Today, Explained - It’s time to talk about Mike Pence

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

President Trump is battling Covid-19 and the vice-presidential debate is days away. McKay Coppins from the Atlantic explains the man waiting in the wings. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. After finding out the President of the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus at the end of last week, we had a weekend of conflicting information on his condition, some videos of him looking under the weather, a photo op of him signing his name like a big boy, a ride around the block that put some Secret Service members at risk, and now he's heading back to the

White House to potentially put even more people at risk. Never has the Trump presidency been in a greater state of flux. And that is really saying something. So with the vice presidential debate set for Wednesday, we thought it'd be a good time to talk about President Trump's very Christian shadow, Vice President Michael Richard Pence. McKay Coppins, you've written about Pence a number of times for The Atlantic. What's he been saying about the president over the past few days? Publicly, he's said the things you might expect, you know, that he's praying for the president and the first lady, that the American people are rooting for him. He's kind of played the traditional role of the vice president as kind of the cheerleader for the president and a supporter of his. What do you think is going on in his head privately? Yeah, that's where things I think get more interesting, because I think that this is a man who has wanted to be president for

basically his entire adult life and who actually believes, according to people close to him, that kind of divine forces have conspired to put him within a heartbeat of the presidency. And so I think that he's probably looking at this moment and wondering if he's been placed here for a reason. And obviously, I think it would be impossible for him to not be thinking about the realities of what it would mean if he had to assume the presidency at this kind of moment of crisis. I feel like most people don't know very much about Mike Pence other than the fact that he is nothing like President Trump. What is the relationship between these two dudes who didn't really know each other four years ago, four years later?

Yeah, it's interesting. When you talk to people inside the White House, they say that their relationship is almost kind of like a big brother, little brother situation, but maybe a little bit more toxic than that. For Pence's part, he is almost theatrical in the way that he performs his deference to President Trump, you know? Well, I think President Trump has a heart of gratitude. Pence kind of talks about Trump in worshipful tones, right? I think the American people find it very refreshing that they have a president who will

tell them what's on his mind. And I think the connection that he made in the course of this campaign is reflective of that. Whether it's true or not. They're going to tell him what, he's going to say what he believes to be true. And I know that he's always going to speak in that way as president. There was one period when Pence would constantly talk about Donald Trump's broad shoulders. He is a man with broad shoulders. He's got a clear vision. He's strong. And I think more and more Americans every day are being drawn to the plain and simple truth that this choice in this election is between change and the status quo. That just gives you a taste of how much Pence kind of performs his role

as kind of the loyal, obedient deputy. For Trump's part, he is often kind of almost disdainful of Pence in his treatment of him. You know, I've heard about Trump mocking Pence for his religiosity in the West Wing. When Trump will meet with people who have just met with Pence, he'll say, oh, did Mike make you pray? He once joked that Mike Pence wanted to hang all gay people. Wow. Yeah. And actually, a small thing, but I think kind of revealing, when the Pence family was first moving into the Naval Observatory

at the beginning of their term, there was some report somewhere that they were moving in their family pets. They had a snake and a rabbit. And Trump, according to a longtime aide who I spoke to, was just completely scornful of this and thought it was really kind of like low class or low rent to have all these pets. The person that I talked to said that Trump thinks the pences are yokels. To be fair, I did speak with one White House official a couple years ago named Mark Short, who said that this is just friendly razzing, friendly joking, and that the president really does respect Pence.

But that's kind of the photo op? How does he square the fact that this is a pretty apparently a religious dude? Yeah, he very rarely betrays any doubts or concerns about that. Once he joined the ticket in 2016, and basically from that moment on, he's been all in and he's done basically anything the president asked him to do. And that ranges from kind of repeating dishonest talking points in public to defending the president amid every scandal. But, you know, when I talk to some people close to Pence, they will say that he sees this as his kind of Christian duty. Pence believes strongly in a scriptural concept that evangelicals call servant leadership. And it comes from a part of the Bible where Jesus washes his disciples' feet

