"The fact that my predecessor had a son who was paid $50,000 a month to be on a Ukrainian board, at the time that vice president Biden was leading the Obama Administration’s efforts in Ukraine, I think is worth looking into." - VP @mike_pence
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 3, 2019
Drain the swamp! pic.twitter.com/CU1NHPmUAS
— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) September 25, 2019
It was the kind of performance that has made Mike Pence’s career.
Speaking with reporters yesterday in Arizona—his voice slow with that wholesome midwestern drawl, his eyebrows lifted more in sorrow than in anger—the vice president came valiantly to the defense of his persecuted boss amid growing controversy over President Donald Trump’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart. “One of the main reasons we were elected to Washington, D.C., was to drain the swamp,” Pence explained, sounding perfectly sincere as he recast Trump’s efforts to pressure a foreign government into investigating his political rival as a bold stand against corruption.
Such ostentatious displays of water-carrying are not new for Pence. But this time the stakes were higher. The Washington Post had recently published a story citing anonymous “officials close to Pence” who appeared to be distancing him from Trump’s escalating Ukraine scandal. To many observers in Washington—myself included—the story was evidence that the two men were not entirely on the same page. Pence’s maneuvering yesterday may have temporarily deflated that narrative, but it also illuminated the fraught nature of his relationship with Trump.
In any embattled White House, an ambitious vice president can run the risk of turning radioactive. Every word he utters in public is dissected, every move searched for signs of a coming coup. Pence, of course, has labored strenuously to perform his loyalty to Trump. But with an impeachment battle raging, and a president burrowing deeper each day into paranoid bunker mode, the fragility of their partnership could soon be on full display.
High regard for Pence among congressional lawmakers could be an especially tender pressure point for the president. One senior Republican Senate staffer, who requested anonymity to describe the situation candidly, told me, “If it was just a matter of magically snapping their fingers … pretty much every Republican senator would switch out Pence for Trump. That’s been true since day one.”
This week isn’t the first time we’ve seen signs of a potential rift. Last year, The New York Times reported that Trump was privately asking allies whether they thought Pence was loyal. More recently, rumors have circulated that the president might replace Pence on the 2020 ticket with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. And in a news conference last week, Trump voluntarily dragged his vice president into the Ukraine mess by suggesting that journalists look into the calls Pence had made to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But the roots of Trump’s distrust can be traced back to the final weeks of the 2016 election, when the Access Hollywood tape became public. In the uproar that followed, Pence did not jump to his running mate’s defense. Instead, he retreated from the campaign and issued a disapproving statement: “I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them.” Anonymous quotes began popping up in the press describing Pence as “beside himself” over Trump’s remarks. And as I would later report in a profile of the vice president, Pence made it clear to the Republican National Committee that he was ready to take Trump’s place at the top of the ticket. (A spokesperson for Pence has denied this.) I wrote:
Republican donors and party leaders began buzzing about making Pence the nominee and drafting Condoleezza Rice as his running mate.
Amid the chaos, Trump convened a meeting of his top advisers in his Manhattan penthouse. He went around the room and asked each person for his damage assessment. [Reince] Priebus bluntly told Trump he could either drop out immediately or lose in a historic landslide. According to someone who was present, Priebus added that Pence and Rice were “ready to step in.”
This episode has not been forgotten by certain Trump loyalists, who believe Pence has shown he will prioritize his own political interests over the president’s if necessary. As one former Trump adviser told me in 2017, “I don’t think he goes down with the ship.”