Vice President Pence was in hiding from a violent mob of Trump supporters in the Capitol last Wednesday when the presidential tweet attacking him posted.
“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. USA demands the truth!” President Trump wrote at 2:24 p.m.
Trump never called him that day or in the days following to make sure Pence was okay — or to discuss a governmental response to the deadly riots the president incited. ...
“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 “If he had been replaced by someone as nuts as the people who have been surrounding the president as the primary advice givers for the last few months, we could have had even more of a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.” ...
The rupture began on Dec. 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 the president and the vice president, officials 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 didn’t object to Biden’s victory, officials said. ...
The day before the certification, Trump was extremely angry, a person present in the Oval Office said, venting at Pence, lawyer Pat Cipollone and others as Pence told him he was planning to certify the results. ...
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 (R-Ky.) 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, officials said. 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 and slow down the certification. Neither Trump nor anyone in the White House checked on Pence ...
