Marc Short, who served as chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence, gave his two cents on what it’s like seeing former President Donald Trump’s mug shot following his arrest at the Fulton County Jail last week.
“I think it’s sad. I think it’s tragic,” said Short on Friday after CNN’s Jake Tapper asked for his reaction to the image.
Short, who was also a director of legislative affairs in the Trump White House, noted that the former president was great to him and his family before offering his two cents on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
“I do think that the events of Jan. 6 were tragic and certainly avoidable. And I think that the president got a lot of bad counsel – in many cases, counsel he sought out – that I think led him astray,” Short said.
“And I think that ultimately asking the vice president to sort of put aside the Constitution is a huge violation of your most important oath to the American people, to protect and defend the Constitution.”
Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges tied to his – and 18 other co-defendants’ – efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The former president faces 91 criminal charges in total across four cases.
Short has been critical of those in Trump’s circle before, once comparing the former president’s “bad” advisers to “basically snake oil salesmen” during an appearance on “Meet the Press” early last year.
Tapper later asked Short how other members of the Trump White House not “charged with crimes” are reacting to the mug shot.
“I think that in some cases it’s probably a little bit surreal for a lot of people, you need to have a little bit of distance from it,” Short said.
“But I think that there’s obviously a lot of us who felt that the events of that day [Jan. 6] were tragic and that what the president was asking the vice president to do was antithetical to his oath. I think there’s a lot of others though, Jake, who feel that they still want to defend and move forward with his candidacy in 2024, I think they want this to go away.”
