Former President Donald Trump was recently indicted again, this time on four federal charges related to the January 6 insurrection, and right-wing media predictably rose to his defense. The former president’s media allies are demanding that Trump’s fellow contenders for the 2024 GOP nomination defend him from Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Department of Justice -- and excoriating his former vice president, Mike Pence, for stepping out of line.
Several Trump opponents, including the so-called “C.E.O. of Anti-Woke, Inc.” Vivek Ramaswamy, reflexively defended the former president. But Pence condemned Trump for putting “himself over the Constitution,” and drew right-wing ire for “being quoted all over the radical left media” as “the foil that he wanted to be used for.”
Staunch Trump ally Rudy Giuliani took a call on his WABC radio show Chat With the Mayor, telling a caller who was upset about Pence “throwing Donald Trump under the bus” that “if you don't condemn this indictment, you shouldn't even be allowed to go to the convention. We should just throw you out of the Republican Party.”
“We got to stand up for the First Amendment,” Giuliani pleaded. “This is bigger than Donald Trump. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than Pence. It's bigger than this election.” Giuliani is believed to be the anonymous Co-Conspirator 1 in the indictment.
On Fox Business, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee similarly told host Maria Bartiromo that “every one of those candidates [for the Republican nomination] ought to be defending Donald Trump.”
“They ought to be defending that he has a right to say what he wants, and they ought to be crying out against this ridiculous persecution. This isn't prosecution, this is persecution,” he said with increasing vigor. “This is election interference. And we better call it for what it is, or we lose this great republic.”
“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” Bartiromo concurred.
And in a familiar Trump-era refrain, Washington Examiner deputy editor Kaylee McGhee White warned Fox & Friends that “GOP candidates need to understand that if they can do this to Donald Trump multiple times, they will do it to the next Republican candidate. All of their names are on the list at this point.”
Appearing on Fox News two days back-to-back, Ramaswamy appeared to heed the calls to defend Trump, reflecting the unusual situation -- created in part by Fox -- where Trump’s challengers cannot challenge him on almost anything, especially his alleged crimes.
On both August 1 and August 2, Ramaswamy told Fox’s Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier, respectively, that he is polling at third in the GOP primary, and it would be easier for him if Trump were eliminated from the race, but that is not how he wants to win.
“It’s important for those of us competing against Trump to take a strong stand against these politicized indictments,” he also told Ingraham, before bragging about his legal efforts to help his opponent.
Fox host Mark Levin was particularly incensed at Pence.
“So Mike Pence is at 1% or less, is being quoted all over Fox,” complained Levin on his radio show. “He's being quoted all over the radical left media. He's being used as the foil that he wanted to be used for. And you know what that means? He just destroyed his career.”
“Because he's not doing it out of integrity,” Levin continued. “He's not doing it out of principle. He's just doing it now. Where has he been? If this is really the way he felt.”
On Fox & Friends the following morning, Levin continued to attack Trump’s former vice president. “Mike Pence, you're a disgrace for what you're doing right now.”
Screaming that “the system worked” to resolve Pence’s differences with Trump about whether he was allowed to throw out millions of votes, Levin whined that there is “not a syllable of evidence that Donald Trump was involved in overthrowing the government,” and the attempt to prosecute him is “a disgrace to the whole country,” like Pence.
