more persuading. "I need you to come back down here," Meadows would tell her. "We've got to get this under control." He would clear the room of other aides and say, "I only want Ivanka, myself and the president in here."

This cycle repeated itself several times that afternoon. As another presidential adviser said, "Ivanka was described to me like a stable pony. When the racehorse gets too agitated, you bring the stable pony in to calm him down."

Not to nitpick, but if the situation was so dire, couldn't our heroine just have stayed in the room to make sure that her father actually called off his dogs? What was so important that she needed to race back upstairs, only to trot back down to play "stable pony" to the "stable genius" whose followers were sacking the seat of government?

Okay, enough of this horse's ass. Let's see how Mike Pence fares in this account.

Vice President Pence could have the courage of a lion, but there was no doubt that he would fulfill his constitutional duty and preside over the pro forma certification of Biden's win.

Oh, cool, the guy who sacrificed every moral principle he ever claimed to have and gave evangelicals permission to vote for a venal pervert is being described as possessing superhuman bravery by the authors of the book. But wait, there's more!

Here's Mike Pence being lauded for his courage in putting out a letter on January 6 declaring his intention to fulfill his constitutional obligation to certify the election. Sure, he could have put it out weeks before and nipped that particular fever dream in the bud, but let's all laud the moral courage of a guy who managed to turn in his homework the day after it was due, right?

Pence vowed to hear any objections, and then to count the electoral college votes "in a manner consistent with our Constitution, laws, and history." His final words: "So help me God."

And here's Mike Pence, manfully refusing to leave the Capitol during the riot, selflessly sacrificing his own safety out of his abiding devotion to democracy.

At 2: 26, after a team of agents scouted a safe path to ensure the Pences would not encounter trouble, Giebels and the rest of Pence's detail guided them down a staircase to a secure subterranean area that rioters couldn't reach, where the vice president's armored limousine awaited. Giebels asked Pence to get in one of the vehicles. "We can hold here," he said.

"I'm not getting in the car, Tim," Pence replied. "I trust you, Tim, but you're not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I'm not getting in the car."

The Pences then made their way to a secure underground area to wait out the riot.

In fact, the only villain in this account is Donald Trump himself. Everyone around him is a bloody hero, risking it all to rein in the mad king. And with the greatest respect for Rucker and Leonnig, both of whom are amazing journalists, we say NO FUCKING WAY.

Because we were all there. We all watched this five year train wreck, we all saw Pence, and Ivanka, and Meadows, and Kellogg, and every last one of those horrible people work to support a man whom they all knew to be constitutionally and morally unfit as he did horrendous violence to our country. And we are not here for some kind of redemption chronicle that casts these people as heroic patriots who did their best to protect America from the president's worst instincts. The fact that it could have been worse doesn't undo the catastrophic harms we all suffered, and it doesn't vitiate the role Pence, Ivanka, and the rest of Team Trump played in inflicting this disaster on us.

They should wear that scarlet letter for the rest of their miserable lives. And if this little mommyblog has anything to say about it, they damn well will.

[ WaPo ]

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