Donald Trump is a liar, a blustering fool, and a con man. That’s who he was before moving into the White House. That’s who is after moving into the White House. It seems increasingly likely that he’ll be a liar, a blustering fool, and a con man after he’s kicked out of the White House.
But the guy warming up in the bull-shit pen isn’t just the uptight, lily white, hard right, ultra conservative he pretends to be. He’s also a practiced prevaricator who’s neck deep in everything that’s likely to send Donald Trump kicking and screaming into the night. Mike Pence, who by a total coincidence, created his own Trump-free PAC this week, is playing a game designed to leave him holding onto Trump’s dead-enders with one hand and a big writ of “I didn’t know” with the other. To get there, Pence is lying. About pretty much everything. Especially when it comes to what he knew about Michael Flynn ...
PENCE: “Well, let me say, hearing that story today was the first I'd heard of it. And I fully support the decision that President Trump made to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.” …
But just a day later, The Washington Post and others reported that Flynn had informed Trump's legal team that he might need to register as a foreign agent even before Trump was inaugurated. And late Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Flynn also had disclosed that he was under federal investigation for it.
Pence also dug deep into his store of radio talk show host pretense as he lied about his knowledge of why Comey was fired, but it’s in the Flynn scandal where he’s really excelled at blinking with waif-like innocence when it’s clear that he was on the inside at every step.
According to MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid, if President Donald Trump is impeached for his scandal tsunami and cover-ups, Vice President Mike Pence should be forced out along with him.
The whole story of why Trump had to finally let Michael Flynn go comes back to the idea that Flynn misinformed Pence about his dealings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Which Pence followed up by going forth to lie.
Going back a little further, the explanation for Flynn's forced resignation in February was that he has lied to Pence about his contacts with Russia — lies that Pence went on TV and promptly emphasized as the truth.
Pence assured CBS's “Face the Nation” that Flynn hadn't discussed U.S. sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — talks that could have run afoul of the law given that Flynn wasn't yet a White House official:
If Pence knew the truth about Flynn’s discussions, then the whole stated reason behind Flynn’s firing is a lie. If Pence didn’t know what Flynn was up to—though the events occurred during the transition that Pence was supposedly leading—he still went out and spread a lie to the public.
The very best of Mike Pence’s actions frames Pence as a guileless carrier and defender of every lie Trump wants passed along to the public. That’s the kindest view.
However, it’s increasingly obvious that Pence wasn’t Trump’s unwitting mouthpiece. He’s Trump’s co-conspirator.