Mike Pence

"I trust you, Tim [Giebels], but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car."

"Last week, I did not yield to pressure to exert power beyond my constitutional authority to determine the outcome of the election, and I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our Nation,"

"There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to "overturn the election". But President Trump is wrong — I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election."

"There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom."

"It really is good to be back with all the patriots in the NRA, men and women who stand on the ramparts of freedom, defending all the God-given liberties enshrined in the Constitution of the United States every day [...] With your support, the Trump-Pence administration championed freedom for four remarkable years, and every single day we stood without apology for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."

"I believe the time has come to institute a federal death penalty statute with accelerated appeal to ensure that those who engage in mass shootings face execution in months, not years."

"The Constitution is quite clear about the role of the vice president in the counting of electoral votes. It essentially says the vice president presides over a joint session of Congress where the electoral votes that are certified by the states shall be opened and shall be counted. And irrespective of the indictment, I want the American people to know that I had no right to overturn the election. And that on that day, President Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution. But I chose the Constitution and I always will. … I really do believe that anyone who puts themself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again."

"I want people to know that I had no right to overturn the election, and that what the president maintained that day and frankly, has said over and over again over the last two and a half years, is completely false. And it’s contrary to what our Constitution and the laws of this country provide. You know, I’m a student of American history, and the first time I heard in early December, somebody suggests that as vice president, I might be able to decide which votes to reject and which to accept. I knew that it was false. Our founders had just won a war against a king, and the last thing they would have done was vest unilateral authority in any one person to decide who would be the next president. I dismissed it out of hand, but sadly, the president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what itching ears wanted to hear."

"Trump spent his last hours as president handing out pardons like lawn care flyers to political allies and friends who had been convicted of serious crimes. Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, and some 140 others received Get Out of Jail cards, just as disgraced General Michael Flynn had earlier. Such massive subverting of the justice system strengthened the impression that for all his posturing, Trump had a career criminal’s appreciation of law and order. If you broke the law for Trump and remained loyal, you would not be punished. All the dedicated investigation it took to uncover deeply hidden facts, the careful presentation of evidence in court, the conscientious deliberations of jurors in fulfillment of their civic duty, and the endless appeals of guilty verdicts to higher courts became ultimately pointless because “the fix” was in at the end—provided you never crossed Trump. This amounted to good advertising for the future, should Trump regain power. He might as well have put up “Wanted” signs for criminals in the post office, except they would be recruitment posters promising big job benefits, including a presidential pardon for crimes committed on his behalf. Anyone who expected Trump to follow tradition and attend his successor’s swearing-in ceremony to help unify the nation did not understand the man who had spent four years splitting the country in two. But Mike Pence did attend, and President Biden privately thanked Pence when their paths crossed after the ceremony for honoring his oath to the Constitution on that fateful day two weeks earlier. Former president Bill Clinton and General Milley also personally acknowledged to Pence how much the nation owed him."

"Reverend Barber, at one point during the debate, a fly landed on Pence’s head for nearly two-and-a-half minutes, prompting widespread commentary online. Professor Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist, tweeted, “As soon as Pence started denying the existence of systemic racism, the fly got him!” And you have a record last night, a ceiling shattered. Senator Kamala Harris made history as the first Black woman to debate a white man in a presidential or vice-presidential debate. She was the first Black woman, Indian American woman. The significance of this...? Amy Goodman"

"She was fusion politics indeed. She was the second Black woman to be the vice president on a major ticket, first on the stage to debate. You know, I couldn’t help but go to the Book of Exodus, where it talked about where God said, “If you don’t let my people go, I’m going to cause flies to come as a sign of what’s wrong. But I won’t let the flies be on the people, but the fly will be a symbol that you’re just wrong. You’re lying. Let my people go.” And Trump and Pence need to let the people go. They’ve been holding poor and low-wealth people hostage, essential workers hostage. It’s time for a change in this country. William Barber II"

"During Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Mike Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election. Instead, he referenced the Trump administration’s legal efforts to restrict mail-in voting. Rev. William Barber says the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts ahead of the November election, aimed primarily at Black and Brown voters, amount to “surgical racism with surgical precision.” The Poor People’s Campaign, of which Barber is co-chair, is leading a major voter mobilization effort to combat voter disenfranchisement. “They know they cannot win if everybody votes. They are terribly afraid of poor and low-wealth Black and Brown people voting,” he says."

