Some of our Salon customers believe I’m a conspiracy theorist, so to fuel that conclusion here’s another one.  Hear me out…There have been rumors flying around for over a year that Trump was going to replace Pantywaist Pence with Nikki Haley.  That’s been fed by weird tweets from Haley herself and recently commentary by Paul Begala predicting Trump is going to do just that.  Everyone in Trumpworld has been lamely trying to slap that one down, but I’ve never been convinced that Trump is NOT going to take Pence out.

It’s no secret that Pence is a toad of the first order, adding no political capital to Trump’s dwindling account.  He’s a Yes Man of the worst order, complete with his longing looks of Trump adoration and his aggrieved voice whenever he’s burdened with explaining Trump’s latest soiling of the carpets in the WH.  Now, Trump has put him in charge of the Coronavirus response, a job that he is totally unsuited (not to mention unqualified) for.  Pence’s response so far has been predictably awful, from mixed messaging to photos of a room full of white men deciding the fates of over 300 million Americans.  The effort is going to fail, and, in fact, has probably already failed.  There is almost certainly going to be an rapid increase in cases and bad news of larger outbreaks.  When that happens, guess who’s going to be the patsy?  That’s right, Mike Pence.  Trump will have “no choice” but to remove him as VP for incompetence and get a more “beautiful” and “fantastic” and “best qualified ever” candidate which will just so happen to be Haley.  It will be a cynical effort to save his suburban mom voting block.

Call me crazy…