Pence and Sensibility
We’re due for another day of nonstop coverage of a Trump arraignment. You can follow along with CNN or The Guardian. While the coverage will be breathless and hurried, the wheels of justice will move slowly, and Trump will do everything possible to slow things down even more. These cases are incredibly damning and the evidence is strong. Trump’s best bet is slow the roll, win the election (or hope some other GOP candidate does), and get to work destroying the case with pardons and a manipulation of the Justice Dept. Robert Reich: Here’s how Trump will try to avoid jail.
+ Meanwhile, it’s looking like Mike Pence is emerging as a key voice in the case against his former boss, even if his newly formed fetal backbone is growing out of a cesspool of oozing, syrupy unctuousness that is so smarmy I had to squeegee my TV screen several times during his latest interview. In response to one of Trump’s lawyers suggesting that the conspirators only asked Pence to “pause” the voting on Jan 6, Pence said, “Let’s be clear on this point. It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause. The president specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me, to literally reject votes, which would have resulted in the issue being turned over to the House of Representatives, and literally chaos would have ensued.” It’s worth keeping in mind that Pence was all in on the Big Lie up until the hours before the insurrection. From my book, Please Scream Inside Your Heart: “Pence had supported the president’s lies about election rigging, both tacitly and verbally. In Georgia, the day before the Senate run-offs, Pence was met with chants of, ‘Stop the steal!’ He responded: ‘I know we all have got our doubts about the last election. I want to assure you that I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress.'” Pence basically dropped a couple sacks of cash on the way out of the bank robbery and then covered for the crime’s ringleader for years. How heroic. Remember, as I wrote yesterday, we’re talking now about a crime that you witnessed in real time. You saw exactly what you thought you saw.