and then teaches that if you want to serve somebody, you have to be like their slave, basically. You should submit yourself to them. And that concept is fairly common throughout Christianity. But the way that it's been applied here is that Pence believes that by signing on to be vice president, his job is to basically submit himself to the authority and will of Donald Trump. That this isn't just a kind of constitutional duty or a political duty. This is a religious duty. I should note here that a lot of evangelical Christians would say this is kind of a perverse reading of servant leadership. And this is not how it was meant to be applied. But

this is at least how Pence and some of his kind of religious allies in the White House justify his behavior. That said, one of the things that kind of most stood out to me when I first began reporting on Vice President Pence a few years ago was the kind of scale of his personal ambition. The truth is that he's actually extremely ambitious. He's wanted to be president since his fraternity days in college. He does have this belief, according to people who know him,

that this is all part of God's plan, right? That eventually God's plan will be made manifest and maybe that will mean Pence becoming president one way or another. Do we have any idea what kind of president he would be other than, you know, a conservative Christian one? So in some ways, Mike Pence is a fairly conventional politician, at least compared to his boss, right? You know, I don't think that you would see him sort of rage tweeting in all caps every morning. I don't think you would see him obsessing over cable news the way that Donald Trump does.

And on a policy level, I think that he's sort of an embodiment of the pre-Trump Republican Party that, you know, this idea of fusionism, where it was tax cuts and deregulation and pro-business economic policies combined with social conservatism, which Pence really believes in and which Trump kind of only pretends to. It would almost be kind of a throwback to the George W. Bush presidency, I think, if you were looking for a comparison. Of course, that would be under normal circumstances, right? And I think that if Pence assumed the presidency because for some reason President Trump was incapacitated or unable to fulfill his duties, we'd be in a very different situation. And what would that situation look like? Well, he'd be taking over a White House that's filled with Trump family members in staff roles

and Trump cronies, right? He'd basically be taking over a White House that's been remade in Donald Trump's image. And I think you could see it becoming even more dysfunctional than it is right now, right? I mean, try to imagine, for example, Mike Pence giving orders to Jared Kushner, right? What would that look like? Try to imagine Mike Pence needing to address the nation and his speech is being written by Stephen Miller. This would be a very odd fit, to say the least, you know, between the kind of people Trump has surrounded himself with and the kind of people I think Pence would ideally want to be working right under him if he was president. So I think there would be a lot of kind of culture clash and friction that it would probably make the transfer of power even more disorganized and difficult than it would be under normal circumstances. Is he a savvy enough political operative to navigate that?

Is he the kind of guy who could just clean house and restaff and take over the helm? You know, it's hard to see that. It's hard to see him kind of masterfully wielding power in that way, especially after sort of cementing his reputation within Trump's orbit as this kind of deputy who Trump can walk all over. It's hard to see him coming in and just like kicking out all the Trump sycophants from the West Wing. I would also say that his governorship, while in some ways kind of traditional and conventional, also had some pretty major political missteps that suggest that he may not be as savvy as you might hope for somebody assuming the presidency in these kinds of circumstances. The origin story of Vice President Pence after the break. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. McKay, who is Mike Penslick? Where did he come from? Is it all Indiana all the way through?

Yeah, he grew up in a small town kind of outside of Indianapolis. Had sort of a quiet childhood. His dad ran a chain of convenience stores. His mom was a stay-at-home mom, took care of five siblings. They were Irish Catholic Democrats. And when Pence graduated from high school and went into college, a small liberal arts school in Indiana. He went in kind of a staunch supporter of Jimmy Carter and a devout Catholic. By the time he left college, he was a Ronald Reagan super fan and an evangelical Christian. So he experienced kind of two important conversion moments in college that would kind of define the rest of his life.

One was at this music festival, this Christian music festival. It was called a Christian Woodstock that he went to with some friends. Don't make me talk about weather. Please don't make me talk about trends. Saturday night, sitting in a light rain, I walked down and not out of anything other than my heart really finally broke with the deep realization that what had happened on the cross in some infinitesimal way had happened for me. And I gave my life and made a personal decision to trust Jesus Christ as my Savior. I just want to talk about Jesus

