but it s great that he s saying it. so what does that do to mike pence? i would have said, before today, that mike pence had a very, very vanishingly small chance of being a seriously contender for the republican nomination in 2024. i know he thinks otherwise, but his position is wildly untenable for exactly the reasons that illustrate today. this is as much a defense of himself as it is a defense of the constitution. there s parts of this pence is basically trying to say, donald trump s attacking me. i did what i had to do. we ve not heard a through going critique of trump s administration from mike pence, and we won t, because mike pence, if he runs for the republican nomination, will have to say, i was donald trump s loyal vice president, and i m proud of everything that happened except for that day on january 6th, which was un-american, but don t blame donald trump, blame his followers. that s going to be the posture he s going to take. that s not going to satisfy anybody, not the
about mike pence and what about those that were chanting on january 6th hang mike pence, he said to me, the exact quote that i said. they re chanting hang mike pence. his next words are it s common sense, jon. that interview was last year. in my book. we haven t heard condemnation of any significance from anybody in the leadership of the republican party to those words from donald trump and yet we have this condemnation here. extraordinary. take me inside the reporting is sort of torquing up the volume out of trump world. the members have been identified that are of interest to liz cheney. i think she knows who was talking to donald trump that day. jim jordan and kevin mccarthy. you have also got the specter of
just as mike pence was not a great defender of democracy here. we know from, again, from the reporting, from bob costa and bob woodward that pence was that his team were out asking people, was there a way he could do what trump wanted? he didn t just look at the constitution and say, i can t do this. this is a legitimate election. forget it. no, it took dan quayle to have to go to mike pence and say, listen, you are cornered. the constitution gives you no power. you must do the right thing here because you have no choice but to do the right thing here. neither one of these guys in the moment, they both landed in the right place, barr and pence. but neither one of them were portraits in courage. both of them were bending to trump s will all the way up until that moment when they finally snapped. and i think that that is i m glad they ended up in the right place, but it really is an illustration of how much power trump had that he was able to bend them as far as he was able to bend t
what does conservative media do with this statement? pence called the plot un-american. there is no idea more un-american than the notion that any one person could choose the american president. donald trump said on sunday mike pence could have overthrown the election. what do you think mike pence is in for publicly and privately in the next few news cycles? i would expect that he s capitulate and apologize and make a craven action. i don t think what mike pence said is because he s courageous. i think he s cornered. the chief of staff is going in and telling the truth to the committee and can acknowledge reality and do what he did today or bend to it and destroy himself in the process through
separate foreign policy entity, you know, bill taylor talked about him just being on his own, the former ambassador of ukraine. donald trump had a completely separate and secretive operation to overturn this election. that s what s coming out now. and mike flynn was right at the heart of the most extreme aspects of it, but donald trump was right there too. and more and more evidence is coming out about the complexity and the depths to which he would go to overturn the election. mara gay, my colleague, carol lee, has some interesting new reporting about this pence speech, the clip i just played. she said, what he said today is a result of mike pence, quote, seeing trump dig his heels in even deeper in going after him more personally. it says this. i think there s a sense of duty that even if the party is pretending the election denial is okay, it s wrong and not the