Job Opening: Republican Vice President

Why Donald needs a new running mate

Donald has a job opening—in fact, he has dozens of them. 

And we should probably be talking about why.

In the coming days, Donald is going to announce his running mate. According to reports, the finalists are Ohio U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, Florida Senator Marco Rubio or Doug Burgum governor of North Dakota. Who Donald picks isn’t important—it’s be another mediocre (most likely white) man.  What matters is that Donald has to pick a new vice president because he almost had the last guy killed. 

While our hysterical friends in the corporate media continue to lose their minds over Joe Biden’s loss of support from the star of Monuments Men, it should be much bigger news that Donald has lost the support of virtually every single person who served with him when he was in the Oval Office--including the vice president his followers, whom he incited, almost murdered on January 6, 2021.

It was on that day that Donald sent his supporters to attack the Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. That was the day Donald’s most fanatical followers erected gallows outside the Capitol while chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” That was the day Donald sat on his ass and watched the attack unfold on television. At the same time, Pence and his family had to be taken to a secure location, barely missing the rioters who were out for his blood. 

But Donald had been setting Pence up to be the fall guy all along. Well in advance of January 6^th Donald and people in his orbit had been pressuring Pence to reject the Electoral College votes despite the fact that, according to the Constitution, the vice president has no such power.

On January 4, Donald held a rally in Georgia and told the crowd, “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us.”

Early on the morning of the sixth, he tweeted, “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency.” Later that day he wrote, “All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

I have zero sympathy for Mike Pence, but the pressure brought to bear on him was enormous and, in the end, he actually did his job. And for that he almost lost his life—because of his boss.

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During the Republican primaries in March, Pence told Fox News that “it should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”

Well, yes and no. No, it’s not that surprising that Pence wouldn’t endorse the man who almost got him and his family killed. But it is fairly surprising that a candidate for the presidency lost the endorsement of his vice president. Or at least it should be and it is frankly shocking that the corporate media has moved on from this major story.

“During my presidential campaign I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my Constitutional duties that I exercised on January the 6th,” Pence said at the time. 

My memory of Pence during the four impossibly long years of the administration in which he served was that he, as Vice President, was a shameless sycophant who polished my uncle’s boots for four years — abandoning him, refusing to endorse him, and refusing to vote for him seems like a bigger story to me than anything George Clooney has to say. 

And it isn’t just Pence—at least 40 of 44 members of Donald’s administration have made it clear they aren’t going to support him. Some of his closest aides go on television every single day to warn the American people that Donald is unfit to hold office. 

Mark Esper, Donald’s Secretary of Defense, has stated clearly that Donald is a “threat to democracy.” His former chief of staff, John Kelly said last October that Donald “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” National Security Adviser John Bolton sounds the alarm about Donald almost daily.

I’ve known the man my whole life, and since 2020 I’ve been devoted to trying to keep him from being re-elected.

It’s a truism that a man is judged by the company he keeps, so it’s mystifying to me that Donald isn’t being judged for hosting fascists and Holocaust deniers, cultivating the support of Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, sucking up to autocrats and dictators, declaring his allegiance to Proud Boys and other white supremacists, and hanging out with his fellow racists, misogynists, and insurrectionists. 

But we — and the media — should be talking a lot more about the company that Donald can’t keep because even the people who know him best, the people who worked with him, know he’s a cruel, dangerous, and incompetent lunatic who will ignore the Constitution and destroy the country.  

When Donald announces his pick for vice president, chosen from a group of men who are proven sycophants, the media and the nation should take a moment and ask what happened to the last one. 

And that his new VP pick should ask himself what will happen if he chooses the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American people over his corrupt, despicable boss.

Or he can just ask Mike Pence.