Producers' Pick | Vice President Mike Pence on fearing for his family on January 6th

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This is the Brian Kilmeade Show. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.

I've tried to be helpful. Vice President Pence, what they're asking you to do, you won't do because you can't. So Mike, Mr. Vice President, just hang in there.

They said we can count on Mike. All of us can count on the Vice President. You're going to do the right thing. You're going to do the constitutional thing. You've got a son who flies F-35s. You've got a son-in-law who flies F-18s.

They're out there flying so that we can get it right here. There are people dying, my good friend from Illinois, to make sure we have a chance to argue among ourselves. And when it's over, it is over. It is over. So that's the Senator Lindsey Graham.

On January 6th, when the Vice President refused to leave the Capitol and then went back, they reconvened after the breach of the perimeter. And then it was time to make the election official, and that was Lindsey Graham. You chronicled that as one of the most moving moments probably in your career and your life with your family there, citing your son and your son-in-law.

And that's all in your book. So help me God. Can you bring us back to that moment? It's hard to hear it without emotion. Have you heard it since?

Only once. Lindsey Graham gets it. He's worn the uniform of the United States. He's been a great champion of our armed forces. But in that moment, after that tragic day when we reconvened the Senate, he spoke those words with my wife and our daughter Charlotte, who never left my side that day.

In the gallery, Charlotte's husband, Henry, was deployed aboard the USS Nemitz. And when he said those words, I glanced and saw my wife put her arm around Charlotte and hug her. But Lindsey Graham was right.

I mean, we've got men and women all over the world wearing the uniform of the United States every day, keeping their oath, taking risks without regard to their personal safety. So we can get it right here. And I'll always be grateful for those words. So what happened is that day, you go into detail on it. And you go that day and you say, I'm not leaving. And you trusted your body man.

But you say he was a big guy. He trusted him. But they wanted you to get in the car. And you said, no, I'm not getting in the car because I'll trust you in your word, but you're not driving. So you were concerned if you got in the car, they were going to drive you right out of that garage into somewhere else. And you thought it would be a bad symbol for the country for the vice president to leave him to be forced out by a mob. At what point did you feel your security was in jeopardy? And at what point did you hear Hang Mike Pence was being chanted? Well, I have to be honest with you.

And I give God the glory. But in that moment, I felt no fear. I was angry. I was angry at what I saw.

People that were rioting in the Capitol building, vandalizing, assaulting police officers. I was filled with indignation, as I write in my book. Were we watching that on monitors or you hear about it later? Well, first in my office, just off the Senate floor where where we were holding until we until we walked to the loading dock below the Capitol building.

But I just looking at the images, I was filled with a sense of not this, not here, not in America. And I was absolutely determined to be a part of the solution to do whatever I could stay at my post and finish our work. And I'll always believe, always believe that by God's grace, we did our duty that day under the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And you did. And you you gaveled in. You gaveled in the electoral results. Now, the president was pushing. We all know this.

It's been chronicled before was pushing the whole time. So, Mike, you have to do this. There's going to be another lecture said there's so much corruption in this election. We can't allow this to happen. Do you believe there was corruption in the election?

Will you open if you saw it? Would you have acted differently if you thought this was corrupted? If you thought this was corrupt, if you if some of the video that they said was these votes that were made up came true? Brian, I said on January 6 and in the weeks before that I shared the concern of millions of Americans about voting irregularities that had taken place. I mean, the simple fact is that there were states that changed the rules in the name of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

In fact, in both cases after the election, the courts would find that changes that were made in the laws were not consistent with state law. But I never saw evidence of widespread fraud. I stayed open to it.

But the evidence would simply never come. But that didn't mean that debating those irregularities lacked value. It's one of the things that I said in my open letter to Congress and the American people on January 6. I made it clear that I intended to keep my oath pledge that I'd made to the American people and that ended with a prayer.

So help me, God. But I also told the Congress and the American people that there was there was nothing wrong with members of Congress bringing objections and having a debate over voting irregularities and and any evidence that they might be able to bring forward. I mean, disputes over electoral votes under American law are resolved by the elected representatives of the American people, not by one person.

And I had said in the days before that I welcome the debate. I mean, one of the one of the sad aspects of that day, beyond the loss of life, beyond the vandalism and the rioting, was that ultimately what what transpired at the Capitol ended up obscuring what what may well have been a very useful debate over voting irregularities that took place. The Wisconsin Supreme Court actually found that that Wisconsin had violated their own state laws not once but twice.