"Trump was often just one yes-man away from doing what he wanted. One attorney general. One military commander. One vice president. Many of those who blocked Trump were complicated figures who had spent years enabling him before finally deciding he had gone too far. Even then they often remained in his orbit or refused to speak out. Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, his four chiefs of staff, his lawyers, the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. For them, every day was a moral challenge, a series of tradeoffs in which they weighed the benefits of accomplishing whatever agenda had brought them into Trump’s world in the first place—whether patriotism or personal ambition or policy goals or simply partisanship—against the need to stop the situation from spiraling out of control. There was a not inconsiderable element of hubris to this; they believed they could manage him, and often succeeded for a while in doing so, only to claim they were shocked it had not worked out when it all ended badly, as it inevitably did. This book is their story too, because without them Donald Trump might have been just another angry old man shouting at the television between golf games."

"One of the staffers said [Pence and I] looked like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, coming through those swinging doors, so we’ve called each other ‘Butch’ and ‘Sundance’ jokingly ever since."

"Mike is intensely loyal. That’s a virtue. He has never uttered to me one syllable of disagreement with the president. And frankly, I admire him for that."

"We’ve taken different paths, but I’m not trying to suggest that mine is a more virtuous path than his. He’s in a position with considerably more power than I have, and there’s something to be said for that."

"[Pence has] got good experience and solid judgment and great background."

"...Trump is many things. He is pampered, he is an immature man, he is a teenager craving unconditional, endless love from everybody. I don’t think he is fanatic. I’m not sure I would say about his vice president that he is not a fanatic, he probably is..."

"He is a man of character and accomplishment. He is the right man for the job."

"Mike Pence did an incredible job, and I'm getting a lot of credit because that's really my first so-called choice."

"Mike Pompeo and Vice President Pence, they both long for the rapture, for the end times, for Jesus coming down to the Earth and killing all the unbelievers with his flaming sword. This is what they are all about. This is why they allowed the embassy to move to Jerusalem. Go back and check the remarks that were made at that time, the prayers that were given and so forth. This is, in a word, a very different U.S. administration, but in the same hands of the military-industrial complex, of the national security state, of all the people who want warfare to be the raison d’être of this empire at the same time."

"... And @Mike_Pence is endangering Americans by not quarantining after close contact exposure to #COVID19..."

"Yes, some of his parleys that violated our rules were taken down, including the ones you are talking about."

"We have to stop saying things were well before COVID. It’s almost as though we give that away to the Trump and Pence. The reality is, Wall Street was well. The reality is, those who got his tax cuts were well. The reality is, though, that before COVID, they were trying to overturn healthcare. Before COVID, they were blocking living wages. Before COVID, we were not addressing the issue of poor and low-wealth people..."

"Well, you know, when Pence talked last night, he told what my grandmother called a bold-faced lie. The first CARES Act, 83% of the money went to corporations and banks. It did not go to the people."

"The Trump-Pence plan is talking about giving more money to the wealthy. In fact, the Trump-Pence-McConnell plan, they refuse to pass a stimulus because they want another $200 billion in tax cuts, they want money for a fighter jet, and they want to protect corporations from liability when those corporations didn’t protect their people from coronavirus... So, what we have is two different worlds operating. Pence, with a straight face, lying, basically said, “Vote for us, and we’ll take your healthcare and undermine your preexisting conditions. Vote for us, and we’ll block living wages. Vote for us, and we will not protect the environment...Vote for us, and we’ll put people on the Supreme Court who will be against your healthcare, against labor rights.” ..And so, we’re living in two different worlds. Not only will Pence and Trump not acknowledge racism when it comes to police violence, they are not even acknowledging the disparate racism in economics and in healthcare, and so forth and so on."