Mike Pence Tells Trump, 'No Endorsement For You! Please Don't Let Your Fans Try To Kill Me Again!'
Slight paraphrase.
Imagine if you were up for a really huge new job, and dozens and dozens of high-level executives who worked closely with you at your last job told your potential employer, “Don’t hire this dude, he sucks.” Plus you’re a bigoted con artist practically foaming at the mouth to put millions of undocumented migrants into prison camps, plus you’ve been found liable for rape and have a variety of felony charges for a range of crimes pending against you and also you have committed financial fraud for decades so now you owe the state of New York half a billion dollars in civil fines.
That is roughly the situation America finds itself in with Donald Trump. And there was no higher level executive during the orange one’s first term than Mike Pence, the illustrious vice president who Trump almost managed to get murdered by a frothing crowd of rabid idiots. So to say Pence has a somewhat informed view of the situation might actually be an understatement.
Nonetheless, Pence officially announced on Friday and repeated over the weekend that he will not endorse Donald Trump for president, thank you very much, please don’t threaten to hang him again, his neck is currently just the right length.
Even here, though, Pence is pulling his punches. Is he refusing to endorse Trump because of all the crime and inhumanity? No, of course not. He’s refusing to endorse his former boss because the former president is not conservative enough, as he explained to Margaret Brennan on “Face The Nation”:
"For me, the reason why I won't endorse Donald Trump this year is because I see him departing from the mainstream conservative agenda that has defined the Republican Party over the last 40 years, and still has the best hope for the future of the country,"
Not conservative enough? He just last week floated cutting Social Security. That alone would once have been enough to get conservatives like Mike Pence praising his bravery. He still talks about overturning Obamacare. He takes personal credit for overturning Roe v. Wade.
But that’s Mike Pence’s story and he’s sticking to it, at least during that interview Sunday:
“[T]he reason that I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump this year also has to do with the fact that he is walking away, not just from keeping faith with the Constitution on that day. But also Margaret, with a commitment to fiscal responsibility, a commitment of the sanctity of life, a commitment to American leadership in the world.”
Pence did also cite Trump’s veneration of the January 6 defendants who are still in jail awaiting trial as a reason to not support him. Trump keeps referring to those defendants as “patriots” and “hostages.” He also keeps playing “Justice for All,” their recording of their nightly off-key warbling of “The Star-Spangled Banner” interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, at his rallies, sometimes while asking people to rise and salute like they’re hearing the national anthem.
This new “no endorsement of Trump” position is a reversal from Pence, and a surprising one despite his insistence that “no one should be surprised” by it.
After all, Pence was one candidate who, during a primary debate last August, raised his hand when a moderator asked whether he and the other then-candidates would support Trump if he won the nomination despite all the criminal charges against him.
This newfound spine also sets him somewhat apart from other high-profile members of his party such as Chris Sununu and Brian Kemp, the governors of New Hampshire and Georgia, who have said that maybe Trump is a giant criminal promising to pardon thousands of other criminals because they still think of him as their god-king, but at least he’s not that hideous Marxist Joe Biden.
Does Mike Pence feel the same way? He refused to say, telling Margaret Brennan he prefers to keep his ballot “private.” It might be helpful to the future of American democracy if he said that, since the choice this year is Trump or Biden and Trump is simply unacceptable, it’s okay to help keep the current president in office.
But by reserving for himself the right to privacy on voting that he would not grant a single woman in America when it comes to her personal medical decisions, Pence gets to have his cake and eat it too. He looks like a principled, rock-ribbed Republican (Hello, 2028!) to whatever rock-ribbed Republicans have not been hunted to extinction, while also not loudly throwing the election to the Democrat.
We like his optimism that there will even be a 2028 election if his former boss gets re-elected, or that his party will somehow, despite being taken over by the same dipshits who tried to kill him three years ago, still have a place for old-school Reagan conservatives. We are somewhat less sanguine about that.
Wonkette’s supportive readers are the only reason we get out of bed in the morning.
Meanwhile, Minnesota court rules it is discrimination for a pharmacist to deny emergency contraception.
https://x.com/DanSuitor/status/1769744791435112885?s=20
Speaking of Trump's general woes:
Trump has been unable to get bond for $464 million judgment, his lawyers say
""Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is 'a practical impossibility,'" the filing said. "These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers."
Their efforts, including “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world,” have proven that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the Judgment “is not possible under the circumstances presented,” the filing said.
The other bond companies will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities),” the filing said. He also noted those companies typically “require collateral of approximately 120% of the amount of the judgment” — which would total about $557 million. "
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-unable-get-bond-464-million-judgment-lawyers-say-rcna143860