The Supreme Court sequestered some eight thousand ballots in the state of Pennsylvania that had been that had arrived after the deadline for election. Those didn't change the outcome of the election. They didn't change the outcome of the election. But for all of us who are concerned about election integrity, that debate was potentially very important and it could have facilitated what, fortunately, has been happening in Republican states around the country, and that is election reforms over the last two years. Georgia straightened it out.

Seems to have. Florida straightened it out. They embarrassed the country for two or three cycles, Texas. California straightened it out. They embarrassed the country for two or three cycles, Texas. California straightened it out. They embarrassed the country for two or three cycles, Texas. And then two years later, we're still counting votes. Why is this?

Why is this happening? I can't I can't figure it. Of course, I'm California still. Look, mail in voting has a long tradition in this country, absentee ballot voting in Indiana. It's a long tradition in this country. It's a long tradition in this country. It's a long tradition within the day or day after Election Day. And that that ought to be the aspiration of of every state in the union. So so that happens after that.

And and we know the president of the United States has got himself in trouble for how he acted then because Georgia is suing him right now when he took the records back to Mar-a-Lago. I can't figure it out, Mike. Let's go call the Bidens and let's bring them through a little tour through the House. And you get a will tour them through the House. You take a vice president elect Harris through the observatory.

I am at and just called it a day and flew out, actually went to inauguration and flew out. I think his approval rating would be about 60 percent right now. And I think he'd be talking about, hey, Mike, what do you say we go do this again?

And you probably wouldn't be thinking about running for president. You know, I think he's going to run for president. I think he's going to run for president. I think he's going to run for president.

Am I am I assumptions wrong? You know, I think during the disastrous years of the Biden-Harris administration, it really has been people have come to even more appreciate. The creation of the first branch of our new branch of our armed forces in 70 years, they crush our armed forces, crush the ISIS caliphate, took down their leader, took out Qasem Soleimani, held the Syrian dictator Assad responsible for using chemical weapons.

Not once, but twice. Russia made no effort to try and redraw international lines under our administration. North Korea stopped testing nuclear weapons, stopped firing missiles. We had we made incredible progress in the Middle East.

Bring it home. We cut taxes, rollback regulation. We became a net exporter of energy for the first time in 70 years.

Three Supreme Court justices, a new beginning for the right to life in America following our administration and our appointments. And I think the American people look at this administration that has literally weakened America at home and abroad every single day. And they long to go back to those policies.

But I will I will tell you, hindsight is 20-20. I write candidly in So Help Me God about my pride in all that we accomplished and how we accomplished it in our administration. My battles as a conservative in the House and my service as governor of Indiana and lessons learned along the way. But I do believe in the days ahead, the American people long to get back to what we did, to what we know works. But I think I think they're looking for leadership.

I think they're looking for for leadership that could unite our country around our highest ideals. You think the president could have done a better job uniting, especially as you wrote the book and reflected? Well, one of the things I write in the book is what many of the president's critics fail to acknowledge is in my lifetime.

I never saw the level of opposition by the Democrats and most of the national media that we saw to our president and to our administration from day one. I recount in So Help Me God being with the president in the Oval Office, his first visit there on our Inauguration Day in 2017. And we walked back to the White House, just the two of us, to meet up with our families and go to the inaugural balls. I remember he looked up at the brightly lit side of the White House and he said, Mike, this is this is. And he paused and I said, it's humbling. And he turned and looked at me and said, that's it.

It is it's humbling. And I said, I said, it is, Mr. President. But I say in the book at that moment, as we walk back to the White House on the evening of January 20th, 2017, on a stack of newspapers right outside the Oval Office was The Washington Post, the headline of which was the quest to impeach Donald Trump starts today. And it never let up two and a half years of the Russian hoax, impeaching the president for a phone call.

I mean, the constant berating, the constant you had found not one day of high five. We made it bouncing on the couches. Let's let's give these guys a shot. We made it bouncing on the couches. We made it bouncing on the couches. We made it bouncing on the couches. We made it bouncing on the couches. We made it bouncing on the couches.

Almost not one. In fact, we all know the stories now. The books have been written, a million of them of the whole Russia thing that came out of thin air. You had the FBI against you and the whole establishment against you.

Incredible. And now they say, why? How dare you challenge elections?

You guys were challenged every day, every day. And you've heard much in the national media talking about election deniers and they're entitled. But what about Hillary Clinton, who said our election was stolen?

