So Help Me God, page 53
Walking out of my office on my way to the Senate floor, I was met by senators Tim Scott and John Barrasso, two good men and close friends thanks to our many years of service together. They thanked me for the role I was playing that day.
As my staff was making its way toward the Senate floor, Tim asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?” I had met him when he was a young state legislator in South Carolina. He had come to an event where I was speaking and said he wanted to meet me, as he was a fellow conservative and a Christian. I have taken great satisfaction seeing his deserved rise through the House and Senate.
“Pray for me,” I said.
“You want to pray now?” Tim asked.
At that my staff said, “Sir, we don’t have time. The senators are all in their seats waiting for you.”
I smiled and said, “There’s always time for prayer.” And so we all bowed our heads as Tim appealed to Heaven to help us finish that trying day. I will always be grateful for that moment of grace.
As I walked onto the Senate floor, you could hear a pin drop. I stepped up to my chair at the front of the chamber, struck the gavel, and asked for leave to address the chamber. It was granted.
Looking out across the Senate to faces of leaders clearly still dealing with the unimaginable events of the day, I began to read:
Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift efforts of U.S. Capitol Police, federal, state, and local law enforcement, the violence was quelled. The Capitol is secured, and the people’s work continues.
We condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms. We grieve the loss of life in these hallowed halls, as well as the injuries suffered by those who defended our Capitol today. And we will always be grateful to the men and women who stayed at their posts to defend this historic place.
To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s house. And as we reconvene in this chamber, the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy, for even in the wake of unprecedented violence and vandalism at this Capitol, the elected representatives of the people of the United States have assembled again on the very same day to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. So may God bless the lost, the injured, and the heroes forged on this day. May God bless all who serve here and those who protect this place. And may God bless the United States of America.
I closed the folder holding my remarks and said, “Now let’s get back to work.” With that, the usually reserved Senate burst into applause, and Republicans and Democrats together rose to their feet in a standing ovation, not for me but in celebration of our democracy and all who had defended it that day. It was a deeply inspiring moment that I will never forget.
When we reconvened, everything changed. Many members withdrew support for objections that had been properly filed, and the process took on the feel of a slow march to the inevitable. On the floor of the Senate, leaders and many members rose to express disdain for the violence and vandalism of that day, but a few of them spoke in generous terms about their gratitude for our service, none more eloquently than Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
I had first become aware of Lindsey during the Clinton impeachment hearings and saw him as a fierce conservative champion in the House. During my time in the House, I had come to know him as a friend, had traveled overseas with him and John McCain, and felt him to be a reliable ally in many conservative fights. During our administration, we had become even better friends, and he was probably the most stalwart supporter of the president and our agenda in Congress. I like and respect Lindsey, but I never expected the words he spoke in the Senate that day.
Rising on the floor of the Senate, he began with a brief history lesson on the origins of the Electoral Count Act, explaining why he did not support objections but saying that those who had brought them “were not doing anything wrong.” Then he spoke about the president, whom he called a “consequential president” but added, “All I can say is count me out.” He took on the claims of fraud. He then turned to me, seated in the chair at the front of the chamber, and said, “Vice President Pence, what they’re asking you to do, you won’t do because you can’t.” He continued, “If you’re a conservative, this is the most offensive concept in the world that a single person could disenfranchise 155 million people.” Quoting the Constitution, he said, “Where in there does it say if Mike can say I don’t like the results, I want to send them back to the states, I believe there was fraud?”
Then he addressed me directly, saying, “So, Mike, Mr. Vice President, just hang in there,” adding “All of us can count on the vice president… you’re gonna do the right thing, you’re gonna do the constitutional thing.” Then he got personal, and I got emotional. Senator Graham said, “You got a son who flies F-35s, you got a son-in-law who flies F-18s, they’re out there flying so we can get it right here!” In the Senate gallery, Karen put her arm around Charlotte at the mention of Charlotte’s husband deployed so far away. And the mention of my son and son-in-law brought a tear to my eye as well.
Lindsey Graham gets it, and I will never forget those words.
For the remainder of the night, we worked through the process, until the wee hours of the morning. Some members withdrew their objections. Others soldiered on, bringing objections and arguments to the floor of the House and Senate, but the nation had tuned out. Beyond the tragic loss of life and destruction of property, the January 6 rioters had also managed to drive the debate over election irregularities into oblivion. The robust debate, the “day in Congress” I had promised the American people, was rendered null and void.
At around 3:40 a.m., with Karen and Charlotte looking on from the gallery in the House chamber, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota read the results of the 2020 election: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had received 306 Electoral College votes to Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s 232. It was met with muted applause by Democrats still awake on the floor of the House. With the words “The announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States,” it was over. And I signaled the chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, to come to the podium with a prayer of benediction.
