CNN
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In a forthcoming memoir about his time on workplace, former Vice President Mike Pence recounts a dialog he had with Donald Trump.
Right here’s the key bit, from an excerpt printed within the Wall Road Journal on Wednesday:
“Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and different Republicans had filed a lawsuit asking a federal decide to declare that I had ‘unique authority and sole discretion’ to resolve which electoral votes ought to rely. ‘I don’t wish to see ‘Pence Opposes Gohmert Go well with’ as a headline this morning,’ the president stated. I informed him I did oppose it. ‘If it provides you the facility,’ he requested, ‘why would you oppose it?’”
“If it provides you the facility, why would you oppose it?”
In the event you had just one quote to know Trump and the way he views the world, that will be a reasonably good one.
The one factor that issues to Trump is energy – and learn how to wield it. He views the world as a relentless struggle for energy and management. The winners are the individuals who seize energy – regardless of the price. There is no such thing as a “proper” in Trump’s worldview. There’s solely what you are able to do – and who can attempt to cease you.
Which is precisely how Trump ran his presidency.
“When any person is the president of the USA, the authority is whole and that’s the way in which it’s received to be,” he said in April 2020 round efforts to raise restrictions associated to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump often handled the federal government as his private play factor. He grew pissed off when the Justice Division refused to pursue his private vendettas. He referred to “my navy” and “my generals.”
Briefly: The presidency was a significant energy journey for somebody who has spent his life in search of to amass and retain simply that kind of energy.
Which brings us again to the lead-up to January 6, 2021, and the stress that Trump was bringing to bear on Pence.
For Trump, the one situation was whether or not somebody stated that Pence had the facility to reject the Electoral Faculty rely. Not whether or not Pence truly had that energy below slightly factor known as the Structure.
Witness Trump’s response to Pence’s insistence that he didn’t have the facility to disrupt the electoral vote rely from the guide excerpt.
“You’re too trustworthy,” Trump informed Pence. “A whole bunch of hundreds are gonna hate your guts. … Individuals are gonna suppose you’re silly.”
See, in Trump’s conception, individuals who don’t seize energy when the chance presents itself will not be sensible. They’re rubes who’re taken benefit of by savvy folks – folks like Trump.
In fact, the peaceable switch of energy in a democracy just isn’t the identical factor as some energy play on the earth of enterprise. The stakes are infinitely increased.
Trump has by no means appeared to know that reality.
