Trump laughed at Pence’s rule about not dining with women without wife

Former President Donald Trump laughed about media coverage of former Vice PresidentMike Pence’s refusal to dine alone with women who aren’t his wife in 2017, a new book authored by Mr Pence claims. Mr Pence, an evangelical Christian, has long declined to dine alone with other women or attend events where alcohol is being served without his wife Karen – a rule that he writes he picked up from the late evangelist Billy Graham. He first mentioned this rule to a reporter in 2002, but it resurfaced in the national conciousness shortly into Mr Trump’s presidency when it was mentioned in a profile of Ms Pence in The Washington Post and seized upon by critics of the Trump administration as an illustration of retrograde thinking and hostility to women. According to Mr Pence’s new book, titled So Help Me God, the thrice-married Mr Trump found the situation amusing. ‘Can you believe it? After all they’ve said about me, now they are attacking Mike for being faithful to his wife!’ Mr Trump, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, reportedly told those gathered for an intelligence briefing shortly after the Washington Post story was published. Mr Trump’s good humour about the situation was a relief to Mr Pence, who wrote that he did not want to ‘create controversy for the administration.’ Mr Trump later joked that his vice president was ‘way ahead of his time’ with his dining rule. Mr Pence defends his position in his book, claiming that he has high-ranking female staff members. He is a staunch opponent of abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and a number of social spending programmes. ‘The ‘Pence Rule,’ as it was later dubbed, was about protecting everyone on our team and encouraging them to put themselves and their families first,’ Mr Pence writes. The release of Mr Pence’s new book comes as the former vice president has taken steps towards announcing his own bid for the White House in 2024. Mr Pence has travelled to several of the early primary states like New Hampshire and Iowa in recent months, and his political action group has been airing television ads as well. Mr Pence has also recently addressed head-on his role in the January 6 Capitol riot, in which he said that Mr Trump’s campaign of pressure on him to overturn the result of the presidential election ‘endangered me and my family.’ Mr Trump is moving towards announcing his own bid for the presidency, while Gov Ron DeSantis of Florida is another potential candidate who has consistently ranked higher than Mr Pence in early polls of the Republican nominating contest.