The phone rang as the vice president walked into his hotel room, and while the campaigns were still spinning and the pundits were making up their minds on cable, he listened intently to an early, positive review: “Melania says I’ve gotta be more like Mike.”
Pence smiles when he tells that story about his debate with then-Sen. Kamala Harris. He is the only Republican who has met her on a national stage, and he certainly knows former President Donald Trump, the voice on the other side of the line that night. Four years later, he remembers someone else listening in to the call.
“I may have heard” former first lady Melania Trump “affirming in the background” that the then-president needed to follow the example of his vice president. It was October of 2020. They trailed in the polls after another earlier debate, the infamous and ugly one where Trump fought as much with Chris Wallace, the Fox News moderator, as with Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee.
Perhaps not a little like now, Trump needed to change his approach ahead of the second debate.
