'Hang Mike Pence' was the logical last step for Trump's pressure campaign: analysis

The entire purpose of sending a mob of Donald Trump supporters was to put one last burst of pressure on vice president Mike Pence to overturn the election results, according to an analysis.

The former president had pressured Pence both publicly and privately to follow through on a coup plot based on a constitutionally specious reading of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, but the then-vice president waffled -- so Trump and his right-wing allies resorted to a last-ditch effort to remain in power through force, argued New York Magazine columnist Ed Kilgore.

"In the heat of the moment on January 6, after Team Trump’s many legal and political efforts to forestall his defeat had failed, swaying the famously sycophantic Mike Pence remained the only real play," Kilgore wrote. "They had run out of time to do anything else. And while this is speculative, it strikes me as likely that one of Trump’s chief motives in sending the mob toward the Capitol on January 6 was to put a final burst of pressure on Pence to 'do the right thing,' perhaps by creating so much chaos in the electoral-vote-count process that an adjournment might seem reasonable."

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Thousands of Trump supporters mobbed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after hearing a fiery speech from the then-president about Pence's unwillingness to overturn what he called a stolen election, but not even threats to hang the former president worked to undo the election loss.

"In the end, Pence would not go along, leaving to the judgment of history whether he should be regarded as a great hero for rejecting pressure to execute an election coup or more of an ambiguous figure thanks to his previous loyalty to a scofflaw president," Kilgore wrote. "There was certainly every reason for Trump to hope against hope that Pence could at least be counted on to throw some sand in the gears of the process leading to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. And that might be enough to constitute a 'strategy' for a seat-of-the-pants presidency built on Donald Trump’s narcissism and the willingness of subordinates to tell him what he wanted to hear at any cost."