To hear Donald Trump tell it, Republicans who take the Jeffrey Epstein scandal seriously, and resist White House pressure to treat the controversy as a “hoax,” are “stupid,” “foolish” and “naïve.” Evidently, the president’s former vice president came to a different conclusion. HuffPost reported:
Former Vice President Mike Pence has joined calls for the Trump administration to release all files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation, saying anyone associated with the late sex offender ‘ought to be held up to public scrutiny.’ ‘I think the time has come for the administration to release all of the files regarding Jeffrey Epstein’s investigation and prosecution,’ Trump’s former VP said in an interview Wednesday with CBS News’ Major Garrett.
While the Indiana Republican insisted that victims’ names should obviously be redacted, Pence added, in reference to the late alleged sex trafficker, “I think that anyone who participated or was associated with this despicable man ought to be held up to public scrutiny. … I just think that we ought to get the facts to the American people.”
And while it’s probably fair to say that the former vice president’s influence in the White House is minimal, his comments stood out, in part because Pence was saying what Trump didn’t want to hear, and in part because this wasn’t an isolated incident.
In May, for example, the former vice president criticized Trump’s trade tariffs during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
In the same interview, Pence took issue with Trump’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy during the president’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia. “I’ve never been a fan of American presidents criticizing America on foreign soil,” Pence said. “And to have the president in Saudi Arabia questioning America’s global war on terror, and describing it as nation-building and interventionist, I thought was a disservice to generations of Americans who wore the uniform and who took the fight to our enemy, you know, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.”
“And particularly giving that speech in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers hailed from, not including Osama bin Laden, I thought was unfortunate,” he continued.
Two months earlier, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly chided Americans’ interest in affordable consumer goods, Pence criticized him, too.
The month before that, the former vice president took issue with Trump’s bizarre effort to blame Ukraine for Russia’s 2022 invasion, which came on the heels of separate Pence comments in which he raised concerns about the administration abandoning our Ukrainian allies. All of this, of course, came on the heels of a 2024 campaign season in which Pence — whose life Trump put in danger on Jan. 6, 2021 — refused to back his party’s presidential ticket, urged Republicans to reject the “protectionist tariffs” that Trump is so fond of, and told a group of voters in New York: “I have real concerns about the direction of the Republican Party today.” It’s not exactly a secret that Trump has achieved a dominant level of power and control over the contemporary GOP, but he still faces some pockets of partisan resistance. In a dynamic without precedent in the American tradition, one of the president’s most notable intraparty detractors is the vice president who served at his side for four years. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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