standards and setting an example to other countries can learn from. watch book tv this weekend on c-span 2. >> coming up this evening, former vice president mike pence speaks at the annual lincoln-reagan dinner. we will have live coverage starting at 6:00 eastern on c-span and also online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. at 8:00 eastern tonight, a look at a national proposed family paid and leave medical act program. talkingabout the pandemic's disproportionate impact on working women and the country. >> more about the vice president. news, a national political reporter. you can see him there and read his reporting at concord monitor.com. as always, good to hear from

you. host: thanks -- guest: thanks, bill. host: up next, more about the vice president. we are joined by tom lobiondo. he is now with business insider. welcome to washington journal. guest: thanks for having me. we will pick it up host: with our conversation -- host: we will pick it up with our conversation about the vice president in new hampshire. what are you expecting to hear? guest: paul steinhauser, incredible, he nailed it. it is very mike pence and the sense of it being more of the same. he is scripted, disciplined and he stays on message. we saw that in south carolina, a little over a month ago. about six weeks ago. that was his first big return to

the campaign trail. touting the accomplishments of four years of donald trump, not talking as much about the scandals. he glanced -- i remember from that speech on april 30 at the palmetto family council, he glanced at january 6. that is still a trouble spot for them. he is trying to figure out how they can talk about that, if they can talk about that. mike pence is a politician as, in his career, congress, as governor, as vice president, steady, methodical. he is pretty good at letting stuff roll off his back great he certainly seems to be doing that with january 6. the question now is how will new hampshire republicans take that? are people still big mike pence fans or are they not? things are still somewhat nebulous on the republican side

right now. we are all watching that, really. host: you are with us last year when your book came out, the piety and power, mike pence and the taking of the white house. if you were to write a final chapter, an addendum to your book, what would some of your observations be? guest: i haven't seen this myself, yet. i am intensely curious and maybe mike pence will address this in his own book coming out in a few years. i would like to know what was going on when they rushed him out of the senate within just seconds of the rioters almost captioning -- capturing him. what was it like in the lockdown? these are the questions that i have in the immediate aftermath of this. when i talked with folks, understandably, mike pence was pretty angry about this. is he still angry? that is a big question.

he and his team, especially folks like mark, pretty routinely pumping up pence and working for him, a longtime senior advisor for him, but again, i don't know that you can. we left it off, when we wrote the book, published back in december of 2019, we left it at the november -- end of november of 2018 where trump floats the question of whether pence will survive on the ticket. that seemed to be, at that moment that seemed to be the most perilous position for pence , i don't think anyone foresaw january 6 happening, let alone a pair of impeachments. i myself have a lot of questions, frankly. one thing from covering pence for a while is he runs a very tight ship.

this is the opposite of trump. you can pre-much always have a good idea of what is happening in trump world. pence is a very tight operation, very scripted and disciplined. i have a lot of questions. maybe it is time for another chapter. [laughter] host: you covered the former vice president, governor, and congressman for years. with us this morning to take your comments and questions about mike pence. (202) 748-8001 aligned to call for republicans, (202) 748-8000 bird democrats, and independents and others, (202) 748-8002. obviously it is very early, 1200 days until the 2024 election, but at this point, is donald trump more of an asset or a roadblock for mike pence's presidential aspirations? tom: we have heard from the

folks around pence, and this seems to be the conventional wisdom of the 2020 for field, there is a big caveat that nobody has announced they are running yet. they are making the trips. you don't go to new hampshire, iowa, or fly down to south carolina unless you are setting your ducks in a row for a possible presidential run. as it stands now, the conventional wisdom on the right with republicans is, if trump runs, he is the nominee. the question of whether he can win a ash big question of whether he can -- big question of whether he can win a general election. i talked with campaign strategist about his previous campaign in 2016, trump world folks, i hear that you see folks like pence, mike pompeo, nikki haley, and others really kind of idling their engines at the

starting line. the auspice is for this, and it's a good one, it's very natural politically. this happened in previous cycles, going out there and campaigning hard for midterm candidates for house and senate races. pence or pompeo flies out to ohio to raise money for whoever is running for senate or a good house candidate, house republican. is trump standing in his way? yes. if trump runs again, he stands in his way. by teasing it, he is still standing in his way. he is standing in everyone's way. this is the dance of is trump in control with the republican -- of the republican party? it certainly looks that way. making targets out of folks like liz cheney and some other republicans that voted for his second impeachment.

