WASHINGTON – Before leaving office, President Barack Obama awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – to his vice president.
In President Donald Trump’s final days, he has presented similar honors to California Rep. Devin Nunes, one of his most vocal supporters during impeachment, and to three professional golfers.
To his vice president, Trump bestowed the label of coward.
The staunchly loyal Mike Pence was excoriated by Trump on Wednesday for his refusal to illegally intervene to prevent Congress from certifying the results for the presidential election that Trump lost.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” Trump tweeted in a post that Twitter removed Wednesday evening.
Trump has also barred Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, from the White House.
“He’s blaming me for advice to VP,” Short told RealClearPolitics.
'Never seen Pence as angry'
Pence has not spoken publicly about the rift.
But Sen. Jim Inhofe told the Tulsa World on Wednesday that he’s “never seen Pence as angry as he was today.
The Oklahoma Republican told USA TODAY he talked to Pence about Trump's rebuke. Pence, he said, was “very upset” with Trump.
Trump’s public denunciation of his vice president is unprecedented in the history of the modern vice presidency, according to scholars. And it comes after more than four years of Pence showing extreme deference to Trump, leading critics to deride him as an obsequious enabler of a volatile president.
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