Downward, Christian soldier

Vice President Mike Pence remains a willing apostle to the most corrupt president in American history.

Nearly four years ago, Mike Pence, then Indiana’s wildly unpopular governor, accepted the Republican nomination for vice president. “I am a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican — in that order,” he said with hammy aplomb to a cheering convention crowd.

He is again expected to accept the opportunity next month to be one Big Mac away from the presidency, yet Pence should amend his signature line. He is, first and foremost, President Trump’s toady. Everything else is a distant second.

Pence is an accomplice in the most corrupt presidency in American history. Its baleful legacy will cling to Pence like a shroud — appropriate for a coconspirator in an administration whose ineptitude, malice, and egotism remain the perfect vectors for the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 125,000 American lives in four months.

With cases again surging in dozens of states and hospitalizations on the rise, Pence is now advocating mask usage to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. Yet he also spent months following his boss’s lead, downplaying the necessity of masks simply by refusing to wear one. Neither is Pence getting ahead of Trump by suggesting the need for a federal mandate on face coverings, though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently called such a guideline “long overdue.”

Though Pence has recently worn a mask, he still echoes Trump’s dangerous nonsense, such as promoting the illogical lie that more coronavirus testing leads to more cases. (You know, like how more pregnancy tests lead to more pregnancies.)

That Pence still heads the White House coronavirus task force speaks volumes about this administration’s incompetent response to the pandemic. Of course, that’s why some political analysts believe Trump picked Pence to lead the task force — he wanted a fall guy.

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