i don't know if he is the roadblock or the leader, however you want to coin that. he is the defective nominee until he says no. i think everyone is operating under that assumption. host: he is fundraising in new hampshire for the new hampshire republican party. what is his record as a fundraiser? tom: he became very good at fundraising. this is something i explored in the book and it helped me understand him and the primaries -- the shadows in the primary presidential campaigns, all the major candidates look good. if you rewind back to november of 2008 when john boehner, the house majority leader pulls him into leadership, and one things pence is tasked with is raising money for the house republican conference. he gets very good at it. he goes back to indiana as governor and spends a lot of time doing national fundraising

for a potential 2016 white house bid. that never materialized at the top of the ticket. he got very good at it, and i remember when i was talking with folks around him and i was talking with republican donors. what i would hear routinely is that pence is very good at listening to donors, they love that, and he's very good at working a room. this is typical politics. very good retail. he got very good at it. he has a good network. early on in the trump administration, there was a lot of resentment at the beginning. pence was doing those dinners at the naval observatory in the middle of 2017 and that kind of drew trump's ire at the beginning. a bunch of people got to him and said you hate doing these fundraisers, that's what trump's

advisors were telling him. why not let pence do it? they handed it off to pence. he is a good fundraiser, a prolific fundraiser. watching some of these, watching fec reports, watching who is giving and who is active, we will start to answer some of these questions about whether pence is feasible for 2024. that is still an open question right now. host: we have calls. let's go first to ian in cunningham, pennsylvania on the democrats line. caller: i'm calling to talk about former vice president pence. i have a feeling that if he tries a run for president in 2024 it's going to be overshadowed by president trump's shadow.

host: we will hear from matthew in martinville, new york on the republican line. matthew in new york, go ahead. caller: i would like to apologize for that last collar. -- caller, a democrat, right? i have a statement and three questions. i take offense at what you call the january 6 the riot. it was basically just another day of tourists going to the capital to look at all the beautiful statuary. you are going to have to rescind that. who would possibly want to take money from the poisonous pence tree of money grovers, please explain that.

-- money grubbers. tom: number one, having worked inside the capital, that was not a tourism expedition. i've seen a lot of actual tourists. people don't die on the tors. january 6, that was a riot, that was real. i was back up there about two weeks ago, and there is still some smashed windows. it is tough. it wasn't tourism. i don't know how to whitewash that one, sorry. [laughter] in terms of donors, viability, we are watching for it. pence is still active. this is something i am wondering about myself in terms of viability. where does the republican party

go? how does it move? is there a future for the cheney's of the party? she has pointedly refused to leave the party versus, is this going to be more like barstool sports and dave portnoy or tucker carlsen, that style? we are still waiting to see and i think when you watch everyone, pence would not be out there right now. he is a very calculated and measured, disciplined politician . very methodical. he would not be out there if he and his advisors did not see a possible path. watch their actions. don't listen to the words, watch the actions. host: vanity fair had a piece headlined, the mike pence, donald trump breakup is happening in real time. i don't know if we have ever had

this in our history before, where the losing president and vice president still potentially being talked about running again , we have been talking a lot here about mike pence running as president. the potential is still out there that he could run, donald trump could run him on his ticket, correct? tom: yes. if there's anything i've learned covering trump it's that anything is possible. is that likely to happen? probably not. i think that says -- as much about trump as it is about pence. pence has been waiting. a lot of folks have been waiting. pence in particular. i will tell you something interesting. something i wrote about in the book and i think about often with regards to pence and i got this question as far as will trump dump pence from the ticket. if we can go back to the before

time before the lockdown started 15 or 16 months ago, and the take on trump, pence, and the coronavirus task force was that trump would use this to scapegoat pence for the failures of covid and dump him from the ticket. none of that happened, but that used to be kind of the take on things, will he get rid of pence ? for me, and i think something we lose here is that pence is very mellow and very flat on the surface. he is very calculating. let's go back to access hollywood weekend in october of 2016. there is an effort

they don't, there is an expectation or hope, there has

been hopeful thinking around what trump will or will not do. it is unclear if trump would actually leave. if he would decide to run again. it's a benchmark. is it a solid benchmark, i don't know. hard to tell at this point. the midterms are something huge to watch for. as i mentioned earlier, it's a great proxy for anybody out there trying to tf, meet supporters down the road and get some chips and the bank and cash in later.

