In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted profiles of former Indiana Governor and Vice President Mike Pence, who for a while, was considered to be an early establishment candidate for president that the Republican Party thought they would be able to rally behind in the 2016 elections. He was a sitting six-term Congressman from 2001 through 2012, establishing conservative bona fides without any scandals or major gaffes while winning elections comfortably.
He actually won a 2010 Straw Poll at the Value Voters Summit where they thought he was their best choice to run against Barack Obama in 2012, but Pence opted instead to run for re-election as Governor of Indiana, and bide his time for what was to be a run in 2016. Then Gov. Pence, the insane true believer in the American culture wars that he is, went and signed Indiana's "religious freedom" law to allow for the legal discrimination of the LGBTQ community, then denied that the point of the bill was allowing discrimination (and making many send him the literal definition of "discrimination" since he seemed unable to understand it) and claiming he was incapable of discrimination because he once participated in an anniversary walk in Selma, Alabama.
That only made critics note that during his time in the U.S. House, he actually campaigned on an agenda to " oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's as a 'discreet and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities," or that he called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus" and instead, "Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior". If you’re unclear as to what that means, it’s that Pence wanted money redirected towards gay conversion therapy, which doesn’t actually work, and is considered a human rights violation.
But that’s not all. Pence responded to the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Act by making the ludicrous claim that it would allow intimidation towards or even charges to be filed against pastors who expressed a Biblical worldview critical to homosexuality, and also tried arguing that the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would, in his words, “weaken unit cohesion” of our military, and once voted for a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman.
Factor in the time Pence is awful enough to women that he voted against all equal pay legislation including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, railed against the Disney cartoon Mulan for implying that women might be able to honorably serve in the military, and actually had an Indiana woman arrested for having a miscarriage because his obsession with cracking down on reproductive rights is that over-the-top insane. We're talking that he voted for for the Terry Schiavo Incapacitated Persons Protection Bill extreme, here. We're saying that he was a sponsor of the legislation that tried to defund Planned Parenthood back in 2011, and his "evidence" of wrongdoing was a DIFFERENT doctored fraud of a video produced by friends of Breitbart News hacks like James O'Keefe.
Pence also compared the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act to 9/11, and in early 2015 decided state taxpayer dollars should be allocated towards “JustIN’, a state-run news service with two employees being paid $100,000 salaries to present a point of view where Mike Pence could do no wrong (cancelled after taxpayers called him out on wasting their money on him lying to them). Pence denied a link between smoking an cancer as late as 2001 (he was accepting money from the big tobacc/o lobby, of course), and denies climate change is a thing to this day.
Mike Pence is so enthralling that after Donald Trump decided that Mike Pence should be his running mate on the 2016 GOP ticket as his vice president, he apparently tried reneging on the offer at the last minute. And then Trump botched the announcement and roll out to get the GOP hyped.
And then the campaign logo for the new ticket was openly mocked because THIS is what Trump's idea men came up with:
Pence spent most of the 2016 VP debate pretending Donald Trump didn't actually say all of the wildly deranged things he says out loud, and on social media, which was far better than the forgettable speech he gave at the RNC (he was clearly overshadowed by Ted Cruz telling people to "vote their conscience"). Maybe Pence's speech would have been better if he wasn't distracted by the inclusion of AIDS Activists in the proceedings as the homophobe he is.
And what a great campaigner Pence wasn't. When he couldn't help look like he was mildly aroused by the thought of, as he put it, sending Roe v. Wade to the "ash heap of history". Hell, he even managed to take on some of Donald Trump's worst habits... like falling all over himself to not say disparaging things about white supremacist David Duke, or praising Vladimir Putin.
Heck, trying to defend Donald Trump isn't easy, like say when you have to spin how he isn't a fascist for talking about jailing his opponent during a presidential debate, but Pence was kept on his toes by girls as young as eleven years old trying to make excuses for Trump around the time the tape of him talking about "grabbing women by the p***y" hit.
And, in spite of Donald Trump being Trump, and Mike Pence being the coalesced nightmares of the LGBTQ community and women everywhere, they defied all the odds, and all the polling, and inexplicably won office. And then, suddenly, everyone finally got properly scared that with a Republican president, Republican House, and Republican Senate, that things like gay marriage, or reproductive rights would be fair game. Oh, and then they remembered that Mike Pence also has talked about wrecking Social Security, too. Or that he casually can talk about resuming a torture program at Guantanamo Bay Prison.
So maybe that's why we don't feel bad for Mike Pence when people donate to Planned Parenthood in his name, or the fact that he’s so afraid of women he won’t have dinner alone with one unless his wife is there (who he calls “Mother”), or when he showed up at a performance of Hamilton, and acts surprised when the audience boos him, or that he gets a lecture from a cast of minorities, gays, and even an HIV Positive lead actor to remind him that he's spent his whole career making legislative and executive decisions to slight anyone who wasn't a straight rich white male.
Mike Pence has continued to be a witless turd throughout the Trump administration, trying to simply not be as corrupt as Trump and hope he inherits the presidency… but even at that, he hasn’t kept his nose clean. Where do we even begin with Pence? Let’s just hit the big points… by the end of the first month of the Trump administration, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired, after several FBI investigations into the fact that he had been illegally operating was a foreign agent of other countries came to light. The official story about Flynn’s firing kept changing rapidly, including that Acting Attorney General Sally Yates got fired after hearing Mike Pence go on Fox News and give a story that seemed to indicate he wasn’t aware of Michael Flynn’s activities. Also, he assured the public that no one in the Trump campaign was talking to Russians (they were).
