Second lady Karen Pence denied she was angry with her husband on the night President Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election.
Author Tom LoBianco wrote in his book, Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House, that Pence twice rebuffed her husband on election night when he tried to kiss her.
She first declined her husband’s affection when he leaned in to kiss her after Trump received a concession call from Hillary Clinton. The future vice president tried again to kiss his wife when they were in their private suite but “again she told him to back off,” the book says.
“You got what you wanted, Mike. Leave me alone,” she told him, according to the book.
Pence told the Indianapolis Star she has no idea where the anecdote came from.
“Don’t believe everything you read. I’d like to know where that story came from. Because everybody was so exhausted. I don’t even remember, 3 or 4 a.m., whatever it was. So all I can figure is someone must have seen me make a face or something like ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I’m tired’ or something and decided I was disappointed in the race or something,” she said.
“Honestly, and we said this over and over and over, on the 2016 campaign trail, the excitement was — we’ve been in this for a long time. We’d never seen that kind of excitement. We really did think we were going to win. We really, really did. So, it’s funny that that story got written. I don’t know where that came from,” she added.