And I just want to talk about His love When the 1980 election happened, it was between Jimmy Carter and Reagan. Pence actually, being a Carter supporter, saw this as a contest between a good Christian man in Carter and sort of this vacuous movie star in Ronald Reagan. Reagan obviously ended up winning, and Pence kind of took to Reagan. And by the end of his college experience, he had been won over, like a lot of people in his generation, to Reagan-style movement conservatism. And, you know, also, I think, interestingly, given what would happen, seemed to develop an appreciation for entertainers as presidential candidates or presidents. I just want to think about Jesus

And I just want to think about his love Nice. And is this around the same time he gets into politics? Or does that come later? A few years later. He first ran for Congress when he was 29 years old. 29? Yeah, so he was pretty ambitious early on. And in fact, people who knew him even earlier than that said he wanted to be president one day. They could tell that that's kind of where he was headed. His first congressional campaign was kind of deeply cheesy. I read newspaper clips about it at the time.

His gimmick that he came up with was that he would ride around his district in a single speed bicycle and like short shorts and sneakers, just talking to constituents. And so he was seen as this kind of like earnest, cheesy, nice young man who was trying to run for Congress. That didn't end up working. He lost the race. And then he decided to run again two years later and kind of took a diametrically opposed strategy to win this time, which was that he ran this like blisteringly negative kind of nasty campaign against the incumbent. In fact, it's still remembered in Indiana as one of the nastiest races in the state's history. It's kind of hard to

picture Mike Pence being blisteringly negative, right? It is, but so let me just give you a taste of it. One of the attack ads that the Pence campaign used against their opponent had an actor dressed up as a cartoonish Arab sheik thanking his opponent in this kind of ridiculous accent for advancing the interests of foreign oil. Pence ended up losing that campaign as well. And after that, he wrote this essay called Confessions of a Negative Campaigner that ended up running in a lot of different newspapers where he basically owned up to the fact that he had run this kind of scorched earth campaign, that he didn't feel good about it, that it was out of step with his Christian beliefs,

and swore off negative campaigning for the rest of his political career. What does he do after losing, after being the most positive campaigner imaginable, and then for at least himself being the most negative he could be? He does what any failed politician does. He goes into conservative talk radio. Mike Pence! He started a local talk radio show in Indiana, which he described as Rush Limbaugh on decaf, basically kind of positioning himself as like a kinder, gentler right-wing talk radio host.

He started out in one market. It actually became very popular. Over the next eight years, he expanded the show to 18 different markets. The Amber Waves of Grain broadcasting live from IU East in Richmond is such a perfect time capsule of 90s culture war issues. Like Dr. Kevorkian was a major issue, the assisted suicide issue. The effect of this was that he basically became kind took a vacation to Colorado. And his wife, Karen, actually later described this moment where they were horseback riding in the mountains and they looked up to the heavens and saw two red-tailed hawks soaring over them and took that as a sign that they were supposed to run and that he would glide to victory.

Kind of suggesting that Pence has always seen his political career as kind of part of a greater divine plan. So he runs and he finally wins? That's right. He entered Congress and kind of immediately started to climb the leadership ranks in Congress. He was not known as a policy wonk. Some Republicans at the time had a nickname that they used for him behind his back. They called him Mike Dentz, which is rude.

Let's be honest. So rude. Not even funny. Right. But yeah, he was not known as kind of a policy mind or this kind of great policy genius. But he was very good at ascending within the ranks of leadership. And he actually kind of built enough of a name for himself in Congress that there was some buzz that he might run for president from his congressional seat. But he talked it over with some of his political allies,

and they suggested that he should run for governor first and then run for president, which is what he did in 2012. I am humbled by your trust, honored that you've chosen me to serve, and I am eager to be the governor of all the people of the state of Indiana. And he immediately kind of went to work cutting taxes and taking on local unions and kind of doing things that would get the attention of conservative donors throughout the country and caucus goers in Iowa. He was very much eyeing a presidential run in 2016 and seemed to almost be building his entire governorship

around that idea. But then in early 2015, he kind of stumbled into this culture war debacle that ended up almost derailing his governorship and his future plans to run for president. Back here in the States to a new law in Indiana leading to outrage across the country. It's called the Religious Freedom Act, but critics say it's a free pass to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Basically, if they said, for example, baking a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding was against the business owner's religious beliefs or moral beliefs, then they would be allowed to do that. And he signed the bill. This was kind of an important part of it. He signed the bill in a private ceremony at the state house surrounded by nuns, monks, and kind of conservative lobbyists. And this picture

