No one has shamelessly groveled more before Donald Trump than the Vice President, Michael Pence. For a man who claims he's devoutly religious, Pence is silently accepting of the profane, greedy, selfish, morally corrupt -- and probably criminal -- President without question.
One has to wonder, if Trump ordered Pence to lick the bottom of his shoes, whether the Vice-President would be on the floor asking if he should do the right or left side first.
Pence's self-debasement was on full display this week. At a photo op event, he lovingly heaped praised on convicted criminal Joseph Arpaio, the disgraced former sheriff from Arizona (details
here). Arpaio was later pardoned by Trump. Pence praised the criminal Arpaio as a "tireless champion of ... the rule of law."
As head of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s for more than twenty-years, Arpaio regularly commanded his deputies to stop anyone who looked Hispanic in order to determine their immigration status. A federal judge ordered him to stop this illegal practice, which was repeated by a second federal judge. Arpaio ignored both orders and continued business a usual, leading to his conviction for criminal contempt.
Pence almost certainly praised Arpaio because the latter was a friend of and pardoned by Trump.
Meanwhile, back in Indiana, where he was governor until elected Vice President, Pence refused to pardon a man named Keith Cooper who spent eight years in prison for a crime he did not commit (details
here). Ultimately freed by the prosecutors who convicted him when DNA evidence showed he was innocent, Cooper happens to be African-American.
So in Pence's warped view of a moral world, a white convicted criminal and racist who illegally targets minorities is a good guy, but an innocent Black man in prison is a bad guy.
As long as Trump is in power, Pence has a job. And if Trump leaves office before the end of his term, Pence will have an even better job as President.
His political future after 2020, however, seems forever stained. A shameless hypocrite with no moral compass, who pretends to be a religious man, will forever be remembered in history as a spineless opportunist.