The most important story about Donald Trump’s incipient pick for his vice presidential running mate is the reason he needs to replace Mike Pence, who served as his vice president for four years. Reporting on Trump’s decision, which will be announced within the next week, should emphasize that Pence has been removed from the ticket because he refused Trump’s entreaties to overturn the 2020 election — and that his substitute will be someone who would make a different choice.
Journalists have covered Trump’s potential vice presidential pick from virtually every possible angle over the past several weeks. In addition to more traditional coverage of who the contenders are, the arguments for and against each, and which one is most likely to be the pick, the reporting has included conflicting stories about whether Trump likes Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s beard, discussions of whether Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would need to move to another state to accept the nomination, and illuminations of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s potential advantage in having “great hair.”
But what often falls out of veepstakes coverage is a simple question: Why does Trump need to pick a new running mate in the first place? Why isn’t Pence, who shared the ticket with Trump in 2016 and 2020, still on the ticket?
Everyone knows the answer: Pence eliminated any hope of serving another term with Trump on January 6, 2021.
Trump spent the weeks after the 2020 presidential election lying that Democrats had rigged the vote against him through massive voter fraud — and trying to subvert the results. He drew support from propaganda outlets like Fox News and a coterie of loyal kooks and charlatans. But courts rejected his arguments in dozens of cases, and state legislatures refused to go along with his plans.
The then-president’s fallback option was a scheme to pressure then-Vice President Pence, who would oversee the count of Electoral College votes during the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress, to illegally reject electors from key states that supported Joe Biden and thus subvert the election to keep Trump in office. But Pence refused to play along, repeatedly telling Trump that he did not have the constitutional authority to take such actions.
But Trump nonetheless summoned thousands of his supporters to a rally at the White House that day, and he told the resulting assembly that Pence had the power to keep him in office.
“If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he told the crowd an hour before the joint session was scheduled to begin.
Pence held firm. He wrote in a letter released minutes before the session that “my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
The insurrection began. A Trumpist mob broke through police barricades and stormed the U.S. Capitol. The Secret Service rushed Pence to a safe location, Congress abruptly halted its constitutional duty to oversee the peaceful transition of power, and the building went into lockdown.
Trump responded to the assault on the democratic process by attacking Pence. The then-president, who was reportedly watching live Fox coverage of the attack, tweeted, “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
As video circulated that members of the mob were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump reportedly suggested that Pence deserved it. And with the building under siege, a Trump lawyer told one of Pence’s aides by email that Pence was responsible.
Pence kept his honor and stood strong against Trump’s coup attempt. Law enforcement eventually cleared the building of rioters, Pence brought both houses of Congress back into session, the legislatures resumed their work certifying the electoral vote, and, at 3:42 a.m., the vice president announced that Joe Biden had a majority and would become president. And for a brief time, there was a widespread, bipartisan consensus that the day’s events had been horrific — and that Trump bore responsibility for them.
But then the right-wing’s propagandists went to work. They created a counternarrative which downplayed the mob’s violence and blamed it on federal agitators, winning over the Republican base and helping to rehabilitate the former president. Now the GOP has turned election denial into a core value — and the party is about to return Trump to its presidential ticket, even as he continues to claim he won four years ago.
Pence won’t be joining him, however. Indeed, Pence, who maintains that “Trump was wrong” and that the then-president bears responsibility for the insurrection, says he won’t be supporting Trump at all in the general election.
Pence wouldn’t pretend that Trump won the 2020 election, and he refused to help him remain in power unlawfully, and so he is off the ticket in 2024. And it beggars belief that Trump might pick someone without getting assurances that they would follow through where Pence balked. Journalists understand what’s going on here, and they don’t serve their viewers, listeners, and readers by hiding the ball.
Indeed, while the contenders have various pluses and minuses, they share two qualities. They all looked at what happened on January 6 and decided they were still willing to take the VP slot, and they’ve all spent the last several months publicly supplicating to Trump by winking at 2020 election denial and pooh-poohing questions of whether they would accept the results of the 2024 race.
Trump's coup failed because brave Republicans — Pence above all — were willing to put their loyalty to the Constitution over their personal loyalty to Trump. By definition, anyone who wants to be his vice president today is saying they would make a different choice. Journalists should keep those stakes front and center as they cover Trump’s running mate pick.