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- President Donald Trump has long enjoyed the loyalty of Vice President Mike Pence.
- But Trump may have pushed Pence too far this week after repeatedly asking Pence to block certification of Biden’s presidential victory.
- That, combined with Trump’s failure to quell his supporters’ insurgency on Capitol Hill, appears to have exposed cracks in their partnership.
- Pence is said to be very angry with Trump but has yet to agree to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would remove Trump from power.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Vice President Mike Pence has been between a rock and an increasingly angry president this week as Donald Trump finally fired his vice president for his failure to organize Trump’s re-election.
Key aides have said Trump has been out of control for weeks, but now he’s directing much of his anger at his staunch vice president until then.
Earlier this week, Pence attended a lunch with Trump in which he attempted to explain that he did not have the constitutional authority to block certification of Biden’s election victory. In addition, in a letter of January 6, he told Trump: “I feel that my oath to support and defend the Constitution prevents me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
The president was furious and reportedly told Pence, “I don’t want to be your friend, I want you to be the vice president.”
Friendship overtures may not have meant as much to Pence after Wednesday, when Trump appeared at one point to turn his crowd angry with the vice president.
At Wednesday’s White House rally, Trump told the crowd that “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he doesn’t, it will be a sad day for our country.”
Trump also took to Twitter to prick Pence. “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. He has the absolute right to do it,” he wrote in a tweet which was later deleted by Twitter for being factually incorrect.
As the crowd walked towards the Capitol building, they erupted into a loud chant: “Where’s Mike Pence?”
It turned out that Mike Pence was at the Capitol building and must have been secretly unearthed when the pro-Trump mob arrived. He then returned to announce that the Biden-Harris ticket had been officially certified as the winner of the 2020 election.
In the midst of the fray, Trump also found time to exclude Pence’s Chief of Staff Mark Short from the White House, apparently accusing Short of giving Pence advice to certify Biden’s victory.
Trump seeks anyone to blame except himself
Pence’s Trump scapegoat has been said to have deeply angered the normally balanced Vice President.
Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe told reporters on Capitol Hill that he had never seen the vice president so angry. “I’ve known Mike Pence forever. I’ve never seen Pence so angry as he is today.”
“I had a long conversation with him,” Inhofe continued. “He said: ‘After all I’ve done for [Trump]. ‘”
A source told CNN: “was [Trump] Fear at all that an angry mob he ordered to march on the Capitol could injure the vice president or his family? “
Pence had previously appreciated what Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity, described to the Washington Post as “a lasting and close relationship with the president,” despite their stylistic differences and clear beliefs.
In the dying days of his presidency, however, Trump seems to be struggling to hold back his friends and colleagues. In the past 24 hours, Education Secretary Betsey Devos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and officials from the Department of Commerce and the National Security Council have all resigned following the siege of the Capitol by pro-Trump. rioters.
There have been calls from the Democratic leadership to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office and have Pence temporarily take over as president. So far, Pence has refused to echo the call, as Insider reported, although it appears Trump is doing as much as possible to upset Pence and make him the scapegoat for his electoral loss.
Read more: SCOOP: Pence opposes 25th Amendment efforts to suppress Trump after riot on Capitol Hill, VP advisers told Insider
“Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a set of corrected facts, and not fraudulent or inaccurate facts that are given to them. asked to certify before. US demands the truth! ”he tweeted Wednesday afternoon before his Twitter suspension.
Pence also took to Twitter for a more indirect snipe against Trump and his destructive mob.
“Peaceful protest is the right of every American, but this attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he tweeted.
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