President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence finally met and spoke to each other after nearly a week of silence, anger and traded accusations.
AP quoted a senior administration official that the two met Monday evening in the Oval Office and had a “good conversation.”
This time was their first speaking since last Wednesday, when Trump invited his supporters to rally at the capitol area, before scores of mobs stormed into the main building as Pence was chairing a session to certify November’s election results. Pence and his family were forced into hiding.
The official explained that during their conversation, Trump and Pence pledged to continue to work for “the remainder of their term” — a seeming acknowledgement that the vice president will not agree to pressures to try to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office with 8 days left in his term.
Upon intense pressure from the democrats, Pence had signaled that he no intention of moving forward with removing Trump, unless President Trump becomes more unstable.
One person close to Pence said aides dismissed Democrats’ efforts to drag the vice president further into the fray as little more than a tactic aimed at damaging Pence’s political future.
Even if Pence had been on board with the sentiment to remove Trump, the appetite for doing so has waned across the administration since last week. While three members of Trump’s Cabinet have resigned, not one has publicly called for Trump to be forcefully removed from office.
The pair meeting came hours before the House is set to cast a vote Tuesday calling on Pence to invoke the amendment.
“The president represents an imminent threat to our Constitution, our Country and the American people, and he must be removed from office immediately,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The House on Wednesday is expected to make Trump the first president in the nation’s history to be impeached a second time.
“We are further calling on the vice president to respond within 24 hours after passage,” Pelosi wrote. There is no mechanism that would force Pence to do so, making the move wholly symbolic.
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