Well, as of December 1st, 2017, we know Mike Pence was just deliberately lying, as he is prone to doing, and he knew about Michael Flynn talking to Russians under the radar. In fact, per Flynn’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Pence and Jared Kushner directed Gen. Flynn to do that specifically. This would be similar to how back in October of 2016, Mike Pence went over to Fox News for an interview/tongue bath and scoffed at the idea that the Trump campaign had any communication with anyone from Wikileaks. Except, y’know, we now know that for almost the entire campaign, Donald Trump, Jr. was talking to Wikileaks, and was even getting advice on which of their stories the Trump campaign should share more on social media. And Roger Stone was talking to Wikileaks, which he lied to Congress about.
This isn’t to say that all Mike Pence did was alternate between lying and hiding since becoming vice-president. He still surfaces to waste taxpayer dollars to do things like try to defeat Kim Jong Un’s regime by impotently staring angrily at the Korean DMZ, to lick Donald Trump’s boots in televised Cabinet meetings, or the time he attended a Colts game with the intention of angrily storming out if anyone protested by kneeling during the national anthem.
By 2019, he was called out for helping funnel money towards Donald Trump’s businesses by manipulating his travel itinerary to stay at Trump resorts and bill American taxpayers for a small fortune. He was also using his office to again direct money towards Christian groups, similarly to what he did with groups that supported gay conversion therapy while in Congress.
In 2018, Pence started to ape Trump’s bigoted rhetoric more, as he praised disgraced former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, defended the Trump White House for banning CNN reporters from covering events (because what’s the big deal about the First Amendment, right?), cited false statistics about how people from the Middle East were sneaking across the U.S./Mexico border with refugees from Central America, or appeared with a fake rabbi who claims Jews who don’t accept Jesus go to hell at an event to honor Jews slain by a Neo-Nazi in Pittsburgh.
He has been rewarded for his loyalty by Trump by being thrown under the bus, completely, and as Trump’s corruption began to be laid bare in his dealings with Ukraine, and the impeachment inquiry began… Trump responded on September 25th, 2019, by telling the media that they should also ask Mike Pence about the times that he has demanded quid pro quos. Pence did push back on that, but hardly enough to convince us that there might not be some truth to it… and then EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified, it looked like Mike Pence would go back to just denying, denying, denying all the facts for the foreseeable future (which he is practiced in doing, but still).
And then… Covid-19 happened. And Donald Trump is, if nothing else, wildly incompetent, but also terrified of receiving blame. So he named Mike Pence to be his patsy… we mean head of the Coronavirus Task Force in February 26th, 2020. As you might have noticed… Pence done f***ed up. Repeatedly and often. Who would thought the man who botched the response to an HIV outbreak while Governor of Indiana could mismanage a highly contagious respiratory pandemic and that 325,000 to 350,000 will be dead by the time he left office?
And forgive us if we take absolute glee in having seen Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris trounce him in a debate, where she lecture him for trying to interrupt her like a schoolteacher telling an unruly student to shut their entitled cake hole, and then he became so lethargic an actual fly parked on his head for the climax of the debate. We still aren’t out of tough times, and whatever glimmer of hope happens, we savor. Seeing this Evangelical white nationalist have his place taken by the first female VP, the first African American VP and the first Asian-American VP… ooooooh hell yeah we are here for that.
Mike Pence ended his tenure as Vice-President doing the bare minimum to support American democracy by certifying the electoral votes on January 6th, 2021, and Donald Trump responded to that by sending an armed insurgent mob to Capitol Hill, chanting threats to lynch him. He has made only a handful of public appearances since, and his own party have started booing and mocking him because it’s now a white nationalist, anti-democratic bag of nuts. Which, had he ever stood up for true principles at any point during the Trump administration, or sooner, or invoked the 25th Amendment that obviously needed to be, maybe he wouldn’t be a pariah to both the right and left.
Like the true Christofascist fanatic he is, he ran for President in 2024, but could never make any headway due to his utter lack of charisma, and the fact that Donald Trumps cult could never forgive him for refusing to aid and abet the coup attempt they attempted on January 6th. He finally realized he was never going to be president on October 28th, 2023, and dropped out of the race.
GOOD RIDDANCE.
One Year Ago, December 5th, 2022: Scott Pio (VA)
Two Years Ago, December 5th, 2021: Dion Bergeron (IN)
Three Years Ago, December 5th, 2020: Mike Pence (IN)… 2020 Update
Four Years Ago, December 5th, 2019: Mike Pence (IN)… 2019 Update
Five Years Ago, December 5th, 2018: Mike Pence (IN)… 2018 Update
Six Years Ago, December 5th, 2017: Mike Pence (IN)… 2017 Update
Seven Years Ago, December 5th, 2016: Mike Pence (IN)… 2016 Update
Eight Years Ago, December 5th, 2015: Mike Pence (IN)… Original Profile
Nine Years Ago, December 5th, 2014: Charles Bishop (AL)