My first loyalty was to the Constitution,’ Pence said

Published 1:30 am Saturday, August 8, 2026

DEAR READER: At 8:17 a.m. on January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump took to Twitter to urge his vice president, Mike Pence, to thwart Joe Biden’s certification as the duly-elected 46th President of the United States. “Do it Mike,” Trump implored, “this is a time for extreme courage!”

Pence, to his lasting credit, did not do it. Some say his courage was not extreme — that in defying Trump’s attempt to subvert democracy he merely did the right thing.

The facts are that Pence refused to flee the Capitol as the MAGA mob breached barricades and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the out-manned security force. Some of the rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” as they penetrated the Capitol’s corridors, hell-bent as well on finding “that bitch,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“I was not afraid,” Pence remembers. “I was angry at what I saw, how it desecrated the seat of our democracy. …To see fellow Americans ransacking the Capitol left me with a simmering indignation and the thought: Not here … not in America.”

HOURS LATER, when the melee had subsided — leaving hundreds injured, one rioter shot dead, one police officer moribund, and $2.7 million in damage to the Capitol — Pence and Congress upheld the election results. “That mob could shatter glass, overturn desks, occupy offices, but they could not stop our democracy,” Pence wrote, recalling that four years earlier when he took the oath that placed him a heartbeat from the presidency, he had vowed to support and defend the Constitution, “so help me God.”

Now, as the mob grew to thousands, Pence told the angry president “one final time” that he was duty bound to preside over a joint session of Congress “and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election — the election we had lost.”

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, was even more emphatic, telling his colleagues, “Nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale that would have tipped the entire election, nor can public doubt alone justify a radical break when the doubt itself was incited without any evidence. …The voters, the courts, and the states have all spoken. If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever. This election actually was not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were all closer than this one. The electoral college margin is almost identical to what it was in 2016. If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.”

THESE QUOTES are from Mike Pence’s 2022 autobiography, “So Help Me God,” and a remarkable new book, “Storm at the Capitol,” an oral history of January 6 by Mary Clare Jalonick, a veteran Associated Press reporter. Her painstakingly researched book is an hour-by-hour narrative featuring the voices of everyone from Vice President Pence to embattled Capitol police officers and the rioters themselves, some unrepentant, others ashamed. “I was in a cult,” says Pamela Hemphill, a retired drug and alcohol counselor from Idaho. “How did I get pulled into this? Everybody thinks they’re smarter than that, but Trump was so good at his lying. … It’s people like me that are not really paying attention, and trusting, that get pulled in real easy.”

If ever a sentence merited repeating it’s that one: “It’s people like me that are not really paying attention, and trusting, that get pulled in real easy.”

While Trump and his blind-faith followers relentlessly maintain he won the 2020 election and parrot preposterous claims like the one by a Georgia congressman that the Capitol riot amounted to “a normal tourist visit,” I’m actually more worried by the self-described, God-fearing conservatives “not really paying attention” to democracy’s peril. They seem undisturbed that Trump issued outrageous blanket pardons to the Capitol rioters and promoted a $1.8 Billion slush fund to compensate his allegedly persecuted allies, including members of the January 6 mob. Pressed to take a stand on these issues, local Republican elected officials and office-seekers tell me they lack the time to worry about such things — or even research the truth about the 2020 election — when there are budget issues and other major challenges on deck.

Why is it hard to stand up for democracy and Grays Harbor? Are they really separate issues?

I’m not going to vote for anyone too timid to say the king can’t be shamed into truthfulness — nor for anyone striving to undermine confidence in our state’s exemplary vote-by-mail election process. “In the current context,” we’re all fools, to paraphrase one of Rep. Jim Walsh’s memorable gaffes, if we believe his distortions about elections security. His claims amount to aspersions on a succession of great Republican secretaries of state and the present secretary, a centrist Democrat who served as an Army cyber-security officer with the Multi-National Force Iraq.

Meantime, despite the fact Grays Harbor boasts Walsh — our state GOP Chairman — and three Republican County Commissioners, the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to delay, divert and deplete funds for the vital Aberdeen-Hoquiam Flood Protection Project. We can only hope our “conservative” leaders, especially the would-be governor, are bombarding the White House with calls and emails, reminding President Trump he carried Grays Harbor three times, fair and square. Some crumbs, please, my liege. Maybe a slightly smaller Big Beautiful Ballroom?

IF I’M LUCKY enough to meet Mike Pence in Spokane on Sept. 10, I’ll shake his hand and give him a copy of this column. The former vice president will be receiving the Thomas S. Foley Award for Distinguished Public Service.

The award bestowed annually by Washington State University’s Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service recognizes individuals who exemplify the civility and bipartisanship that characterized Tom Foley’s lifetime of public service. The Spokane Democrat represented the 5th Congressional District for 30 years, serving as Speaker of the House from 1989 to 1995.

The decision to honor Pence was the subject of a stinging editorial in WSU’s award-winning student newspaper, The Daily Evergreen.

Makani K. Pang, the managing editor, called it “a slap in the face to the communities WSU has claimed to support and uplift.” Pence’s policies “have continuously hurt women, LGBTQ+ communities and at-risk youth,” Pang wrote, asserting that Pence repeatedly consulted former Vice President Dan Quayle “on whether there was anything he could do to overturn the results of the election, to which Quayle had to repeatedly tell Pence there was nothing he could do. … It is clear Pence’s decision — if you can call it that, given the vice president’s role in the matter is purely ceremonial — was not some strict moral and ethical line Pence was drawing in the sand. Make no mistake, he repeatedly looked for ways to justify betraying the Constitution, the American people and basic democratic values to remain in power.”

That’s a gutsy, articulate editorial from a student journalist with a bright future, assuming there are any newspapers left when he graduates, since everyone expects quality information for free. Besides, we have Facebook, where everything is true.

I grasp Pang’s criticism, but respect that Mike Pence stood his ground at a defining moment in American history. Had Trump selected a running mate with less spine, the outcome could have been the death spiral for our democracy. One wonders what Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich or Rudy Giuliani — also among those considered as Trump’s running mate — would have done on January 6. Actually, one doesn’t have much to wonder.

With millions of Americans “not really paying attention” beyond their social media silos, the danger to democracy is real and present.

Silence is complicity.

John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.