The Shadow President

by Michael D'Antonio

  When the hosts of national TV talk shows chimed in, all was lost. David Letterman lashed out and dedicated a Top Ten List of “Guys who Mike Pence looks like.” (Number eight: the guy whose wife has to tell him he’s “getting a little loud”; number one: “The guy fishing in a Cialis commercial.”) “This is not the Indiana I remember as a kid,” said Letterman. “I lived there for twenty-seven years, and folks were folks, and that’s all there was to it.”30

  Pence held out for several days, consulting with advisors and polling friends. His aides spoke with Curt Smith, who opposed compromise and urged Pence to hold tough. Smith had launched a press blitz in defense of RFRA, telling reporters that the Christian Right was an oppressed group deserving protection from laws that would require those who ran businesses to treat customers equally. “Why would you want to engage a bunch of hateful people,” he said of the other side. “We’re always accused of being bigots.” In this way, he framed the right to discriminate in a secular setting—like a bakery—as a matter of religious freedom. The Christians were victims, not bigots, and Pence needed to stand firm. Nevertheless, Smith saw that something needed to be done on the public relations front. Privately, in talks with the governor’s aides, Smith endorsed a plan for Pence to go on national television to defend himself as a reasonable man.

  On March 29, 2015, three days after Pence signed the bill, he went to an Indianapolis TV studio where he was connected via satellite to the ABC TV network, where George Stephanopoulos, the host of a news program called This Week, would interview him.

  Confident in his abilities—after all, he had been a TV host too—Pence sat in front of an image of the Indiana Statehouse. He knew the points he wanted to make; the press was distorting reality, RFRA was about religious freedom, and even Bill Clinton had signed a federal religious freedom act in 1993.

  Stephanopoulos, who had been senior advisor to Clinton in his first term, was well aware of the details of the federal law. Pence raised the Clinton talking point and said the state law had not been written with the intent of discriminating against gay people in Indiana. Stephanopoulos pointed out that laws in other states specifically protected the civil rights of gay citizens, balancing religious freedom law with civil rights. Indiana’s law had no such civil rights provision. He also noted that one of the proponents of the Indiana bill, Eric Miller of a group called Advance America, had said that RFRA was an anti-equality measure that “will protect those who oppose gay marriage.” Stephanopoulos then quoted Miller as saying, “Christian bakers, florists, and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage.”

  When he finished with the quote, Stephanopoulos asked, “Is Advance America right when they say a florist in Indiana can now refuse to serve a gay couple without fear of punishment?”

  Pence evaded the question, blaming misunderstandings, distortions, and the news media and complained that Stephanopoulos was playing into a false narrative. Four times, Stephanopoulos asked Pence to answer “yes or no,” and four times Pence evaded the question. Each time, with increasing irritation, Pence reverted to his talking points.31

  PENCE: George … there’s a lot of people in this country that are concerned about government overreach into their religious liberty, and I’m one of them, and I stand with them and we’ve defended them in Indiana. This is about protecting every Hoosier of every faith.

  STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think it should be legal in the state of Indiana to discriminate against gays or lesbians?

  Pence took a breath and, sounding exasperated, said, “George…”

  STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s a yes-or-no question.

  PENCE: Come on. Hoosiers don’t believe in discrimination. I mean, the way I was raised in a small town in southern Indiana is you’re kind, you’re caring and respectful to everyone. Anyone who’s been in Indiana for five minutes knows that Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan, it’s a reality.… This is not about discrimination, this is about protecting the religious liberty of every Hoosier of every faith, and we’re going to continue to work our hearts out to clarify that to the people of Indiana and the people of this country.

  Not willing to let go, the TV host came back at Pence. “Yes or no,” he said. “Should it be legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians?”

