In a last ditch effort to convince his vice president to support an effort to stop Congress from reaffirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory last week, President Donald Trump reportedly told Mike Pence that he could either lay down his legacy to be remembered as a patriot or “a pussy.”
“You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy,” Trump told Pence in a call hours before his supporters staged a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol according to the New York Times.
Two people briefed on the conversation told the Times, that President Trump was infuriated by Pence’s refusal to try to overturn the election when he presided over the joint congressional session to reaffirm Electoral College votes that cemented Biden as President-elect. Trump’s pressure on Pence to do his bidding, came in the form of a series of meetings where Trump ping-ponged between intimidation and praise, the Times said.
The alternating tactics have played out over and over in the president’s phone calls to other Republican officials — including efforts to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and even a top elections investigator into submitting to his attempt at subverting election results in their state.
Trump’s attack on Republican officials, that extended to his second-in-command last week, has fueled dangerous death threats presumably from the president’s followers.
After Trump heaped blame on Pence during the rally that catapulted his supporters into a deadly attack on the Capitol on Wednesday, he subsequently sent out tweets attacking his vice president.
According to the Times report, Trump watched his supporters raid the Capitol with glee on Wednesday, not once checking on the safety of his governing partner who was rushed away from the session to huddle in the basement as members of the pro-Trump stormed the building, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”
In spite of all this, Pence rebuffed a call from the House on Tuesday to invoke the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office.
“I do not believe such a course of action is in the best interest of our Nation or consistent with our Constitution,” Pence wrote in a letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) objecting to the move.
