Discourtesy claim
New information revealed in Schenectady officer’s dealing with public.
Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518454-5442 or email cchurchill@ timesunion. com
Mike Pence is coming Sunday to Fort Drum, where he will be joined, if all goes as planned, by Elise Stefanik. “It is an honor to welcome the vice president to our district,” the Republican congresswoman said on Facebook of the visit to the North Country military base.
Just a few weeks ago, prior to the attack on the Capitol and before Pence had refused to overturn the election on Trump’s behalf, Stefanik’s simple words wouldn’t have been a provocation. This week, they were met by many with vitriol.
“He stabbed our president in the back,” wrote one of the hundreds who commented on Stefanik’s page, echoing a common, though not universal, sentiment painting the vice president as a traitor, a deep-state Judas and worse.
The twists and turns of history really are something.
A little more than four years ago, ahead of the 2016 election, Stefanik wasn’t the dedicated Trump ally she has become. Aligned with Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, she was so unenthralled with the party’s gatecrasher that she endorsed “the Republican nominee” without saying his name.
Pence, meanwhile, was Trump’s loyal and trustworthy sidekick, a role he would occupy without wavering for nearly the entirety of Trump’s term — until about the 6th of January.
That’s when Pence put country ahead of career, reality ahead of fantasy, law ahead of tyranny, and rebuffed Trump’s insistence that he reject millions of votes to overturn a fair election.
Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, the vice president didn’t have the authority to reject election results certified by states. To do so would have been both illegal and undemocratic, a trampling of the constitution.
But no matter. By refusing Trump’s authoritarian demand, Pence put a target on his back. A portion of the mob that overran the Capitol came looking for him.
The Justice Department says some planned to kidnap and possibly assassinate the vice president. They chanted for Pence to be hung as they carried nooses, bats, pipes, chemical irritants and zip ties that could be used to handcuff hostages. Pence, his wife and his daughters were rushed from the House chamber and ducked into a hideaway only minutes ahead of the rioters. As the vice president hid, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”
That was a lie. Pence did, in fact, protect our country. Had he done as Trump wanted, we wouldn’t have one; our democracy would have ended at that very moment. No matter what you think of Pence’s career, record and role in boosting Trump, credit him for that.
Frankly, it’s stunning so many people would seemingly want to live in an America where Pence alone could reject the ballots of millions. How can it be possible that so many would abide the delegitimization of everything the country is supposed to represent?
The rioters didn’t get to Pence, of course, but they did kill one police officer and wounded more than 50 others as they overran and ransacked the building. That’s the stark ugliness of what happened. That’s the inarguable horror.
In a better country, an attack on the seat of the republic would bring unity. In a better country, the mob’s brutality would bring a cooling of overheated rhetoric and a pause to consider what we’ve become.
That isn’t the country we live in. This is, instead, a nation infected by a terrible sickness.
The comments on Stefanik’s Facebook page prove that. They show that a significant segment of the country has bought into an evidence-free fantasy, a mass delusion, of a stolen election and sweeping conspiracies and nihilistic distrust of everything, save one solitary man.
Yes, I know social media brings out the worst in people. Still, it’s hard to see bile written, less than two weeks after insurrection at the Capitol, and not think this country is lost to a dark ugliness swamping its soul.
As I’ve said in a few columns already, Stefanik abetted that ugliness — and Trump’s fantasy of a stolen election — with blatant falsehoods and cynical manipulations, forever staining her legacy. She bears some responsibility for the attacks on Pence now.
So, I asked Stefanik’s office if she wanted to defend the man she’ll stand with at Fort Drum, the vice president with the target on his back.
The response received began with snark about “the Times Union’s tired and out-of-touch columnists” but ended with a different tone.
“Vice President Pence is a patriot, a public servant, and an honorable man who has served our nation well for the past four years,” Stefanik said. “I am proud to call him a friend.”
That’s good. At this moment, Pence needs all the friends he can get.