Pence camp thinks Trump ‘set up the VP to take the fall’ — endangering his life in the process: CNN

Vice President Mike Pence was on Capitol Hill to preside over the tabulation of Electoral College votes when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the building on Wednesday, forcing the Secret Service to evacuate him.

Sources close to Pence think Trump set him up and needlessly endangered his life in the process, according to a new report from CNN.

"President Donald Trump and top White House officials did little to check in on Vice President Mike Pence while he and members of his family were inside the US Capitol when Trump-backed rioters stormed the halls of Congress on Wednesday, a source close to the vice president tells CNN," Jim Acosta reported. "Several of the violent Trump supporters who were rampaging the US Capitol were heard screaming 'where's Mike Pence,' the source said, frightening the vice president and his family."

"People close to the vice president now believe he is being set up as a 'scapegoat' to shoulder the blame inside Trump-world after Pence refused to buckle to the President's demands to engineer a procedural coup that would keep Trump in power," Acosta reported. "On Tuesday, Pence came under intense pressure from Trump to toss out the election results during a meeting that lasted hours in the Oval Office. The vice president's chief of staff, Marc Short, was banned by Trump from entering the West Wing, the source said, as the President repeatedly warned with 'thinly veiled threats' to Pence that he would suffer major political consequences if he refused to cooperate."

"The events Wednesday have left some aides to the vice president feeling Pence was betrayed by Trump as well as White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and the President's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani," Acosta added.

He cited one source anonymously. "Rudy, Meadows and their teams have been trying to set up the vice president to take the fall as opposed to admitting they laid out false hope in all of this," the source said. "Trump just can't admit defeat and wants a scapegoat."