"... darkly comic flim-flammery and low-bore corruption": Let's Talk About The Jussie Smollett Case

Is there something strange about years that end in the number *1* that causes my blogger juices to go awry? In 2011, I posted exactly one post, on December 31, and I did only slightly better this year, with 9 posts in January.  I've missed my blog, however and there will more posts to come. 

To start with, here's an editorial from the Chicago Tribune, in which the Editorial Board ponders the meaning of the Jussie Smollett case: 

Titled "The Tawdry Case of Jussie Smollett Had Comic Relief, But Was Not a Victimless Affair," the editorial was published on December 12, three days after Smollett was found guilty of five felonies. This is the editorial in its entirety: 

The recent trials we've been following have contained enough human pain to make us shudder: The Kyle Rittenhouse case involved two dead Americans; the matter in Georgia was about who caused the death of the 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery; the yet-unresolved Ghislaine Maxwell affair has a backdrop of the cynical abuse of scores, if not hundreds, of impressionable young girls and women over many years.

By those standards, the case of Jussie Smollett has been comic relief.

Smollett, a B-list TV actor, was not accused of either killing or hurting anyone. His trumped-up saga of a deliberately staged, "racially motivated" attack usable for the purposes of personal promotion fits squarely into the Cook County tradition of darkly comic flim-flammery and low-bore corruption.

It matches up well with some of the cases famously recounted on the pages of this newspaper a hundred years ago by the crime reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose trial-room notebook would form the basis for the musical "Chicago." Watkins would have loved writing about Smollett.

Once it became clear something fishy was in play, a conclusion reached Thursday evening by a jury of Smollett's peers, this was a trial that was fun for everyone to discuss.

How was the scheme concocted? Were the two bodybuilding brothers, apparently Smollett's accomplices, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Smollett's Hamlet? Or were they closer to reincarnations of the classic "Saturday Night Live!" duo of Hans und Franz, here to pump anybody up? This case had a tabloid-friendly unspooling, with new twists and turns arriving almost every day.

But despite all the gossipy Tweets and chatter and opinions, there were real victims here. That would be everyone in the future who actually becomes the victim of a violent hate crime, being as Smollett's phony version only seeds needless doubt for the real incidents that surely will follow.

His idea of exploiting such an attack for publicity certainly worked with politicians on Twitter, especially since Smollett had plenty of connections and the immediate backing of a huge PR firm, thanks to his network, Fox Entertainment.

"This was an attempted modern day lynching," tweeted Kamala Harris at the time, praising Smollett's kindness. "This attack was not 'possibly' homophobic," wrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, going after anyone holding back judgment, "it was a racist and homophobic attack." "What happened today to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country," wrote Joe Biden.

Biden was right about that. Just not for the reasons he thought.

Even as these rushed statements appeared on social media, Chicago police had to get down to the nitty gritty of what exactly happened. By all courtroom accounts, the cops took this crime seriously, expending huge amounts of resources on trying to find who had attacked Smollett. Even Smollett said he had been treated with dignity and respect during the initial stages of the investigation. Chicago police get a lot of criticism, including plenty leveled by this page. In this matter, they behaved admirably.

With the aid of cameras and other clues, police quickly figured out all was not as it seemed, and the evidence for this all being faked was passed to Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx. That's where things went off the rails, but not necessarily for the reasons most of the media is saying.

It's tempting to see the Smollett case, whose cause was backed by the attorney and influence peddler Tina Tchen, as another egregious example of Foxx's go-soft approach and reluctance to prosecute criminals, especially since Smollett had made Chicago look like a haven for violent racists and homophobes.

But cooler, nonpartisan heads can understand that with all Chicago has to worry about in the sphere of crime, a first-time offense likely to result in probation probably was not worth allowing to suck up resources that could be spent on finding the actual killers on our streets. Foxx's office was right to offer Smollett a quick deal, and correct to see that there were more important criminals for them to worry about.

But Foxx made one crucial mistake. She didn't require Smollett to admit his guilt and apologize as part of his deal. He should have offered to do that: Had he done so, he would have avoided four felony convictions on his record and, over time, he likely could have resumed his career. But he did not do anything of the kind.

And that's where Chicagoans both pragmatic and invested in fairness grew incensed, how a special prosecutor became involved and, frankly, how we ended where we ended up on Thursday evening when the jury delivered its verdict.

We know that people who are not on a TV show and friendly with politicians like Harris don't get both a sweetheart deal from the prosecutor and the chance to walk around town protesting their innocence. At that point, the Smollett case became about special favors in a city with an egregious history of them. And thanks to the jury, he ended up the loser, pending any appeals.

Smollett wasted a lot of time of some very busy people who have far more important issues to worry about than him. He embarrassed the politicians who supported him and he didn't respect his own fans. Sure, he probably didn't think it would ever come to all this, but he still didn't have the guts to turn off the machine when only he could. Shame on him.

Still, we haven't changed our mind about the limited severity of this crime, the hoopla notwithstanding, and we've no wish to see Smollett languish behind bars. We'd rather he admitted responsibility, got some help and performed meaningful public service.

Ideally right here in Chicago, a city whose reputation he slandered.

Tribune reporter William Lee, in a column written after the verdict, says the Smollett story reeked from the very beginning:

The Jussie Smollett story reeked from the moment this crime reporter laid eyes on it. To paraphrase “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah, there was a certain part of Smollett’s story that was always a little weird. Maybe you felt the same way. I know a lot of street reporters did in those early days. In all my years on the job, I’d never seen a threat letter written from newspaper clippings like some 1980s TV crime drama.

I won’t go into a full recap as most of us have already heard the details a million times, but the basic contradictions of Smollett’s infamous 2 a.m. Subway sandwich run have been masterfully laid out by Noah and Dave Chappelle. But you don’t have to be a comedian to see the absurdity of two well-prepared white racists successfully carrying out an attack during a chance encounter with their target on an empty downtown street in the middle of the night during the coldest week of 2019.

The former “Empire” actor’s nearly three-year journey from beloved victim to pariah took a step toward its conclusion Thursday when a Cook County jury found the actor guilty of five of six counts related to making a false report to police. Listening to the verdict, I was instantly transported back to that cold, prepandemic January morning when I awakened to a television news report of the attack. In hindsight, I’m proud of the fact that while other publications’ headlines blared that Smollett had been the victim of a hate crime, the Tribune’s first story on the incident, by reporter Tracy Swartz and me, was more subdued: “Cops look into report of assault on actor.”

As a longtime crime reporter, I’m loath to speak on active crime stories, but holes began appearing in the Smollett story within the first two hours of working on it. It seemed very clear from the jump that Smollett’s camp gave his version to friendly outlets to get his narrative out, despite assertions that he didn’t want any public attention. The first report was posted to ThatGrapeJuice.net, a celebrity website that somehow had exclusive details of the alleged Chicago attack — the attackers’ ski masks and the noose placed around Smollett’s neck. TMZ followed with new details that the attackers were two white men, along with the racist and homophobic slurs and the now-famous “This is MAGA country” comment. The story also claimed that Smollett suffered a fractured rib, which police later refuted.

I read each story three times during my ride to the newsroom that day and by the time I stepped off the bus, I knew the whole thing sounded off and warned two of my editors about the coming avalanche and that we needed to be careful writing about it. Smollett wasn’t only a handsome young rising star with a hit TV show filmed in Chicago, he was an activist who used his celebrity to champion gay and Black causes. It didn’t take long for A-list celebrities and politicians to share messages of support for Smollett.

The story got kicked into high gear when then-President Donald Trump publicly acknowledged the attack, prompting me to shout the F-word before I could stop myself. A shout-out from a sitting president meant that Smollett’s saga — with its numerous early red flags and strange turns — would remain in the spotlight until its bitter end. The incident thrust Chicago back into the national spotlight for all the worst reasons. We’d gone from a city that launched one American president to being a city constantly attacked by his successor to score cheap brownie points with red state followers.

