Charlotte Pence says she bought John Oliver’s Marlon Bundo book
Charlotte Pence says she’s among those picking up a copy of John Oliver’s sold-out spoof of her children’s book about the vice president’s family’s pet rabbit.
“I have bought his book,” said the author of “Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President.”
“He’s giving proceeds of the book to charity, and we’re also giving proceeds of our book to charity, so I really think that we can all get behind it,” Pence told ITK on Wednesday.
{mosads}Oliver announced the release of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo” on his HBO show on Sunday.
The parody, which quickly shot to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list before selling out, satirizes Charlotte Pence’s book about her family’s rabbit, Marlon Bundo. In Oliver’s version, Bundo is gay, a dig at Vice President Pence’s stance on LGBT issues.
“It doesn’t have to be divisive,” said Charlotte Pence, 24. “I think that everybody can come together over Marlon.”
A portion of the proceeds from Pence’s book — which was illustrated by her mom, second lady Karen Pence — will go to Tracy’s Kids, which provides young cancer patients with art therapy.
Charlotte Pence, the oldest daughter of the vice president’s three adult children, says she’s also donating some of the money from sales to A21, an anti-human trafficking nonprofit.
Oliver has said proceeds from his book will go to AIDS United and the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBT youth.
“I also want to support those charities — I really mean that,” Charlotte Pence told ITK.
She says she hopes her first children’s book, which follows Marlon Bundo as he shadows her father throughout his daily grind, teaches young readers about the role of the vice president.
“There are a lot of things I didn’t know about the vice president’s official duties until my dad was the vice president,” she says.
Since her dad took office, Marlon Bundo, also known as BOTUS, “Bunny of the United States,” has hopped his way to Instagram fame, amassing nearly 25,000 followers.
“I think people really like seeing a bunny in this role,” Charlotte Pence says of the hare’s hordes of fans. “There have been presidents who’ve had bunnies before, but it’s a little more rare.” Among the rabbit-owning former presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Marlon Bundo may also serve as a bushy-tailed distraction from the typical partisan sniping going on in Washington.
Charlotte Pence, who lives in Los Angeles, says she doesn’t “pay a ton of attention to the negativity” and mudslinging rampant in the nation’s capital.
Asked how she deals with criticism lobbed toward her father, she replies, “I think you just have to have the mindset that my parents have really taught me to have, which is while people may be critical of my dad, we live in a country where we have freedoms to speak out against our elected leaders.”
“So whenever people protest, my dad always has this line, he says, ‘That’s what freedom looks like.’ And it’s really true,” she says
“At the end of the day, he’s still my dad, and my opinion of him is going to be good because I know him and I know his heart,” she adds.
Charlotte Pence says growing up, she always wanted to be a writer. She calls it an “awesome privilege” to be able to pen the book, which features rhyming verses about her furry family member.
So will Marlon Bundo soon be nibbling on a sequel?
“Marlon I think definitely has some adventures up his sleeve, for sure,” she says.
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