  “George, you’re following the mantra of the last week online and you’re trying to make this issue about something else,” Pence said. “What I am for is protecting with the highest standards in our courts the religious liberty of Hoosiers.… I stand by this law. It was an important step forward when Bill Clinton signed it in 1993. It’s an important step forward of keeping the promises of our Bill of Rights and the First Amendment and our Indiana Constitution, and I’m proud that Indiana has adopted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

  Pence’s performance got negative reviews even in his home state. “If it seemed impossible to make things worse, Pence found a way in the course of those five minutes on Sunday,” wrote Dave Bangert, a columnist at the Lafayette Journal & Courier. “He couldn’t answer simple yes-or-no questions when given access to a national TV audience.” Pence “only poured fuel on the fire for his critics,” wrote Tom LoBianco in The Indianapolis Star. “But Pence’s bona fides with his core base of supporters, on the religious right, cannot be questioned now. And maybe, if you’re the Pence Team, that’s worth the massive backlash.”32

  On April 2, four days after his national television appearance, Pence spoke to Curt Smith, who urged him to resist the pressure to change RFRA. He said that Pence shouldn’t fear long-term repercussions because the NCAA tournament, about to start in Indianapolis, would eclipse the controversy in the minds of basketball-crazed Hoosiers. Pence did not agree and instead backed a revision to the bill, which specified that no one “may deny service to anyone on the basis of sexual orientation, race, religion or disability.”

  The change reversed the effect of the law. Business leaders who had pressed Pence for it were pleased. Curt Smith, who had been dismissed from his day job at a law firm because of his many public statements during the RFRA controversy, felt it as a betrayal. In Deicide, he would hold to his principles, writing that Pence’s reversal would have “grave implications beyond our national borders.” He wondered if Pence had acted first on the basis of his religious convictions and finally out of concern for his national political ambition.33

  For his part, Pence could claim to have used every opportunity he could to push the Christian agenda. After the RFRA debacle, he signed a law making Indiana’s restrictions on abortion, which were already among the tightest in the nation, even more intense. The new law required women to receive antiabortion counseling prior to having the procedure and then wait at least eighteen hours to have it performed. It also mandated funeral services for fetuses, required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, restricted the use of fetal tissue in medical research, and barred abortions based on fetal abnormalities. Although it was eventually struck down by federal courts, the abortion bill signaled that Pence was willing to use his power to do whatever he could to block women from exercising their rights. This position would assure him unwavering support from the Christian Right for whatever ambition he would chase next, including the office of president of the United States.34

  * * *

  The White House had occupied a place in Pence’s imagination from his time as a boy in Columbus. In 2015, he was not openly seeking the presidency, but he was taking stands that might appeal to GOP primary voters. In foreign policy, this meant sounding and whenever possible acting tough when it came to America’s enemies. And although Pence was not among the large field of Republicans about to run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, he stayed close to the Republican message: Barack Obama was not doing enough to protect the United States.

  In 2015, with the Cold War against communism a distant memory, foreign terrorists linked to radical Islam were the replacement bogeyman, as they had been sin
ce the attacks of September 11, 2001. Nothing of the scale of 9/11 had happened in the United States since then, but whenever an incident occurred anywhere in the world, politicians in America sought public support by issuing dire warnings about doing enough to protect the homeland. Pence was ready to follow suit.35

  On November 13, 2015, terrorists affiliated with a murderous group called ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) launched six coordinated attacks around Paris, killing 130 people and injuring more than 400. President Obama led U.S. condemnation of the attacks, which followed many other ISIS attacks in Europe and in the Middle East that year. “This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share,” President Obama said. “The American people draw strength from the French people’s commitment to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.… We’re going to do whatever it takes to work with the French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice, and to go after any terrorist networks that go after our people.”36

