Mike Pence finds a whole new way to sabotage Donald Trump
One of the most under-reported storylines over the past month has been how, after having seemingly been at peace with each other all along, Donald Trump and Mike Pence have quietly but unmistakably begun trying to sabotage each other. Pence helped take down Trump’s Doctor, Ronny Jackson. Trump vetoed a key Pence hire. Now Pence is at least part of the reason Trump’s North Korea summit has fallen through.
To be clear, Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Kim Jong-Un was always going to backfire on him. Trump needed this meeting because he’s in desperate need of a win as his presidency circles the drain. Kim didn’t need this meeting. So this was either going to end with Kim humiliating Trump during the meeting, or it was going to end with no meeting. When Kim announced last week that he was considering canceling the meeting, the whole farce was doomed. But then Mike Pence made sure it was doomed.
Pence went on Fox News and claimed that the Trump administration has been internally discussing the possibility of going the “Libya” route with North Korea. The Obama administration and its allies inflicted just enough military damage against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that his own people ended up finishing him off. Even if this is being discussed, it’s not something you publicly announce on the verge of a peace summit with an egomaniacal and reckless dictator like Kim Jong-Un. He was never going to respond well to a ‘make peace with us or we’ll have you killed’ narrative.
Sure enough, the North Korean government fired back by calling Mike Pence “ignorant and stupid.” That was the last straw. Donald Trump realized the summit was toast, and he “canceled” it before Kim could officially cancel it. Despite being a craven extremist, Pence usually plays things cautiously and chooses his words carefully. In this case, his words directly sabotaged what was left of the North Korea summit. Trump desperately needed that summit, and Pence sabotaged it. Is it possible that Pence just had a mental lapse, or did Pence sabotage Trump on purpose? With Trump’s presidency on life support, perhaps Pence is already sizing up the Oval Office.
