For all the credit he deserves for obeying the Constitution on Jan. 6, Pence deserves criticism for not taking this necessary step. But passing judgment on him really isn’t the principal point of the committee’s evidence. There’s an important legislative purpose at stake: Section 4 provides that Congress can substitute for the Cabinet “such other body as Congress may by law provide” — like, say, an independent group of experts who don’t owe their jobs to the president of the United States.
That should be an important focus of the committee’s continued work. Still, the evidence will help add to history’s verdict on Pence and the rest of the GOP. Trump’s disordered personality and his inability to carry out his duties didn’t suddenly manifest themselves in the days after the 2020 vote; as I’ve written at length, all that was out there for years, for everyone to see. Discussions within the Trump administration about sidelining the madman began as early as 2017.
They all knew. Yet they stood by and said and did nothing. Even at the very end, when the country was most in peril. Indeed, to my mind, the biggest falsehood of the Trump era wasn’t any of the 30,000-plus lies he told in office; it was the pretense maintained by GOP executive officials and lawmakers for four long years that he was in any way fit for the job.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member