In the original schedule for the rally, the president was supposed to make brief remarks and after they were done the vice president would release his statement. But as the president spoke the vice president’s people wondered if he wasn’t purposely going on to hold them off—counting on the vice president not to say anything while Trump had the stage. In four years, Pence really never had—really, the stage had been Trump’s for the entire time.

But at 12:30 p.m., midway through Trump’s speech, the Vice President’s Office released a two-and-a-half-page letter explaining that “after careful” study, the vice president had concluded that he was not able to reject votes unilaterally or, in effect, to do anything else, beyond his ceremonial role, that the president might want him to do.

“Oh, shit,” noted Miller, at home, sending the statement to Giuliani, Epshteyn, and Scavino, leaving it to one of them to tell the president. Everybody else thought, Oh, shit, too.

Meadows and Scavino had slipped out and weren’t listening to the speech. One of the Secret Service agents hurried to get Meadows aside and tell him the president said he was planning to march to the Capitol with the protestors.

“No. There’s no way we are going to the Capitol,” said Meadows.

Meadows confirmed this with the president as soon as he came off the stage at 1:11 p.m.

The president seemed unsure what Meadows was talking about.

“You said you were going to march with them to the Capitol.”

“Well—”

“How would we do that? We can’t organize that. We can’t.”

“I didn’t mean it literally,” Trump said.

By 1:30, the president was back at the White House, his family returning with him.

10

THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY, JANUARY 6

Lunch was waiting.

Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Eric and Lara Trump left the White House, and Ivanka hung around.

Trump was back on the phone trying to get new information on Pence. The Joint Session had convened at 1 p.m. Arizona was the first objection. He was looking for coverage of the breakout, but only C-SPAN seemed to be on it. To the extent that aides had now come to rationalize all this as an exercise to force the voter fraud issue down the throat of the mainstream media, this, too, seemed to be failing.