There were other local ramifications. The case exposed a growing rift between Chicago police and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who earned their eternal enmity for dropping charges against Smollett that March, despite what authorities considered a solid criminal case.

I’ll always recall how Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Supt. Eddie Johnson and Cmdr. Ed Wodnicki were barely able to contain their rage to reporters after news broke over the dropped charges. Police had been suspicious of Smollett’s story early on, critical of the fact that he continued wearing the noose — a feared universal symbol of racial hatred — so that responding officers would see it. And of course there was Smollett’s initial hesitancy to turn over phone evidence that theoretically could have led to his attacker.

Within days, investigators learned the identity of brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who caught a ride-hailing service near the scene. Until the brothers returned from Nigeria in February, sources said, police had one directive: Treat Smollett as a victim until the facts suggest otherwise. For weeks, police kept up the charade as they continued their investigation. The rest is history. Despite the comedy of errors in this tale, it was never a happy one to cover. Even with the prospect of it being a hoax, I was sympathetic to the actor, unsure whether the incident was a display of avarice and ego, or a cry for help by someone suffering a breakdown.

Despite the hot-button nature of the incident, this was a low-stakes Class 4 felony case, and the fact that no one had actually been injured, aside from a bruise under Smollett’s right eye, this story seemed destined to be forgotten. But Smollett broke a cardinal rule: He went into a city that wasn’t his own and loudly proclaimed “Your town wronged me.” Cops in any city would have been put under tremendous pressure to solve the case of an assaulted star. And despite the effort and attention, he wouldn’t admit his falsehood, with the evidence against him mounting. In the end, Smollett was responsible for derailing his own career, reducing his own reputation to ashes and playing for a fool all of those who came to his aid. And now he has been found guilty of what many of us suspected all along.

He should be offered forgiveness and be able to move on with his life and career, after his contrition. Here in Chicago, we have our own problems. None of them are helped by a celebrity coming to town and crying wolf.

Click here to read previous posts about Jussie Smollett. 

The Weakest, Wimpiest, Most Pathetic Crop Of Needy Nincompoops In U.S. History

I always smile when a serious writer uses the word "nincompoop." (Click here to read previous posts about this cool word.) Now conservative Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kathleen Parker, writing at the Washington Post, has this to say about Republicans in 2021: 

With the electoral eviction of Donald Trump from the Oval Office, Republicans had a shot at redemption and resurrection.

They missed and failed — and deserve to spend the next several years in political purgatory. The chaos now enveloping what’s left of the Grand Old Party after four years of catering to an unstable president is theirs to own. Where conservatism once served as a moderating force — gently braking liberalism’s boundless enthusiasm — the former home of ordered liberty has become a halfway house for ruffians, insurrectionists and renegadewarriors.

What does Trump have on these people, one wonders? The continuing loyalty of so many to a man so demonstrably dangerous can’t be explained by “the base,” a word never more aptly applied. What secrets were shared by Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who, after blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 mob attack, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago this week to make amends? It seems that The Don, yet another appropriate nickname, need only purse his button lips and whistle to summon his lap dogs to Palm Beach, there to conspire for the next Big Lie.

The party’s end was inevitable, foreshadowed in 2008 when little-boy Republican males, dazzled by the pretty, born-again, pro-life Alaska governor, thought Sarah Palin should be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The dumbing down of conservatism, in other words, began its terminal-velocity plunge, with a wink and a pair of shiny red shoes. Palin cast a spell as potent as the poppy fields of Oz, but turned the United States into her own moose-poppin,’ gum-smackin’ reality show.

Forget Kansas. We’re not in America anymore.

Eight years of Barack Obama added insult to injury and paved the way for Trump — a gaudier, cinematic version of the “thrillah from Wasilla.” Seizing upon our every worst instinct, he turned Palin’s lipsticked pig into a herd of seething, primitive barbarians. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is warning of yet more violence by domestic extremists, presumably from the ranks of the mob and QAnon conspiracists who stormed the Capitol with blood on their minds.

For Donald Trump, you went down this road? Either Trump has a stockpile of incriminating videos — his people have people, you know — or today’s Republicans are the weakest, wimpiest, most pathetic crop of needy nincompoops in U.S. history.

Suddenly, the “good ones” are worried about their newest member, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a QAnon-promoting female version of Trump — only without the charm. You begin to see how this monster mutates like a certain virus into ever-more-dangerous versions of itself. Among other things, Greene embraces the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and the slaughter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were staged. One struggles for words, but I’ll settle for “creep.”

Recently unearthed video shows Greene chasing David Hogg, the Parkland student who rose to public prominence as a gun-control activist after the February 2018 shooting, goading him to respond to her insinuation that his ability to get appointments with U.S. senators when she couldn’t obviously meant he was a public relations spawn and not a survivor of a terrorist attack.

I confess to early uncertainty about Hogg, who was preternaturally adept at media management and public speaking, suddenly materializing from the fog of horror. But the notion that he was somehow complicit in a manufactured act of mass murder is beyond the pale even for the farthest right.

Good work, GOP. You got yourself a live one. Naturally, Greene has been assigned to the Education and Labor Committee.

Going forward, not only will House Republicans be associated with a colleague who “liked” a Twitter post calling for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s murder. They’ll be attached to QAnon, which promotes the extraordinary fiction that Trump was leading a war against Satan-worshiping pedophiles and cannibals, whose leadership includes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and, oh, by the way, yours truly, as well as U2’s Bono.

To those Republicans who can read: You own all of this. The party isn’t doomed; it’s dead. The chance to move away from Trumpism, toward a more respectful, civilized approach to governance that acknowledges the realities of a diverse nation and that doesn’t surrender to the clenched fist, has slipped away. What comes next is anybody’s guess. But anyone who doesn’t speak out against the myths and lies of fringe groups, domestic terrorists and demagogues such as Trump deserves only defeat — and a lengthy exile in infamy. Good riddance. (This is the column in its entirety.)

Presidential Transitions, Then And Now

Then: January, 1993, the transition from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton:

[Outgoing President George H.W. Bush] was dignity personified. The campaign was spirited. Republicans accused former President Bill Clinton of somehow being politically compromised because of a student trip he took to the Soviet Union in 1969. Bush himself, in a campaign speech, called Clinton a "bozo," a comment he said later he hadn't thought was all that offensive.

And, as a strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, I can tell you we launched our fair share of attacks as well, taunting Bush for pledging "read my lips, no new taxes" and mocking Bush's seeming inaction in the face of a recession. Tame stuff compared to today, to be sure. But the potential for a deep and lasting rupture was real, and both men made a special point to unite the country.

This is where Bush's amazing grace came in. He was a wounded politician, but more than that he was a patriot. "Among the many memories from my first inauguration that I'll cherish for the rest of my life," Clinton recalled to me, "is the extraordinary graciousness that President and Mrs. Bush showed to Hillary, Chelsea and me on what had to have been an incredibly difficult day for them."

The outgoing president and incoming President-elect meet for coffee at the White House before the swearing-in, and one can imagine that the coffee comes with a quite a bit of tension -- especially when you must depart the White House for the last time in the company of the guy who kicked you out. But the Bushes cut through it, Clinton told me. "They treated us with genuine kindness, and expressed a real hope that our country would be successful over the next four years, and that our family would be happy in the White House."

Former first lady Barbara Bush, herself a fierce competitor, shifted into loving grandmother mode. "I'll never forget Mrs. Bush praising Chelsea, who was 12 at the time," Clinton told me, "for the way she handled herself so maturely through the crucible of the campaign. Chelsea replied, 'Thank you, Mrs. Bush, I tried.' And Mrs. Bush said, in her direct, classic way, 'Oh, we all try. But not everyone can do it.'" (From an article at CNN written by Paul Begala; read it here.)