I could think of no better man to have the last word on January 6.
Stepping off the rostrum in the House chamber was a blur. Members approached me with words of thanks, but all I could think of was finding Karen and going home. I made my way into the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor, and there she was. Ignoring all the others speaking to me, I walked up to my wife, and as we hugged, she looked up at me with teary eyes and said, “I’m proud of you.”
On our way out of the Capitol, I realized that I had lost track of my chief of staff, Marc Short. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I typed a quick text, saying, “I lost you and just wanted to say thanks for everything.” As we walked down the steps to the waiting motorcade, I saw that he had replied simply “2 Timothy 4:7.” When we sat in the car, I looked up the verse, which reads, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” As the motorcade pulled away, I reached over to hold Karen’s hand, and with one more look at the Capitol dome against that early-morning sky, we went home.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO The Calm After the Storm
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
—James 1:19
On January 7, 2021, the morning came too quickly. Karen, Charlotte, and I had arrived home from the Capitol at around 4:30 a.m. With less than four hours of sleep, I was just getting coffee when the White House operator rang. Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer were trying to reach me, she said. The day before, we had worked together without partisanship, but I knew that would be short lived.
I placed a call to my chief of staff, Marc Short, who was equally weary, and asked him to find out what the Democratic leaders wanted. He called back to say that they wanted to discuss invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove the president of the United States. “Here we go again,” I thought.
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment was ratified in February 1967 and created a process whereby the vice president can become the acting president when the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It was an effort to clarify the rules of succession; it was not a substitute for impeachment, and the two Democrats knew it. It was pure political theater and a gross distortion of a provision in the Constitution. I didn’t take the call.
As the day wore on, I was humbled by calls from family, as well as from friends in the cabinet and Congress. All expressed their support and appreciation for the stand we had taken at the Capitol. Some of them were quite public about their support; others were more discreet. I will always remember and cherish every call.
I neither had nor sought any contact with the president. But that afternoon, he issued a useful recorded statement in which he condemned the “heinous attack on the United States Capitol,” saying that the demonstrators had “defiled the seat of American democracy.” He delivered a stern message to those who had broken the law, saying, “You will pay,” and then, in a measured tone, he defended having “vigorously pursued every legal challenge to the election,” adding that it was imperative to reform our election laws.
Perhaps of greatest importance, the president said that “Now that Congress has certified the results, a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20,” and that his focus would be on ensuring a “smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power.” He said everything that needed to be said. We were back on track, at least at our end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
On Friday morning, I spent some quiet time in my devotions and read from James 1:19, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” and I tried to do just that. But the truth is, I was angry. Having weathered the storm of events, I was encouraged that the president had denounced those who ransacked the Capitol and had committed to an orderly transition, but I was still angry at how his reckless words had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol. President Trump was wrong, I had no right to overturn the election, and in time I trust that most Americans will recognize that our actions were consistent with the Constitution and the laws of our country on that tragic day.
That said, I believe in forgiveness. My faith instructs me to “forgive those who trespass against us,” and the Bible also admonishes to “forgive as the Lord forgave you.” I have been shown grace in my life. So that morning I prayed for the strength to meet the remaining days of our administration in that spirit. But that was easier said than done.
Karen and I spent the weekend packing up our things at the Naval Observatory and preparing to move into a rental home in northern Virginia where we would live as we looked for a house in Indiana. We were emotionally drained, so some lifting and packing were just what the doctor ordered.
Over the weekend, the Democrats’ push to use the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove the president began to drive the news. Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution in Congress calling on me to invoke the Amendment. She wouldn’t let it go. It was time for another written statement to Congress, my second in as many weeks.
On Monday, I met with Marc Short and Greg Jacob in my West Wing office to discuss drafting another formal message to Congress, to be delivered just prior to an expected vote on the Democrats’ Twenty-Fifth Amendment resolution the next day. I chaired a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force that afternoon and learned that Jared and Ivanka wanted to meet. I remain very fond of both of them and value their friendship, so I readily agreed.
Arriving back in my office in the late afternoon, Jared and Ivanka informed me that the president wanted to meet and wondered if I would be willing to sit down with him before going home for the day. It had been five days since January 6, and the president had made no effort to contact me in the midst of the rioting or at any point afterward. Truth is, I had felt no obligation to initiate a meeting, but if the president had something to say to me, I assured them that I would be willing to hear him out. They told me he was available right then.
