At Thursday night’s January 6th committee hearing was an invisible man. Nevertheless, he was the star. We did not hear him, and we saw him only fleetingly (in a video clip). Still, Vice President Mike Pence was at the center of the narrative. President Donald Trump’s behavior toward him on January 6, 2021 – and his obsession with him during the weeks just before and immediately after – were not only at the heart of the story. They were the most vivid single examples of Trump’s craziness and malevolence.
As the hearing made clear, there was an approximately 15-minute period on January 6th when the life of the Vice President was genuinely in danger. The rioters were getting close, they were targeting the vice president (“Hang Mike Pence”), and Pence’s path to safety was unclear. Even his secret service agents feared for their lives.
Was Trump concerned? Not hardly. Just the opposite. At that moment, from his bunker in the White House, he tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” As former White House communications aide, Sarah Matthews, put it at the hearing, Trump’s tweet was like “pouring gasoline on a fire.” She promptly resigned on account of it, as did another one of Trump’s longtime assistants, Matt Pottinger.
Why did Trump single out Pence for special abuse? Why for that matter did the rioters target Pence particularly, with murder on their minds? Ironically, it was precisely because they had all come to expect that Pence would without question follow where Trump led. Would without question do what Trump told him to do. Would without question obey Trump’s authority – which in this instance meant he would overturn or at least forestall the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Both Trump and the mob had good reason to expect that Pence would do as instructed. For in a world full of Trump toadies no one, and I mean no one, was more of a toady than Pence. For more than four years Pence had been follower-in-chief; sycophant-in-chief; toady in chief; fawner, flatterer, and flunky-in-chief.
Pence was first among Trump’s underlings. As I wrote in my book, The Enablers, Pence will forever be viewed as “an abject subordinate who, among his other failings, not once corrected or contradicted the president’s numberless lies.” His sole qualification for his job was his fealty, his feckless and pathetic, craven, and cowardly, fealty. Or, as Mark Leibovitch put it in his recent book, Thank You for Your Servitude, “Pence was the unquestioned maestro of this top-level symphony of sycophancy…, He stood by his man in the most nakedly servile of ways.”
Small wonder that Trump was so aghast and enraged when for once Pence was different. When for once – on January 6th no less – Pence refused to do what Trump told him to do.
Poor president. He had every reason to expect otherwise. Poor vice president. He never understood how blind obedience is a risky business – sometimes even a fatal weakness.