  Pence sided with most of the seventeen GOP candidates running for president who used the Paris attack to justify claims that Obama’s immigration and refugee policies were allowing potential terrorists to slip into the country. More than one thousand Syrian refugees had settled in the United States, and about ten thousand were scheduled to come in 2016. (They would be among eighty-five thousand refugees from around the world.) Florida governor Jeb Bush, whom many considered the front-runner in the race to be the Republican nominee for president, said he was most concerned about protecting Syrian Christian refugees. Ted Cruz had already called the Obama administration’s refugee policies “nothing short of crazy.” He went further after the Paris attacks. Allowing Muslim refugees to enter the United States, he said, was “lunacy.” Donald Trump, who was not widely considered a viable candidate, advocated a total ban. “We cannot let them into this country, period,” Trump said. “We have no idea who these people are. This could be one of the great Trojan horses.”37

  In fact, the Obama administration had initiated a long, complicated vetting process for refugees, which included investigations that could last eighteen months or more. No one would be admitted before this screening was done. Included in the process were fingerprinting, retina scans, exhaustive interviews that determined prior job status, and the identification of relatives and friends in the United States. Investigators also tested refugee candidates’ claims that they would face retribution if they returned to their countries of origin.

  “The process for any citizen of a Middle Eastern or majority-Muslim country to get into the United States is tortuous and has become more so over the past 15 years, with additional screenings, interviews and other background checks,” said Natasha Hall, a former Homeland Security immigration officer. “While the average wait time for refugee resettlement is 18 to 24 months, Iraqis and Syrians typically wait several years.”38

  As critics sought to halt the processing of Syrians, President Obama lashed out at the Republicans for playing politics with humanitarian concerns. He opposed the notion that only Middle Eastern Christians, not Muslims, be admitted. “That’s shameful,” Obama said. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”39

  On the Monday after the Paris attacks, Pence announced he would suspend settlement of Syrian refugees in the state. “Indiana has a long tradition of opening our arms and homes to refugees from around the world but, as governor, my first responsibility is to ensure the safety and security of all Hoosiers,” Pence said.40 Governors in more than a dozen other states took similar action, although legal analysts said neither Pence nor the other governors had the authority to do so. On that basis, the American Civil Liberties Union promptly filed suit against Pence. His actions violated “both equal protection and civil rights laws and intrude on authority that is exclusively federal,” said Ken Falk, ACLU Indiana legal director.41

  The ACLU legal challenge was accompanied by a moral challenge from the Roman Catholic Church. Joseph W. Tobin, the archbishop of Indianapolis, decided to bypass Pence’s dictate and to allow the resettlement of a Syrian family in Indiana under the auspices of Catholic Charities. In early December, Pence met with Tobin at the statehouse for about an hour and directly asked that the Syrian family not be brought to the state. The governor cited concerns that the Obama administration had not done enough to check on the refugees, while Tobin reminded the governor that all refugees, including this particular family, had undergone an exhaustive screening process before entry. The archbishop politely refused Pence’s request and thanked him for his time. Tobin made a more pointed statement when the Syrian family arrived the following week, focusing on Catholic mercy and tradition.

  “Three years ago, this family fled the violence of terrorists in their homeland of Syria,” Tobin said. “After two years of extensive security checks and personal interviews, the United States government approved them to enter our country. For forty years, the archdiocese’s Refugee and Immigrant Services has welcomed people fleeing violence in various regions of the world. This is an essential part of our identity as Catholic Christians, and we will continue this life-saving tradition.”42

  Pence held to his position. A spokesman for the governor said that he held Catholic Charities “in the highest regard but respectfully disagrees with their decision to place a Syrian refugee family in Indiana at this time.” At the agency coordinating the Syrians’ settlement, staff scrambled to protect a family that was en route. “We didn’t want anyone coming into a situation where they might be met with hostility, or even massive amounts of attention,” recalled Cole Varga, director of the agency, Exodus. “They were diverted to Connecticut.”

  Noting that no refugee had been involved in a terror attack in America since 1980, Varga pointed out that in Indiana, employers eagerly competed for those who settled in the state because they were such good workers. “It’s a population that has overcome torture, abuse, and long waits to come to the United States. They do very well once they arrive.” Exodus aided their adjustment, and amid the controversy stirred by Pence, it received a spike in donations, and more than four hundred people called to volunteer. This support was sustained as one of the Republican presidential candidates spoke even more forcefully.

