Clearly, very few people are interested in books by Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo

Walter Einenkel

Daily Kos Staff

Monday January 09, 2023 · 12:55 PM PST

2023/01/09 · 12:55

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 24: (L-R) Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attend a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda and U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on June 24, 2020 in Washington, DC. Duda, who faces a tight re-election contest in four days, is Trump's first world leader visit from overseas since the coronavirus pandemic began. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

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Conservatives are not nearly as popular as they would like you to believe. It is the feebleness of their ideas and the emptiness of their platform policies that have led to their need to rig our system for minority rule. If you cannot get the majority of Americans to vote for you you need to suppress votes, gerrymander districts into tortured maps, and allow dark billionaire money to flow into your campaigns.

Two conservative memoirs are in the news right now: former Vice President Mike Pence’s So Help Me God (so named because he’s super into a hypocritical God), and the soon-to-be-released Mike Pompeo ditty, Never Give An Inch (so named because he’s super not into God, but is a total hypocrite). Pence’s book came out in November of 2022, and Pompeo’s mythology is set for a release later in January.

The two books are in the news for different, but similar, reasons. Both of those reasons have to do with illustrating the abject corruption, deceit, and loneliness of being a conservative con artist who (likely) believes your own bullshit.

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First up is Mike Pence’s story. According to Forbes, Pence’s Great America Committee spent about $91,000 on “Collateral Materials” from Books on Call NYC, INC. back on Nov. 9, six days before his book came out and hit the New York Times’ bestseller list at No. 2. But don’t you worry, Pence isn’t getting money directly from these sales. According to Pence spokesperson Devin O’Malley, everything is on the up and up, though he didn’t mention whether or not this $91,000 was spent on goosing up sales to game the bestseller list.

According to Bookscan, Pence has sold just north of 112k units of his book since its release. It is a decent number of books but doesn’t bode well for the two-book deal Simon & Schuster cut with Pence. However, to put that into perspective across the book landscape, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry—released the same week as Pence’s book—sold more than 144,000 copies in that first week. Michelle Obama’s book has sold more than three-quarters of a million copies since then, and the publishing market has been considered to be “soft.” In Mike Pence’s defense, he’s a cowardly and unappetizing person.

Pence’s potential book-buying shenanigans are not new. In the last couple of years, it has become the self-promotional swampy navel-gazing standard to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars here and there to boost up the sales numbers for operatives like Sens. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and even Donald Trump Jr.

What does Mike Pence’s sad memoir about how God can’t sell books for him have to do with Mike Pompeo’s soon-to-be-released lie about his vainglorious fight against the domestic terrorist threat of the teacher’s union?

This might be the most hilarious book blurb I've ever seen.

Really embarrassing @mikepompeo couldn't find ANYONE else to praise his book. pic.twitter.com/1qPBOsG5ck
— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) January 9, 2023

It isn’t even a good quote about his own book! “Stories from my heart?”

It’s Burgundy-esq pic.twitter.com/0vkOhCGPdf
— Mattchoo P Choo (@mattch12) January 9, 2023

Here’s an update on the possible why Pompeo’s promotional material is so sad.

This is what happens when you publish a book where the publicity team is on strike. https://t.co/ugT6qODpok
— HarperCollins Union on strike since 11/10/22 (@hcpunion) January 9, 2023

Clearly, very few people are interested in books by Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo

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