Mike Pence Refuses to Connect the Dots
On the morning of January 1, 2021, Mike Pence awoke after a terrible night’s sleep, poured a cup of coffee, and started his new year with a tongue-lashing from the president of the United States.
Donald Trump’s angry phone call didn’t come as a surprise. The vice president had gone to bed the night before “with a growing foreboding about the days ahead,” he writes in his new book, So Help Me God, which is part memoir, part soft launch of a 2024 campaign, and part eyewitness account of the lies, betrayals, and abuses of power that roiled the nation during Trump’s final days in office. For weeks, the president had been subtly suggesting to Pence that, as vice president, he could act unilaterally on January 6 and prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Pence had continually resisted, explaining that his only authority under the Constitution was to tally the electoral votes after Congress certified them. Now the proceeding was just days away, and Trump was done being subtle.
Tearing into Pence over the phone—“hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts,” the president told him—Trump was vexed about one thing in particular. A few days earlier, Louie Gohmert, the far-right representative from Texas, had joined other Republican officials in filing a federal lawsuit that would have given Pence
