Then-President Donald Trump scolded Mike Pence that he would be a “wimp” if he didn’t toss out election results last year, the former vice president has recounted in his new memoir.
Trump pressed Pence at the White House in early January to “unilaterally” reject Electoral College votes giving Joe Biden the presidential victory, Pence noted in an adapted excerpt from his book, “So Help Me God,” published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.
“‘You can be a historic figure,’ he said, ‘but if you wimp out, you’re just another somebody,’” Pence said Trump told him a phone call, according to the book excerpt.
Trump was optimistic then that Pence would go along with his scheme to upend the election by refusing to certify the electoral votes at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. The plot to keep Biden out of office hinged on that refusal setting the plan in motion.
“On Saturday, Jan. 2, I instructed my chief of staff to issue a statement supporting the right of lawmakers to bring objections under the Electoral Count Act. By Sunday morning, the headline ‘Pence Welcomes Congressional Republicans’ Bid to Challenge Electoral Votes’ was everywhere,” Pence recounted in the memoir. “When the president called me that morning, his mood had brightened. ‘You have gone from very unpopular to popular!’ he exclaimed.”
But Pence was never assured that he had clear “legal authority” to reject the electoral votes, even from Trump’s own “coup-memo” attorney John Eastman, Pence wrote.
When the vice president spoke to Trump on the phone Jan. 6 to inform him he would not be unilaterally jettisoning votes, the president “laid into me,” Pence wrote. “‘You’ll go down as a wimp,’ he said. ‘If you do that, I made a big mistake five years ago!’”
When Trump accused him of not “protecting our country,” Pence said he told his boss: “We both took an oath to support and defend the Constitution.”
Later that day, Trump supporters raged through the U.S. Capitol demanding that the vice president be “hanged” for refusing to reject America’s choice for president.
The following week, Trump would ask Pence if he was afraid.
Read the rest of Pence’s excerpt in The Wall Street Journal here.