Former Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that he has a “strong relationship” with former President Donald Trump and added that the two had sat down and “talked through” their differences in the days after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.
“Look, you can’t spend almost five years in a political foxhole with somebody without developing a strong relationship,” Pence told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “And, you know, January 6 was a tragic day in the history of our Capitol building. But thanks to the efforts of Capitol Hill police, federal officials, the Capitol was secured. We finished our work, and the president and I sat down a few days later and talked through all of it.”
Pence added that he and Trump had “parted amicably at the end of the administration and we’ve talked a number of times since we both left office.”
The then-vice president was presiding over the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results when pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol and forced Pence and other lawmakers to take refuge in secure areas of the building. Some rioters erected a gallows and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” as they made their way through the Senate chamber.
Trump had publicly insisted that Pence reject the election results in the leadup to Jan. 6, an unprecedented move, which would have triggered a constitutional crisis.
According to the recent book “Peril,” authored by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and reporter Robert Costa, Pence reached out to former Vice President Dan Quayle — a fellow Hoosier — for advice.
“Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle reportedly told him.
After Pence told Quayle that “you don’t know the position I’m in,” Woodward and Costa write, Quayle told him: “I do know the position you’re in. I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power.”
In June, Pence acknowledged to a gathering of New Hampshire Republicans that he did not know if he and Trump would “ever see eye to eye on that day.”
The House of Representatives has since convened a select committee to examine the events of that day and has issued several subpoenas, including to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon.
On Monday, Pence argued that “the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January. They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.
“But for our part, I truly believe we all ought to remain completely focused on the future,” he said. “That’s where I’m focused and I believe the future is bright.”
