The Most Telling Pence Attacks

To begin with, Mike Pence strikes me as the kind of man who would never be caught using a contraction in a sentence — as such, I will not be using contractions in this article. I do not know why I think this, but something about his personality just points to him being that kind of person.

Easily the most interesting part of the debate — besides Pence constantly looking like a robot — was his refusal to keep time. Susan Page, the moderator, had to keep reminding him time was up — and he still kept going on and on about whatever it is he felt like. And when his constant rambling was stopped, he decided he could just continue where he left off the next time he got a chance to speak.

Here’s an actual exchange during the debate:

PAGE: If Roe v Wade is overturned, what would you want Indiana to do? Would you want your home state to ban all abortions? You have two minutes, uninterrupted.

PENCE: Thank you for the question, but I’ll use a little bit of my time to respond to that very important key before. The American people deserve to know, Quasem Soleimani, the Iranian general, was responsible for the death of hundreds of American servicemembers. When the opportunity came, we saw him headed to Baghdad to kill more Americans, President Trump didn’t hesitate and Quasem Soleimani is gone. But you deserve to know that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually criticized the decision to take out on Quasem Soleimani. It’s really inexplicable, but with regard to Joe Biden it’s explainable, because history records that Joe Biden actually opposed the raid against Osama bin Laden. It’s absolutely essential that we have a commander in chief who will not hesitate to act to protect American lives and to protect American servicemembers, and that’s what you have in President Donald Trump.

Now, that is all great and everything — actually, it is far from great as the killing of Soleimani was a disaster from a foreign policy standpoint — but Pence was asked about abortion. He really could not have given some fluff “I would want to see abortion banned in Indiana but states can legalize it however they see fit” style answer? The same answer, by the way, that was given by people like Antonin Scalia, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Charles Krauthammer, and many other people typical associated with the pro-life movement.

Or how about when he got onto Kamala Harris for enforcing drug laws supported by people like — Mike Pence!

PENCE: When you were DA in San Francisco, when you held that office, African Americans were 19 times more likely to be prosecuted for minor drug offenses than whites and Hispanics.

Here is a fun fact, in 2013 Mike Pence, who had just become Governor of Indiana, lobbied against a bill that would lower the sentence of those caught with pot. In 2016, the same year Pence first ran for Vice President, he reinstated a ten year mandatory minimum for for certain drug offensives. And I should remind you all, he had the power to make a substantial change regarding how his state fights the war on drugs, including the ability to have his state stop fighting it, and he did not.

Speaking of Pence and drugs:

PENCE: So, the fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine if the vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think is unconscionable. And Senator, I just asked you, stop playing politics with people’s lives.

“Stop playing politics” says the politician to the other politician. And how was Pence not “playing politics” when he defunded needle exchange programs and pushed abstinence only education as Governor of Indiana? Might I remind you, that led to a massive spike in the HIV rate back in 2015.

But then came my favorite attack. It started off with Harris saying the following:

HARRIS: You, the Vice President earlier referred to, as part of what he thinks is an accomplishment, the President’s trade war with China. You lost that trade war. You lost it. What ended up happening is, because of a so called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Farmers have experienced bankruptcy, because of it. We are in a manufacturing recession, because of it. And when we look at this administration has been, there are estimates that by the end of the term of this administration, they will have lost more jobs than almost any other presidential administration.

Here is how Mike Pence responded:

PENCE: Well, I’d love to respond. Lose the trade war with China? Joe Biden never fought it. Joe Biden has been a cheerleader for Communist China through over the last several decades.

Of course, “Biden didn’t fight a pointless trade war that has been a failure on all accounts” is not the slam-dunk than Mike Pence thinks it is. Or, at the very least, it should not be. However, this comment — that it is okay to kill us all if it means China might get a boo-boo — is a very common talking point among the right.

Hence why we saw no issue with the President trying to take away our medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic — if the medicine came from China. Meanwhile, manufacturing has not come back to the United States (and yet we could still have a very low unemployment rate) and we are still very trading with China. The most this trade war has done is lead the United States further into authoritarian direction, with it now being seen as okay if the United States government bans a video sharing app if they can pull a China connection out of their asses.

It’s this idea that hawkishness on China, an issue that should be constantly debated before any serious action is taken, is now the status quo. Why is it the status quo? Because 80,000 people in three states voted for Donald Trump — same with the border wall. Hence why One America News anchor Liz Wheeler was able to tweet this during a DNC debate:

Your daily reminder that @PeteButtigieg is NOT moderate. He supports:

— Late term abortion

— No border wall

— Amnesty for illegals (says “no human is illegal)

— Abolish electoral college

— Praised Bloomberg soda ban

— Stacking SCOTUS

— Free college

— $15/hr min wage

— High taxes

Of course, a number of these things are just untrue. Buttigieg’s plan to “stack the court,” for example, would involve premaritally giving one third of it to the Republican Party. However, it is the fact that “no border wall,” or being against a highly controversial idea, is now an example of left-wing extremism that highly got to me.

This is how Republicans think, they barley squeak through another election and they treat it as evidence both God and the American people are on their side no matter what. In 2004, when George W. Bush just barley beat John Kerry in one of the closest elections in US history, that was seen as a mandate by Republicans — it was the farthest thing from it.

A memo to the Vice President, free trade has only gotten more popular over the course of the Trump administration. Many small businesses have sued to have your protectionism removed because of how badly it has damaged them. Oh, and for every one job your tariffs create, fourteen jobs are lost elsewhere in the economy.

If Kamala and Biden are going to not fight this bullshit trade war, consider me a supporter of them.