The former president’s older daughter may have had a “bad feeling” about the pressure her father applied on Mike Pence in the days preceding the election on January 6, according to Tim O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.”
The public hearings into the Capitol brawl have played excerpts from Ivanka Trump’s testimony. Trump was repeatedly advised that his plan to get Vice President Pence to send back electors to the states in an effort to overturn the election result was unlawful.
“Do you get a sense from her testimony that Ivanka had a bad feeling about January 6th, even before the rally at the ellipse?” questioned MSNBC host Alex Witt to Mr. O’Brien.
Absolutely, O’Brien retorted.
“We know from other accounts of what she did that day that she honored the fact that Mike Pence was resisting Donald Trump’s pressure to decertify the electoral results on Jan 6 at the Capitol. And then she obviously was in the Oval Office with several other campaign advisers, including lawyers, who heard him swearing at Mike Pence, who heard him grow increasingly angry at Mike Pence because Mike Pence wouldn’t do a Donald Trump wanted him to do, which was to break the law,” he explained.
“What is significant is what we have learned in the hearings thus far, is that Donald Trump at that point knew it was illegal,” O’Brien elaborated. “[John] Eastman had told him it was illegal. They had also, there are other people in the White House who said that the plan was ‘nutty’. It was crazy. So it was not only lacking in visibility, it was illegal, and yet he continues to pressure Mike Pence, to break the law and he did so in front of a number of witnesses including his daughter.”
Ms. Trump said in court that she overheard her father and Mr. Pence having a “very intense” phone call. Many members of the Trump family were seen in the Oval Office on the morning of January 6, 2021, prior to the demonstration on the Ellipse that followed the Capitol riot, according to photos that have surfaced.
The then-president allegedly dubbed his devoted vice president a “wimp” and a “p***y,” according to staffers close to Mr. Trump and his daughter, including his “body man” Nick Luna and Julie Radford, her chief of staff.
Since the hearing, Mr. Trump has denied calling Mr. Pence a wimp. He then claimed that his vice president lacked the confidence to carry out the request.
