Former White House Situation Room officer Mike Stiegler revealed that then-President Donald Trump never called down to check on then-Vice President Mike Pence as Trump fans hunted him at the Capitol, and that we were “that close” to losing the VP.
On Tuesday’s edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor George Stephanopoulos sat down with Stiegler, whose account of the Capitol riot is included in the host’s new book “The Situation Room.”
In a stunning exchange, Stiegler revealed just how close Pence came to getting killed — to the point of asking “Where’s the second in line?” — and that Trump never called down to the White House nerve center to ask about Pence:
Honestly kinda wish they’d have succeeded. We’d be down one monster at the hands of another; and the justice system would have handled the situation with MUCH less legal circus and kid gloves. The overall response to J6 has been a joke, and this would have forced us to take it seriously.
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Not sure if Pence dying would have made a difference there actually. There was already an insurrection, so if martial law is what he was after, he could have just used that as an excuse regardless of how successful the insurrectionists were.
I like to think that ‘we the people’ wouldn’t tolerate a Trump instigating an insurrection and then calling for martial law on the basis of that same insurrection; but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’d have been disappointed at our collective lack of a spine.
It would have. If he didn’t certify the vote then vote goes to Congress and they would have voted trump in.
Get a clue.
The Vice President doesn’t certify the vote count, the Senate does. The VP usually presides over the counting because the VP is the head of the Senate but if the office of the VP is vacant or the VP chooses not to preside over the vote count then the president pro tempore or the Senate leader elected under SR1 is the presiding officer.
Yeah, and without Pence, it would’ve been Lindsay Graham acting as president pro tempare, and he would have gone along with the fake elector scheme as pretext to refuse to acknowledge electors from states Biden won, leaving him with less than 270 electors. Election stalemates, it goes to Congress in a one-vote-per-state contest, and Trump wins. That was the entire plan behind the coup–find a pretext to deny Biden 270 electors to throw it to the backup mechanism where Republicans outnumber Democrats.
I’m glad they failed but at least I don’t have to listen to the corporate media wax poetic about how the United States is a beacon of democracy because the president is willing to peacefully transition to the next or whatever
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Did the president ever call down to the Situation Room on that day?
MIKE STIEGLER: Not to my knowledge.
Not that I think Trump gave a shit about Pence’s life, but I think it’s equally possible that he didn’t know that the Situation Room was a thing because he’s extremely stupid.
What a wild timeline. Nearly died but hey, maybe I’ll put him in office again.
Mike Pence will not endorse Trump, but will not rule out voting for him
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/17/mike-pence-republicans-trump
You gotta think he fears for his life or something if he’s still saying he might vote for Trump. Dude could easily retire and step away from politics, but he won’t.
He probably thinks it’s a room where you can find The Situation.
He knows it’s a thing, but never watches it because I bet Wolf Blitzer said a mean thing about him that one time.
I suffer from cognitive dissonance myself when viewing what happened from afar and knowing that Americans might elect this stupid man for a second time instead of taking the Mussolini option.
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However, that fact makes this source no profits, therefore “new interview” that “reveals” a “stunning” fact about “murder” it is then.
In this “news” article.
How about you, aren’t you “stunned” to hear this? :-(
slammed There. I said it.
Shocking
@DancingBear was gobsmacked by comment.
Please ^click ^^our ^^^^fucking ^^^^^liiiiiinks
I don’t really put much weight on Trump not calling down to Pence to check in on him. Trump only cares about himself and wouldn’t have called down regardless of what was happening. I do put a lot of weight in the unannounced change in security detail for Pence on the day of the insurrection. Pence was smart enough to turn down getting into a black car with a secret service person he didn’t know.
https://www.newsweek.com/pence-refusing-get-secret-service-car-jan-6-chilling-raskin-1700341
Damn, he is a piece of shit, but he helped save democracy for another four years on that day.
How in the fuck has Trump not been jailed for the insurrection. Flabbergasting watching from Europe.
We have a two tiered (minimum) justice system
Our whole government, especially courts have been corrupted so fully that he more or less got to pick his judge who is giving him everything he wants.
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IMPOSSIBLE! It was just a TOURIST VISIT! But it was ALSO a VIOLENT BLM BACKED RIOT! But NO ONE was in DANGER! Except for MAGAS who also WEREN’T EVEN THERE BECAUSE IT WAS ALL ANTIFA at the Tourist Visit that wasn’t but also was violent! And everyone arrested was ONLY MAGA! Who again weren’t there!
I see you speak fluent conservative.
Does anyone else kinda wish they had succeeded at this? I feel like we would be having a very different conversation about J6 if they had killed a Republican politician. Like, maybe Trump wouldn’t be on the ballot if it had happened that way. And let’s face it, the world would not miss Pence…
No, I don’t. Trump came dangerously close to creating a constitutional crisis that day, that he could have leveraged to retain power, by getting his dumbass cultists to attack the capitol. Had they succeeded in killing the VP, the one who is supposed to certify the election, there would have legit been a constitutional crisis.
There are always backups if someone dies. His being murdered by the mob wouldn’t have stopped election verification
Depends on which they chose to certify. The fake electors, or the real ones. It was the fake electors that Pence knowingly chose not to certify that got him into the almost assassinated situation.
I don’t, because IIRC the plan was to take Pence out of the picture, have Graham assume the role of Senate president pro tempare in his place, and then Graham would use the fake electors as a justification to refuse to certify Biden’s election. From there, it would get thrown to Congress, where each state’s congressional delegation get a single collective vote to decide who becomes president. Republicans outnumber Democrats in enough state delegations to throw the election to Trump.
In other words, the timeline Pence dies is the one where the coup succeeds.
Does anyone else kinda wish they had succeeded at this?
There are a lot of sitting Senators that could make the world a better place by just dropping dead. Idk if I’d want the Jan6thers to claim that many scalps. But if they’d all died of heart attacks a week later, I would not have minded.
Like, maybe Trump wouldn’t be on the ballot if it had happened that way.
Nah. But maybe Mitt Romney wouldn’t be doing an interview in which he insisted Biden should pardon Trump.
The conspiracy theory that it would have been democrats would be bigger and trump would have a martyr for his cause
How is Trump going to martyr the guy his own supporters killed? That’s not how martyrdom works…
Simple, claim it was antifa plants in his otherwise “very good people” crowd
They regularly claim it was a democratic psy op
The first change is that the vote count certification wouldn’t have been finished and Biden’s victory would have been denied. Sooo…
I imagine Trump was bewildered by any questions about succession, that doesn’t come into play when offing those deemed disloyal. When he learned rioters were being turned away because their weapons couldn’t go through magnetometer screening he told aides, “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.”
This convinces me that I’m not in the funniest timeline. Because what would be funnier than Joe Biden christening the brand new Mike Pence Memorial Statue in the center of the Senate Chamber atrium, months before another group of right-wing rioters break in and tear it down?
Thank god for that. If I laughed too often I’d need healthier and more expensive coping mechanisms than just comedy and alcohol
Wait what?? Why did Trump fans want to kill Pence?
He did the barest of minimums to preserve democracy by allowing Biden’s electoral victory to be formalized, so the hogs demanded blood