Now: from Donald to Joe Biden

On the morning of January 20, Donald Trump and Melania Trump will depart the White House as President and first lady, but they will not invite their incoming counterparts, Joe and Jill Biden, inside before they do.

The dissolving of one of America's most enduring transfer-of-power rituals -- the outgoing president welcoming the incoming president on the steps of the North Portico, and then riding with them to the United States Capitol -- is just one of the snubs the Trumps are perpetrating as they leave Washington.
Instead of a president and first lady, the Bidens will be greeted by the White House chief usher Timothy Harleth, according to a source familiar with the day's events and planning. Harleth, a 2017 Trump hire from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, will likely not stay on in the Biden administration, the source said, noting the role of chief usher in all probability will be filled by someone more familiar with the incoming president and first lady.

The afternoon of Inauguration Day, then-President Biden will participate in a ceremonial wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery, joined by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

... The Inauguration Day snub of the Biden's comes on the heels of a series of broken norms and childish behavior that comes directly from the President of the United States, who has been vocal about his disinterest in preserving any semblance of decency towards the man who will succeed him.
Trump, according to several sources, is even mulling whether to write a letter to Biden to leave for him in the Oval Office, a standard-bearing tradition.

Melania Trump, who has not been seen in public in more than two weeks, has not reached out to Jill Biden, dashing expectations she would continue the passing along of hospitality to her successor, hosting her for a tour. (Also from CNN, from an article titled "Trumps' snub of Bidens historic in its magnitude," read it here.)

More About Mike Pence

Writing at The Atlantic, Peter Nicholas says Mike Pence has nowhere to go: 

Mike Pence publicly defied the president once in four years, and for that solitary show of independence, his own political future could be all but finished.

The vice president’s swift journey from acolyte to outcast was head-spinning. This is someone who would pause after mentioning Donald Trump’s name during an address so that the audience had time to clap—and who would then stand silently at the lectern when it didn’t. Editing Pence’s speeches, aides would cut references to Trump when they didn’t believe there was any reason to mention him. Reviewing the changes, Pence would take his Sharpie and add Trump’s name back in, a former Trump-administration official told me.

But Pence will see no reward for his fealty, or for his actions on January 6, when he resisted pressure from Trump to toss out the election results. The springboard to the Oval Office that so many vice presidents have used is gone. Not only has Trump’s base turned on him, but Pence is complicit in the Trump administration’s most egregious actions.

Lashing himself to Trump was a path to becoming president—the only path, really—for a man who has long wanted the job. As a lowly representative from Indiana, he talked privately with former Vice President Dan Quayle about how best to position himself for a White House bid, gaming out whether he should run as a member of Congress or as Indiana governor.

Imagining his next move is difficult. “The biggest and most obvious problem he has is he has to distance himself from the president, and when you’re vice president for four years, you can’t do that,” Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former aide to California Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, told me. Alternatively, “going into a crowded primary field [in 2024], he could say, ‘Hey, I’m the guy closest to Donald Trump.’” But after last week, he can’t do that either.

When Pence’s most memorable act is ushering in the Joe Biden presidency, the MAGA crowd becomes less a reliable following than a possible mortal threat. Spurred on by Trump’s remarks at a rally before the Capitol riot, some in the mob went looking for Pence. “Hang Pence!” they chanted, as they flooded the halls of Congress. Worried about Pence’s safety, federal agents have now surrounded his official residence in Washington, D.C., with chain-link fences and concrete barriers for extra protection. Any credit Pence gets for certifying Biden’s victory comes from people who probably wouldn’t vote for him anyway. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” Whalen said.

Pence’s rise and fall is emblematic of that of so many people who tethered themselves to Trump with disastrous results. When he agreed to become Trump’s running mate, his career was in peril. He was an obscure governor facing a difficult reelection campaign. At the time, his national profile centered on a bill he’d signed that critics feared could be used to discriminate against the LGBTQ community on religious grounds. By putting him on the ticket in 2016, Trump rescued him from a potentially career-ending loss—a point that Trump hasn’t hesitated to make in private discussions with White House aides.

From the first, Pence worried about alienating a thin-skinned president in constant need of validation. He stayed on message even when there was no message. James Melville, a former U.S. ambassador to Estonia, told me about a visit Pence made to that nation in July 2017. When Pence would huddle privately with aides, he’d invariably ask: “Were there any tweets? Did I miss anything?” Melville recalled. “I thought it was shocking and amusing” that Pence would be engaged in so much “hand-wringing over what the boss was saying.” Working under Trump, Melville said, was akin to “living with an alcoholic. You’re always waiting for the next disaster.”

My first exposure to Pence came during the 2016 transition, and I was immediately struck by his determination to bind himself to Trump. He’d agreed to an interview, but recited only talking points that ate our time—and revealed nothing. With his wife, Karen, sitting nearby, he stood up at the end and, with some sympathy in his voice, asked if he’d said anything that might prove useful. Not really.

Over and over, he gave Trump cover and vouched for him with the evangelical voters who were a crucial part of Trump’s governing coalition. He stayed when families were separated at the border and when the president pressured a foreign leader to find dirt on Biden. He stayed through the tweetstorms and tantrums and false claims of election fraud. “He tends to seek approval from something bigger and more powerful than himself,” Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who prayed and read scripture with Pence when he was in Congress, told me. “And in this case, it’s the president.”

Embracing Trump was always a gamble. As Brendan Buck, a former House Republican–leadership aide, told me, “There are no happy endings when it comes to Trump.” In this partnership, the president got more out of the bargain. Pence comes away damaged, while Trump, at least, got a vice president who ran a functioning operation.

Pence’s office was a corner of the Trump administration that actually resembled a working executive office. His staff didn’t turn over every three days. There was little public drama and, whatever you may think of his politics, a sense of mission. Career government officials with no love for the president told me that Pence was a fair intermediary who’d listen to their arguments. Joseph Grogan, who left his job as the director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council in the spring, said that when people ask him who they should call at the White House with a question or problem, he suggests Pence’s office. “I tell them that that’s the only place you can really go right now, because they’re still working,” he said. Now that Trump is holed up in the White House nursing his grievances, Pence is, in some respects, stepping into the role of acting president. Yesterday, he went to the Capitol to thank the National Guard troops deployed to protect the building ahead of Inauguration Day—the sort of gesture a president would normally make.

Until the election’s grisly aftermath, Trump seemed positioned to become a GOP kingmaker who’d hold considerable sway over the political fortunes of any West Wing aspirants, including his vice president. (That is, if he himself didn’t run in 2024.) Now the party faces a reckoning. “Trump’s inexcusable behavior likely blew himself up politically, which may become a huge gift to the Republican Party,” said a former senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. The official framed Pence as a casualty of Trump’s recklessness. His recent treatment of Pence showed “a complete lack of character.” What Trump was imploring Pence to do by rejecting the election’s certification was not “legal and not constitutional … It’s ridiculous.”

Yet Pence has no obvious place in GOP electoral politics even if his party repudiates Trump. Grateful though they might be that Pence honored the popular vote, independents and Never Trump Republicans have plenty of plausible alternatives when the 2024 primary season rolls around. Consistent and unapologetic critics of the president, such as Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, would most likely attract those voters. In the meantime, the Trump base is more likely to gravitate toward one of the president’s adult children, or maybe one of the two GOP senators who pushed to reject the electoral-vote count: Ted Cruz of Texas or Josh Hawley of Missouri. Pence was never a lock for the presidency, but now he simply has no lane left.

“The hardest core of the Trump crowd is going to turn on him—and Trump is going to make sure that they do,” Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson, told me.

This week, Pence offered Trump one last act of service, rejecting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for him to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and bounce the president from office. But come January 20, he’ll be in the same position as he was after the Capitol riot: out in the cold. (This is the article in its entirety.)

