Yet another excerpt from Wall Street Journal senior White House reporter Michael Bender’s new book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost”, published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal (no paywall in link) has a lot of good clips, but this might be the best:

“Trump’s attention had turned to his vice president, who was responsible for presiding over the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the election. The two men had debated for weeks whether Pence could reject the results. But the vice president wasn’t practiced in confronting Trump. The only example some administration officials could remember was in 2018, when Pence’s political committee hired Corey Lewandowski, the president’s ubiquitous adviser. Trump was holding a newspaper article about the hiring and said it made him look weak, like his team was abandoning him as he was probed for his campaign’s role in Russian election meddling. He crumpled the article and threw it at his vice president. ‘So disloyal,’ Trump said.”

“Pence lost it. Kushner had asked him to hire Lewandowski, and he had discussed the plan with Trump over lunch. Pence picked up the article and threw it back at Trump. He leaned toward the president and pointed a finger a few inches from his chest. ‘We walked you through every detail of this,’ Pence snarled. ‘We did this for you – as a favor. And this is how you respond? You need to get your facts straight.’ Three years later, the moment seemed to call for another get-your-facts-straight lesson from Pence. But the vice president’s team believed he’d been clear with the president that he didn’t have the constitutional authority to overturn the vote. ‘Anything you give us, we’ll review,’ Pence told the president during a meeting on Jan. 5. ‘But I don’t see how it’s possible.’ Trump later insisted that his vice president never told him no.”