Even before the Jan. 6 attack, when Donald Trump put then-Vice President Mike Pence’s life in danger, the Republican president had a habit of publicly embarrassing his right-hand man. The Hoosier did everything he could to show unfailing loyalty, but for Trump, it simply didn’t matter.
The president, of course, ultimately replaced Pence with Vice President JD Vance, and history is already starting to repeat itself.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump would occasionally contradict the Ohio Republican, which didn’t do Vance’s reputation any favors, but on literally the first day of the Trump-Vance era, the problem became more acute when the new president pardoned Jan. 6 criminals — including those who violently clashed with police officers at the U.S. Capitol.
And that, of course, brought to mind the public comments that his vice president had made eight days earlier. The Associated Press reported on Jan. 12:
Vice President-elect JD Vance says people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot ‘obviously’ should not be pardoned. … Vance insisted in an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that the pardon question is ‘very simple,’ saying those who ‘protested peacefully’ should be pardoned and ‘if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.’
This was not the first time the Ohioan made such comments. In May, two months before the then-senator joined his party’s 2024 ticket, Vance told CNN, “If you beat up a cop, of course you deserve to go to prison. If you violated the law, you should suffer the consequences.”
Note the unambiguous phrasing: As far as Vance was concerned, “of course” violent rioters who attacked police officers should be put behind bars. It’s hardly a subject of debate: “Obviously” such violent criminals and convicted felons should not receive presidential pardons, the vice president said nine days ago.
This was, he told a national viewing audience, “very simple.”
It’s not yet clear how the deliberative process on Team Trump unfolded behind closed doors. Maybe Vance was sidelined. Maybe he presented a case that the new president rejected. Maybe he was told what position to take, and Trump soon after changed his mind. Whatever the explanation, just hours into the Trump-Vance era, the new president hung his vice president out to dry. (This comes on the heels of Vance investing some of his political capital into Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general, personally escorting the former congressman from Senate office to Senate office, urging his colleagues to confirm Gaetz and putting his credibility on the line. Soon after, the Florida Republican withdrew from consideration — and Trump agreed.) While we wait for the vice president to explain why the president made him look foolish (again), it’s also worth emphasizing that Vance isn’t alone on this. Quite a few Republican officials said they were prepared to accept Jan. 6 pardons for non-violent offenders, but they weren’t altogether comfortable with the idea of Trump putting violent criminals who attacked the police back onto the streets before their sentence was up. Weaseling out of these comments won’t be easy, but since the alternative is criticizing their party’s new president, they’ll have to think of something.
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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