Mike Pence and Mother. Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Save the Storks

Mother Pence, Mother Pence!

Yes, my husband.

Won’t you give me a kiss?

No, my husband.

Mother Pence, Mother Pence!

Yes, my husband.

What about now?

No, my husband.

Mother Pence, Mother Pence!

Yes, my husband.

But I’m vice-president!

You got what you wanted, Mike. Leave me alone.

That’s a nursery rhyme that doesn’t rhyme and will definitely give your kids nightmares. Feel free to recite it for them before they go to bed or when they’ve misbehaved and need to be punished. It’s based on this Jezebel report about Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House, the new book about Vice-President Pence by journalist Tom LoBianco. Per Jezebel, when Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, bee mistress and towel-charm maven Karen “Mother” Pence rebuffed his celebratory advances:

Early in the morning of Wednesday, November 9, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump and conceded. After Trump took the call, Mike Pence leaned in to kiss Karen, but she rebuffed him. “You got what you wanted, Mike. Leave me alone.” Upstairs, at the Pence’s private suite — separate from the Trumps’ — he tried again for a victory kiss, and again she told him to back off.

Pence presumably then went to dejectedly nurse a double shot of milk on the rocks.

According to LoBianco, it’s not Mike but Mother who “rules the roost” of the Pence household, which was already pretty clear given reports that the vice-president calls his wife “Mother” and won’t dine alone with other women, and that video of the time he was forced to watch helplessly as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke danced energetically with his wife, quite literally sweeping her off her feet. At least she didn’t call Zinke “Daddy.”

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