“Gregarious” is probably not a word anyone has ever used to describe Mike Pence, unless it was in jest. “Corpse-like,” on the other hand, seems much more likely. The former vice president’s general human awkwardness was on full display when he sat down with ABC News’ David Muir — and Jimmy Kimmel ate every bit of Pence’s robotic being up with a spoon.
On Monday night, Kimmel boasted that while other networks may have had Monday Night Football, ABC had two hours of Bachelor in Paradise and “scored an exclusive hour-long interview” with Pence, which he equated to “herpes in the hot tub and then bleaching it out.” Pence, whose memoir is dropping today and, so help me god, is titled So Help Me God, spent an hour being his emotionless, android-esque self with Muir, which led to many moments of uncomfortable silence. As Kimmel explained:
Mike Pence sat with David Muir of ABC News, who asked him about one of Trump’s most inflammatory tweets on January 6th. You remember, Pence was in hiding with his family. Watch the body language here, because there is something churning inside Mike Pence that might possibly require an exorcist.
The clip is shown at the 8:00 mark of the video above, where Muir recounts Trump’s tweet that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” in order to overturn a completely legitimate election. If you think your screen has frozen for a second, it has not — that is just Pence’s default non-reaction to things that should have him running for cover. As the video president nods his head and nervously taps his foot, Muir and his perfect hair look on, waiting for a response. And waiting. And waiting…
Finally, Pence admits — with an astonishing lack of emotion for a man who was sought to be hanged — that “that angered me,” and that he turned to his daughter and said, “It doesn’t take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law.”
Kimmel, however, would have gone a different route. “You know what I would’ve said to my daughter at that moment? ‘Run! Hillbillies with horns want to kill daddy!’”
You can watch the full segment beginning around the 7:15 mark.
