Lest Fox News viewers forget (assuming Fox is even covering Russiagate), Mike Pence was actively involved in the Trump campaign and he was the head of the Trump transition team. Yet, as noted before, he has steadfastly acted like Sergeant Schultz in the old Hogan's Heroes, television show: he claims he saw nothing, heard nothing and knew nothing. Recent revelations, including emails discussing Mike Flynn's Russian contacts, however, suggest that Pence - who claims to be a devout evangelical Christian - is perhaps lying. As regular readers know, in my view from years of tracking them, other than perhaps Trump himself, few elements of American society lie more often or more viciously than the self-congratulatory "godly folk." A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Pence's efforts to fade into the woodwork as he no doubt hopes that if and when Trump is driven from office, he can step in and claim the mantle of the presidency. Here are article highlights:
It is extraordinary, in retrospect, that Mike Pence wouldn’t have known about Michael Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak or his foreign lobbying ties. As we now know, multiple members of the Trump campaign were aware that the man who would become Donald Trump’s national security adviser was in communication with the Russian ambassador at a senior campaign official’s behest. Yet Pence, who was in charge of Trump’s White House transition team—directing staffing, organizing agency “landing teams,” and vetting administration candidates—was conveniently out of the loop. (Flynn was ostensibly fired for misleading the vice president about those contacts.) Pence went radio silent again last week, when Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about those conversations. And he was nowhere to be found in the aftermath, as Trump’s legal team raced to contain the fallout after the president potentially implicated himself in obstruction of justice on Twitter. The former Indiana governor has, on the one hand, secured Trump’s trust by serving as an unflappable, unquestionably ideological defender of the president’s agenda. But his blissful ignorance on all things Russia has also raised eyebrows in Washington among insiders who see him as the obvious back-up candidate if Trump doesn’t pan out. Indeed, Pence has a curious pattern of alibis whenever controversy strikes the West Wing. While Flynn and Jared Kushner were ensnared in back-channel brokering over a United Nations resolution during the transition, Politico notes, Pence was volunteering at a homeless shelter in his home state of Indiana. When Flynn was gabbing with Kislyak about lifting sanctions against Moscow, Pence was at his son’s wedding. As Donald Trump Jr. was fending off headlines about his Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, his father’s right-hand man insisted that was the first he’d heard of it.
Rumors of Pence’s presidential ambitions seem to resurface whenever Trump’s political prospects look weakest. . . . . Others noted the existence of an unspoken agreement among Republicans to keep Pence above the fray. “He’s not stupid about the fact that there could be some very bad outcomes for Donald Trump here,” Rick Wilson, another Republican strategist, added.
There is no vice president who takes the job without the expectation of advancement. But Pence, it seems, glimpsed the possibility of a promotion early on. According to The Atlantic, amid the tumult after the Access Hollywood tape was made public, Pence briefly came within spitting distance of the top of the Republican ticket.
It is a grand irony that Donald Trump might, unintentionally, slingshot Mike Pence to the presidency. While Pence’s name emerged as a potential presidential contender for 2016 in the wake of his 2012 gubernatorial victory, the Indiana governor’s political career was on a downward trajectory when he unexpectedly hitched his wagon to Trump’s star.
Pence has repeatedly denied that he has any designs on the presidency. . . . Still, the signs are there. In May, he filed paperwork with the F.E.C. to launch his own PAC, the Great America Committee. Reports that he was cozying up to Republican mega-donors fanned speculation that he was in drape-measuring mode. According to the Times story, “multiple advisers” to Pence have “already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not.”
Pence’s ascendance could come sooner than later. . . . The latest argument from Trump’s legal team—that there “is no crime of collusion” and that the “president cannot obstruct justice”—appears to anticipate the worst. Meanwhile, Pence boosters are waiting quietly in the wing.
The country does not need another conniving liar in the White House. If - and hopefully soon - Trump goes down he will reach out and take Pence with him. If Trump has any sense, he ought to see the signs that Pence will knife him in the back as soon as he sees it to be in his own self-interest. I despise Paul Ryan, but he'd be far less dangerous to the country and civil rights of its citizenry than either Trump or Pence.
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