In between loving glances at Vice President-elect Mike Pence yesterday, the cohosts of Fox & Friends asked him about President-elect Donald Trump’s reckless, protocol-breaking call with Taiwan. Not surprisingly, nobody pointed out the dangers. Nor did anyone point out that the Trump family was already looking to build a series of resorts and hotels there. Even so, we now know that Pence almost certainly lied when he described the call as merely “congratulatory.”
Cohost Brian Kilmeade asked Pence, “Do you regret having the president-elect take that call?” He also asked if it had been “planned all along to re-establish some type of relations with Taiwan?”
As we reported yesterday, there was reason to think that Trump had deliberately endangered the U.S. for the sake of his business interests:
Talking Points Memo notes that before the call “[T]here was already news in the Taiwanese press that Trump and his children are in talks to build a series of luxury resorts and hotels in Taiwan.”
Today, The New York Times revealed that the whole thing had been in the works for months:
Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.
Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department. Mr. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents.
Mr. Dole’s firm received $140,000 from May to October for the work, the forms said.
The disclosures suggest that President-elect Trump’s decision to take a call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, was less a ham-handed diplomatic gaffe and more the result of a well-orchestrated plan by Taiwan to use the election of a new president to deepen its relationship with the United States — with an assist from a seasoned lobbyist well versed in the machinery of Washington.
But Pence, who was probably truthful when he said he had “no regret whatsoever” about the call went on to claim, “This was a congratulatory call, and it was a courtesy … I think he felt it would be rude not to take the call.”
Kilmeade pressed, “Are you sending a message though, Mr. Vice President?”
Pence dodged by saying “You’d have to ask the president-elect.”
At that point, cohost (and Trump sycophant) Ainsley Earhardt jumped in on Trump’s behalf. “Imagine if he didn’t take the call. What would the mainstream media be saying this morning? Then it would be the opposite, it would be like, why didn’t you take the call? We’re offending another country.”
Actually, that is quite unlikely. But nobody disputed the point.
Watch the deception below, from the December 6, 2016 Fox & Friends.
This group is of course going to love anything Trump does. And they were going to hate anything Obama did. Has nothing to do with whether one is right or wrong. Just that one is Trump and GOP and the other is Obama and Democrat. The former is always right and the latter is always wrong.
And again, we need to keep in mind – Mike Pence is the acting President, and will be so for the next four years. He’ll be handling the real work in the White House while Trump headlines rallies and public appearances.