WASHINGTON — When Vice President Mike Pence flew to Europe as the stand-in for President Trump at the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, it appeared to be another sign that the famously fickle president trusted his vice president.
But Pence’s decision while in Ireland to stay at the Trump golf resort in Doonbeg, the area his grandfather emigrated from a century ago, caught Washington insiders as another act of fealty from a vice president derided at times as overly obsequious, even “oleaginous.”
On the surface, Trump and Pence insist they have a great relationship and are working closer than ever to win reelection in 2020. (They’ve consistently beaten back rumors that former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is in the running to replace Pence on the 2020 ticket.)
But behind the scenes, tensions have been mounting among Trump, Pence and their top advisers ever since the GOP’s resounding losses in the 2018 midterms. In the weeks afterward, Trump asked aides about replacing Pence on the ticket, and he asked again for their thoughts on Pence during his August vacation at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., according to Trump advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions with the president.
Current and former Trump and Pence advisers interviewed for this story, as well as my forthcoming biography of Pence, “Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House,” consistently described a personal relationship between Trump and Pence that is warm but somewhat aloof. Pence has a lane that he sticks to in the White House — conservative social policy — but he is not considered to be as influential as people like Jared Kushner or Stephen Miller.
But the relationship between their political teams has soured greatly in the past year, according to a dozen Trump and Pence aides and Republican advisers familiar with the dynamic. In particular, rumors that Kushner and Ivanka Trump wanted to consider replacements for Pence — specifically trying to find a woman running mate to help win back the suburbs in 2020 — have worried the vice president’s camp, according to Trump and Pence campaign advisers who spoke on background for this story.
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In the spring, Pence’s aides went to Parscale to ask if he could include a question testing Pence’s favorability on a poll he was doing of battleground states, according to Trump campaign advisers familiar with the request. Parscale said it was too late to add the question to the poll — but what he didn’t tell Pence’s aides is that the question was already on the poll, done in 14 states. When the results came back, Pence’s favorability was higher than Trump’s — something Parscale and the campaign’s pollsters withheld from Trump and Pence. But Obst, Pence’s chief political aide who also works as a senior adviser on the Trump campaign, used a mole inside the president’s campaign to get a copy of one of the polls.
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They see Trump keeping Pence on a tight leash — leveraging the uncertainty over 2020 to get him to pass “loyalty tests” for Trump.
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One former adviser to Trump and Pence noted that Trump would more warmly embrace the vice president in public if Pence simply announced that he wasn’t planning a run for president. Trump, the former adviser noted, hates aides who display more ambition than him.
“All of this would go away if he announced he wasn’t running for president in 2024,” the former adviser said.
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Tensions have been mounting among Trump, Pence and their top advisers ever since the midterms. In the weeks afterward, Trump asked aides about replacing Pence on the ticket, and he asked again during his August vacation, Trump advisers tell Yahoo News. https://t.co/QPnCuhnE5N
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 7, 2019
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