As Donald gets ready to slink back into private life, having effectively destroyed whatever legacy he might have had and getting himself impeached for a second time, I've been wondering if, deep in his soul, such as it is, Donald has any regrets about putting himself in the spotlight of the presidency. To answer Ronald Reagan's famous question, Donald isn't better off than he was four years ago. 

I'm having the same thoughts about Mike Pence. I've believed all along (and said here in the blog,) that the only reason Mike Pence agreed to work for Donald Trump is that he thought it would lead to the Oval Office. Remember, four years ago it was completely reasonable to think that Donald might not last a full four-year term. He would do something stupid, something egregiously illegal, his cholesterol-ridden heart would give out, or maybe he would just decide being president isn't that much fun after all and quit. Voila! Mike Pence would be president.  

It didn't happen and here we are. Unless something happens within the next 44 hours, Donald will have served a complete term and Mike Pence, like pretty much everyone who has worked for Donald, leaves with his reputation destroyed and his career in ruins. He's not better off after four years either.    

Forbes Says "Don't Hire Them"

Randall Lane, the Chief Content Officer of Forbes Media, issued the following statement on January 7. He buried the lede in the second-to-last paragraph:

Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, [Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham & Kayleigh McEnany] and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.
  

In other words, Karma.

This is the article in full:

Yesterday’s insurrection was rooted in lies. That a fair election was stolen. That a significant defeat was actually a landslide victory. That the world’s oldest democracy, ingeniously insulated via autonomous state voting regimens, is a rigged system. Such lies-upon-lies, repeated frequently and fervently, provided the kindling, the spark, the gasoline.

That Donald Trump devolved from commander-in-chief to liar-in-chief didn’t surprise Forbes: As we’ve chronicled early and often, for all his billions and Barnum-like abilities, he’s been shamelessly exaggerating and prevaricating to our faces for almost four decades. More astonishing: the number of people willing to lend credence to that obvious mendacity on his behalf.

In this time of transition – and pain – reinvigorating democracy requires a reckoning. A truth reckoning. Starting with the people paid by the People to inform the People.

As someone in the business of facts, it’s been especially painful to watch President Trump’s press secretaries debase themselves. Yes, as with their political bosses, spins and omissions and exaggerations are part of the game. But ultimately in PR, core credibility is the coin of the realm.

From Day One at the Trump White House, up has been down, yes has been no, failure has been success. Sean Spicer set the tone with the inauguration crowd size – the worst kind of whopper, as it demanded that people disbelieve their own eyes. The next day, Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s lie with a new term, “alternative facts.” Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied at scale, from smearing those who accused Trump of sexual harassment to conjuring jobs statistics. Her successor, Stephanie Grisham, over the course of a year, never even held a press conference, though the BS continued unabated across friendly outlets. And finally, Kayleigh McEnany, Harvard Law graduate, a propaganda prodigy at 32 who makes smiling falsehood an art form. All of this magnified by journalists too often following an old playbook ill-prepared for an Orwellian communication era.

As American democracy rebounds, we need to return to a standard of truth when it comes to how the government communicates with the governed. The easiest way to do that, from where I sit, is to create repercussions for those who don’t follow the civic norms. Trump’s lawyers lie gleefully to the press and public, but those lies, magically, almost never made it into briefs and arguments – contempt, perjury and disbarment keep the professional standards high.

So what’s the parallel in the dark arts of communication? Simple: Don’t let the chronic liars cash in on their dishonesty. Press secretaries like Joe Lockhart, Ari Fleischer and Jay Carney, who left the White House with their reputations in various stages of intact, made millions taking their skills — and credibility — to corporate America. Trump’s liars don’t merit that same golden parachute. Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

This isn’t cancel culture, which is a societal blight. (There’s surely a nice living for each of these press secretaries on the true-believer circuit.) Nor is this politically motivated, as Forbes’ pro-entrepreneur, pro-growth worldview has generally placed it in the right-of-center camp over the past century — this standard needs to apply to liars from either party. It’s just a realization that, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, in a thriving democracy, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Our national reset starts there.

Walking Naked Into A Cold And Friendless World

I know I'm not the only one who's enjoying watching Donald destroy himself. Now Jonathan Chait, writing at New York magazine, shares his thoughts about what awaits Donald when he is no longer president. The article is titled Trump Is on the Verge of Losing Everything: 

President Trump’s second impeachment, like the other repudiations he has suffered, feels provisional. He is never quite banished. He is impeached, but Senate Republicans refuse to convict or even allow evidence into his trial. He loses the election, but won’t concede, and may just run again. He is impeached again, but his trial is delayed until after his departure date. It feels as if we have spent four years watching the wheels come off, yet the vehicle somehow still keeps rolling forward.

But now, finally, the end is at hand. Trump is suffering a series of wounds that, in combination, are likely to be fatal after Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20. Trump is obviously going to surrender his office. Beyond that looming defeat, he is undergoing a cascading sequence of political, financial, and legal setbacks that cumulatively spell utter ruin. Trump is not only losing his job but quite possibly everything else.

One crisis, though the most opaque, concerns Trump’s business. Many of his sources of income are drying up, either owing to the coronavirus pandemic or, more often, his toxic public image. The Washington Post has toted up the setbacks facing the Trump Organization, which include cancellations of partnerships with New York City government, three banks, the PGA Championship, and a real-estate firm that handled many of his leasing agreements. Meanwhile, he faces the closure of many of his hotels. And he is staring down two defamation lawsuits. Oh, and Trump has to repay, over the next four years, more than $300 million in outstanding loans he personally guaranteed.

Trump has reinvented his business model before, and he may discover new income streams, probably by monetizing the loyalty of his fanatical base through some kind of Trump-branded “news” organization, as has been predicted since before the 2016 election. But starting a media property is difficult and hardly a guarantee to make money. (It’s not as if conservative alt-news fans have nowhere else to find an angry white man shouting about antifa, socialism, and Black Lives Matter protesters.) One Republican who speaks to Trump hopefully suggested Trump can make money holding more rallies: “If you can [get] 30,000 people to show up and you charge them $5, that’s real money,” he told the Post two months ago. Actually, a $150,000 gross payout, before deducting the costs of renting a venue, staff, security, and travel, is probably a negligible — or even negative — profit, not “real money,” and the fact it’s being considered reveals a certain desperation.

And if Trump can’t make money luring customers to watch him do the “Lock them up” chant and dance to “Macho Man,” and he can’t do the hard work of launching a lucrative media brand, then he’s back to giving away his rants for free on other peoples’ networks (now that he can no longer give them away for free on Twitter).

If this were still 2015, Trump could fall back on his tried-and-true income generators: money laundering and tax fraud. The problem is that his business model relied on chronically lax enforcement of those financial crimes. And now he is under investigation by two different prosecutors in New York State for what appear to be black-letter violations of tax law. At minimum, these probes will make it impossible for him to stay afloat by stealing more money. At maximum, he faces the serious risk of millions of dollars in fines or a criminal prosecution that could send him to prison.

Trump reportedly plans to pardon himself along with a very broad swath of his hangers-on. But a pardon hardly solves his problems. For one thing, a federal pardon is useless against state-level crimes. For another, the self-pardon is a theoretical maneuver that’s never been tested, and it’s not clear whether the courts will agree it is even possible to do so.

And what’s more, a pardon might constitute an admission of guilt, which could open up Trump to more private lawsuits. Remember how O. J. Simpson was ordered to pay $34 million to the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, even after he beat the murder rap? The families of victims of the January 6 riot might well sue Trump for his role in inciting the violence. Trump might try pardoning himself to make sure he can’t be charged with criminal incitement, but admitting the crime makes it even easier to bring a civil suit against him.

The easiest way out of the self-pardon dilemma would be for Trump to make a deal with Mike Pence, under which he would resign before leaving office and Pence would grant him a pardon. Unfortunately for Trump, Pence is still sore about the whole “whipping up a paramilitary mob to lynch him” episode. ABC reported recently that Trump does not want to resign, in part because he doesn’t trust his vice-president to pardon him.

