Mike Pence is in the news and not for good reasons. He was easy to ignore for a long time but he’s suddenly more relevant due to new revelations of his conduct and betrayal in the final days of his and Trump’s term in office. In a way, I’m just piling on. Pence worked in the shadows and it takes a deep insider to really know what is Mike Pence. Even office holders in the nation’s capital are just now learning some details. I consider it my contribution, to frame what we’re learning now in more explicit language than most public figures are willing to say openly now. But not to worry, they’ll be saying it in six months to a year.
Mike Pence fits into my list of I-told-you-so’s. While I admit, I of course, did not know the depths of his betrayal, especially in 2019-2020, but I knew he had betrayed. As I recall, I and a few others, had characterized him overall as cowardly, as someone that froze when he should have been forthright. That is not strong enough. More recently, I’ve called him ‘Benedict Pence’. I could stop right there as a final word but pile on I must. Mike Pence appears to have a deeply conflicted personality type that makes him despisable.
His original utility as running mate to Donald Trump was to balance out Trump’s reckless worldly persona with someone having the bland gravitas of a church elder. Pence is an evangelical, but as is now plain in 2023, that no longer means anything, certainly not what it meant in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s. Pence’s sole credential as an outspoken conservative seems to be limited to the topic of abortion. If there is more, there has to be more, but I don’t know what it is. A Vice President is placed in charge of many secondary initiatives but none of them are memorable to me except his role in being the original point man during the Covid outbreak. The announcement of that role was the beginning and end of whatever meaningful actions he took. Enter Fauci, Birx, and the final destruction of Trump’s otherwise shoo-in re-election performance record.
In hindsight, maybe that was every bit as intentional as Pence’s last acts. Faced with overwhelming evidence (video, forensic, statistical, sworn testimony) that there were significant irregularities in six key swing states, the Constitution of the United States makes provision to send those electoral votes back to the state legislatures for validation. Pence, the lifeless paper face in Trump’s administration that hovered in the background, never spoke and never acted; he choked. He claimed that the constitution did not say what it plainly says he could and should do. In the intervening almost three years, that claim was exposed as a plain lie as bipartisan legislators have since made motions to close and eliminate the option and Pence himself has half-wittingly since confirmed that he could have sent it back to the states but did not.
Mike is now Benedict Pence not because he failed to send the electoral vote back to the states, but because he betrayed his President, the constitution, and thus, the United States. If Mike Pence really believed what he was saying, an honest Mike would have resigned as Vice President and as Trump’s running mate for the coming term, even in the last hours of his term, declared his conscientious objection to an interpretation of the constitution, and then let Congress and the courts take their course. But Mike Pence was not honest, nor faithful, nor courageous. Was he afraid that history would judge him too harshly for taking either action? Apparently, add oblivious to the list of his characteristics because he somehow is not aware that he is now judged as a traitor. Somehow, that seems to fit with is persona as a blank paper stare.
Now that some behind the scenes details are seeping out, Mike Pence needs a reassessment. Was he a deep state mole in the Trump presidency? This looks intriguingly more likely the more we know, and the more he is forced to admit as a 2024 presidential candidate. Not to worry that he’ll get elected; he’ll find out that betrayal does not endear him to any significant constituency, and that dear friends is the note that will go into history books.
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