I’d love to have been a fly on the wall for these conversations. The fallout that occurred—the Capitol Hill riot—not so good—but President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence reportedly got into a tussle of words prior to the joint session of Congress that would certify the 2020 Electoral College results. According to The New York Times, the president engaged in a relentless campaign to get the VP to do his part and help overturn some electoral votes in order to pave a way for him to secure a second term. It was a nutty idea. It was never going to happen, but he pressed on anyway. The vice president was quite clear in the days leading up to certification that he didn’t have the authority to do what Trump was asking. The meetings were reportedly very heated with Trump telling Pence that he could either go down in history as a patriot or a “p**sy” (via NYT):
For Vice President Mike Pence, the moment of truth had arrived. After three years and 11 months of navigating the treacherous waters of President Trump’s ego, after all the tongue-biting, pride-swallowing moments where he employed strategic silence or florid flattery to stay in his boss’s good graces, there he was being cursed by the president.
Mr. Trump was enraged that Mr. Pence was refusing to try to overturn the election. In a series of meetings, the president had pressed relentlessly, alternately cajoling and browbeating him. Finally, just before Mr. Pence headed to the Capitol to oversee the electoral vote count last Wednesday, Mr. Trump called the vice president’s residence to push one last time.
“You can either go down in history as a patriot,” Mr. Trump told him, according to two people briefed on the conversation, “or you can go down in history as a pussy.”
The blowup between the nation’s two highest elected officials then played out in dramatic fashion as the president publicly excoriated the vice president at an incendiary rally and sent agitated supporters to the Capitol where they stormed the building — some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
Here’s the thing. There have been many “people briefed on the conversation” stories about the Trump White House that turned out to be straight-up fake news. The Trump trashing dead American soldiers as suckers being the most recent one, but I believe this one. No doubt I could see Trump saying something like this to Pence amid a contentious election and this being the final hail Mary snap to secure a second term. Seriously, Trump would say this, and he probably did. So what? What’s more serious is that utter fiasco that erupted last week.
Trump brought zest into the American political scene, along with millions of loyal supporters; people who had up until recently never voted in their lives. That’s a good thing. But Trump is also not infallible. He let Joe Biden address the nation before him when things went off the rails on Capitol Hill last week. He didn’t contact the family of the Capitol Police officer who was killed when someone threw a fire extinguisher at his head. He dithered on lowering the flags on that as well. Trump dropped the ball on this one. Period. And now we’re going to be subjected to a social media torching that will further hinder our efforts to keep the Biden administration in check from pursuing some of the most insane lefty policy projects in recent memory. Trump is gone in a week. The latest and most aggressive stage in the war on conservatives on social media platforms has only just begun and this leeches into free enterprise as well. Scores of companies use these platforms to make a living and these Silicon Marxists are literally ensuring that there’s a quasi-litmus test regarding who can and cannot make a living in this country based on political ideology. That’s the long war. And this Capitol Hill riot only accelerated their plans at muzzling us.