Shortly before his first term as President was about to end in 2021, Donald Trump wrote down a personal note about his right-hand man, and it wasn’t pretty.
On January 6, as protestors were gathering outside the Capitol Building, Trump took the opportunity before chaos broke out to write a simple note about his then-VP, Mike Pence, in his daily planner.
‘You’ll go down as a wimp. You listen to the wrong people.’
Pence replied calmly in another note: ‘I listen to my heart and mind.’
The notes have been released as part of ABC chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl’s new book, ‘Retribution’.
The notes were hastily written hours before the Presidency of Joe Biden was certified. They were initially going to be used by special counsel Jack Smith as evidence of Trump allegedly directing the mob to storm the Capitol on the same day.
For years, Trump has blamed the violence of January 6 on his former VP Pence. Members of the mob thought that Pence could have stopped Biden’s victory from being certified, despite it being out of his hands.
Pence previously wrote in his own book, ‘So Help Me God’, that he was called by Trump just before the President made a speech on January 6, before the mob broke out.
It was during this call that Trump repeated his claim that Pence was a ‘wimp’ after telling Trump he didn’t have the power to block the certification of Biden’s win.
‘You’re not protecting our country, you’re supposed to support + defend our country,’ Pence reportedly said in retaliation.
‘I said we both [took] an oath to support + defend the Constitution. It doesn’t take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law.’
On January 6, Trump held a rally near the White House and told his fans, ‘We will never give up. We will never concede.’
An hour later, the first wave of Trump supporters stormed the outer police barrier at the Capitol. Trump supporters overcame cops in the backside of the Capitol, breaking through the last police barricades.
Just after 2 pm, protesters broke windows of the Capitol and climbed inside, then opened doors for others.
Trump then tweeted: ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.’
Just past 3 pm, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt tried to climb through, but was shot by a Capitol Police officer and later died of her injuries.
At the same time, Trump tweets asking people to stay peaceful, but does not reiterate his false claims of election fraud.
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