WASHINGTON – After more than four years of unwavering loyalty, Vice President Mike Pence is increasingly concerned about the way his relationship with President Donald Trump is coming to an end amid the most tumultuous episode of his administration, according to with several people familiar with Pence’s thinking.
There is also deep and widespread anger among Pence’s aides and allies over how Trump apparently dismissed his most devoted soldier for his refusal to circumvent an important constitutional duty for these people. The president’s decision not to contact Pence and his family while they were housed inside a Capitol bunker while pro-Trump protesters violated the building particularly angered Pence and others in its orbit.
The vice president himself is “very upset” because Trump hasn’t done more to dissuade the mob, some of whom have called for Pence’s execution. “Lives were at stake,” said a person close to Pence.
The White House, after days of notable silence on the issue, issued a generic statement on Saturday condemning “all calls to violence” against anyone in the Trump administration. The president has yet to acknowledge that the security of Pence – or any authority on Capitol Hill on Wednesday – was at risk.
According to several people close to Trump and Pence, the two have not spoken since Wednesday morning, after the president repeatedly asked his second-in-command to break his oath and somehow try to intervene in the tabulation of the College’s votes Election, which Pence had no authority to do.
Pence lamented to people close to him and Trump that “he was a good partner for years”, but the president abandoned him for “a little thing,” said one of those people.
The vice president is expected to resume a more regular agenda for the past nine days of the government, with events and speeches planned to promote his own work – all while bipartisan lawmakers continue to call for Trump’s resignation.
And next week, Pence will attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, while Trump has said no.
Those who marveled at Pence’s ability to remain steadfast in their devotion to Trump and argued that this will be an asset in any political future, now admit that it can permanently tarnish or undermine Pence’s ambitions.
But others close to the vice president, and even some Republicans close to Trump, say that despite his frustrations, Pence may be politically better off than before Wednesday.
“Pence is in the strongest position he has ever held,” said a person close to the president, because the vice president may say he was totally loyal to Trump, but he had to follow the constitution. And another source suggested that the president’s actions during and after Wednesday’s violence likely eliminated him from the serious dispute in 2024, when Pence is believed to be considering a presidential candidacy.
While the vice president seeks to walk that fine line, however, many of Trump’s supporters genuinely believe the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen – and they see Pence as an obstacle to rectifying this error, fueling even more frustration among the base Republican Party.
Over the weekend, Pence struggled to figure out how to spend his last days in office, balancing the desire to highlight the perceived successes of the Trump administration with decisions on how to deal with the potential impeachment or removal of the president. Pence is not inclined to invoke the 25th Amendment, by those familiar with his thinking, and is instead waiting for time to run out before he can reach January 20 “in full”, according to an ally.
Pence also spoke with the family of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died from injuries sustained by protesters during last week’s attack. The president, so far, has not spoken to the family and it took days for the White House flags to be reduced to half the frame, as they had been in the Capitol complex for several days.
Even senior Trump officials have expressed frustration with the president’s conduct towards Pence, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services administrator Seema Verma, who has known Pence for years. Verma told officials in a phone call on Friday that he was “repulsed” by the way the vice president has been treated inside and outside the government and argued that attacks on him “further undermine faith in our democracy”.
Trump’s decision to arm Pence was the culmination of what a person familiar with the discussions described as a weeklong “pressure campaign” starting in mid-December, with Pence receiving calls from the president’s allies seeking to sustain implausible scenarios in a last effort to undo Biden’s victory.
Pence has always seen his work “through the lens of duty,” according to another Pence associate, including his decision not to contest the Electoral College count. “It was about the constitution and the law and not about politics.”
The vice president’s ability to look back and say he felt he did the right thing will also be important to him, an ally added, speculating that Pence might believe something like, “I have to be true to who I am. And if it costs me political capital, so be it. I will be able to sleep at night knowing that I did my job. “
Kelly O’Donnell contributed.