In last ditch effort to stave off ouster, Donald Trump begins leaking ugly things about Mike Pence
At this point the only remaining argument for not ousting the mentally unstable Donald Trump is that Mike Pence is in some ways even more of an anti-American extremist. After all, why trade the measles for the chicken pox? As talk of impeachment and the 25th Amendment grows louder, Trump seems to have concluded that making Pence look bad is his best remaining defense. Accordingly, he’s now leaking ugly things about Pence.
There’s a lengthy new op-ed titled “The Danger of President Pence” in The New Yorker, which makes the detailed case for why Mike Pence is indeed a dangerous fundamentalist. The entire thing is worth reading and considering. But the money quote comes near the end. During a conversation about gay rights, Trump reportedly pointed at Pence and said “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”
From the context, it’s fairly clear that Donald Trump or his own people strategically leaked this anecdote themselves. Consider the timing, just days after other Trump staffers leaked that they’ve been warning Trump about the possibility of Pence invoking the 25th Amendment against him. Also consider that the entire point of this piece was to paint Pence as a bad potential president. In other words, the Trump camp put this story out there to try to remind mainstream Americans of why Pence is such an extremist piece of crap.
Here’s what stands out as remarkable. There now appear to be at least two factions of Donald Trump advisers working against each other. The first faction has concluded that Trump is too dangerously unstable to remain in office, and is leaking embarrassing things in the hope of generating public demand for his ouster. The second faction is trying to protect Trump from ouster by making his potential replacement Mike Pence look bad. There is now a civil war within Trump’s own staff.
