Mike Pence melts down as Donald Trump’s stroke coverup scandal gets even uglier

Donald Trump made his Walter Reed health scandal much worse today when he made the oddly specific insistence that he didn’t have a “series of mini-strokes,” even though no one was reporting that he’d had any sort of stroke. But the New York Times did report that whatever Trump’s medical crisis was last November, it was dire enough that Mike Pence was put on standby in case he had to take over.

Now it’s apparently Mike Pence’s turn to make the scandal even worse. When Pence went on Fox News tonight, he was asked about the incident. His response: “I don’t recall being told to be on standby.” Everyone knows that if a politician says he doesn’t “recall” something, it means it’s true but he doesn’t want to admit it, and he’s trying to split the difference between telling the truth and lying.

This answer from Mike Pence isn’t just bad, it’s meltdown level bad. It gives away to everyone involved that Pence was indeed told to be on standby because Trump’s health emergency was so dire. It also gives away that Pence is afraid to confirm or deny what happened. He’s clearly afraid to confirm it, because Trump is pretending it didn’t happen. Pence’s refusal to deny it suggests that there’s proof it’s true, and Pence knows it’s going to come out.