The assumption until now has always been that Trump wouldn’t really be convicted of crimes or sentenced to prison, despite the fairly clear evidence of his criminality. American ex-presidents don’t go to jail; they go on book tours.

That supposition wasn’t wrong, exactly. It rested on the understanding of a broad norm of legal deference to powerful public officials and an understanding of the dangers of criminalizing political disagreement. But what has happened to Trump in the weeks since the election, and especially since the insurrection, is that he has been stripped of his elite impunity. The displays of renunciation by corporate donors and Republican officials, even if they lack concrete authority, have sent a clear message about Donald Trump’s place in American society.

It might be easy to overlook the significance of Mitch McConnell letting it be known that he wishes to be rid of Trump. McConnell probably won’t push for Trump’s conviction in a second impeachment trial, but he does wish to disqualify Trump from holding office and clear away the threat of a third straight presidential election with Trump at the top of the ticket. A prison sentence would solve that problem nicely.

McConnell obviously can’t dictate decisions by prosecutors or courts. But courts do follow the lead of political elites. And if McConnell sees Trump as a liability for the party and the conservative movement, the ideologue judges he helped install just might see it the same way. Trump will be staving off lawsuits, state prosecutions, and possibly federal prosecutions. He needs help from the courts, and the reserves of latent deference and sympathy he might have counted on to save him will be exhausted.

At noon on January 20, Trump will be in desperate shape. His business is floundering, his partners are fleeing, his loans are delinquent, prosecutors will be coming after him, and the legal impunity he enjoyed through his office will be gone. He will be walking naked into a cold and friendless world. What appeared to be a brilliant strategy for escaping consequences was merely a tactic for putting them off. The bill is coming due. (This is the article in its entirety.)

Yes, He Really Is That Stupid

In a question posted at Eugene Robinson's Live Chat yesterday, the poster pointed out that by trying to save his presidency, Donald has in fact damaged himself: 

Q: We know Trump doesn't care about the country, but he does care about his reputation, his legacy, his business prospects and his golf courses. And yet, if he had sat down the day after the election and said to himself, how can I destroy myself most effectively between now and Inauguration Day, he couldn't have come up with a better plan than what happened last week. This whole thing has been so contrary to his own best interests. I guess my question is, and I know the answer, Can he really be that stupid? 

A: You really do answer your own question.

An article posted last night at the Washington Post lays out the damage: 

In November — as President Trump began his effort to overturn the election he had lost — his longtime friend Tom Barrack called him with advice: Stop, for the sake of your business.

The Trump Organization was already struggling, hurt by political backlash and coronavirus-related closures, facing huge unpaid loans. Barrack told Trump that he could help that business — as well as his aides, and the country itself — by ensuring a peaceful transition, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

An “elegant” exit, Barrack said, could preclude what could be a painful future: millions of dollars in legal costs, rampant investigations and more boycotts of his businesses.

Trump did not follow Barrack’s advice.

Now, the Trump Organization is facing the consequences: In the past week, it has lost a bank, an e-commerce platform and the privilege of hosting a world-famous golf tournament, and its hopes of hosting another have been dashed. In the future, the Trump Organization also could lose its D.C. hotel and even its children’s carousel in Central Park, if government landlords in Washington and New York reevaluate their contracts with Trump.

Trump lost a much bigger broker relationship Tuesday night when real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield told The Washington Post it would no longer work with him. The company has handled an array of business for Trump for many years, including office leasing at Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street, and retail leasing in Chicago. It means that Trump’s company will quickly have to find someone else to handle lease negotiations at some of his most prominent properties.“Cushman & Wakefield has made the decision to no longer do business with The Trump Organization,” the company said in a statement.

By refusing to acknowledge that he would be returning to private life, Trump appears to have sabotaged what could have been his best chance at success in that realm — a rebound of the battered Trump brand.

Now, through his encouragement of rioters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol, Trump has made his company a pariah and driven away allies who could have brought it revenue and post-politics credibility.

“Most financial institutions and investors avoided doing business with him before he ran for president, and the situation now has only gotten worse,” said Kathryn Wylde, the leader of the Partnership for New York City, an influential group that includes the leaders of banks and Fortune 500 companies.

Wylde was able to secure support for an open letter against Trump’s efforts to overturn the election from almost 200 major companies — including most of the major banks and real estate firms in New York — within 36 hours, a sign of how angry many are with his actions. That was before Jan. 6.

“If he remains a visible player, no one will want to be associated with him in any kind of public way, because he is going to symbolize the destabilization of the American political system,” Wylde said.

The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The White House declined to comment.

One senior administration official said Trump was particularly infuriated about the PGA of America’s decision to move the 2022 PGA Championship away from Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf course. Trump wanted to know what legal rights his company had to stop the organization from moving it.

The official, speaking like some others on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly, said Trump had been a bit “shellshocked” at the corporate backlash to his comments preceding the attack on the Capitol.

A former senior administration official said that Trump has long wanted regular updates on how his businesses are performing — particularly his Mar-a-Lago Club and the Bedminster golf club. “The happiest I saw the president was when all the biggest people in business were around him and kissing his ring,” the former official said, citing one particular event in Florida where real estate honchos and others each paid $580,000 to Trump’s campaign.

Trump still owns his organization but has given day-to-day leadership to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric. The company has not said what Trump’s role there will be after he leaves office Jan. 20.

Even if Trump had conceded his race to Biden without drama, he would have returned to a company that had been diminished — literally and metaphorically — since he took office in January 2017.

Four Trump-branded hotels had closed. The company’s plans for new hotel chains had fizzled. The remaining hotels had been hit by political backlash, and then by the pandemic, which has devastated the hospitality industry: At Trump’s Chicago hotel in the fall, the managing director told investors, “It’s going to be very, very tough to keep the boat afloat.”

The D.C. hotel’s BLT Prime restaurant had quietly lost its decorated chef, David Burke, who told The Post on Tuesday that he left in the fall after ESquared Hospitality, the New York-based company that operates the upscale steakhouse, ended his contract. Burke said it was probably because of the economics of the pandemic.

Trump has at times railed about business losses resulting from his being president, a senior administration official said, complaining in the Oval Office that the scrutiny and bad publicity were costing him “billions.”

Trump also is facing state-level investigations into his financial practices in New York, and more than $400 million in loans will come due in the next few years.

That was bad. But as of Election Day, Trump still had partners who could help him recover.

Then came the attack on the Capitol.

The first backlash fell upon, of all things, the Trump website that sells candles and T-shirts.

TrumpStore.com had been hosted by the e-commerce website Shopify — until last week.

“Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence,” the company said. As of Tuesday evening, the site was still down.

Then Trump lost the real estate broker working to sell his D.C. hotel. He lost the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four majors, which was scheduled to be played at his Bedminster, N.J., club in 2022. The event would have given him a massive spotlight in a sport he loves.

In Britain, Trump’s hopes of landing another major golf tournament — the British Open — were dashed, as the organizers said they would not use Trump’s Turnberry club in Scotland for “the foreseeable future.”

This week, Trump lost his accounts at New York’s Signature Bank, which gave back the money and put out a statement telling him to resign. New York City said it was “reviewing whether legal grounds exist” to terminate Trump’s contracts for ice rinks, the carousel and the city-owned golf course.

Also Tuesday, Professional Bank — a Florida entity that lent Trump’s company $11.2 million in 2018 to buy the president’s sister’s home near Mar-a-Lago — said it would no longer do business with Trump.

“Professional Bank has decided not to engage in any further business with the Trump Organization and its affiliates, and will be winding down the relationship effective immediately,” the bank said in a statement. Trump also has a money market account at the bank worth at least $5 million, according to his most recent financial disclosure. The bank’s decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

That may not be the extent of Trump’s troubles.

