In my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall, published last week, I thought I came down pretty hard on Mike Pence’s behavior as Trump’s vice president. I even said Pence violated an important principle in the Bible by accepting Trump’s invitation to be his vice president. Fort the apostle Paul wrote, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6.14). Paul meant that in things like marriage and business.
I also said in the book that “in accepting this invitation, Pence became Trump’s lap dog. He constantly praised the president and covered for his ill remarks and bad behavior. With Pence being so loyal to the president, he became disloyal to his own integrity. It nauseated me that this very Christian guy was perhaps the chief enabler of Donald Trump’s wrongdoing as president.” I don’t think Pence understands this even now.”
I conclude in my book, “Yet, Pence did right near the end” by refusing to succumb to Trump’s demand to overthrow the election, which he probably couldn’t do anyway.
Peter Bergen is one my favorite journalists. He is also an author and CNN’s national security analyst. I attended a lecture by Peter Bergen at Arizona State University (ASU) and afterwards met and talked to him. He really comes across as an intelligent, personable, and really nice guy. (I now see he has accepted some type of position at ASU.)
Bergen has an op-ed article with CNN today entitled “Opinion: Mike Pence is no profile in courage.” Pence is obviously focused on being chosen for the Republican nomination for the U.S. president in 2024 election. Pence now disagrees publicly with Trump’s constant claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and therefore stolen from him without any evidence of that whatsoever despite losing all 60 lawsuits about it.
Bergen says in this piece, “Pence is no profile in courage. Trump’s in-your-face lying and hucksterism is almost preferable to the sanctimonious sycophancy of Pence.” Bergen then cites polls showing that 54% of Republican voters intend to choose Trump as next president, 21% for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and about only 1% are for Pence.
Bergen concludes with this stinging remark, “There’s one thing Americans seem to dislike more than a habitual liar like Trump, it’s a patent phony like Pence.”
I just think Mike Pence doesn’t get it. That is, the guy is not that smart. He thought he should be loyal to Trump no matter what, that that was the moral and right thing to do. There are a lot of religious people who think that way. Thus, they are not critical thinkers. Even Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivana, has said since her father left the White House that Mike Pence is “a really nice guy.”
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