© Jabin Botsford/The Washington PostPresident Trump and Vice President Pence walk through the White House in Washington on June 22.
Vice President Pence is spending considerable time
cultivating big-money Republican donors at small, private events, including hedge fund managers and executives from brokerage houses, chemical giants and defense contractors, Kenneth P. Vogel
reports at the
New York Times. Many of these events, whose participants are kept secret from the media and are omitted from Pence's public schedule, have been taking place at the vice-presidential residence at the Naval Observatory, as well as other nongovernment venues.
While cultivating support from deep-pocketed business interests is nothing new in GOP politics, Pence's activities raise the question of
whether he is doing this for Trump-Pence 2020 — or for himself. As Vogel's piece points out, Pence's intimate confabs with wealthy donors and conservative power brokers "have fueled
speculation among Republican insiders that he is laying the foundation for his own political future, independent from Mr. Trump."
All of this suggests something important about President Trump. Despite Pence's protestations to the contrary, the vice president looks to be preparing for his own political future. Beyond this clear signal about his own political ambitions, Pence's actions raise the question of
whether he has lost confidence in Trump's ability to come out of the Russia investigation unscathed.
Comment: More pot-stirring fakenews? Notice how the article begins with a perfectly rational explanation: that this is normal business as usual. But using their fakenews blinders, WaPo and NYT treat news like a Rorschach test, go with the "juiciest" angle, and run with it as if they've eliminated all other options.