  At a campaign rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump called for a ban on the entry of all Muslims into the United States. “We have no choice,” Trump said. “Our country cannot be the victim of tremendous attacks by people who believe only in jihad.”43

  Governor Pence was among those who thought Trump had gone too far. He issued his response in a tweet on his official Twitter account the following morning. He said: “Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.”44

  A year later, things would change. Pence would no longer object to Trump’s ban on Muslims entering the United States. By now, he had become Trump’s most ardent supporter, no matter what the presidential candidate and eventual president might say.

  Tobin, however, had not changed. Neither had Pope Francis, who was a constant advocate for mercy and for protecting the refugees. A month before the presidential election, the pope took a step that seemed to reward Tobin for his stand against Mike Pence’s ban on Syrian refugees. On October 9, 2016, the pope named Tobin a cardinal and assigned him to the Archdiocese of Newark, where he continued to speak out for refugees and the poor. A headline writer at the Detroit Free Press in his former diocese asked the question: CAN CARDINAL JOE, A NATIVE DETROITER, RISE TO BECOME THE 1ST AMERICAN POPE?45

  9

  WHEN TRUMP CALLS

  Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.

  —Proverbs 27:2

  On Wednesday, April 20, 2016, which was an unseasonably warm day in Indianapolis, Mike Pence stood at the front steps of the governor’s mansion wearing a light gray suit, white shirt,
and blue tie. Blooming pansies and violets filled two big planters to either side of him. His serene face betrayed no emotion as a pair of black SUVs slowly entered the curved driveway. When the car stopped, Donald J. Trump and New Jersey governor Chris Christie emerged from the back seat of one of the SUVs into the warmth of the day. The three stood and chatted for a moment before they entered the mansion, followed by their aides. Christie would come to rue this day. It was the start of a beautiful friendship, or at least a strategic alliance, between Trump and Pence.

  Inside, Trump and Christie found a homey version of an official residence. Family photos were arranged on the stairway leading to the second floor. A beagle named Maverick and two cats—Oreo and Pickle—wandered the house, and somewhere a bunny named Marlon Bundo and a snake named Sapphira were safely put away. A notorious germophobe, Donald Trump had owned a dog early in his first marriage, but he generally considered pets to be déclassé.

  As governor of New Jersey, Christie had come to know Pence through the Republican Governors Association. He had been acquainted with Trump much longer. Christie had endorsed Trump after ending his own presidential campaign, becoming one of the very first to pick him out of the big field of candidates. For weeks, Christie had campaigned for the front-running candidate, often appearing with Trump, where he had a tendency to let his face go blank. This invited observers to imagine he was more than a little ambivalent about his circumstance. Trump was a vulgar man with no government experience, and in the previous year, Christie had said, “I just don’t think that he’s suited to be president of the United States.”1 From this starting point, he had evolved into a key Trump surrogate and the broker for this meeting with Pence.

  Trump, who claimed to have a great memory, should have remembered that he had met with Pence twice before. A few years prior, Pence had visited with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Before that, in November 2011, Pence had met with Trump to ask for his financial support as he prepared to run for governor. This time, it was Trump who wanted something. The Indiana presidential primary was two weeks away, and Trump was fresh off a resounding victory in his home state of New York. He was hoping for a decisive win that would end the chances of his only remaining competitor, Texas senator Ted Cruz. He knew that Pence was unlikely to give him an endorsement. Pence and Cruz were aligned as hard-right Christians, and Cruz had offered Pence public support in 2015 after Pence signed the Indiana religious freedom act. “Governor Pence is holding the line to protect religious liberty in the Hoosier State,” Cruz had said at that time. “I’m proud to stand with Mike.”2 It was logical that Pence would now be expected to return the favor—by supporting Cruz in what could become a make-or-break primary on the march to the Republican convention.