As an armed mob charged the Capitol while cheering, “Hang Mike Pence!” President Trump wasn’t begging the National Guard to go save his most loyal servant and his family, hiding for their lives, and immediately calling for the rioters to stand down on his (once) prolific Twitter account.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump instead tweeted mere minutes after boasting to the mob that he would lead the group to the Capitol to convince Congress to override President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. “USA demands the truth!”
Suffice it to say, the storming of the Capitol that ended with five people dead marked the end of a five-year friendship of convenience.
For nearly two weeks now, the vice president has served as the actual president in all but name. It was Pence who authorized the National Guard deployment, while Trump looked on the siege with “delight,” according to Ben Sasse, and it was Pence who called successor Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to concede graciously and offer his assistance in her transition. Pence, who is reportedly livid with the boss whom he’s barely spoken to since, will not attend Trump’s final departure, instead opting to attend Biden’s inauguration.
On his last afternoon as president, Trump finally thanked Pence in his farewell address.
“I also want to thank Vice President Mike Pence, his wonderful wife Karen, and the entire Pence family,” Trump said after thanking his own family.
Well, it’s not much. But it’s something coming from a man demanding so much sycophancy that the primary target of his ire right now is Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who voted both to overturn the election and not to impeach Trump.
Of all the Republicans to make a Faustian bargain with the man who never should have been president, perhaps no one got a worse deal than Pence, perhaps the only person who really saw no real opportunity in the gig other than keeping the country from careening out of control with Trump’s caprice. Sure, Pence was facing reelection in Indiana, and he wasn’t a sure bet. Like every politician, he had his own ambitions. But rather than lobby Trump for the sort of Cabinet gig that would have allowed him to use the White House as a stepping stone and skirt the drama, Pence signed up for four full years of serving as Trump’s No. 2.
And he served him loyally for all four. When Trump was caught on a hot mic boasting about grabbing women by the p—-, when he was actually accused of doing so by multiple women, and when he was revealed to have cheated on his current wife with a porn star whom he paid off for her silence, the evangelical — so personally devout and faithful to his wife that he doesn’t dine alone with any other woman — stood by him silently. While Pence spent all year leading the task force to plan the White House’s coronavirus response, Trump traversed the country, casting doubt on masks and hosting superspreader events amid a virus that has killed 400,000 people in the United States as of today. Through every shameful tweet, wink, and nod to the alt-Right and QAnon, and attempts to abuse his office, Pence proved himself Trump’s man through and through.
But four years of loyal service was never going to be enough because Trump knows loyalty to nothing and no one. Not all of the wives he cheated on, not to the country he was elected to lead, not to the electoral process the Constitution demanded he protect, and not to the foot soldier who watched him trample over every value he ever believed in in the name of service.
Pence failed the final loyalty test from Trump, to violate his oath of office and steal an election, and in return, Trump fiddled as Pence stood seconds away from being executed by the mob Trump had sicced on him.
After four years of tireless work, Pence served his country over his president and nearly lost his life for it. In the end, it was a thankless job.