was released and kind of all hell broke loose in the state. So there was immediate backlash from Democrats. And then that backlash kind of cascaded into a larger backlash from businesses and national corporations. And the NCAA, which is headquartered in Indiana, said that the law could imperil future events, suggesting that they might pull the March Madness tournament from the state. And it became such a controversy that the Indianapolis newspaper actually ran an editorial on its front page with massive all caps letters that just said, fix this now. Mike Pence completely mishandled the situation. You know, he didn't think that it was going to be as controversial as it was. Once it did prove to be controversial, he first doubled down

and even kind of went on national TV to defend the policy. One fix that people have talked about is simply adding sexual orientation as a protected class under the state's civil rights laws. Will you push for that? I will not push for that? I will not push for that. And finally ended up backing down and revising the legislation. But by then, it was kind of too late for Pence's political prospects. His poll numbers were in free fall. The Democrats were raising tons of money to defeat him in re- reelection. And it actually looked to a lot of political observers

like he was headed for defeat when he ran for reelection in 2016. Huh. And then, of course, someone steps in and saves him. I would like to introduce a man who I truly believe will be outstanding in every way and will be the next vice president of the United States, Governor Mike Pence. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. This is what's so interesting about their relationship, right?

Donald Trump effectively saved Mike Pence's career by putting him on the 2016 ticket. When they first met each other, both of them kind of had serious hesitations about whether this partnership would work. You know, Mike Pence had spent most of the 2016 primaries sort of shaking his head in disappointment at some of Donald Trump's antics. He had endorsed Ted Cruz, did not really seem to think that Donald Trump was up to the task. And for Trump's part, he thought that Pence was, according to one aide, prudish, stiff, and embarrassingly poor. Embarrassingly poor? If you talk to anybody who knows Trump,

he really does measure people by how much money they make. And the fact that Pence never had made a lot of money and that financial disclosures showed he was not a wealthy man stuck out to Trump as a red flag in terms of whether they could work together. But he picks him anyway? I'm told that when decision time was coming for Trump to announce a running mate, he was actually personally leaning toward Chris Christie. But a lot of people in the campaign, including in Trump's family, where on July 12th, Trump's plane broke down when he was in Indiana. So Trump kind of was stranded in the state and had dinner with the

Pence's, where Pence was able to woo him and kind of make one last case for why Trump should pick him instead of somebody else like Chris Christie. As it turns out, the plane did not have mechanical problems, I'm told. Basically, Paul Manafort and other people in Trump's orbit just orchestrated this whole thing so that Trump would be able to spend more time with Pence. The plane breaking down thing kind of sounds like divine intervention, though. Well, certainly to Pence, I imagine, right? I mean, that's what's so interesting about Pence's whole career, right? You look at the arc of his career. And from 2015, where he's kind of this embattled small state governor, who seems like he's on the verge of

losing reelection. And now he's a heartbeat away from the presidency. It almost seems like Pence's entire rise has been kind is all part of God's plan, that there's some kind of larger divine purposes at work that he's at the center of. But why? Why Mike Pence, you know? I just don't understand what this guy has to offer. He has less to offer, seemingly, than Donald Trump, maybe the most incompetent president we've had in, you know, generations, if not the history of the country. I mean, I think this is where kind of the mingling of religious belief and political ambition can become sort of dangerous, right?

And I say this as somebody, I'm a person of faith myself. I, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with our public servants being religious people, relying on prayer and scripture for wisdom. All those things are good. They're fine. But I think that when you start to convince yourself that God wants you to succeed professionally, that your quest for power is divinely sanctioned, it starts to give you the ability to excuse any behavior in your quest for power. a moral man, is not very Christian. Maybe any number of policies that this administration has enacted are outside of my Christian beliefs, but all of it's okay because the end is that I'm going to become president, and that justifies the means. When you get into that way of thinking, I do think that it can become not just morally fraught, but I think dangerous

for the country. And that's where Pence's critics at least say that they're worried when they think about the prospect of a President Pence. McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This is Today Explained.