Walking down the narrow hallway between the Vice President’s Office and the Oval Office, I didn’t know what to expect. I made my way to the small dining room where we had met for lunch every week for the past four years. There on the wall in the hallway, along with a few historic photographs, was a framed picture I had given the president on his birthday during our first year in office. It showed Karen, Charlotte, and me with him and Melania in the sunshine at Bedminster the weekend I had interviewed for the ticket in 2016. He had displayed that photo of the five of us just outside the Oval Office for four years.
When I walked into the back room, Mark Meadows was there but made a hasty exit as the president invited me to come in and sit down. He looked tired, and his voice seemed more faint than usual.
“How are you?” he began. “How are Karen and Charlotte?” I replied tersely that we were fine and told him that they had been at the Capitol on January 6. He responded with a hint of regret, “I just learned that.” I told him they were there the whole night; they wouldn’t leave.
He then asked, “Were you scared?”
“No,” I replied, “I was angry. You and I had our differences that day, Mr. President, and seeing those people tearing up the Capitol infuriated me.”
He started to bring up the election, saying that people were angry, but his voice trailed off.
I told him he had to set that aside, and he responded quietly, “Yeah.”
I said, “Those people who broke into the Capitol might’ve been supporters, but they are not our movement.” For five years, we had both spoken to crowds of red hat–wearing Americans who were the most patriotic, law-abiding, God-fearing people in the country and who would never do anything like what those people did that day.
I told him that I had prayed for him for the past four and a half years, and I encouraged him to pray. “Jesus can help you through this,” I said. “Call on Him.”
He didn’t say anything.
I asked him what his plan was for the next eight days. He told me he intended to “lay low and give a few speeches.”
With genuine sadness in his voice, the president then mused, “What if we hadn’t had the rally? What if they hadn’t gone to the Capitol?” Then he said, “It’s too terrible to end like this.” To which I replied, “It’s not over yet.”
I told him that we had eight days left to serve the country and we should focus on finishing what we started. I told him I had plans to visit military bases to thank our troops and would be going to the inauguration. He replied that he had “no problem with that.”
I encouraged him to make a farewell address to the country, as every president since George Washington had done. He could show sadness for what had happened, express anger toward those who had desecrated the Capitol, and speak up for the millions of our supporters who were being unfairly maligned because of the despicable actions of a few thousand rioters. In the end, I thought he should simply thank the 74 million Americans who had stood by us and our record after four years of incessant attacks by the Democrats and their allies in the press. He listened to my thoughts without interruption.
We talked alone for more than ninety minutes, and as I stood up to leave, I said, “You know, I did what I believed the Constitution and the law required me to do,” to which he gently waved his hand, saying, “I know, I know.” As I left, I urged him one more time to take time to pray.
On Tuesday, January 12, a certain quiet seemed to descend on Washington, DC—everywhere but on Capitol Hill, where Nancy Pelosi was pushing her resolution demanding that I take action under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove the president from office. That was really no surprise. Pelosi and the Democrats had spent the last four years trying to remove the president from office, and with eight days left until the end of our term, they were going to give it one more shot.
As we had done the week before, my team and I prepared a message to Congress to be delivered before the vote.
After expressing appreciation for the actions of the leaders of both parties for reconvening on the very same day of the attack on our Capitol, I informed the speaker that I did not believe that invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment would be “in the best interests of the nation or consistent with the Constitution.” I reminded her that just a few months earlier, when she had introduced legislation creating a Twenty-Fifth Amendment Commission, she had said, “A President’s fitness for office must be determined by science and facts,” insisting that we must be “[v]ery respectful of not making a judgment on the basis of a comment or behavior that we don’t like, but based on a medical decision.” I reminded her that under our Constitution, “the 25th Amendment is not a means of punishment or usurpation. Invoking the 25th Amendment in such a manner would set a terrible precedent.”
I had not yielded to pressure to exert power beyond my constitutional authority to determine the outcome of the election a week earlier, and I was not about to yield to similar efforts by Democrats in Congress to achieve their own political ends. That night, all but one of the House Republicans, including some of the president’s harshest critics, voted against the Twenty-Fifth Amendment resolution. Case closed, or so I thought. The very next day, Pelosi and the Democrats in the House voted to impeach the president for the second time.
Late in the day on Thursday, I stopped by the Oval Office and found the president working quietly in the back room. He had delivered an address to the nation the night before from the Oval Office. He had unequivocally denounced the violence at the Capitol and called for calm and national unity. Sitting for a few moments at the small table where we had spent so much time together, I congratulated him on his address, to which he responded, “I knew you’d like it.” He seemed discouraged, so I reminded him that I was praying for him. “Don’t bother,” he said.
