Last week at Jimmy Carter’s funeral, President-elect Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama were seated next to each other and appeared to engage in a cordial conversation. That comports with the idea that the country’s leaders should set aside all their differences during a time of national mourning.
But before Trump sat down, Karen Pence, the wife of his former Vice-President, uncharacteristically snubbed him. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many wives of congressional Republicans respected her for doing that.
Families of politicians should be off-limits to commentaries unless they directly engage in something political. But Trump breaks that rule it all the time. So, I’m going to break it too by bringing Sen. Dan Sullivan’s family into the picture.
Let’s start with Mrs. Pence. Only she knows the reason she remained seated while Trump shook hands and briefly with spoke to her husband. When asked about it the next day during an interview with Christianity Today, Mike Pence would only say “You’d have to ask my wife about her posture, but we’ve been married 44 years, and she loves her husband, and her husband respects her deeply.”
Charlie Sykes argued “her decision was perfectly normal in our abnormal world.” He pointed to how Trump “incited a mob” to go after her husband after he refused to use his vice-presidential power to “violate the Constitution and overturn the election.”
But she certainly must have recognized Trump was a seriously flawed individual long before the insurrection.
Like most Republican wives and daughters, I think she was repulsed by the character revealed when the Hollywood Access tape was leaked in 2016. And I seriously doubt she thought the ease and frequency in which he lies, and viscously insults anyone who crosses him, were signs of a healthy, mature adult.
For someone known to reflect deeply on the Bible’s teachings about life, I suspect Mrs. Pence has been questioning her husband’s role in normalizing Trump’s presidency, particularly among faithful Christians who were uncomfortable with his rank indecency and self-absorption. And especially after last’s year civil trial in which a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting of a fashion reporter years ago.
To think she wasn’t troubled by any of that is to question the dignity of Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Months before the insurrection, Murkowski endorsed blistering criticism that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis directed at Trump. She hoped it might help her colleagues “be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.”
That was in 2020 during the nationwide protests about the murder of George Floyd. Mattis made his statement immediately after the Lafayette Square incident in which Trump reportedly asked his Defense Secretary at the time if they could just shoot the protestors in the legs.
During his Senate confirmation hearing this week, Pete Hegseth was asked if he would “carry out such an order from President Trump?”
Sen. Dan Sullivan is a member of the Armed Services Committee. If he was troubled by the way Hegseth evaded the question, he kept it to himself.
Well, maybe he spoke with his family about it like he did during the Floyd protests.
“We are witnessing something that I believe is an important moment, one that has potential to move our country in a direction toward a more perfect Union,” he said on the Senate Floor. Discussions about “what can or should be done at the individual level” were happening “not just in the halls of government but around dinner tables,” including “for example, in my family.”
Several months later, they must have shared their outrage at how Trump’s insurrectionist mob sent the country in the opposite direction and forced him to flee the Capital.
One subject that must have come up often is Sullivan’s honest efforts to combat the scourge of sexual assault and domestic violence. They may have even talked about the allegations of such conduct that have been made against Hegseth.
Sullivan himself let us know his wife and his daughters were as disgusted as he was by what he called the “reprehensible revelations about Donald Trump” in the Hollywood Access tape.
And knowing that, we can surmise that the women in Sullivan’s family would appreciate the silent act of conscience displayed by Mrs. Pence.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
