.png)
3 hours ago
3
On the day that his supporters attacked the US Capitol because his 2020 re-election run ended in defeat, Donald Trump called his vice-president at the time, Mike Pence, and told him he would go down in history as a “wimp” if he certified the election result, a new book says.
Those details were revealed on Sunday when ABC News published a preview excerpt of an upcoming book by its political correspondent Jonathan Karl. The book, titled Retribution, cites Pence’s notes from the 6 January 2021 phone call with Trump, who was purportedly trying to shame his vice-president into refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory weeks earlier in the White House.
“If you do that, I made a big mistake five years ago,” Trump is said to have told Pence, who was his running mate when he won his first presidency in 2016. “You’ll go down as a wimp.”
According to Retribution, before he ultimately fulfilled his duty of certifying Biden’s victory, Pence’s notes maintain that he told Trump both had taken “an oath to support + defend the constitution”.
“It doesn’t take courage to break the law,” Pence’s notes portray him as saying to Trump. “It takes courage to uphold the law.”
The notes cited in Retribution say Trump also reportedly told Pence, “You listen to the wrong people.”
Pence has publicly said that he certified Biden’s victory, despite Trump’s wishes, because he knew he had no legal right to overturn Trump’s electoral defeat at the hands of Biden. That stand came as Trump and his allies brazenly pushed lies that electoral fraudsters had rigged the 2020 election in Biden’s favor, leading to his victory.
A mob of Trump supporters eventually stormed the US Capitol, unsuccessfully demanding Pence’s hanging and delaying the joint congressional session certifying Biden’s victory by several hours.
Federal authorities never charged Trump in the attack. Yet, as Retribution pointed out, prosecutors reviewed Pence’s notes as evidence of the hours before the attack.
Prosecutors did convict or at least criminally charge more than 1,500 other people who were attributed roles in the January 6 attack, which a bipartisan US Senate committee linked to several deaths, including the suicides of law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol that day.
Then in January, in one of Trump’s first acts back in the Oval Office after he defeated Kamala Harris – Biden’s vice-president – in the 2024 presidential election, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all linked to the Capitol attack.
JD Vance was Trump’s running mate when the latter man won his second presidency and summarily ignited warnings about the US’s “trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to an assessment from former intelligence and national security officials. Pence did not pursue public office during that election cycle.
The Retribution excerpt arrived days after Steve Bannon, who was chief White House strategist during Trump’s first presidency, said in an interview with the Economist that he predicted Trump would get “a third term” in 2028 despite being barred by the US constitution.
“People ought to just get accommodated with that,” said Bannon, who touted a “plan” purportedly to be laid out later that would circumvent the constitutional amendment limiting US presidents to two terms.
Bannon’s comments echoed those of others aligned with Trump, along with the president himself, who has previously made threats about their being “methods” – and possibly even unspecified “plans” – to keep him in office no matter the constitution.
