Reminder: Pence Is Helping Drive The Trump Train
May 10, 2018
Here’s a periodic reminder from news this morning that Pence is on board the Trump train — and a very willing passenger.
Pence can no longer keep his distance from the special counsel’s probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
CNBC: “Vice President Mike Pence tells special counsel Robert Mueller: 'It's time to wrap it up'”
Washington Post: “What Pence is really saying is that a politically inconvenient thing should go away. There’s not much more to it than that, and one need not read too far into things to get that message. What’s striking, though, is how far that deviates from recent Republican attitudes toward investigations into their political opponents.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “But you've just got to start asking yourself, if Mike Pence wants to kill an investigation that is pursuing how the Russians tried to undermine American democracy in 2016, my gosh, makes me sad to say this, Mike, but I guess we have to start asking the question ‘why does Mike Pence want to kill this investigation?’ What did Mike Pence know about General Flynn? Was he lied to, or is Mike Pence the one who has been lying to us all this time?”
Pence’s push to end and discredit the Mueller investigation even drew comparisons to Vice President Spiro Agnew during Watergate.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Now playing the role of Spiro Agnew for the Trump administration is Mike Pence. Because this is exactly, Spiro Agnew continually attacked Watergate, he continually attacked the president’s coverage of Watergate, and of course, Spiro Agnew ended up in jail.”’
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Now, I don't know if Mike Pence is going to end up in jail. I do know this, Mike Pence was there when Paul Manafort was around, when those meetings were being taken. And Willie Geist, it seems strange to me that any American who wants to get to the bottom of Russia's involvement in the 2016 campaign would call for the end of an investigation that is actually uncovering new connections to Russian oligarchs as we speak.”
Pence got called out for spreading lies about negotiations with North Korea.
CBS’s Margaret Brennan: “You don’t see this summit as a concession?”
CNN's Chris Cuomo: “Mike Pence is doing media about this saying the United States offered nothing. That this was a one-way exchange, but that's not really true, David, right? Because they're getting the summit. You’re meeting with Kim Jong Un. You have the president of the United States saying positive things about him, in a way that we’ve never heard any U.S. president speak with the optimism and praise for the actions of this truly murderous regime. So North Korea got plenty out of this.”
Pence got obliterated for epitomizing the Republican Party’s transformation into the party of “groveling.”
George Will: “Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.”
George Will: “And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.”