6 Totally WTF Mike Pence Stories Nobody Ever Brings Up

Playing a Republican crowd favorite, Pence donned the officer and a gentleman persona, saying he wants to keep women out of the military for their own safety. Look, ladies, male soldiers are going to keep sexually harassing and assaulting women. That will never change. Which is why Pence was worried that Mulan would inspire young princesses to serve their country and and turn brave heroes into sex offenders. He even refers to how Bambi ruined the debate on deer hunting in America. Seriously, what kind of maniac watches Bambi and is on the side of the hunters?

Regardless of his ridiculous positions on ancient Chinese familial dynamics and the importance of honor in service, Pence used that radio show to keep his name in the news across Indiana, and it didn't take long before Hoosiers were listening to him on over 20 stations statewide for several hours a week. So when he ran for Congress again in the '00s, he had a well-known position on every issue, name recognition across the state, and a media savvy that was hard to match in a state like Indiana. Finally, he had a real victory under his belt, but the ridiculousness of his career wasn't even close to finished.

In fact, the Pences are such a well-known dream couple that a lot of conservatives and liberals alike were quick to come to their defense when Mike was grilled (and rightly so) for refusing to sit down for dinner with any woman (even a colleague) without anyone else present. Why respect hamburger when you can have steak at home, right?

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

But that's not even the weirdest dinner story coming out of the Pence family. During his time as governor, at a small dinner with some state legislators, Mike found himself seated at the other end of the table from his wife. Not knowing how to do small talk without his talking point prompts (as he is wont to do), a flustered Pence cried out to his wife, "Mother! Mother! Who prepared our meal this evening?" That's right, the 2017 vice president of the United States calls his wife "mother." "Mother!" like how a teenage Mormon girl grumbles at her mom when she says something embarrassing in front of a cute boy. The only time that a sitting governor should address his wife as "mother" in front of other legislators is when those administrators are wearing stovepipe hats and discussing Confederate troop movements.

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But what is much more disturbing is that Karen Pence isn't just the "mother" in their relationship, but the daddy as well. She has another nickname in the Pence household: "prayer warrior." And if some people formerly close to the Pences are to be believed, it seems that she's the real force behind Mike's conservative stances. Since his election as a representative, Mrs. Pence has had a red phone installed in Pence's offices that only she has the number to. She also sits in on meetings as his "gut check and shield," helped pick his staff, and is present during his debriefings. That's a lot of political influence for a raging homophobe who thinks sexuality is a choice and believes her prayers can increase people's hemoglobin count. So in case some of us are still thinking President Pence might be the lesser of two evils, don't forget who would really be running the show -- and Karen Pence ain't no Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

That white dude In a Bob Marley costume is an actor pretending to be a Middle Eastern man, ironically thanking Representative Sharp for getting America to rely so heavily on his country's oil. That's racist even by fratboy standards. And remember, this was 11 years before the September 11th attacks launched anti-Muslim feelings in the United States into the stratosphere, making Pence a hipster of Islamophobia (he was into it before everybody else was). There was just no reason for Pence to give this the thumbs-up -- though to his credit, he's admitted the backlash from this ad convinced him to never again launch a negative ad himself. That's what running mates are for.

But shockingly, this terrible ad isn't what lost Pence the race. It would later come out that he'd been misusing campaign funds to pay for his mortgage, groceries, car payments, and golf tournament entries -- or as we know it now, training for being in the Trump cabinet. This wasn't illegal at the time, but for someone running on fiscal responsibility and down-home morals and values, this was the final nail in the coffin for Pence's early political career.

He would have to go on to pursue a somewhat different dream ...

Pence, it turns out, has a bit of a history of censorship. When some of his constituents commenting on his public Facebook page noticed their comments had disappeared, it was revealed that Pence's staff was going through and deleting comments in a targeted fashion. If they were particularly pro-gay or seemed to come from people they knew were specifically anti-Pence, the staffers had been instructed by Pence (which he freely admitted to) to go ahead and get rid of them. Sure, it's just social media, but that's how a lot of people get their news nowadays, and when you're a politician, that's a clear suppression of folks' First Amendment rights. Yes, even if they hate you.

Governor Mike Pence/Facebook

Not that that makes Pence the world's most boring dictator or anything. No, that coup happened when he tried to create a literal state-run news service. The plan was to come up with a controlled breaking news outlet called JustIN, which sounds like how an angry mom would yell at her son to stop skateboarding. JustIN would have meant that government types would be able to control the news that was coming out of their offices, and independent press agencies would have no more access to political coverage other than repeating what JustIN published. This was quickly mocked as "Pravda on the Plains," which still makes it sound more exciting than Pence's particularly mundane evil. Governor Pence quickly backed off the idea, if for no other reason than he probably remembered that conservatives are supposed to appear to reduce the government meddling into people's affairs. Eye on the tax breaks, Pence. Eye on the tax breaks.

During the presidential race, Mike Pence sent an email blast titled "Nefarious News!" (which is exactly how we imagine an upset Pence talks), stating that he and his wife Karen were stranded in the Philippines and needed some money. It was quickly uncovered that some really incompetent people ran a substandard phishing attack on Pence's email account and sent a money request to all his contacts. No one believed it, of course, because everybody knows that the Pences only holiday in Gary, Indiana.

So his AOL email (yes, Mike Pence still uses AOL) got hacked by scammers. Big deal. Happens to the best of us, right? Except that, according to every neckbeard on the internet, the best would never use personal email addresses to conduct state business, which is exactly what Pence did. When The Indianapolis Star made a public records request to look into the hacked emails, they were told that some emails were too sensitive to be made public -- i.e. they contained important state business. If that's not ringing any alarm bells to you, it should, especially if you considered "cyber security liability" a reason not to elect a politician into a higher office than he (or she) had ever held.

Even worse was the 2016 gubernatorial election. Prior to accepting the VP nomination in July, Pence was still leading for reelection -- barely. About two months before getting tabbed for the Trump ticket, he was polling at roughly a dead heat with Democrat John Gregg.

The Indy Star

Turns out Pence had spent a little too much of his political capital on the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," which protects the legal rights of people discriminating against others on the basis of their god not liking them. Championing the bill (and then slowly backing away after the slightest of pressure) left him with a higher disapproval rating than approval. Voters claimed that while Pence might have been better equipped to handle things like the budget, they trusted Gregg more to handle things like, and this is an actual quote, "not embarrassing the state of Indiana on a national level."

Finally, Pence has been on the receiving end of a bunch of protests throughout his career, though it seems like the worst is yet to come. But none probably stung more than watching about 150 graduates of the University of Notre Dame and their families walk out as Pence (who was only invited because student body had protested against inviting Trump) got up to give the commencement address last May. That's a significant percentage of (largely wealthy and conservative) students who walked away from the most important day of their lives in order to not be on the same football field as a man like Pence.

Isaac is a proud Notre Dame alum, a Buckeye by birth, and a Hoosier by girth. Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

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