EPILOGUE: AND ONE REASON TRUMP MUST STAY

MIKE PENCE

Everything we’ve said about Donald Trump is true. He’s the most ignorant, unqualified, inexperienced, and utterly obnoxious person ever elected president. He knows nothing about issues and has no interest or patience to learn. He listens to and respects no one’s opinion but his own, which is invariably wrong, if not deluded. He’s rude, crude, gross, and mean. Even conservative commentator George Will calls him the worst of all forty-five presidents so far.1

But as frustrated, angry, or embarrassed as you may be that Donald Trump is the forty-fifth president of the United States, it could still be worse. We could be stuck with Mike Pence.

He’s the one argument—and a strong, compelling argument, too—for keeping Trump right where he is.

Not everybody gets that. Pence has buffaloed a lot of people, liberal and conservative. After all, he seems so disciplined where Trump is so unruly; so soft-spoken where Trump is loudmouthed; so grown-up where Trump is so childish. A lot of people wish something bad would happen to Trump so Pence could take over.

When Trump at one time agreed to an immigration compromise with Democratic leaders (which he later abandoned), conservative pundit Ann Coulter tweeted: “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached? If we’re not getting a wall, I’d prefer President Pence.”2

Some on the left fell for the same story line. New York Times columnist Gail Collins praised Pence as someone who “seems less likely to get the planet blown up.” And the headline on a Washington Post column by Dana Milbank declared, PRESIDENT PENCE IS SOUNDING BETTER AND BETTER.3

No, he’s not. Don’t be fooled. Because as dangerous as Trump is, Pence would be even more dangerous. He’s even more conservative than Trump—former GOP congressional staffer Mike Lofgren calls him “as far right as you could go without falling off the earth”—and a lot more effective.4

Where Trump doesn’t really believe in anything, Pence is a committed, doctrinaire ideologue and right-wing extremist. Where Trump is a know-nothing, Pence is a total, deeply conservative policy wonk. Where Trump has no apparent religious convictions, Pence is a full-fledged evangelical zealot. Where Trump has no idea how to govern, Pence knows how things work, both at the state and federal level. Where Trump is chaotic evil, Pence is lawful evil.

And make no mistake about it: Pence’s show of low-key humility is just a front. He burns with political ambition and high aspirations, as was already evident when he was just involved in local politics in his hometown of Columbus, Indiana. Harry McCawley, editor of The Republic, Columbus’s local paper, told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, “Mike Pence wanted to be President practically since he popped out of the womb.”5

Elected to Congress in 2000, Pence served six terms without authoring a single successful bill. His eyes were always on the national scene, according to colleagues at the time. In fact, he gained national attention by bucking President George W. Bush and fellow congressional Republicans when he thought they were not conservative enough—opposing expansion of Medicaid to cover the cost of prescription drugs, for example.

It was also as a member of Congress that he followed “the Billy Graham rule,” now better known as “Pence’s rule”: He does not eat alone with a woman who is not his wife, or attend an event where alcohol is being served unless his wife, Karen, whom he reportedly calls “Mother,” is also present. Needless to say, Donald Trump does not abide by the same rule.6

Now, as vice president, Pence enjoys a twofold shot at the big job he’s always coveted. First, just by being where he is (which, he believes, was ordained by God). Of his forty-seven predecessors, nine vice presidents eventually assumed the presidency either because of death or a resignation. Second, Pence is vice president to Donald Trump, whom many believe will be convicted, impeached, or forced to resign before he completes his first term.7

Reportedly, very quietly—so as not to spook his boss—Pence is already preparing for that possibility, assembling his own team of experts, developing his own relations with foreign leaders, staying in close touch with leaders of Congress, and hosting dinners for major Republican donors at the vice president’s mansion—many of whom, like Charles and David Koch, can’t stand Trump. But Pence is so close to the Kochs, says Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, that “if Pence were to become President for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch Brothers—period. He’s been their tool for years.” Even Steve Bannon agrees and has expressed his concern that Pence would be “a president that the Kochs would own.”8

You only have to look at his record to know what kind of president Pence would be: the candidate of the religious Right, and further to the right than any president so far. His political agenda comes right out of Franklin Graham’s playbook. In fact, he proudly declares, “I am a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, told The New Yorker’s Mayer, “Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician.”9

In short, his America would be straight out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Pence believes in the criminalization of abortion and wants to deny unmarried women access to birth control. He campaigned for Congress in 2000 vowing to oppose “any effort to recognize homosexuals as a discrete and insular minority entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws.”10

As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a bill requiring burial or cremation of aborted fetuses and slashed funding for Planned Parenthood. He opposed resettlement of any Syrian refugees in this state. He helped exacerbate the worst HIV outbreak in state history by slashing health spending and, until the damage was done, opposing needle exchanges. And he achieved national notoriety by signing the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allowing business owners to cite their religious beliefs as justification for refusing service to LGBTQ Americans—which stirred up such a backlash, Pence was forced to back down and sign a weaker version of the bill. In fact, Pence’s extreme social agenda proved so unpopular in Indiana, it looked like he could never get reelected and his political career was over—until Donald Trump saved him by making him his running mate.11

Now, mix that extreme policy agenda with a bland, nonthreatening public persona and an undeserved reputation for making government work, and you have a very dangerous combination, indeed. You have Mike Pence, who is, again, far, far more dangerous than that shoot-from-the-hip, bull-in-the-china-shop Donald Trump.

You also have in Mike Pence a total and unrepentant hypocrite. In August 2016, when the Access Hollywood tape surfaced, on which Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” pundits were sure that the devout Christian Pence would break with Trump and resign from the ticket. But they didn’t know Pence. After allegedly trying to see if he could dislodge Trump from the top of the ticket, he not only stuck with Trump, he praised him publicly, saying, “I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologized to the American people.” Put to the test, Pence’s Christian beliefs proved far less long-standing than his political ambition.12

And today, Pence is the most disgusting suck-up to Trump of anybody else in the White House. If George Will, as noted above, is no fan of Trump’s, he’s even less of a fan of Pence’s. “The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness,” Will writes, has become “America’s most repulsive public figure.”13

Will’s distrust and disgust with Trump is shared by former Apprentice contestant and White House aide Omarosa Manigault, who knows both men well. “As bad as y’all think Trump is, you would be worried about Pence,” she said on Celebrity Big Brother. Nor does Manigault buy Pence’s belief that he and Trump are all part of God’s plan: “I’m Christian. I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. And I’m like, ‘Jesus ain’t say that.’ He’s scary.”14

So for those of you in a hurry to replace Donald Trump with Mike Pence, I issue one word of warning: “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” And you just might want Donald Trump back again.

After all, with Trump in office, some now pine for the disastrous days of George W. Bush. Then again, when he was president, my 2004 book Bush Must Go only listed ten reasons. At this rate, we may well need a thousand reasons to deal with His Holiness Mike Pence of Indiana.