So help me god, p.36
So Help Me God, page 36
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Shortly before the Senate began its confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh in September, a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University named Christine Blasey Ford sent a letter to California senator Dianne Feinstein. In it she alleged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while they were in high school. Feinstein and her staff did not make the letter public. Kavanaugh sat for hearings in the Senate for four days starting on September 4, during which there was no mention of Ford’s letter or the sexual assault allegations. Then, on the sixteenth, the New York Times, likely tipped off by Democratic Senate staffers, broke the news of Ford’s letter and its allegations. That was, it must be remembered, in the middle of the “Me Too” movement. Allegations of serial sexual assaults were being made against numerous powerful men in Hollywood, in the media, and of course in politics. And as evidence to back those accusations accumulated, the men were stripped of their posts of influence and power and drummed out of society. Rightly. So when allegations of sexual abuse were leveled against a potential Supreme Court justice, the country took them seriously. And it wasn’t just the initial allegation made by Ford; soon two other, even more damaging, accusations were made about sexual misconduct in Kavanaugh’s past.
Senator Chuck Grassley, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled another hearing so that both Ford and Kavanaugh could testify. A few nights before Kavanaugh testified, he and his wife, Ashley, sat down for an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News. Watching from the vice president’s residence, I thought Kavanaugh did fine. He and his wife remained calm. He denied the allegations, explained that he had no recollection of meeting Ford, had never been to the party she described. He had never sexually assaulted her or anyone, not in high school, not ever. But he was understated.
I thought he needed to show more fire, more righteous indignation. I called him that night and told him so. After all, this was a man with an unimpeachable record, admired by colleagues both male and female, and he had been accused of sexual abuse with no corroborating evidence, no witnesses. No one, not even Ford, could remember exactly where the party had taken place.
So I told him that he had done well on television but suggested that when he testified in front of the Senate, he shouldn’t hesitate to defend his reputation more forcefully. I don’t pretend that I was the only one who made that suggestion to Kavanaugh. But when he testified before the Senate, he was emotional, fighting back tears and pushing back against senators who clearly believed the worst about him. Ford’s own testimony had been moving, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it. Quickly the additional accusations of sexual misconduct fell apart. The New Yorker, which had printed the second account, quickly had to concede that its reporters could not secure any eyewitness account of Kavanaugh being at the party where the alleged transgressions had taken place. A third, even more lurid accusation of gang rape fell apart as well. Democrats, seeing the lack of evidence against Kavanaugh, claimed that his charged testimony was proof of an inadequate temperament. No legal observer had ever questioned Kavanaugh’s temperament during his career. Only after he had passionately defended his name and family in the face of outrageous allegations did the accusation arise, out of desperation. I was outraged by it. And as the process played out, many Americans were as well. In one of Lindsey Graham’s finest moments, the senator delivered a barn-burner speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lindsey has an old-school approach to Supreme Court nominees: he votes on their qualifications, not on party lines. In fact, he had voted to confirm Obama’s two picks, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. But on that day, he condemned his colleagues for trying to ruin Kavanaugh’s life and said that tarring candidates for the high court was “going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap.” He was right. On October 5, the committee, in a party-line vote, moved Kavanaugh’s nomination forward. The following day, after an FBI investigation had cleared Kavanaugh’s name, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh’s nomination as the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court, and it was my honor to preside over the vote and announce it to the nation.
Instead of simply reporting the vote count and hammering the gavel, I announced, “The nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh of Maryland to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed.”
The place thundered with applause.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Dialogue Is Good
For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.
—2 Timothy 1:7
One of the defining features of Trump’s candidacy was his willingness to speak truth about America’s relationship with China. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the West had believed that giving China open access to its economies, welcoming it into the World Trade Organization, and creating an economic relationship grounded in fairness and reciprocity would lead to greater rights for the Chinese, including freedom of expression and worship, and government transparency. Looked at in the light of 2018, that was a distant dream and had been a giant miscalculation.
At the end of the second decade of the new century, China’s economy had grown ninefold in twenty years, becoming the second largest in the world, in large part because of US investment. As Trump would say, “We rebuilt China.” I’d often correct him and say, “Actually, we built China, Mr. President.” In return, the United States was subjected to intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, and punishing tariffs on the part of China. Previous administrations had ignored those acts of aggression and turned a blind eye. The rise of Donald Trump spelled an end to that. He had won the presidency on a platform that promised a new era in US-China relations in which China’s government would be held responsible for its bad actions.
By the end of 2018, Trump had met with Chinese president Xi Jinping twice. The meetings were cordial. The two men got along well. But although Trump was happy to build friendly relations with leaders such as Xi, he had no intention of letting them pursue their nations’ interest at the expense of the United States’.
