Here's a little tidbit that flew past yesterday on Deadline White House with Nicolle Wallace.
"I want to read more about Mike Pence's experience on January 6th," Wallace said, reading from the Leonnig-Rucker book, "I Alone Can Fix It."
"They go on to record at 2:26 p.m., after a team of agents scouted a safe path to ensure the Pences would not encounter trouble, Giebels, their top Secret Service agent, and the rest of Pence's detail, guided them down the staircase to a secure subterranean area rioters couldn't reach where his armored limousine awaited. He asked Pence to get into one of the vehicles. 'We can hold here,' he said. 'I'm not getting in the car, Tim,' Pence replied. 'I trust you, Tim. But you're not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I'm not getting in that car.'
" 'The Pences made their way to a secure underground area to wait out the riot. Pence feared a conspiracy, feared that the Secret Service would aid Trump and his ultimate aims that day.' This is the most harrowing version of Mike Pence's day I've seen reported," she said.
"Nicolle, this is typical of a dictatorship of an authoritarian anti-democratic regime," Jeremy Bash said.
"This is not typical of the greatest democracy ever on the face of the planet. And I think what you're seeing here is a dynamic that the former president advanced and wished for, which is to somehow enlist the security services to include law enforcement, to include maybe the Secret Service, the United States military and maybe the intelligence community, which are and must remain apolitical organizations.
"I think it was his ambition to somehow insert them into his political gamesmanship to retain power. Thankfully, those organizations are full of women and men who have sworn an oath to the Constitution, up and down the chain of command, who I think have been classically trained in the democratic ideals that underpin our security, intelligence and military organizations, and they were having nothing of it.
"The reason we got to this point, where essentially Trump was trying to set up a situation where might would make right, meaning, my security services would help achieve a political outcome, is because Donald Trump took us there. And I want to tip my hat to those people inside our professional gov organizations who continue to be under attack today in some parts of our body politic today, because our organizations should never be brought into an election controversy for any political gain."
I'll just add here that I think Pence was more than entitled to worry. As we've written here before, Trump did deeply politicize the Secret Service and a lot of the Secret Service agents went full MAGA.
