Originally published at: Watch Mike Pence's reaction to US House calling for him to remove Trump from power: "Excellent" | Boing Boing
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Don’t forget this guy:
I would never put enough stock in Mike Pence to think he actually read that text and said “excellent” in referral to what he’d just read. He seems like the kind of person who just casually says that word when an assistant does their job well in lieu of saying thank you or engaging with the person. Very corporate bureaucratic in that manner.
“Excellent” hands phone back to assistant
“Excellent” watches person walking his dog scoop their poop up with a baggie
“Excellent” Mother wears that flowery sun bonnet he likes
In all seriousness, though, I really don’t think this is him reacting favorably to what he’d just read - I just think he’s too much of a trained politician to let on. Pence knew his entire legacy was hitched to Trump and I don’t believe for a second that he ever acted from a place of humanistic character or moral upstanding.
Pedant: the story has a couple typos.
The first is in the first sentence. While I think a lot of people would want to “impact Trump” (with a body part, a blunt object, or a vehicle moving at a high rate of speed) I think this was supposed to read “impeach Trump”.
The last sentence of the article stated that “The January 7 committee …” While there was probably more than enough insurrection and general horseshit going around at that time to warrant seating multiple committees to investigate, it was the January 6th committee that subpoenaed the footage.
Oh, oops, er…
Yes. American Democrats need to stop making every Republican that agrees with them vis-a-vis Trump out to be some sort of hero and pretend hidden secret leftist tendency-holder. Liz Cheney is a terrible person. Mike Pence is a terrible person. Let’s not pretend that just because their interests are aligned with democratic interests doesn’t mean that if they actually were in Trump term 2 they wouldn’t have shut up and gone along with it.
The corollary of the banality of evil is that just as seemingly benign actions can constitute evil en masse, so can seemingly beneficial actions be equivalently benign.
Pence did the right thing when it came to Trump and the transition of power. That is what you are supposed to do. You don’t reward people for doing their job.
The Democrats need to bring real charges and consequences when it comes to Trump, his enablers, and anyone using similar tactics. Because no consequences means they will keep doing it until it works.
FWIW: when ‘doing your job’ is a standard not met by the majority of the party, I think it’s worth noting, even if it’s not worth praising.
He is by no means a hero. However I do think it is important for Republicans who are still unwilling to leave their party to see a less fascist path forward than the one presented by Trump loyalists.
Needs more @pesco (sorry Pesco - second time today)
Also - to get to the relevant part, scrub through this video to approx 2mins 10 secs.
It’s really tough for me to figure why he would say “excellent”, and then not act on it.
Was it sarcasm?
Did he think “this will hurt the Democrats”? (this is when the violence of Jan. 6th, where he was within 40 feet of being hanged, was still reasonably fresh in everyone’s minds.)
Or is he some kind of robotic automaton who truly doesn’t care?
(Don’t answer that.)
He didn’t have nearly enough of the Cabinet on board to be able to enact the 25A. Hell, half of them were part of Team Insurrection and the other half were unconfirmed acting Secretaries of Grabass.
Sure would be interesting to learn if he ever made an effort to convince them.
ftfy…
I’m on the same side as these comments overall, but just pointing out that Pence was completely prepared to not do his job until he was told (by Dan Quayle no less) that there was no way he could make it happen.
I find Electoral Vote’s discussion of this topic, including the link I attached, to be rather informative, as always. I’m just uncomfortable with the elevation of Mike Pence that seems to be happening on social media. Pence and Cheney, even if they are strange bedfellows, are members of a “team normal” Republican party that hates poor people, LGBTQIA+ people, non-whites and women. They’re just taking advantage of the political calculus, and many Democratic voters are going along with it.