Trump says Jan. 6 mob chanting ‘hang Mike Pence’ was ‘common sense’
I’m not sure exactly what Donald Trump wants to be, but it isn’t president of the United States.
Technically, that’s what he was.
And it seems to be an office he’ll campaign for again.
But that’s not what he wants to be.
If he wanted to be president, he would have acted like a president when he had the job. And he would have done what his vice president, Mike Pence, actually did.
Which was follow the U.S. Constitution.
Pence would go down in history as a …
![Insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump try to open a door of the U.S. Capitol as they riot in Washington on Jan. 6. [AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File]](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/11/04/NAAS/7a514f6e-a9f0-4b04-8fad-c959d37b68fa-Young_column_1104.jpg?width=660&height=441&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
Instead, Trump harangued and disparaged Pence for performing his duty, whipping up such a frenzy among his supporters that the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol were chanting “hang Mike Pence.”
Why?
Because Trump lost the election and wanted to overturn the democratic results. He tried to get Pence to block the certification of the election results.
Pence, in a letter to Congress, said, “It is my considered judgement that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
Trump took to Twitter and said, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.“
He reportedly accosted Pence in the Oval Office, telling the vice president, “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a p—y.”
If Trump wanted to be president, instead of some kind of second-rate despot, he would have recognized that Pence in that moment was being a patriot.
‘The people were very angry,’ Trump said
That protecting the country and the Constitution, as Pence described, is the most patriotic thing a person can do.
The fact that the vice president had to protect the country from the sitting president must have been sobering to Pence. If not frightening.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who has written a book called “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” released a taped exchange he had with Trump over the awful events of Jan. 6, when a mob attacked the Capitol, and lives were lost, and property was destroyed, and the crowd was chanting that Pence should be hanged.
Jonathan Karl: “Were you worried about him (Pence) during that siege? Were you worried about his safety?”
Trump: “No, I thought he was well-protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no, I think – ”
Karl: “Because you heard those chants – that was terrible. I mean – ”
Trump: “He could have – well, the people were very angry.”
Karl: “They were saying ‘hang Mike Pence.’ ”
Trump: “Because it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you – if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? – how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that?”
What part doesn’t Trump get?
Common sense?
Pence, unlike Trump, wasn’t buying or spreading the big lie about the election. He knew, as every subsequent…
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