this person was telling me, there is still a lot of support for mike pence among movement conservatives, social conservatives. the evangelical right. you saw that in their selection there is a christian right group and south carolina. you saw that in their selection as a first venue to bring it back out. i was watching the speech, you could hear them testing messaging. he had one joke that i thought was a take on an old dick cheney joke where he had just gotten his pacemaker installed. he said the doctor told him his heart was skipping a beat and he said the last time he had that happened was when he met his

wife. they are tiptoeing back out there. you wouldn't see that happening if they didn't see a possible path. >> here's a little bit more of that message testing. >> i came here tonight for two reasons. thank you for the privilege of serving as your vice president. the privilege of serving alongside president donald trump. it's the greatest privilege of my life. also to say after 100 days, of

open borders, runaway spending, plans for higher taxes a bigger welfare state more government defunding the police abandoning the right to life canceling our most cherished liberties, i have had enough. after 100 days, i think the time has come for americans to vote into faith and family and freedom and limited government to stand up and unite behind a positive agenda and win back america. it starts right here and right now. in south carolina. first, let me reflect on what we accomplished over the last four years. i remember the final day of the

republican convention in cleveland 2016. our nominee and i climbed into the airport car together. he is sitting next to me in the car, we were still getting to know each other. he starts to give me the pep talk. he says the campaign starts now. he says if you go north, went to go south. he says what ever time you have to spare, we're going to work. i said i'm all in. he said were going to have to work and go out and campaign and take our message to the american people. i said i'm there. he says were going to work and work and work. then he looked over at me and he hit me in the shoulder and he said then it's going to be great. i have to tell you, it was. it was four years of

consequence, four years of results, four years of promises made and promises kept. >> a lot bundled into those minutes. >> the first thing i heard or the last thing i heard was classic pence version of trump. you do you know what's interesting about that? i tell you it's a story from the 90's when he was on the radio. he used to say that he is like rush limbaugh on decaf. conservative talk radio call-in show. probably not nearly as fiery as rush or anything now.

after he came off the air one day, he used to be one of the executives in indiana. network indiana which used to carry mike pence's radio show. pence goes up to him and he's a veteran at this point. he asks him he says how did i do? he is like man u did great your natural. you are awesome. just one thing, stop talking like rush. pence almost didn't realize he was taking on the rush intonations. when i was doing the research for the book, there's an interesting interview that he gave to the tribune. i think it was 1998. he talked about how he picks up mannerisms.

i ask who is this guy? who is mike pence? i would get that a lot from his friends. former advisers when i was talking with him about the book. who is he? the rest of the speech, where the republican party is right now, you heard a lot of old classic lines hitting on the greatest hits on the right on

social conservative issues. that's not terribly surprising. the anecdote at the end where he slips in, he's talking with trump and he slips into the trump impersonation. that's the most telling part of that. >> let's hear from raymond in jacksonville, florida. you are on the air. >> good morning to both of you. i was there at the time of the riot. as a republican, we were all chanting people were saying how can you say it's not a riot. when you do something like that, it is. >> we're going to go to terry in winchester, tennessee.

it makes me sick to hear people praise trump like they do. i wonder how much he is paying mike pence to market him for president again. didn't he watch the riot? i want to know what's wrong with our federal government, our fbi. why is trump not sitting in jail? and being denied bond. there is no question that he invited the riot. he puts out lies out there all the time. joe biden has done a really good job. >> a comment about mike pence from stephen ohio. he says pence was loyal to trump even when trump said and did

stupid stuff, he acted vice presidential all through four years. to vote for him, his political views differ from mine but he was a stabilizing addition to a wacky administration. >> i think that is correct. to the extent where he would insert himself sometimes. not all the time, i wouldn't call him a forceful presence. remember the anonymous op-ed. that was written by another hoosier. he later identified himself. this idea of the adults in the room, that's a long theme throughout the trumper administration.

something i wrote about in the book which speaks to that is, this would have been back in 2017 when trump was going to meet with kim jong-un. they were going to have the summit. pence didn't have much of a relationship with the former senator when they were in congress together. they developed a little bit of a relationship with pence as the vice president. pence sees him at the event and he invites him to come over and brief him on disarmament. this is back in may 2017. of course he is famous for disarmament in the former soviet union. the vice president asked him to come in and he said i would love

to. name a date. he brings sam nunn with him. they go to meet with the vice president in the west wing in his corner office. they walk in, shake hands of pence, pence gets up. straight into the oval office. he says mr. president, this is former senator lugar, former senator not. -- >> nobody paid per ticket to see me. please stand and remain standing for the invocation, the pledge, our national anthem and our toast. for that, i would like to welcome to the stage the commissioner of education.