What did Mike Pence just do?

| 6:00 pm EST January 4, 2020
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Mike Pence is many things: a liar, an extremist, a sexist, a criminal, and a weirdo who’s creepily obsessed with what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. He’s also bad at campaigning, he has no personality, and he’s about as unpopular as Donald Trump is. But here’s one thing Pence usually isn’t: erratically inept. In fact it’s often Pence’s job to try to go and justify Trump’s most erratic moves to the conservative establishment.

That’s why it’s so odd that Mike Pence has laid such an egg while trying to explain away Trump’s spurious decision to assassinate Iranian leader Soleimani. Pence posted a lengthy Twitter thread trying to justify the whole thing, and it included this bizarre accusation against Soleimani: “Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”

To be clear, Mike Pence is lying. Soleimani did a lot of terrible things – but it’s well established that he had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. It’s not at all surprising that Pence is lying about this while trying to justify Trump’s antics; that’s par for the course. But since when were there only twelve 9/11 terrorists?

Everyone who lived through 9/11 has it burned into their brains that nineteen terrorists attacked us that day. If Mike Pence wants to convince people that Soleimani was somehow involved in 9/11, he’d have had a far better chance of selling that lie if he’d managed to get the number of hijackers right. These aren’t the kinds of screw-ups that Pence usually makes. Did he not show the thread to anyone on his staff before posting it? He’s more careful about his villainy than Trump is, which is part of why Pence is so dangerous in his own way. Did Trump’s Iran antics catch Pence that much off guard, or is there something going on with Pence?