Dazed by this set of circumstances, Pence reached out to a number of friends for advice. One of them was David McIntosh, the former Indiana congressman who was now president of the Club for Growth, an organization that had spent millions of dollars attacking Trump during the primary. “What if he offers me the position?” Pence asked.
“That’s a no-brainer,” McIntosh replied. “The most likely result is you don’t win in the fall, but you’re probably the next presidential nominee. Or, who knows—you might even be vice president.”
“You don’t think it’ll be damaging to my career to be associated with Trump?” Pence pressed.
“No,” McIntosh said. “You’re still going to be Mike Pence.”
The Indiana governor decided to make a request of Trump’s campaign. Before proceeding any further—and certainly before answering, if the offer were extended—Pence wanted his family to spend time with Trump’s family. He assumed that such an ask was unrealistic given the time constraints on a presidential campaign; if Trump could not accommodate him, Pence figured, he would know that it wasn’t meant to be.
Almost immediately, however, Trump responded in the affirmative. His campaign invited Pence’s family to spend the July Fourth weekend at his private golf club in New Jersey. On his way to the airport, Pence placed an anxious call to Conway—who, it so happened, had been formally hired by the campaign one day earlier. All the concerns he had about Trump were flooding over him. She wouldn’t hear it. “You crossed the Rubicon. Now that you’ve gone this far, there’s no going back,” Conway told Pence. “I’m going to make sure you get it.”
The access he was given to Trump that weekend proved surprising—and surprisingly reassuring. “Morning, noon, and night, we got to be around them,” Pence recalls. “That first time we got together, I was really struck by what an inquisitive person he is. He literally leads by asking questions. The first time we were together, we had breakfast and played a round of golf. Then we had lunch and dinner together. He must have asked me a thousand questions.”
About what?
“Everything,” Pence says. “My background. Politics. People. Policy. I mean, we were talking through things. But he never stops. And I’ve learned from him, it’s a leadership style in which he’s constantly asking questions.”
Trump was also fun to be around—unpredictable, comfortable in his own skin, and often, hilarious. Picking up the phone as he sat with Pence on Saturday, Trump dialed Steve Scalise, the House majority whip. “Steve, question for you,” he said. “I’m thinking of making Mike Pence my vice-presidential pick. What do you think about him?”
Scalise gushed with positive feedback on Pence, his friend and fellow alumnus of the Republican Study Committee. “Well, that’s good, real good, Steve,” Trump said. “Because he’s sitting right here!”
As the weekend wore on—and especially after a breakfast in which Trump charmed the Pences’ twenty-three-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who had accompanied her parents on the visit—Pence found himself smitten with Trump. The Indiana governor began to believe that his friends in the governing class had gotten their nominee all wrong. No longer would he be the pursued; Pence became openly desirous of the position. (Boasting to reporters that Trump “beat me like a drum” on the golf course was a good start.8)
By the time he departed New Jersey with his wife and daughter, Pence felt sure that he wanted the job. He was less certain that Trump would offer it.
PENCE’S FRIENDS WERE FLOORED TO HEAR OF HIS HUNGER TO JOIN THE Republican ticket. There were the obvious differences: Pence was a known foreign policy hawk and democracy promoter, while Trump had spent much of the campaign flattering foreign strongmen, most conspicuously Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Yet stranger still, to the governor’s old friends and allies, was how Pence could bring himself to ignore the man’s behavior. Trump’s history of ad hominem ridicule, of sexual innuendo, of routine deception, was well established. And he seemed intent only on adding new chapters to this legacy.
In June, as Pence found himself coming around to the campaign’s entreaties, Trump found himself embroiled in a fresh controversy. A federal judge named Gonzalo Curiel, an American by birth whose parents were naturalized U.S. citizens from Mexico, was presiding over multiple court cases related to Trump University. The plaintiffs alleged they had been conned into paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that never materialized. After the judge repeatedly ruled against him in the various proceedings, Trump criticized Curiel for having “an inherent conflict of interest” in the case.9 The reason: Trump was campaigning on a pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border, he said on CNN, and the judge was “of Mexican heritage, and he’s very proud of it.”10 Trump repeated the claim at his rallies: Curiel could not rule fairly because of his Mexican roots.
Republicans rushed to denounce their nominee.
“It’s time to quit attacking various people that you competed with, or various minority groups in the country, and get on-message,” Mitch McConnell told reporters.11
South Carolina senator Tim Scott called Trump’s remarks “racially toxic.” Scott’s home-state colleague, Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s former rivals for the GOP nomination, told NBC News, “It’s pretty clear to me that he’s playing the race card.”12 Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, an outspoken critic of the GOP’s nominee, tweeted, “Public Service Announcement: Saying someone can’t do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of ‘racism.’”
And then there was Ryan.
The Speaker had urged Trump, during their RNC détente, to stop attacking fellow Republicans. In the weeks thereafter, Trump had mocked Romney (for being a “choker” and walking “like a penguin”), Rick Perry (for initially opposing him and then reversing course), Jeb Bush (for not having the “energy” to endorse him), South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (for opposing him in the state’s primary), and New Mexico governor Susana Martinez (for “not doing the job” well). The day after the Martinez putdown, Ryan blew up at Trump during a private phone call, explaining that Martinez was a friend—and the GOP’s most prominent Latina elected official. Ryan suggested that it would behoove the Republican nominee to focus his fire on Clinton. Instead, two days later, Trump picked a new target: Judge Curiel.
Standing with community leaders outside a drug-rehabilitation house in one of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods, Ryan winced as he looked out at the assembled press corps. Here he was, attempting to promote the GOP’s solutions to fighting the endemic scourge of poverty, and all anyone wanted to ask about was Trump’s attacks on a judge for his “Mexican heritage.” Making matters worse, Ryan had finally given in and endorsed Trump just days earlier.
“Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Ryan said. “I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
If Ryan assumed that such a forceful response—the textbook definition of a racist comment—would satisfy the reporters, he was mistaken. The next question came: Did Ryan worry that Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric would “undercut” the House GOP’s agenda? Yes, Ryan said; their exchange was proof that Trump was overshadowing their “Better Way” proposal, a blueprint for governing the country. The third question was also Trump-related; so were the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. When a reporter finally asked about the minimum wage, Ryan let out a laugh. “Thank you so much.”