Witnesses: Trump called Pence a ‘wimp’ during phone call before riot
An assistant to former President Trump told the House Jan. 6 select committee that Trump called Vice President Mike Pence a “wimp” during a phone call between the two men just before the Capitol riot.
Nicholas Luna said he remembered hearing the word “wimp” from the call.
“As I was dropping off the note, my memory, I remember hearing the word ‘wimp,’ either he called him a wimp, I don’t remember if he said you are a wimp, you’ll be a wimp, wimp is the word I remember,” he testified.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, described the phone call as “heated.”
The descriptions came during the third public hearing held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The hearing focused on pressure Trump placed on Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
During its presentation, the panel showed never-before-seen photos of Trump on the call in the Oval Office, which were obtained from the National Archives.
“The conversation was pretty heated,” Ivanka Trump, who was in the Oval Office during the call, previously testified to the committee, a clip of which was presented by the panel at Thursday’s hearing.
She characterized the way her father was speaking as “a different tone than I’d heard him take with the vice president before.”
Former White House counsel Eric Herschmann told the committee that the conversation “started off as a calmer tone,” but “then became heated.”
The witnesses who testified before the committee also helped piece together what was said during the conversation between Trump and Pence.
Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Pence’s national security adviser, said the president told the vice president “you’re not tough enough to make the call.”
Ivanka Trump’s former chief of staff, Julie Radford, said Trump called Pence “the p-word.”
And Greg Jacob, who served as senior counsel to Pence and testified before the committee on Thursday, said the vice president was “steely, determined, grim” when he returned to his staff after the call.