Committee that the President called Vice President Pence a "wimp,"[181] told him it would be "a political career killer" to certify the lawful electoral votes electing President Biden,[182] and accused him of "not [being] tough enough to make the call."[183] As Ivanka Trump would recount to her chief of staff moments later, her father called the Vice President "the p-word" for refusing to overturn the election.[184]
In response, Vice President Pence again refused to take any action other than counting the lawfully certified electoral votes of the States. But President Trump was angry and undeterred. After the conclusion of this call, he edited his speech for the Ellipse to insert language to which his lawyers objected—targeting Vice President Pence directly.[185]
Earlier that morning, Eric Herschmann had tried to remove the reference to Vice President Pence from the speech. As he told speechwriter Stephen Miller, he "didn't concur with the legal analysis" that John Eastman had advanced and believed it "wouldn't advance the ball" to discuss it publicly.[186] But after the call with Vice President Pence, speechwriters were instructed to reinsert the line. Although the final written draft of his speech referred to Pence just once—a line President Trump didn’t end up reading[187]—the President went off-script five different times to pressure the Vice President:
