https://news.yahoo.com/pence-had-ask-dan-quayle-203748729.html
Rolling Stone
Pence Had to Ask Dan Quayle If American Democracy Should Continue
Peter Wade
Tue, September 14, 2021, 1:37 PM·
Mike Pence - Credit: AP
The fate of a healthy Democracy does not come down to a phone call with
Dan Quayle. But, well, here we are.
According to an upcoming book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, in the
final days of Trump’s presidency, then-Vice President Mike Pence was
struggling to decide whether to honor the votes of the American people
or to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump and set
off an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
The authors write that Pence sought advice from Dan Quayle, the only
living Republican vice president who had been in the position of
certifying an election where his ticket was the losing one. And it was
Quayle — the same man who has been something of a national punchline for
a decade — who talked Pence off the ledge and into doing the right thing.
Trump at the time was frantically trying to find a way to cling to
power. He was spreading lies that rampant election fraud took place,
pushing election officials in Georgia to undermine their state’s results
and pushing the Justice Department to “just say the election was corrupt
and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.” And he was
privately and publicly pressuring Pence.
During their conversation, Quayle said Pence had no wiggle room and told
him to certify the election results. “Mike, you have no flexibility on
this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle told him.
“I know, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell Trump,” Pence responded.
“But he really thinks he can. And there are other guys in there saying
I’ve got this power.”
Pence then brought up Trump’s allegations of voter fraud and the
lawsuits filed by Trump supporters in Arizona attempting to decertify
Biden as the winner in the state. “Well, there’s some stuff out in
Arizona,” Pence said to Quayle, who immediately shot him down.
“Mike, I live in Arizona,” Quayle said. “There’s nothing out here.”
The book also reveals that Trump ally and former White House senior
strategist Steve Bannon was fueling the president’s delusions. According
to the authors, Bannon told Trump on December 30th that he and Pence
needed to return to D.C. immediately to prepare to “bury Biden” during
“the moment for reckoning” on January 6th.
“You’ve got to return to Washington and make a dramatic return today.
You’ve got to call Pence off the fucking ski slopes and get him back
here today. This is a crisis,” Bannon told the president. “People are
going to go, ‘What the fuck is going on here?'” Bannon added. “We’re
going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him.”
After Pence’s call to Quayle, he spoke with Trump in the Oval Office on
January 5th — the day before the election certification and Capitol
attack — and refused Trump’s orders to stop the certification process.
Already, the president’s supporters were gathered in front of the White
House. Referring to the protesters, Trump asked Pence: “If these people
say you had the power, wouldn’t you want to?”
“I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,” Pence said.
To this, Trump replied, “But wouldn’t it be almost cool to have that power?”
“No,” Pence said, according to the book. “I’ve done everything I could
and then some to find a way around this. It’s simply not possible.”
It was then, the authors say, Trump began to shout. “No, no, no! You
don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend
anymore if you don’t do this,” said Trump, who, by chronology, is an adult.
Trump’s anger continued into the next morning when he called Pence to
again apply pressure. “If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four
years ago,” Trump said, then added, angrily and defeatedly, “You’re
going to wimp out.”
According to the book, Pence wasn’t the only person in the White House
who was desperately trying to contain Trump as he became increasingly
unhinged after the election. Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, was also scrambling trying to prevent a nuclear war because he
was worried the president would “go rogue” and launch nuclear weapons at
China unprovoked.
On some level, Pence deserves credit for ultimately doing the right
thing, even if it meant not getting to be Trump’s BFF4eva. On another
level, it’s rough that he had to chew it over with anyone. Pence’s early
career had an awful lot of talk about being a “constitutional
conservative,” and we’re pretty sure there’s nothing in the Constitution
that says the losing candidate gets to stay in office if he really,
really wants to.
