“To support the Republican candidates last night the President went down to Georgia — as devils often do,” quipped Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday.
Georgia is currently amidst runoff elections which will decide who controls the Senate during President-elect Joe Biden’s tenure. However, outgoing President Donald Trump is still in deep denial that he is in fact outgoing, relying on baseless hopes that Vice President Mike Pence will somehow overturn the presidential election.
To be clear, Pence does not have the power to do this. As Colbert notes, the vice president’s role in certifying the result in Congress is purely ceremonial. Yet that hasn’t stopped Trump from declaring he “won’t like [Pence] quite as much” if he doesn’t magically keep Trump in the White House despite having absolutely no authority to do so.
It’s like one of those fairy tales where an evil witch tells a young maiden to drain a lake with a sieve, only instead of a young maiden it’s another evil witch, and actually succeeding in the task would mean the end of democracy in the U.S.
“If this were an after-school special, this is the part where we would tell Mike Pence that if the president says he won’t like you unless you give him what he wants, then he doesn’t really care about you,” said Colbert. “He should like you for who you are. Although we understand why he wouldn’t, because who you are is Mike Pence.”