On October 4, I was preparing to deliver what amounted to the first full-throated articulation of the Trump administration’s China policy. It was to be held in Washington at the Hudson Institute, a think tank and research center with a focus on foreign policy, which had for years called Indiana home. I knew that the speech was an important one, and so did the president. When some of the cable business news channels started to speculate about the content of the speech a few weeks beforehand, the president took note of the coverage and I suggested that it would be a good idea to review the speech with him in detail. He agreed. With a draft of the speech and my chief of staff in tow, we sat opposite the president in the Oval Office and went through the entire speech line by line. When the president was distracted by a phone call or interruption, I would respectfully point at the draft on his desk and say, “Back to the speech.” I wanted to make sure that the message to China was just right and that Americans understood how the president was honoring his word to stand up to the country. Under his leadership, the US military had been given the largest increase in funding since the Reagan presidency. He had slapped $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. Besides enumerating China’s economic offenses, I reminded the world of its military expansion in the South China Sea, the state censorship blocking the flow of liberating information to its citizens, the persecution of Chinese Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists, and the Chinese government’s attempted interference in the US midterm elections. When the speech received an outsized amount of attention in the business press as an important statement of administration policy and the president wondered aloud why he wasn’t the one giving the speech, I reminded him, “You read every word of it.” He paused, nodded his head, and said, “You’re right.” And that was that.
Months after the speech, when I arrived in Japan on an official visit, I was greeted by our ambassador, Bill Hagerty, who said, “I just wanted to welcome the second most popular American in Japan.” My speech had been reprinted in every newspaper in Japan and welcomed by every freedom-loving country in the Asian Pacific.
The midterm elections arrived in November with an unpleasant thud for Republicans. The president and I had campaigned across the country for candidates, but the writing was on the wall, and it didn’t carry positive news. Historically, the party of the president doesn’t fare well during midterm elections, especially when that party has unified control of government. Americans like a divided government. The president was far more optimistic than I was about the prospect of Republicans’ keeping control of Congress. The economy was strong, unemployment was low, and he had delivered on a promised tax cut, was standing up to China, and was making historic progress in denuclearizing North Korea. He thought that the GOP would be rewarded for those things. But there was also the constant speculation over collusion with Russia and the impending Mueller report.
If the Democrats did win back Congress, Trump often speculated, it wouldn’t necessarily be all bad for his administration and the country, suggesting he might be better able to “make deals” if one chamber went for the Democrats. I strongly disagreed. I had been in the minority in Congress. I knew Nancy Pelosi and what she was capable of. Handing her the speaker’s gavel would put the Trump presidency into political peril. On the night of the election, members of the administration watched the returns come in in the East Room of the White House. Chairs were placed informally; large television screens were set up on stands around the room. The president and I were sitting next to each other when Newt Gingrich came by. Trump asked him to settle our argument. “Hey, settle this for us, Newt,” he said to Gingrich. “I think it might still be okay if the Democrats win the House. Mike says no.” Newt didn’t need a second to contemplate his answer: “Your vice president is right.” An hour later, the news stations called the election: the Democrats had won back the House of Representatives, and Nancy Pelosi would be speaker of the House for the next two years of the Trump term. It was a wipeout in the House, where the Republicans lost thirty-eight seats. There was some positive news floating in the blue wave: the GOP had managed to hang on to the Senate, even picking up seats in Indiana and North Dakota.
And there was a personal note of pride for the Pence family: my older brother Gregory was elected to represent Indiana’s Sixth Congressional District, the seat I had held for twelve years. Over the years he had been one of my greatest supporters. He had served in the military, built businesses, and raised a beautiful family. I’d never thought he would enter politics or run for Congress. But I was glad he had. Members of Congress equipped with a lifetime of experience better understand and are better qualified to serve their constituents. That was Gregory. And, he could brag that unlike me, he had been elected to serve our hometown in Washington on his first try. Brothers.
The following day, Trump took questions about the election results from reporters at the White House. With the midterms now on the books, the political press focused on the next election, the presidential one. “Will the vice president be your running mate in 2020?” a reporter asked the president. “Well, I haven’t asked him, but I hope so.” Then he found me in the audience, sitting to his right. “Mike, will you be my running mate?” he asked. I nodded. Then he jokingly asked me to stand up and raise my right hand. “Will you?” he asked again. I put my right hand up. “Thank you, okay, great. Yeah, the answer is yes. That was unexpected, but I feel fine” with a smile and a gesture my way.
Two years in, victories and defeats, I felt fine, too. There wasn’t much time not to.