He still owes that $400 million, much of it to Deutsche Bank. Under normal circumstances, a borrower might seek to refinance or extend those loans, perhaps by getting a loan from a different bank. But experts say the former president is likely to have extreme difficulty finding a Wall Street bank willing to refinance properties that he controls.

At Deutsche Bank, which had bailed Trump out of financial hardships before, his personal banker resigned recently. And his existing loans with Deutsche Bank are on properties that have suffered severely from pandemic-related business closures. The New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank had determined it would not do business with Trump in the future. A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment to The Post.

Also, at one of Trump’s most troubled and debt-saddled properties, he will soon have a new landlord: the Biden administration.

Trump’s D.C. hotel operates in the federally owned Old Post Office building under a contract with the federal government. For several years, therefore, Trump has effectively been his own landlord — and a fairly understanding one.

Since Trump was elected, the General Services Administration, which oversees the lease, has approved his ownership — despite a clause saying the lease could not benefit an elected official — and blocked House Democrats’ inquiries into the hotel. The GSA has said Trump is in compliance because he wasn’t an elected official when he signed the lease.

One of those Democrats, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.) said Tuesday that he hoped Biden’s team would release documents to show whether Trump derived improper benefits from the contract while president.

“My Committee’s investigation has not ended — it was stonewalled. I expect our records requests to be honored by the Biden administration,” DeFazio said in a statement to The Post.

Still, Trump’s D.C. hotel struggled: Company documents obtained by The Post said the hotel had been running nearly half-empty, even before the pandemic, The Post has reported. The company sought to sell the operation, then pulled it off the market after the novel coronavirus hit. Trump borrowed about $170 million from Deutsche Bank to renovate the building.

Now some experts think the Biden administration may have grounds simply to revoke the lease, particularly if Trump runs into further legal trouble. One clause in the contract says Trump would be in violation if he is “under investigation by any government authority for alleged criminal activity” — meaning federal or D.C. agencies.

Steven Schooner, an expert on contract law at George Washington University, said that should be enough.

“By law and regulation, our government need only do business with contractors that ‘have a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics,’ ” Schooner said. Schooner said Biden’s administration should sever the contract.

“At a moment when major private-sector firms, concerned for their reputations, are publicly disassociating the Trump Organization like rats from a sinking ship, this isn’t rocket science,” he said.

A Biden transition spokesman declined to comment.

As of Tuesday night, Eric Trump had not tweeted at all since the day of the Capitol attack. The Trump Organization’s official Twitter account has been silent since Jan. 1, when it wished the world a happy new year. (This is the article in its entirety.) 

The End Is Near?

Josh Marshall, writing at Talking Points Memo, says events are closing in on Donald:

As you can see, the tempo of events is moving rapidly now. Donald Trump not finishing his term of office now seems like a real possibility, as astonishing as that may seem. A number of developments are coming together, like converging waves that build on each other.

There are two things I think we should be thinking about as developments which led to this quickening.

First, you may have seen that the US Attorney in DC today said people will be shocked when the [sic] find out the totality of what happened in the Capitol last Wednesday. It is almost certain that top congressional leaders have been briefed on these investigations. They likely know what’s coming. That could be moving things along.

Second, this morning President Trump departed the White House and gave some brief remarks to reporters. The tone of his remarks suggested he felt confident he was in the clear. Pence had ruled out the 25th Amendment and Republicans were holding tough on impeachment. He said he had nothing to apologize for and essentially threatened more violence if he were impeached.

That sent a clear message to anyone with any doubts what the last eight days of Trump’s presidency will be like. A number of Republicans, inexplicably, were on TV over the last few days saying ‘well, that got crazy so he’s learned his lesson.’ Obviously that was never the case. This morning he made that crystal clear.

I suspect both of these developments and especially the first helped quicken the erosion of his support which now appears to be on the verge of collapse. (This is the article, which was posted last night, in its entirety.)

Mike Pence For President? Umm, No.

Did Mike Pence destroy his chance to be elected president by standing up to Donald Trump? In an article titled "Pence Reached His Limit With Trump. It Wasn't Pretty," the New York Times says yes:  

WASHINGTON — For Vice President Mike Pence, the moment of truth had arrived. After three years and 11 months of navigating the treacherous waters of President Trump’s ego, after all the tongue-biting, pride-swallowing moments where he employed strategic silence or florid flattery to stay in his boss’s good graces, there he was being cursed by the president.

Mr. Trump was enraged that Mr. Pence was refusing to try to overturn the election. In a series of meetings, the president had pressed relentlessly, alternately cajoling and browbeating him. Finally, just before Mr. Pence headed to the Capitol to oversee the electoral vote count last Wednesday, Mr. Trump called the vice president’s residence to push one last time.

“You can either go down in history as a patriot,” Mr. Trump told him, according to two people briefed on the conversation, “or you can go down in history as a pussy.”

The blowup between the nation’s two highest elected officials then played out in dramatic fashion as the president publicly excoriated the vice president at an incendiary rally and sent agitated supporters to the Capitol where they stormed the building — some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

Evacuated to the basement, Mr. Pence huddled for hours while Mr. Trump tweeted out an attack on him rather than call to check on his safety.

It was an extraordinary rupture of a partnership that had survived too many challenges to count.

The loyal lieutenant who had almost never diverged from the president, who had finessed every other possible fracture, finally came to a decision point he could not avoid. He would uphold the election despite the president and despite the mob. And he would pay the price with the political base he once hoped to harness for his own run for the White House.

“Pence had a choice between his constitutional duty and his political future, and he did the right thing,” said John Yoo, a legal scholar consulted by Mr. Pence’s office. “I think he was the man of the hour in many ways — for both Democrats and Republicans. He did his duty even though he must have known, when he did it, that that probably meant he could never become president.”

Former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics and a longtime friend of Mr. Pence before they drifted apart over the president, said he was relieved the vice president had finally taken a stand.

“There were many points where I wished he would have separated, spoke out, but I’m glad he did it when he did,” Mr. Flake said. “I wish he would have done it earlier, but I’m sure grateful he did it now. And I knew he would.”

Not everyone gave Mr. Pence much credit, arguing that he should hardly be lionized for following the Constitution and maintaining that his deference to the president for nearly four years enabled Mr. Trump’s assault on democracy in the first place.

“I’m glad he didn’t break the law, but it’s kind of hard to call somebody courageous for choosing not to help overthrow our democratic system of government,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey. “He’s got to understand that the man he’s been working for and defending loyally is almost single-handedly responsible for creating a movement in this country that wants to hang Mike Pence.”

The rift between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence has dominated their final days in office — not least because the vice president has the power under the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office with support of the cabinet. The House voted on Tuesday demanding that Mr. Pence take such action or else it would impeach Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pence sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Tuesday refusing to act. But Mr. Trump has been nervous enough about it that he finally broke five days of the cold shoulder to invite his vice president to the Oval Office on Monday night to smooth over their split. The official description of the hourlong conversation was “good”; the unofficial description was “nonsubstantive” and “stilted.”

The clash is the third time in 20 years that a departing president and vice president came to conflict in their last days. After Vice President Al Gore lost his presidential campaign in 2000, he had a bitter fight with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office over who was to blame. Eight years later, just days before leaving office, Vice President Dick Cheney castigated President George W. Bush for refusing to pardon I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, for perjury in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Trump came into office with no real understanding of how his predecessors had handled relationships with their running mates. In the early days, when it became clear that there would be no organizational chart or formal decision-making process, Mr. Pence made himself a regular presence in the Oval Office, simply showing up with no agenda, often walking into a policy discussion for which he had received no briefing materials.

He arrived in the West Wing each morning, received an update about when the president was coming down from the residence and then simply stationed himself in the Oval Office for most of the day. He was almost never formally invited to anything and his name was rarely on official meeting manifests. But he was almost always around.

Calm and unflappable, Mr. Pence took on the role of confidant for cabinet secretaries and other officials fearing Mr. Trump’s ire, advising how to broach uncomfortable topics with the president without triggering him.

