"Piety & Power:" Tom LoBianco's Portrait Of America's Enigmatic VP

In 2016, when Mike Pence accepted the Republican nomination for vice president, he introduced himself to the national electorate as a “Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” Mike Pence and President Donald Trump appear to be polar opposites. Why does Pence serve and defend a man so distant from the moral ideals that Pence himself has so long espoused? According to a probing biography published last fall, Pence chose to do so because “in the end, ambition and the hunger for power outweighed anything else.”Today on Midday, a conversation about one of the most enigmatic figures in American politics. Biographer and veteran political reporter Tom LoBianco joins Tom via Zoom to talk about his book, Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House.Tom LoBianco is a Washington correspondent at Business Insider's Washington Bureau, covering the White House, the Trump re-election campaign and Republicans. He previously covered the Trump-Russia investigation and the White House for The Associated Press and the 2016 campaign and Congress for CNN Politics and CNN. He has also covered two statehouses, in Indiana and Maryland, for the AP, the Washington Times and other outlets. He lives in Maryland with his wife and daughter.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.