As the 2024 presidential election heats up, opponents of former President Donald Trump are attempting to shift the focus back to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to sink his prospects, to varying degrees of success.
New insights from that fateful day have just emerged in the form of a transcript detailing an interview conducted with Trump's former White House valet with the now-defunct House Select Committee probing Jan. 6, in which conversations between the sitting president and then-Vice President Mike Pence are recounted, as the New York Times reports.
In the aforementioned transcript, obtained by the Times, tensions were running high on the morning of Jan. 6. when it remained unclear whether certification of the presidential election results would indeed be certified by the vice president.
The unnamed White House Valet testified to the House committee that Trump, during a phone call with Pence, outlined what he believed would be the consequences of certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the contest.
“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Trump said, according to the employee, who testified that he was near the president for much of the day in question.
The valet went on to claim that Trump applied pressure on Pence to overturn the results and was clearly outraged by the vice president's refusal to follow his instructions on the matter.
Some of the valet's recollections tend to portray Trump in a relatively unflattering light, whereas others tend to debunk some of the more frequently repeated allegations regarding what occurred as the Capitol unrest began to unfold.
The valet noted that upon learning that a civilian had been shot near the House chamber, Trump did not appear overly bothered.
Referencing a note card given to Trump to inform him of that dire news, the valet said, “I don't remember how it got there or whatever. But there was no, like, reaction.”
However, the valet contradicted oft-heard claims that Trump unleashed a torrent of vulgarities when discussing Pence's reluctance to deny certification of the election results or that the president concurred in any way with protestors' suggestions that the vice president be subjected to hanging for his alleged treason.
He also remembered hearing Trump discuss the possibility of sending National Guard troops to help quell the demonstration once things began to spiral out of control.
Likely in large part because of their divergence on Jan. 6, but also because of policy differences with Trump that the former vice president has since articulated, Pence recently declared that he would not be endorsing the former commander-in-chief for election to another term in office, as the Associated Press reports.
During the launch of his own unsuccessful bid for the White House last year, Pence declared of Trump, “I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”
Earlier this month, Pence referenced concerns about abortion, the national debt, and other topics, telling Fox News's Martha MacCallum, “During my presidential campaign I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my Constitutional duties that I exercised on January, underscoring his belief that the current GOP front-runner's agenda “is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.”