Not angering Mr. Trump “was a key objective of his,” observed David J. Shulkin, the former secretary of veterans affairs. “He tried very hard to straddle a very tough line.” But that meant Mr. Pence’s own views were often opaque.

“Were the policies and the statements being put out, were they ones that he completely agreed with?” Dr. Shulkin asked. “Or was it his strategy that it is better to be in the room, it is better to be a trusted party to help moderate some of those strategies and the way to do that is not to publicly disagree? I think that was a really hard one to figure out, exactly where he stood.”

Mr. Pence ultimately discovered that loyalty to Mr. Trump only matters until it does not. Tension between the two had grown in recent months as the president railed privately about Mr. Pence. The vice president’s allies believed Mr. Trump was stirred up in part by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, who told him that Pence aides were leaking to reporters. That helped create a toxic atmosphere between the two offices even before Election Day.

When Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results were rejected at every turn by state officials and judges, Mr. Trump was told, incorrectly, that the vice president could stop the final validation of the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in his role as president of the Senate presiding over the Electoral College count.

Mr. Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, researched the matter and concluded the vice president had no such authority. Prodded by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, two of his lawyers, Mr. Trump kept pressing.

Mr. Pence’s office solicited more constitutional opinions, including from Mr. Yoo, a prominent conservative at the University of California at Berkeley who served in Mr. Bush’s administration.

In the Oval Office last week, the day before the vote, Mr. Trump pushed Mr. Pence in a string of encounters, including one meeting that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and argued to Mr. Pence that he did have the power to act.

The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, Mr. Pence’s personal lawyer, called J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge revered by conservatives — and for whom Mr. Eastman had once clerked. Mr. Luttig agreed to quickly write up his opinion that the vice president had no power to change the outcome, then posted it on Twitter.

Within minutes, Mr. Pence’s staff incorporated Mr. Luttig’s reasoning, citing him by name, into a letter announcing the vice president’s decision not to try to block electors. Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Luttig said it was “the highest honor of my life” to play a role in preserving the Constitution.

After the angry call cursing Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump riled up supporters at the rally against his own vice president, saying, “I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

“He set Mike Pence up that day by putting it on his shoulders,” said Ryan Streeter, an adviser to Mr. Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. “That’s a pretty unprecedented thing in American politics. For a president to throw his own vice president under the bus like that and to encourage his supporters to take him on is something just unconscionable in my mind.”

Mr. Pence was already in his motorcade to the Capitol by that point. When the mob burst into the building, Secret Service agents evacuated him and his wife and children, first to his office off the floor and later to the basement. His agents urged him to leave the building, but he refused to abandon the Capitol. From there, he spoke with congressional leaders, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — but not the president.

A Republican senator later said he had never seen Mr. Pence so angry, feeling betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. To Mr. Trump, one adviser said, the vice president had entered “Sessions territory,” referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before being fired. (A vice president cannot be dismissed by a president.)

On Thursday, the day after the siege, Mr. Pence stayed away from the White House, avoiding Mr. Trump. The next day, he went in, but spent most of the day at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door, where he held a farewell party for his staff.

But aides said Mr. Pence did not want to become a long-term nemesis of a vindictive president, and by Monday he was back in the West Wing.

Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence plans to attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration, then expects to divide time between Washington and Indiana, possibly starting a leadership political committee, writing a book and campaigning for congressional Republicans.

But no matter what comes next, he will always be remembered for one moment. “We’re very lucky that the vice president isn’t a maniac,” said Joe Grogan, Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser until last year. “In many ways, I think it vindicates the decision of Mike Pence to hang in there this long.” (This is the article in its entirety.)

The subject of Pence's political future also came up on Morning Joe this morning, as Mika and George Conway discussed the fact that Pence is refusing to invoke the 25th Amendment to get Trump out of office. Mr. Conway said this: "If Michael Pence thinks he's going to be president any other way than the 25th Amendment or impeachment, he's smokin' something." 

One week from today, (Yay!) Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States. Four years from now, will Mike Pence be inaugurated as the 47th? My guess is no. 

A Pickle For Mike Pence (Or Let's Watch The VP Squirm)

One week ago, in an Opinion piece at the NY Times titled "Will Pence Do the Right Thing?," Neal K. Katyal and John Monsky pondered the vice president's situation: 

President Trump recently tweeted that “the ‘Justice’ Department and FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud,” followed by these more ominous lines: “Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th.”

The unmistakable reference is to the day Congress will count the Electoral College’s votes, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. Mr. Trump is leaning on the vice president and congressional allies to invalidate the November election by throwing out duly certified votes for Joe Biden.

Mr. Pence thus far has not said he would do anything like that, but his language is worrisome. Last week, he said: “We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to win Georgia, we’re going to save America,” as a crowd screamed, “Stop the steal.”

And some Republicans won’t let up. On Monday, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and other politicians filed a frivolous lawsuit, which has multiple fatal flaws in both form and substance, in an attempt to force the vice president to appoint pro-Trump electors.

Mr. Trump himself has criticized virtually everyone’s view of the election, from that of the Supreme Court to the F.B.I. to Senator Mitch McConnell, but he has never attacked Mr. Pence, suggesting he has hopes for the vice president.

But as a matter of constitutional text and history, any effort on Jan. 6 is doomed to fail. It would also be profoundly anti-democratic and unconstitutional.

Both Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment say that the votes of the Electoral College are to be opened by the “president of the Senate,” meaning the vice president. The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1887 to avoid chaotic counts like the one that followed the 1876 election, adds important details. It provides a detailed timeline to tabulate electoral votes, culminating with the final count to take place on Jan. 6, and it delineates the powers of the vice president.

He is to be the “presiding officer” (meaning he is to preserve order and decorum), open the ballot envelopes, provide those results to a group of tellers, call for any objection by members of Congress, announce the results of any votes on objections, and ultimately announce the result of the vote.

Nothing in either the text of the Constitution or the Electoral Count Act gives the vice president any substantive powers. His powers are ministerial, and that circumscribed role makes general sense: The whole point of an election is to let the people decide who will rule them. If an incumbent could simply maneuver to keep himself in office — after all, a maneuver to protect Mr. Trump also protects Mr. Pence — the most foundational precept of our government would be gravely undermined. In America, “we the people,” not “we, the vice president,” control our destiny.

The drafters of the Electoral Count Act consciously insisted on this weakened role for the vice president. They guarded against any pretense he might have to throw out a particular state’s votes, saying that the vice president must open “all certificates and papers purporting to be” electoral votes. They further said, in the event of a dispute, both chambers of Congress would have to disagree with a particular state’s slate of electoral votes to reject them. And they made it difficult for Congress to disagree, adding measures such as a “safe harbor” provision and deference to certification by state officials.

In this election, certification is clear. There are no ongoing legal challenges in the states of any merit whatsoever. All challenges have lost, spectacularly and often, in the courts. The states and the electors have spoken their will. Neither Vice President Pence nor the loyal followers of President Trump have a valid basis to contest anything.

To be sure, this structure creates awkwardness, as it forces the vice president to announce the result even when personally unfavorable.

After the close election of 1960, Richard Nixon, as vice president, counted the votes for his opponent, John Kennedy. Al Gore, in perhaps one of the more dramatic moments of our Republic’s short history, counted the votes and reported them in favor of George W. Bush.

Watching Mr. Gore count the votes, shut off all challenges and deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush was a powerful moment in our democracy. By the time he counted the votes, America and the world knew where he stood. And we were all lifted up when Mr. Gore, at the end, asked God to bless the new president and vice president and joined the chamber in applause.

Republican leaders — including Senators McConnell, Roy Blunt and John Thune — have recognized the outcome of the election, despite the president’s wrath. Mr. McConnell put it in clear terms: “The Electoral College has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”

Notably, Mr. Pence has been silent. He has not even acknowledged the historic win by Kamala Harris, the nation’s first female, first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.

