Jason Sattler

Donald Trump Denial has become as common in the Republican Party as its more famous and slightly sweatier cousin, Climate Change Denial. We’ve now seen some of the hottest denial on record from Mike Pence.

Pence has spent the last few decades proving that he will almost literally defend anything. Up until 2000, he said “smoking doesn’t kill.” In 2002, he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that condoms are "very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases."

In 2004, he went to the floor of the House of Representatives to declare that despite the media's attempt to "minimize" the news, “weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.” But he was referring to two old munitions containing sarin and mustard gas and dating from before 1991. Stockpiles of weapons suggesting that Iraq had restarted its WMD program, the reason the Bush Administration said we went to war, were never found.

And in 2015, he refused to admit that his state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act allowed discrimination against gay people, even though the law allowed — nay, was designed to allow — discrimination against gay people.

With this impressive array of deceptions in his quiver, Pence bravely attempted and succeeded in doing the nearly impossible — he defended Trump at Tuesday night's vice presidential debate. And he did it by pretending that the Trump we’ve grown to know, and of whom we disapprove at a rate of around 59%, just doesn’t exist.

Pence repeatedly denied things that Trump definitely said, contradicting not only his Democratic opponent but also the existence of videotape itself, the memories of millions of Americans and things Trump will probably repeat tomorrow.

But you don’t defend cigarettes by defending cancer. You do it by pretending that you’re offended that someone would even bring cancer up.

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Trump’s running mate acted as if it were really rude of Tim Kaine to repeat things Trump had said aloud. And by end of the debate he left viewers to wonder if Pence has an imaginary friend he calls “Donald Trump.”

Prominent Republicans who are not on a national ticket with Trump have become experts in Trump Denial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to take questions about Trump. Why? “Because I choose not to.” Trump hasn’t been seen with either of the party’s living presidents or in the same room as any of the Republicans who came closest to defeating him in this year’s GOP primaries.

So it takes a special kind of Republican to accept a place on a ticket that could go down in history, way down in history, as one that took conservatives’ best shot at total political domination of all three branches of government and traded it for an opportunity to wreck the party’s outreach to Latinos, possibly forever.

The consensus forming after the debate is that Pence won and Trump lost because even his running mate wouldn’t dare to defend him. In other words, Mike Pence did exactly what Mike Pence thought he had to do to launch Mike Pence’s 2020 presidential campaign. And since it seemed to work, it will likely be the party’s post-Trump coping mechanism of choice.

“Pence is giving the country a very good preview of how the Republican Party is going to move beyond Trump,” tweeted Alec MacGillis, a reporter for Pro Publica. “Just pretend he never happened.”

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You can bet that will happen should Trump lose. Or Republicans will pretend Trump was a Democrat. And it isn’t like they have nothing to work with: How many "Republicans" are so desperate to get Bill and Hillary to come to their weddings that they forked over six figures to the Clinton Foundation? How many Republicans have donated to Nancy Pelosi?

But Republicans have a pattern of forgetting old presidential candidates and even two-term presidents. George W. Bush Denial helped the GOP blame President Obama for the deficit that he inherited. Great Recession Denial helps Donald Trump speak about 2016 as if it were the worst economy of all-time instead of the most promising job market in a decade.

And the early stages of Trump Denial helped the self-alleged billionaire take over the party.

In 2012, Mitt Romney, along with many leading party luminaries, ignored Trump’s race-baiting birtherism as they fawned over Trump’s endorsement, attention and money. But now that Trump’s “America First” white nationalism has proven to have a vast constituency in the party and in America, it may be too late to put Trumpism back in a bottle. This is the danger of a party that’s constantly pining for the past — it’s not looking ahead.

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. But Mike Pence would probably say it is, if it helped him get his next job.

Jason Sattler is a columnist for The National Memoand the answer to the obscure trivia question, "Who's the guy who tweets as @LOLGOP?"

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