One only has to look at the Trump all-stars supporting the new operation - which includes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway - to see how Pence is walking a careful path that might lead him to capture Trump's fervent base of supporters. On the day his book deal was made public, Pence launched a political advocacy group called Advancing American Freedom, which touts the "successful conservative policies of the Trump-Pence administration" and champions "Conservative values and policy proposals," which the organization's website claims are under attack. But will Pence - who may have presidential ambitions of his own - offer a modicum of truth and express his true feelings about the president who jeopardized his life?Īs of now, that seems unlikely.
The stark contrast between Pence's loyalty to Trump and Trump's ultimate betrayal of his vice president would be exactly the sort of thing worth exploring in a multimillion dollar book deal. The mob, believing the vice president was a traitor for carrying out his constitutional role in certifying the results of the election, chanted, "Hang Mike Pence." And while Trump was aware Pence had been evacuated to a secure location during the attack, the former president never attempted to contact him directly.
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He set the tone at the first full cabinet meeting in 2017, when he kicked off the infamous, 11-minute, roundtable praise-fest for Trump by saying, "It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people." After each cabinet member took turns lavishing praise on the president, Glenn Thrush of The New York Times called it "the most exquisitely awkward public event I've ever seen."īut the relationship between Pence and Trump all but disintegrated on January 6, 2021, when insurrectionists who believed Trump's lie that the 2020 election had been "stolen" broke into and overran the US Capitol. Unctuous? Fawning? Smarmy?īut Pence's role as Trump's vice president began very differently from how it ended.
(Of course, he was an elected official who Trump couldn't fire.) Throughout his tenure, Pence remained a faithful sidekick whose fealty was so extreme that some detractors strained themselves for fresh synonyms. Pence, who was drafted as the pious counterweight to then-candidate Donald Trump, is one of the few major figures who stayed on the job for all four years - no small feat, considering the high turnover in Trump's administration.
The question now, is whether his story will create any buzz. Absent the fly, Simon & Schuster has signed their next-best option: Pence. With so many Trump-related books already on the shelf, publishing houses have reached the point where perhaps the only author still worth hearing from would be the fly that landed on former Vice President Mike Pence's head during his debate with now Vice President Kamala Harris. Editor's Note: Michael D'Antonio is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book "The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.