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He - Trump kept insisting that no matter what all the experts were saying, that Pence had this power to send the whole election back to the states. INSKEEP: Didn't he even call his fellow former vice president from Indiana, Dan Quayle?ĮLVING: (Laughter) That's right. Every expert he turned to - and his chief of staff tried to pull together a whole constellation of conservative legal stars - some of the absolute big names among federal judges and among constitutional scholars and top universities - and they all said, Pence, you have no role but to open the votes from the states and announce the result. He struggled mightily with this decision for January 6. He was perhaps the most ambivalent character in the entire book, perhaps in the entire administration at that point. How hard did Pence try to work out what to do?ĮLVING: He worked pretty hard at it. INSKEEP: Now, we know that Pence, in the end, did what the law required and did not attempt to do something that the law didn't allow him to do.

And if you won't do that, you won't be my friend. He kept saying, Mike, you don't have to do that. And under a procedure that's been in place for 140 years, it's a pretty much pro forma thing, where the vice president just reads off the numbers from the states.Īnd, you know, President Trump didn't want him to do it. But one of those occasions is when the Electoral College reports every four years. Now, he really only does that on ceremonial occasions. What was Mike Pence's dilemma?ĮLVING: Well, Mike Pence's job includes presiding over the Senate. INSKEEP: I just want to work through a few Republican players, starting with a critical player on January 6. RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Steve.

So there is more to discuss this morning.Īnd NPR's Ron Elving has been reading. That was one scene in the book called "Peril," which also reports on Republicans around Donald Trump. officers call their foreign counterparts all the time. Milley has said he followed his constitutional role and accurately says that U.S.

Milley also told officers to follow procedure if they received a sudden order to use nuclear weapons. Mark Milley called his counterpart in China to say he need not worry about a U.S. We discussed this on the program last week.Īfter the attack on the Capitol - January 6, you will recall - Gen. It's made news about the president's top military adviser.

The book on two presidents comes from two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. A new book explores the fraught transition between ex-President Trump and President Biden.