Does Pence really call his wife ‘mother’? Aide says it’s ‘a myth that drives me crazy’

by Judy Kurtz - 09/09/21 12:01 AM ET

An aide to former Vice President Mike Pence is dispelling what she’s calling the “myth” that he refers to his wife as “mother.”

“This is a myth that drives me crazy,” Alyssa Farah, a former press secretary for Pence, said on the inaugural episode of “One Decision,” a global affairs podcast hosted by journalist Michelle Kosinski and former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove.

“This has driven me crazy for years because it’s weird. That would be very weird if he called her mother,” Farah said of Pence’s supposed pet name for his wife, Karen.

The “myth” seemingly originated from a 2017 Rolling Stone article, which cited an anonymous source who said at a dinner with lawmakers the then-Indiana governor referred to his wife of more than three decades as “mother.”

“Mother, Mother, who prepared our meal this evening?” Pence asked his spouse, according to the magazine.

“This is when he has kids who were teenage years,” Farah told Kosinski in the episode released Thursday. “They’re probably 14, 15 years old. And he steps up and he says, ‘mom’ and he calls her mom. But my parents did that too.”

“In front of kids, you say, ‘dad,’ ‘mom,'” Farah continued.

“She was always Karen when I was around, and the rest of us called her Mrs. Pence or the second lady,” Farah added. “But no, he does not call her mother.”

The political advisor also broke down former President Trump’s makeup routine in the otherwise-serious chat, which largely focused on the U.S. drone strike last year that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Farah, who served as the White House communications director before resigning in December 2020, said the 45th president usually would do his own makeup, and she was never enlisted for touch-ups because “you don’t touch the Donald Trump face.”

Trump was even so impressed by a particularly flattering mirror that he had it schlepped to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“We always have roughly the same mirror that we have backstage, but there was one time we were backstage, and for whatever reason, he particularly liked the mirror, I guess the way it was positioned,” Farah recalled.

“He turns to me, he says, ‘Look at this. This is a skinny mirror,’ he says,” she continued.

“Take this back to the White House,'” Trump told her. “We used it [at] every event.”

Asked if she had any regrets about her time in the Trump White House, Farah expressed contrition about not doing enough to promote face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“I regret that I didn’t push more advocating for mask wearing. I was in a position to weigh in on it on multiple occasions. I did. I always expressed that I thought we should embrace it,” she said.

“I told the president he looked good when he wore a mask and I remember one of the times he infamously did,” Farah said. “It was at my encouraging and a couple other folks, but I wish I’d pushed harder on it. And I think I could have had more success on it.”

Tags Alyssa Farah Donald Trump Donald Trump Mike Pence Mike Pence