Former Vice President Mike Pence has no chance in hell of winning the 2024 Republican nomination. He’s currently polling nationally in single digits, and while Tim Scott is gaining ground among social conservatives in the Iowa caucus, Pence is trailing behind Vivek Ramaswamy — a one-time libertarian rapper. (Yes, Ramaswamy’s done some other things but that’s just the most impressive.)
So, maybe Pence feels like he has nothing to lose now by dropping some truth bombs about his former boss Donald Trump.
Wednesday, Pence dismissed some jive from Trump’s lawyers about how the insurrectionist in chief didn’t ask him to coup, per se, but just “pause the voting” on January 6. (The “voting” had already taken place and Biden won more votes. Trump and his goons wanted Pence to ignore those results and help overturn the clear will of the people.)
“That’s completely false,” Pence told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum, “and it’s contrary to American history, to our Constitution, and to the laws of our country. I never considered it.”
Oh, but ya did, Blanche Mike, ya did! Let us not forget that Pence reportedly sought guidance from noted constitutional super genius Dan Quayle.
Over and over, Pence asked if there was anything he could do.
“Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle told him.
Pence pressed again.
“You don’t know the position I’m in,” he said, according to the authors.
“I do know the position you’re in,” Quayle responded. “I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power.”
But “I never considered abetting a coup once Murphy Brown’s arch nemesis told me no” doesn’t make as good a sound byte.
Pence continued, “Look, the first time I heard speculation that as vice president, I’d have authority to overturn the election by returning or rejecting votes, I frankly dismissed it out of hand … The founders of this country had just won a war of independence against a king, and I was confident as a student of American history that those founders would have never vested the vice president or anyone else with unilateral authority to decide what Electoral College votes to count and which not to count. I was clear on that throughout. I was clear with President Trump throughout all the way up to the morning of January 6.”
Putting aside how Pence’s version of events is both self-serving and not entirely true, I think if your boss at McDonald’s said, “Hey, let’s steal all the Big Macs,” you’d probably need to do more than just say, “No thanks, I’m not going to help you steal Big Macs or even those scrawny little cheeseburgers.” The 25th Amendment should’ve been invoked once Trump declared his intent to overthrow a free and fair election. Instead, the cowards surrounding him just plugged their ears while Trump waged a public war against democracy.
His arms now fully akimbo, Pence told McCallum, “But let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that he asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me — and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me — to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives. And literally chaos would have ensued.”
That chaos would’ve become state-sanctioned violence against American citizens.
Crackpot lawyer Rudy Giuliani was so mad that Pence suggested he was a crackpot he fumed on Newsmax, “I don’t think he’s even been in a courtroom, and he went to a law school nobody even knows.”
Pence graduated from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Giuliani went to NYU, but his license is suspended in New York state. He’ll probably spend far more time in courtrooms over the next few years than Pence, but that’s nothing to write home from prison about.
Friday, during a town hall in New Hampshire, Pence faced the charming MAGA base and while no one threatened to hang him this time, he was called a “traitor” and one unhinged man shouted, “Why’d you sell out the people? Why didn’t you uphold the Constitution?”
“I upheld the Constitution,” Pence replied. “Read it.”
You could have Kevin Sorbo record a MAGA-friendly Audible of the Constitution, and Trump supporters still wouldn’t comprehend its meaning. We don’t care much for Mike Pence, but if he can land a few blows on Trump and his stooges on his way to political oblivion, we’ll gladly watch.
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>>Crackpot lawyer Rudy Giuliani was so mad that Pence suggested he was a crackpot he fumed on Newsmax, “I don’t think he’s even been in a courtroom, and he went to a law school nobody even knows.”<<
This coming from a demonstrably insane former mayor who counts among his legal "peers" Alina Habba, proud graduate of Juicy Shart Law School and Bait and Tackle Emporium.
Pence is getting positive responses to his recent remarks, so watch him get saltier as the positive feedback loops and loops. By the new year he'll be casually referring to Trump as "that pussy ass bitch from Queens."