Mike Pence with microphone in front of red and American flag background

Valerio Pucci/Shutterstock (Licensed)

Dirty Delete: Mike Pence hides his pro-death policies behind a smile

Pence’s web presence is a lot like him: you’d probably make fun of it if he wasn’t so dangerous.

 

Claire Goforth

Tech

Posted on Jun 30, 2023   Updated on Jun 29, 2023, 8:20 am CDT

Dirty Delete is a weekly column that goes deep into the social media history of politicians that runs on Thursdays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is probably best known for opposing LGBTQ and women’s rights and being former President Donald Trump’s number two.

Now the man who supported conversion therapy and bungled an HIV outbreak wants to be president. Pence is packed into a crowded Republican field that includes his former boss.

Pence’s web presence is a lot like him: you’d probably make fun of it if he wasn’t so dangerous.

He had a field day online on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade being overturned. While the majority of Americans who support reproductive rights mourned women’s rights being rolled back half a century, Pence danced on the graves of everyone who has and will die waiting for lifesaving medical care or from complications from an illegal abortion.

See, behind that snowy white dome, folksy demeanor, and insistence that he’s pro-life, Pence has supported policies that are pro-death.

Pence is the kind of guy who sees record heat, sea level rise, and the absolute horror of mountaintop removal and still joyously tweets, “coal is coming back!”

After the Parkland school shooting, Pence claimed the Trump administration was working to ensure the nation’s schools were as safe as possible. He neglected to mention that he personally made schools more dangerous. While governor of Indiana, Pence signed legislation allowing guns on school property. 

Given his negligence handling an HIV outbreak, Pence was a strange choice to head the COVID-19 task force. But Trump isn’t exactly a great judge of character.

Maybe it was Pence’s penchant for creating corpses that attracted the fly that spent a full two minutes on his head during a vice presidential debate in 2020, hands down the best moment of his time in the White House.

Pence is on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Dirtiest Delete

Pence doesn’t often delete posts, unless it’s a photo of him with a cop wearing a QAnon patch. (He does, however, enjoy deleting comments criticizing his opposition to gay marriage.)

One tweet about COVID is an exception to that general rule.

In 2020, Pence swiftly deleted a tweet boasting, “It is important to remember that President @realDonaldTrump shut down the entire American economy to put the health of America first.”

As he’s now running against the man who said he deserved to be hanged for refusing to overturn the 2020 election, Pence might actually wish he hadn’t smashed that delete button.

In Body Image
Share this article
*First Published: Jun 30, 2023, 6:00 am CDT