I’ve written wrote two major posts trying to understand Mike Pence. Right after the Dipshit Insurrection, I concluded that Mike Pence Is Made Of Calmer Stuff. Who else would allow a fly to crawl over their head during a debate without so much as a flinch or grimace?
In the fall of 2022, Pence was given credit for breaking with Trump by many in the mainstream media. But his critique was so mild that I concluded that he was emotionally embalmed.
Who else would underreact to this?
After the coup case indictment came down, Pence stepped up his critique of the Indicted Impeached Insult Comedian: he had no choice, his fingerprints were all over the indictment. But Pence’s words still felt muffled and emotionally bland. He’s not just emotionally embalmed, he’s emotionally constipated. That could explain the blank and expressionless look he always has on his face as if he were a pod person in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Make that a constipated pod person.
Team Trump is in attack mode after the coup case indictment. Mike Pence has been one of their main targets. He fired back in a Mike Pencey way on Face The Nation yesterday:
One of the allegations against Trump is that he attempted to enlist Pence to use his ceremonial role in affirming the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 to “fraudulently overturn the results of the election.” Pence has said Trump went beyond asking him to pause the count for an audit and urged him to reject the Biden electors outright, in the hopes of tipping the election in Trump’s favor.
“There was no discretion ever given to the vice president in history, nor should there ever be,” Pence told “Face the Nation.” “I had no right to overturn the election and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”
Is that the Royal we or GOP wee-wee? This mild mannered mook still thinks he can be the nominee. MAGA Maggots dominate the GOP right now. They’re going to nominate the guy they wanted to string up and make the whitest lynching victim in American history? He has the same chance as fellow recovering Trump sycophant Chris Christie: slim and none and slim left town in a hurry before the mob got him.
Team Trump is mounting a political, not a legal defense because they know they can’t win in court. Trump mouthpiece John Lauro followed Pence on CBS:
“What I said is the ultimate ask of Vice President Pence was to pause the count and allow the states to weigh in. That was my statement, and what I’ve said is consistent with what Vice President Pence is saying,” Lauro said. “The reason why Vice President Pence will be so important to the defense is … number one, he agrees that John Eastman, who gave legal advice to President Trump, was an esteemed legal scholar. Number two, he agrees that there were election irregularities, fraud, unlawful actions at the state level. All of that will eviscerate any allegation of criminal intent on the part of President Trump.”
Say what? Pausing the count is illegal too. Additionally, John Eastman has admitted that he was fomenting a coup and is damn proud of it. He cited the Declaration of Independence as if it were a legally binding document, which it is not. In his insurrectionary fervor, he seems to have forgotten the whole pursuit of happiness thing.
Back to the Inscrutable Mr. Pence. He’s still trying to have it both ways:
“Pence was asked by CBS correspondent Major Garrett whether he would be a witness against Trump if the case went to trial.
Pence replied: “In this case, we’ve stood firmly for the rule of law. I took a stand, we challenged in court the scope of any testimony that I could provide, because as [the former] president of the Senate, the constitution provides me with the protections that are afforded to members of Congress. We won that at the lower court level and ultimately, we responded to a subpoena, and I have no plans to testify.
I’m glad he added that disclaimer. The special counsel’s team will insist that he testify: he’ll be one of the star witnesses in the coup case.
At every turn, the same Republicans who have Trump fatigue have blown every chance of ridding themselves of the Kaiser of Chaos. Mitch McConnell could have been the hero of the second impeachment if he had voted to convict thereby giving cover to other GOP senators. As to Mike Pence, Josh Marshall said it best:
“Pence remains a fascinating, almost novelistic figure in this drama, almost a reductio ad absurdum, a mathematical representation of how to do the right thing with the least physically measurable quanta of dignity possible. In the two and a half years since, a hero’s role in the drama has always been there for the taking. But he’s never taken it. Indeed, he compromised it so thoroughly in real time it’s hard to say how much that role even existed.”
It’s classic Mike Pence: He’s a small man who shrunk the importance of the office in which he served with his persistent toadying. Instead of a hero, Pence is a cipher whose claim to fame will be his testimony against the man who he sucked up to for five years. Then, Pence will return to obscurity. He blew the chance of a lifetime. Why? Mike Pence has no sense of drama or history. He’s made of calmer stuff.
The last word goes to Stevie Ray Vaughan:
Pence is undead.
His daughter is a vampire.
That fly on his head, a familiar, lives in his left nostril.
It is known.