He now stands on the edge of history as he begins his most consequential act of leadership. The question for Vice President Pence, as well as other members of Congress, is which side of history he wants to come down on. Can he show the integrity demonstrated by every previous presidential administration? The American people accept a graceful loser, but a sore loser never goes down well in the history books.

We urge Mr. Pence to study our first president. After the Revolutionary War, the artist Benjamin West reported that King George had asked him what General Washington would do now that America was independent. West said that Washington would give up power and go back to farming. King George responded with words to the effect that “if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

Indeed, Washington did so, surrendering command of the army to Congress and returning to Mount Vernon for years until he was elected president. And he again relinquished power eight years later, even though many would have been happy to keep him president for life. Washington in this way fully realized the American Republic, because there is no Republic without the peaceful transfer of power.

And it’s now up to Mr. Pence to recognize exactly that. Like all those that have come before him, he should count the votes as they have been certified and do everything he can to oppose those who would do otherwise. This is no time for anyone to be a bystander — our Republic is on the line. (This is the article in its entirety.)

About the authors: Mr. Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown, is a former acting solicitor general of the United States. Mr. Monsky is the creator of the American History Unbound Series of multimedia productions that covers watershed moments in American history and a board member of the New-York Historical Society.  

Today, in an article titled "Pence's Choice: Side With the Constitution or His Boss" and subtitled "The vice president will preside on Wednesday when Congress convenes to ratify Joe Biden's victory. President Trump still seems to hold out hope that his loyal No. 2 could change the outcome," the Times has this to say: 

WASHINGTON — Speaking to supporters of President Trump on Monday at the Rock Springs Church in Milner, Ga., Vice President Mike Pence implored the crowd to vote in the two runoff elections Tuesday that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

“I am here for one reason and one reason only, and that is that Georgia and America need David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler back in the Republican majority,” Mr. Pence said.

But the crowd had a message for him, too.

“We need you do the right thing Jan. 6!” one supporter cried out. “Stop the steal!” shouted others. The crowd applauded.

If Mr. Pence has tried to skirt Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power, his reception in Georgia on Monday served as the latest reminder of the delicate role he will play on Wednesday, when Congress conducts what is typically a ceremonial duty of opening and counting certificates of electoral votes.

As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence is expected to preside over the pro forma certification of the Electoral College vote count in front of a joint session of Congress. It is a constitutionally prescribed, televised moment in which Mr. Pence will name the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

It is also a moment some of Mr. Pence’s advisers have been bracing themselves for ever since the president lost the election and stepped up his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. There is no chance of Mr. Pence not being there, people close to him said. Mr. Pence’s aides have told people that they view the vice president’s role as largely ceremonial.

“I know we all have got our doubts about the last election,” Mr. Pence said Monday in Georgia, attempting to assuage Trump supporters. “I want to assure you that I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress.”

It was not clear, perhaps by design, what he meant. Mr. Pence does not have unilateral power to affect the outcome of Wednesday’s proceedings. But he has carefully tried to look like he is loyally following the president’s lead even as he goes through a process that is expected to end with him reading out a declaration that Mr. Biden is the winner.

After nearly a dozen Republican senators said they plan to object to the certification of the vote on Wednesday, the vice president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, issued a carefully worded statement intended not to anger anyone.

“The vice president welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6,” he said.

The statement, which frustrated senators who say Mr. Trump is trying to thwart democracy, helped to mollify the president, according to one person close to him.

But it was not enough to squash the belief of many Trump supporters — and the president himself — that the vice president could still somehow help overturn the results.

Two people briefed on the discussions said Mr. Trump had directly pressed Mr. Pence to find an alternative to certifying Mr. Biden’s win, such as preventing him from having 270 electoral votes and letting the election be thrown to the House to decide.

In Georgia on Monday night at a rally for Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Mr. Trump openly pressured the vice president, saying, “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you.” He added, “Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him as much,” before saying that he really likes Mr. Pence.

On Monday, after Mr. Pence returned from Georgia, the vice president and Mr. Trump were expected to hear a last-minute pitch at the White House from John Eastman, another Trump lawyer. Mr. Pence also met with Senate parliamentarians for hours on Sunday to prepare himself and the president for what he would say while on the Senate floor.

The fact that Mr. Pence’s role is almost entirely scripted by those parliamentarians is not expected to ease a rare moment of tension between himself and the president, who has come to believe Mr. Pence’s role will be akin to that of chief justice, an arbiter who plays a role in the outcome. In reality, it will be more akin to the presenter opening the Academy Award envelope and reading the name of the movie that won Best Picture, with no say in determining the winner.

“President Trump’s real understanding of this process is minimal,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist.

Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers have helped fuel the idea that Mr. Pence could affect the outcome of the election. In an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News on Saturday night, Peter Navarro, a White House trade adviser, claimed inaccurately that Mr. Pence could unilaterally grant a demand by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and 11 other Republican senators for an “emergency 10-day audit” of the election returns in the states Trump allies are disputing.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence and expressed “surprise” that the Justice Department had weighed in against a lawsuit filed by Trump supporters, including House members, seeking to expand Mr. Pence’s powers in the process. The suit was dismissed on Friday by a federal judge in Texas whom Mr. Trump had appointed.

One person close to Mr. Pence described Wednesday’s duties as gut-wrenching, saying that he would need to balance the president’s misguided beliefs about government with his own years of preaching deference to the Constitution.

Members of the vice president’s circle expect that Mr. Pence will follow the rules while on the Senate floor and play his ceremonial role as scripted, aides said. But after that, he will have to compensate by showing his fealty to Mr. Trump.

A tentative final foreign trip by Mr. Pence to visit Israel, Bahrain and Belgium was scrapped, while more events to talk up Mr. Trump’s legacy at home are being considered, according to a person familiar with the plans. Aides would not say whether Mr. Pence would attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration.

Pence aides said they expected the vice president to walk through what is expected to happen on Capitol Hill with Mr. Trump before Wednesday, in part to inoculate himself against public criticism in real time.

But even with his practice at managing the president, Republican strategists described Mr. Pence as being in the worst political position of any potential 2024 major Republican presidential candidate. The vice president will be unable to avoid a nationally televised moment when he declares Mr. Biden the winner, potentially disappointing those who believe Mr. Trump was the victor and angering those who think he has the power to change the outcome.

“His best bet is to buck and dodge and make it through without infuriating either side,” said William Kristol, the conservative columnist and prominent “Never Trump” Republican who was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle.

“He has to hope the Trump people are furious at Tom Cotton and anyone else who doesn’t go along,” Mr. Kristol said, referring to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, an ally of the president’s who said he would not join the effort to challenge the Electoral College results. “He has to hope establishment Republicans are furious at Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. And then he’s the guy who didn’t offend anyone.”

Four years ago, Mr. Pence was facing a difficult re-election for governor of Indiana when Mr. Trump’s advisers at the time saw opportunity in choosing the mild-mannered, silver-haired conservative who was popular among the evangelical voters whose support Mr. Trump needed.

Since then, Mr. Pence has played the role of the president’s relentless defender and — with rare exception — prevented daylight from coming between them.

In an administration that has cycled through four chiefs of staff, four national security advisers and four press secretaries, the vice president’s political calculation has long been that being the unstintingly loyal No. 2 would give him the best shot at inheriting the Trump mantle.

But with just 16 days left in the administration, Mr. Pence is at risk of meeting the fate that he has successfully avoided for four years: being publicly attacked by the president. (This is the article in its entirety.) 

I have no admiration for Mike Pence, so I'm enjoying watching him squirm about this. I also like the idea of him being in the worst political position of any potential 2024 major Republican presidential candidate. Someone recently declared that Pence has the charisma of a ream of paper, and I agree. Even without his current between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place quandary, it's hard for me to imagine him getting elected to anything in the future.