Trump thought Pence was a 'square' who wasn't 'tough' and could be 'rolled' easily
Michael Wolff's new book details several clashes that former President Donald Trump had with his staff and Republican leaders while in office.
One such point deals with the lunches between Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. It was a tradition that former President Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden enjoyed while in office. The two would often have lunches to discuss strategy, issues and family. But for Trump, their time was something else, BusinessInsider said, citing an excerpt from Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency.
"The lunches were specifically meant to be an opportunity for Pence to tell the president exactly how hard he was working for him," Wolff explains in an excerpt of his book. "He usually got ten minutes to do this before Trump snapped on the television and launched into his current list of grievances."
According to Wolff's book, Trump often wondered how Pence "could be such a 'stiff' and a 'square, and likewise, as though a corollary, he regarded Pence as someone not tough, as someone who, he increasingly pointed out, could be 'rolled'."
Trump and lawyer Rudy Giuliani had hoped that Pence would defy the Constitution and somehow ensure his presidency would continue.
"Trump pressed further, in a line he would leak straight away and that he would be repeating for months to come: 'Do you want to be a patriot or pussy?'" Wolff penned. "Pence, not rising to the bait, repeated that, in the overwhelming opinion of those constitutional experts he had consulted, the Constitution did not give him the authority to do what the president thought he could do."
Bloomberg News reported in March that Trump, were he to run in 2024, would replace Pence on the ticket.
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