An evangelical pastor who was a close associate of Mike Pence when he served as an Indiana Congressman in the early 2000s has announced that he’s planning to vote for Joe Biden in the November presidential election. Pastor Rob Schenck made the revelation in an interview with The Atlantic, to whom he also explained that he’d tried to reach out to Pence since he joined the Trump administration, but he had not been answered. The concerns that Schenck cited about the Trump administration include Pence’s relentless deference to his boss and the relentless lying that unfolds on a daily basis across the whole administration.
The Atlantic reports:
‘After Pence won an Indiana congressional race in 2000, he would meet with Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister, and pray and read scripture together… “If he were to seek pastoral counseling from me, I would say to him, ‘Brother Mike, Jesus commands you to love your neighbor, not love your boss,’” says Schenck, who plans to vote for Biden, the first Democrat he’s supported in a presidential race since Jimmy Carter in 1976. “That’s not God’s command.”’
Schenck apparently tried to get in touch with Pence after “seeing him at a swearing-in ceremony for Sam Brownback, the administration’s ambassador for international religious freedom,” The Atlantic explains. Schenck says that after the ceremony, he sent a letter to Pence warning about the dangers of bearing false witness, meaning lying. Schenck explains:
‘I conveyed in the letter that that was one of the greatest failures of this administration: truth-telling. I was trying to say to him, “You need to be a truth-teller.”‘
Pence has made no kind of break with his boss, President Donald Trump, in the time that he has been on the job. He has stood right by the president, metaphorically or otherwise, through scandals like the administration’s recent attempt to sweep bad news about the Coronavirus under the rug. People’s lives are at stake, but the Trump administration — including Pence — seems most concerned about its public image. Voters are paying attention — presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden currently leads by an average of 8.7 percent in national polls, according to RealClearPolitics.
