‘Did not end well’
New Mike Pence book details split with Trump
NEW YORK >> Former Vice President Mike Pence blames Donald Trump for endangering his family “and all those serving at the Capitol” on Jan. 6 in a new memoir released Tuesday.
In “So Help Me God,” Pence recounts, for the first time in his own words, the Republican former president’s extraordinary effort to push him to overturn the results of the 2020 election and shares his account of the day thousands of rioters stormed the Capitol, with some chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
“They had come to protest the result of the election and to prevent Congress from fulfilling its responsibility to open and count the Electoral College votes,” Pence writes. “And, as I later learned, many had come looking for me.”
The book, which traces Pence’s life in politics — from serving as youth coordinator for a local Democratic Party to watching then-Vice President Al Gore certify his election loss days after Pence had been sworn in as a member of Congress — largely defends Trump, glossing over and whitewashing many of his most contentious episodes. “I had always been loyal to President Donald Trump,” the book begins.
But Pence, who spent years refusing to publicly criticize his old boss, makes clear that Jan. 6, 2021, was a breaking point in which, he writes, Trump’s “reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol.”
“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence writes, summing up their time in the White House. Still, he adds, “we parted amicably when our service to the nation drew to a close. In the months that followed, we spoke from time to time, but when the president returned to the rhetoric that he was using before that tragic day and began to publicly criticize those of us who defended the Constitution, I decided it would be best to go our separate ways.”
The book, published by Simon & Schuster, comes as Pence appears increasingly likely to run for president in 2024, a move that would put him in direct conflict with Trump, who is expected to formally launch his own reelection campaign in Florida on Tuesday night.
Pence, who in the book never directly states that Democrat Joe Biden won fairly, writes that when Trump first suggested holding a rally in Washington on Jan. 6, the day Pence was set to preside over the election’s certification, he thought it was a good idea. “My first thought was that a rally that day might be useful as a way to call even more attention to the proceedings on the floor of the House and Senate,” he writes.
Instead, Pence describes sitting in the Senate chamber and presiding over the certification when the Senate parliamentarian leaned over to inform him that rioters had breached the building and a member of his Secret Service detail rushing over to insist they leave. Pence refused to vacate the building and was instead ushered to a Senate loading dock, where he spent hours, surrounded by staff and family members, making calls to military and congressional leaders to coordinate the government’s response, as the president — who never bothered to check in on Pence’s safety — sat cloistered, watching TV.