Absolutely. What about all the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, that spent years saying that Donald Trump was not the legitimate president of the United States, undermining public confidence in our elections? What about Joe Biden calling Georgia's sensible, responsible election reforms Jim Crow 2.0? I mean, look, I hold the view that it is time to put aside this kind of reckless rhetoric across the spectrum. But in So Help Me God, I really try and chronicle what we accomplished under unprecedented opposition.

And you did. You talked about some decisions in session should have been asked to step aside as soon as he had any interaction with Russia. It would have been a lot easier. There would have been no Mueller report.

He would have got over in a day because there was no there there. The vice president here, is he going to run for president? What other stories does he have for us in his book that's called So Help Me God? All those stories and more. The book came out on Tuesday.

Pick it up now. Brian, kill me, Joe. This is Molly Hemingway encouraging you to listen to my favorite podcast, Issues, et cetera. Every day you get in-depth interviews with host Todd Wilkin asking expert guests substantive thought provoking questions on all of the important news and issues of our day. The expert guests are in culture, law, ethics, philosophy, theology and apologetics. Expert guests, expansive topics, always extolling Christ, issues, et cetera.

From his mouth to your ears. It's Brian Kilmeade. How would you handle running against people in your cabinet like Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence? Well, many of them have said they would never run if I run. So we'll see whether or not that turns out to be true. I think it would be very disloyal if they did. But that's OK, too. So that was the president of the United States, Mr. Vice President, who's kind enough to come into studio.

His book is out called So Help Me God. And that was the president a couple of weeks ago. So if you decide to run for president, he would consider that disloyal. How do you feel about that? You know, I think the American people love competition, Brian.

I really do. The president had every right to make the announcement he made last night. And my family and I will take time to reflect over the holidays on where we might next serve. But, you know, we'll go where we're called. You know, I write in the book that a friend told me many years ago that there's there's two kinds of people in politics. There's people that are called and people that are driven. And honestly, I've been both. I write about my early days in politics where I let my ambition overrun what I felt my Christian faith required of me in the way that I carry myself in the public square. But ever since then, ever since Karen and I packed up our three kids, moved back to my hometown to run for Congress 20 years ago, we've just tried to answer the call. How would you feel about being on the stage with the president trying to run on the same record he has?

And when he turns around and says, I'm disloyal, you know, vicious and tough he can be. How would you handle that? Well, you know, if if we entered that race, I can tell you.

We'd run the way we've run for the last 20 years, and that is. So much run against anybody, I run for things. And I really believe in that Bible verse that says without a vision, the people perish. And look, I'm very well acquainted with the sharp elbows of politics. I enjoyed a lot of going after Rubio, the president going after Jeb. And when they go after you, you can't ignore it. I haven't seen anyone ignore it.

I've never seen that on the stage, ignoring barbs. Well, I've spent a little bit of time in national debates on national television. So you're not worried about it. And look, I I believe that this is an enormously important time in the life of our country. And you think you're a better choice right now than the president, the former president? Well, I wouldn't say that about me because we've arrived at no conclusion about what role we'll play. But I think there will be better choices. As I said, I'm incredibly proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration.

And the president has every right to run for election again. But as I've traveled around the country, people stopping me in airports, you know the drill. People recognize you and have a word with you. What I've heard consistently from people at the grocery store, at the airport, at the gas station is two things. Number one is, can we get it all back?

Can we get back to what was working? And number two is they I think they want a new leadership that will unite our country around our highest ideals. You know, once you get out of politics, I'm out of politics right now. You're you're reminded that, you know, the American people actually get along pretty well most days. We figured out our politics are deeply divided.

But but the American people have a neighborliness. The thing is, we only have a minute left to your radio guy, just know that if you just get Republican votes, it's only 40 percent. You have to find a way to get Democrats and independents or Republicans are never going to win.

It's true. And look, we have a winning agenda. And I'm very confident Republican primary voters will sort it out. And come this Christmas, when our our Marine Corps captain comes home, our our lieutenant in the Navy comes home and we have the whole family together. We'll give it prayerful consideration. But we're going to be a part. Whatever the whatever the Lord calls us to do in the years ahead, we're going to be a part of helping to win this country back. And when you make that decision, if you want to come back to these microphones, the Brian Kilby show is ready for you, Mr. Vice President. Hey, hey, pick up the book. So help me God.