If you're going to fault Vice President Mike Generic-Brand Mayonnaise Substitute Pence for something, and I heartily recommend you do, you could fault him for his grinning advocacy for religious rule in the United States. You could fault him for his dull, uninspired promotion of conservative economic theories that had proven ineffective before Mike Pence ever found his way to office, or his thoroughly generic battles against the working class of his state, and the poor, and the usual enemies of Republican thought.
You could do that. But consider, instead, faulting him for being such a pathetic person as to blindly follow Donald Trump, a true garbage fire of a man, by regurgitating whatever lies Donald Trump wants regurgitated. Mike Pence is truly a liar's lapdog, and that is about as low as a person can sink.
During a speech at the Tax Foundation’s annual dinner, Pence made a claim that tops them all. After rattling off a series of Trump’s initiatives to “get the economy moving again,” Pence declared, “There are more Americans working today than ever before in American history.”
Because the population is greater. That's it. The workforce is greater than it was in 1980 or in 1860 or in 1692 because There. Are. More. People. Now. Mike Pence is willingly repeating one of the hoariest economic dodges in political rhetoric—a claim usually made by political hacks who are absolutely, positively convinced their audience is made up of morons.
Given that Pence made his bold pronouncement at a Tax Foundation dinner, well, there ya go.
Anyhoo, the Washington Post's fact-checking team weighed into this. They are unimpressed with Pence.
The Trump administration has made a habit of taking credit for economic gains that have little or nothing to do with its policies. Pence’s claim that there are more Americans working today than ever before in American history might go down as one of the more ridiculous economic claims made by the administration.
That's a high bar that Mike Pence probably can’t reach in an administration in which every individual office is staffed by its own garbage fire, but he need not reach it. What is impressive about Mike Pence is that he is truly a man without shame. A man with no integrity at all, at least not if he can help it. Donald Trump wants him to go out and say that the economy is the Bestest It Has Ever Been, because Donald Trump's personal delusions of grandeur require his staff to say so, and Mike Pence obliges because Mike Pence is a nothing in a suit. A mannequin. A doll.
During his entire time in office, any office, he has merely been a willing receptacle for the party's dullest thoughts and worst instincts, and if he does it because he believes any of it or because he is a robot programmed to blindly seek higher office by repeating the phrases he is fed remains forever unclear. He seems too dim-witted to be saying any of it intentionally, but you could say the same about all of the yes-men Trump has surrounded himself. Because Trump doesn't like hanging around people who are any smarter than he is.