Two weeks ago, when I spoke to Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director—the same conversation in which he pilloried several colleagues, threatened to fire his entire staff, and claimed to have called the F.B.I. to investigate the White House chief of staff—he offered some cryptic thoughts about Vice-President Mike Pence. “Why do you think Nick’s there, bro?” Scaramucci asked me, referring to Nick Ayers, Pence’s recently installed chief of staff. “Are you stupid?” He continued, “Why is Nick there? Nick’s there to protect the Vice-President because the Vice-President can’t believe what the fuck is going on.” Given everything else Scaramucci told me that day, I left this exchange out of my original article about the conversation. But, in light of the news this week about Pence’s political machinations, the remarks seem worth revisiting.

On Saturday, the Times, citing conversations with seventy-five Republicans, reported that two of Pence’s aides, including Ayers, have told other Republicans that the Vice-President, in the words of the Times, “wants to be ready” to run for President in 2020 in case the opportunity arises.

In the complicated relationship between a President and his Vice-President, nothing is more sensitive than a Vice-President angling to replace the boss, and Pence’s response to the Times article was furious. He called the piece “disgraceful and offensive to me, my family, and our entire team” and labelled the allegations it contained—without being specific—“categorically false.” It was “laughable and absurd,” the Vice-President said, to think that he wasn’t committed to Trump’s reëlection.