In a few days I was on Air Force Two, headed to Singapore to represent the president at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference, a biannual meeting of Southeast Asian nations where discussions on economic and national security are held. Trump was never big on those types of meetings. He didn’t much like the socializing and schmoozing, the elaborate banquets. He much preferred to talk to other world leaders one-on-one, preferably on the phone. I was honored to go in his place.
The second day of the conference, I took my seat at the head of the four long, joined tables forming a square around a room in a convention center in Singapore. The plenary session, a meeting of all the member states of the association, the ten-state economic union of Asian nations, was beginning. I felt a tap on my left shoulder. It was Vladimir Putin.
He strutted through the crowd of translators, advisors, and diplomats with a confident bearing and took his seat. He quickly stood back up and came my way for a handshake. I stood up and shook his hand, and we chatted briefly before the session began. He offered help in combating the wildfires currently impacting California; I told him the president would meet with him at a summit in Argentina later in the year. I noticed that Putin projected a familiarity toward me. It came, I concluded, from his friendly meeting with Trump earlier in the year. It was as if we were old acquaintances. I didn’t return the favor. I kept my expression firm and fixed, and the photo of me looking down at him with a furrowed brow and a grim expression was published around the world, just as I’d hoped it would be. When I came back, Trump had seen the photograph, and he told me that I had looked too harsh. When I told him that it was intentional, he said, “Sometimes it shows more confidence when you’re friendly.” I liked the photograph.
After the session ended, the Russians requested a brief meeting, and I knew it was an opportunity to lay down a marker when it came to meddling in US elections. As the leaders got up from their seats, both our staffs motioned Putin over to a corner, where we stood together, surrounded by security and aides. Putin was just inches from me, expecting a friendly chat. He spoke of his desire to restart nuclear nonproliferation negotiations. After he finished, I said I had something I wanted to say to him. “Mr. President, we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.” Though Putin speaks English, he listened as his translator leaned in, relaying my message. His expression grew incredulous. He turned with a question to his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, presumably asking what I was talking about. The only word I recognized was “elections.” Then he spoke through his translator, saying Russia had nothing to do with the election. To which I responded, “Mr. President, I’m very aware of what you’ve said about that, but I’m telling you we know what happened in 2016, and it can’t happen again.” Putin seemed taken aback. Then he shrugged and changed the subject back to his upcoming summit in Argentina.
There was one more line to draw before leaving Singapore. At the conclusion of the ASEAN meeting, the world leaders gathered for a group photo. Afterward, as the crowd broke up, Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, stopped me as I was stepping off the stage. He was aware of the tough speeches on China I had given at the Hudson Institute and at this conference. He pleaded China’s case against the hard line the Trump administration was taking against its government, repeating his belief that China was a “developing nation.” I listened to him as he explained to me that a different set of rules applied to China and the United States should be willing to accommodate its status as a “developing nation.” I looked him in the eyes and said, “Mr. Li, things have got to change.” And as the translator converted my words to Chinese, I said it again slowly: “Things have got to change.” And we parted ways—in more ways than one.
A few days later, I was standing in the conference room of a cruise ship moored in the harbor at Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, where China’s President Xi and I would address US-China relations at the 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. “The US will not change course until China changes its ways,” I said to the leaders gathered. During my speech, in which I leveled another broadside at China’s trade abuses and military provocations, the transmission suddenly cut out. It was an audio glitch, not the Chinese government’s doing. Or so I was told. President Xi had already made his case in a speech earlier in the conference, warning that confrontations and cold or trade wars have historically produced “no winners.”
A grand banquet was held on the final day of the conference. Before taking our seats, the leaders gathered for a “family portrait.” But one head of state was late for the photo. Karen and I waited in the reception room for more than an hour, along with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, and others including Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, representing Putin, who had not attended. We all wore coordinated silk short-sleeve shirts, some red, some yellow, with black pants. Red, yellow, and black are Papua New Guinea’s national colors. Since the 1990s, when Bill Clinton handed out leather bomber jackets during an APEC meeting in Seattle, attendees have donned shirts or other garments native to the host country as a form of tribute. As we milled around and chatted, the room suddenly grew quiet, and the chatter died down. A staffer nudged me, and I saw Xi Jinping enter the room. He isn’t a particularly tall man, but he is an imposing figure. The crowd parted as he walked in the room, and he strode between the sides it formed. It was quite an entrance. He came to the area where I was standing. When he recognized me, he walked up with his interpreter (Xi doesn’t speak English) and acknowledged me as the vice president. I told him it was an honor to meet him. He asked if I had ever been to China and I replied that I had, as governor of Indiana. He invited me to return and I said it would be an honor to do so.
