U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is calling on supporters at the end of a rally in Kinston, North Carolina, on October 25, 2020.
Jonathan Drake | Reuters
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to travel abroad for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic just hours after presiding over the congressional session in which President-elect Joe Biden will formally win the November contest against President Donald Trump .
The Indiana Republican will leave the United States on Jan. 6 for a trip that will include stops in Bahrain, Israel and Poland, according to a government document obtained by NBC News. Pence will remain abroad until January 11th.
The travel schedule, which an administration official said is subject to change, has two advantages for Pence.
He is expected to use his last trip as vice president to promote the achievements of the administration’s foreign policy, including the normalization of relations between Israel and several Gulf states, including Bahrain.
It will also allow Pence, who is rumored to harbor his own presidential ambitions, to leave Washington after getting the awkward task of announcing his defeat and Trump against Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
The trip starts on the same day that Congress will meet in a joint session to formally count the electoral votes for president and vice president. Under federal law, the president of the Senate (a role played by the vice president) is in charge of presenting the electoral votes and announcing the winner.
The job is politically awkward for Pence, as Trump has set precedents for refusing to concede defeat. Biden got 306 electoral votes, 36 more than the 270 needed for victory. Trump won 232 electoral votes. The Electoral College formally voted Monday.
Pence has been locked up with Trump during the four years of his administration, remaining a loyal ally in a White House that was plagued by an unusually high turnover and frequent fighting. But the vice president has largely remained in the background, as Trump has tried to reverse the results of the Nov. 3 election. Still, Pence has backed the president’s unfounded allegations of electoral fraud and has not publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory or congratulated the former vice president.
Other senior Republicans have slowly begun to recognize election results, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. On Tuesday, McConnell urged his fellow Republicans not to try to block Biden’s declaration of victory.
The vice president’s office declined to comment on NBC News. Politico, who previously reported on the trip, quoted Pence’s allies as saying there was no suggestion that Pence would not do its statutory obligations.
The role of Pence presiding over the January 6 congressional session is a formality and he has no say in selecting the winner of the election. At least on a previous occasion when the vice president refused to chair, in 1969, the job was done by the pro tempore president of the Senate, according to the Congressional Research Service. This year, the pro tempore president is Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
In addition to political considerations, the timing of Pence’s trip may also be related to the recent approval of the first vaccine designed to prevent coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine made by Pfizer for emergency use earlier this month.
Pence, the leader of the White House coronavirus working group, has not traveled since before the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the United States. On Friday, he will publicly receive one of the first doses of the vaccine, the White House said.
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