Mike Pence, erstwhile Vice President to Der Trumpenführer, embodies the moral bankruptcy that now consumed the Republican Part and the evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians who bear the responsibility for having out Trump in office. Hypocrisy and deliberate lies are now the norm be they about the non-existent persecution of Christians to the false claims that Trumpcare would increase healthcare coverage and lower premium costs. In the midst of it all stands Mike Pence, a man who wears his feigned religiosity on his sleeve, but is only too ready to attack the civil rights and equality of LGBT Americans and give a wink and a nod to white supremacists. Much of the misogyny one sees in the Trump cabinet likely lays squarely at the feet of Pence as well due to his apparent role in "vetting" the many unfit individuals nominated by Trump. Betsy DeVos is merely the tip of the iceberg of incompetent ideologues promoted by Pence. And then there is Pence's willingness to lie for Trump even when he has to know that the words flowing from his mouth are untrue. Like so many of the Christofascists, lying for Pence is never an issue. It's as if the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness has been conveniently removed from the Ten Commandments that Pence and his fellow modern day Pharisees pretend to revere. Richard Cohen has a good take down of Pence. Here are excerpts:
When history holds its trial to account for the Donald Trump presidency, Trump himself will be acquitted on grounds of madness. History will look at his behavior, his erratic and childish lying and his flamboyant ignorance of history itself and pronounce the man, like George III, a cuckoo for whom restraint, but not punishment, was necessary. Such will not be the case for Mike Pence, the toady vice president and the personification of much that has gone wrong in Washington.
On any given day, Pence will do his customary spot-on imitation of a bobblehead. Standing near Trump in the Oval Office, he will nod his head robotically as the president says one asinine thing after another and then, maybe along with others, he will be honored with a lie or a version of the truth so mangled by contradictions and fabrications that a day in the White House is like a week on LSD.
I pick on Pence because he is the most prominent and highest-ranked of President Trump’s lackeys. . . . He vouches for things that are not true — no talk of sanctions between Mike Flynn and the Russians, for instance, or more recently the reason James B. Comey was fired as FBI director. In both instances, the president either lied to him or failed to tell him the truth. The result was the same: The vice president appeared clueless.
I don’t feel an iota of sympathy for Pence. He was among a perfidious group of political opportunists who pushed Trump’s candidacy while having to know that he was intellectually, temperamentally and morally unfit for the presidency. They stuck with him as he mocked the disabled, belittled women, insulted Hispanics, libeled Mexicans and promiscuously promised the impossible and ridiculous — all that “Day One” nonsense like how the wall would be built and Mexico would pay for it.
The swamp that Trump kept mentioning in the campaign is not really one of tangled bureaucratic mangroves, but of moral indifference. Washington always had a touch of that — after all, its business is politics — but Trump and his people have collapsed the space between lies and truth. The president uses one and then the other — whatever works at the time.
The president cannot be trusted. He cannot be believed.
From most of the Republican Party comes not a whisper of rebuke. The congressional leadership is inert, cowed, scurrying to the White House for this or that ceremonial picture, like members of the erstwhile Politburo flanking Stalin atop Lenin’s mausoleum. . . . . I know, and they fear the voters back home, but their complicity ought to be obvious even to them.
[Trump's] own party has been sullenly complicit, showing how little esteem many politicians place in our most cherished values, not the least of them honesty and dignity. For all of them, an accounting is coming.
I believe that Pence knew what he was getting into, but his lust for power outweighed all else. Like many other Christofascists, he believes feigned piety, avoidance of alcohol and mistreatment of others based a few Bible passages authored by ignorant, unknown herders makes him "godly." Rather, it shows his moral bankruptcy and unfitness for office. I sincerely hope Pence is directly implicated in Trump's misdeeds. He needs to go as well.
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