How Vice-President Mike Pence split from President Donald Trump after the Capitol hill riots

Pence has committed to attending the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, even though Trump is not going. The Vice-President has begun telling staffers goodbye, posing for pictures and having sentimental moments with key aides in his Executive Office suite.

A senior administration official said Trump and Pence finally met in the Oval Office on Monday night, local time, and “had a good conversation, discussing the week ahead and reflecting on the last four years of the administration’s work and accomplishments”. Pence is under pressure from Democrats to invoke the 25th Amendment, a process to remove the President from office, but he is not expected to do so, aides said.

Trump’s treatment of Pence has reverberated in the White House and among campaign aides, many of whom see it as unseemly and unfair. One senior administration official described it as “unconscionable, even for the President”.

“We’re very lucky that Mike Pence is a decent guy and rational and levelheaded,” said Joe Grogan, the former head of the Domestic Policy Council under Trump. “If he had been replaced by someone as nuts as the people who have been surrounding the President as the primary advice givers for the last few months, we could have had even more of a bloodbath. Imagine what would have happened if Pence was devious and vile and didn’t stand up for the Constitution.”

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the President’s current views of Pence.

“Vice-President Pence has been a critical part of this administration and helped President Trump achieve unprecedented successes on behalf of the American people. We are all grateful for the Vice-President’s service to the country,” Deere said.

Critics say Pence deserves less credit after standing by the President so long – not forcefully speaking out against child separation at the border, Trump’s calls with Ukraine’s president and his numerous attacks. Many note that he chose to serve Trump for four years and was the head of the administration’s coronavirus response; more than 375,000 people have died.

“Republicans have said for decades that you can’t negotiate with terrorists, and Trump is a terrorist and Pence decided to negotiate with him because he thought it was in his best interest, and this was inevitable,” said Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican consultant and Trump critic. “Mike Pence threw aside everything he said he believed in – everything – I mean, here is a guy who railed against adultery on his radio show, and then teams up with Donald Trump and of course it was going to end this way.”

Pence now faces opprobrium from Trump’s supporters, including some who chanted for his hanging during Wednesday’s siege and yelled in the Capitol, “Where’s Mike Pence?”

“He has no future in the Republican Party,” Stevens said. “When the base of the party is not booing you, but chanting hang you, that’s a bad sign.”

For Pence, it is an uncomfortable and unfamiliar position. One former senior administration official said Pence had previously described his job as doing most anything Trump had asked him to do.

“The President could say, ‘Mike I want you to go fly to Asia,’ and he would do it, or ‘Mike, I want you take over the coronavirus task force,’ and he would do it, never questioned a thing,” said a former senior administration official, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “Pence would spend hours in the Oval. Pence would come in, he’d get his daily brief and then he’d get word of when the President would be coming into the Oval and then he’d go over there and they’d spend hours together. For them to not speak anymore is a paradigm I just never would have imagined.”

The rupture began on December 15, when Trump decided erroneously that Pence was his last resort to block his election loss. The President began telling others to pressure his Vice-President to object to the final counting of electoral college results by Congress, and the topic came up regularly in conversation between Trump and Pence, officials said.

Those putting pressure included lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, trade adviser Peter Navarro and conspiracy-minded Trump ally Sidney Powell, officials said, along with other lawyers and outside advisers sent by Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows. Trump told “almost anyone who called to tell him he could still win to call Pence,” one senior administration official said. Pence at times was in the Oval Office when Trump called people to try to convince the Vice-President, an official said.

Pence was subjected to repeated phone calls from Trump, including one as late as last Wednesday morning – and to implicit threats from the President that he would attack him if he did not object to Biden’s victory, officials said.

“Do the courageous thing, Mike,” Trump said in one meeting, according to a person present.

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“It will be bad for you and for the country if you don’t,” Trump said at another time, according to an official describing the meeting.

“There was never any sort of convincing case that the President or any of the lawyers around him made,” a senior administration official said. Pence tried to be respectful and listen to everyone but told his team to conduct an independent analysis of the laws.

Pence was uncomfortable with the arguments, and asked his team to conduct its own analysis.

The White House declined to comment. Powell did not respond to a request for comment.

Senators regularly told the Vice_president that they did not have evidence to support the President’s claims and that they wanted to be supportive, but they needed evidence, a Pence adviser said. Pence told them he’d pass along the messages, but the White House never provided evidence to many of the senators, the adviser said.

The day before the certification, Trump was extremely angry, a person present in the Oval Office said, venting at Pence, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and others as Pence told him he was planning to certify the results.

Pence met with Trump multiple times before Wednesday to talk him through the dynamic and explain why he could not do what Trump wanted, advisers said. After Wednesday’s final pitch did not go well, Trump gave a fiery, falsehood-laden speech, in which he repeatedly pressured Pence to a bloodthirsty crowd.

Soon, the mob descended, and Trump verbally attacked the Vice-President.

Pence declined to leave the Capitol after protesters breached the compound, even though his security detail on three occasions suggested it would be a good idea to do so, a senior administration official said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others left. While Trump was watching TV and resisting entreaties to tell the mob to go home, Pence repeatedly called military officials and others in the government to expedite the National Guard’s deployment. He talked with McConnell about reinstating the certification vote that evening and met with Capitol Police officials, even as Trump and lawyers continued to call others to try to slow the certification. Neither Trump nor anyone in the White House checked on Pence.

Pence skipped his speech to the Republican National Committee meeting, scheduled for the next day, and did not come to the White House. He returned Friday.

Pence’s aides say he needs to make money in the private sector and may write a book. He is keeping his options open for a potential 2024 Presidential bid, an adviser said, and feels at peace with what he did.

“Pence withstood enormous public and private pressure at an historic moment. He followed the Constitution, upheld the rule of law and treated people on all sides with civility,” said Tim Phillips, who leads Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-affiliated group. “Those who know him well are not surprised.”

Trump told aides that he wanted to ban Short, the Vice-President’s chief of staff, from the West Wing, for giving Pence advice to certify, and that he was not interested in seeing Pence. But no one carried out the ban and Short continued to come to work, officials said, and scheduled a Pence going-away event for Friday.

On Friday evening, Pence came to his office suite with wife, Karen Pence, and his daughter Charlotte Pence for a farewell ceremony. He told the room of aides that he hoped they were proud of what they’d accomplished in the administration and encouraged them to continue to work in public service, a person present at the meeting said. He was given a four-minute standing ovation and was presented with his Cabinet chair.

He told the room that early on Thursday morning as he left the Capitol, after certifying the results from Biden, he received a text message from Marc Short, his chief of staff.

“2 Timothy 4:7,” the text said. The Bible verse reads: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The Washington Post