Kellogg floated Pence for medal, now says he’s ‘fair game’

By Philip Wegmann
Real Clear Wire

Keith Kellogg, who served as national security advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence, has endorsed Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Kellogg claims to be surprised that anyone else is surprised. 

“I’ve been with Trump since 2015,” said the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, who now co-chairs the Trump-friendly America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security and who stopped short of calling his recent statements an endorsement. Kellogg told RealClearPolitics he supported Trump “well before Mike Pence even became a gleam in his eye.”

But it was the way Kellogg did it that raised eyebrows. Not content to praise the former president, Kellogg also took a shot at Pence. The day after the former vice president qualified for the first primary debate, Kellogg made headlines for saying that Pence was “unworthy of the presidency.”

In a statement posted to Truth Social, he also wrote, “Where President Trump is bold and unafraid to challenge the status quo, Pence has often chosen the passive route, avoiding confrontation.” In Pence’s camp this statement suggested a bit of convenient amnesia on the part of Kellogg.

For starters, Kellogg personally recommended that Trump award Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In addition, in the tense hours of Jan. 6, as the U.S. Capitol was being cleared of pro-Trump demonstrators, Kellogg sent emails to Pence chief of staff Marc Short in support of Pence’s decision to finish certifying the Electoral College vote. “That’s not a good plan, that’s a great plan,” Kellogg told Short. “Close this thing out tonight.” Short was only too happy to read those emails aloud on CNN Tuesday.

Kellogg didn’t offer exact details about his change of heart – until a Tuesday afternoon interview with RCP.

While Pence and Trump remain at odds over the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a controversy recently re-invigorated by the former president’s recent indictment, Kellogg now tells RCP he still wasn’t sure if the former vice president was correct to certify the 2020 election.

“I don't think anybody knows,” he said. “The Electoral College Act, right? They're still talking about what exactly is in that, and how it is to be read. We will see how it plays out.”

It was what came years after that riot, Kellogg said, that led him to publicly turn on Pence.

“When the vice president, Mike Pence, made the comment that he did not think that President Trump was fit to be president again, he crossed the line of loyalty,” Kellogg explained. This kind of criticism was enough for him to conclude, “Okay, now you’re fair game.”

Kellogg also said he was galled to learn that Pence kept contemporaneous notes while in the White House. This was a reference to the revelation that Pence shared with CBS that occasionally he “scribbled a note or two on my calendar.” Kellogg served as a senior advisor to both men during the previous administration. “I had no idea,” he said of Pence occasionally making notes of his talks with Trump.

Kellogg joined the 2016 Trump campaign as a national security advisor and later served as acting national security advisor after the resignation of Michael Flynn. It wasn’t until 2018 that Pence selected Kellogg to advise him on national security matters. And it was Kellogg, while National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien was away, who was in the Oval Office with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump and Pence split that day and their subsequent divorce has played out in public as the two men compete for the 2024 GOP nomination. Pence remained loyal to Trump up until the very end of the previous administration and only now finds himself the target of the former president’s wrath.

But Kellogg told RCP he attempted to broker a last-minute peace. Even after Pence bucked Trump’s scheme to send the 2020 election back to the states, and when the two men weren’t on speaking terms, the general pushed for Trump to award Pence the Medal of Freedom on his way out of the White House.

“I'd seen both of them work so closely together for four years, and I was just trying to say, ‘how do we resolve this, and how do we get them back together again in the last two weeks,’” Kellogg said, confirming for the first time the reporting of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their 2021 book, “Peril.” The reconciliation effort fell apart, Kellogg explained, when Pence’s team balked.

“Marc Short told me he would recommend that Mike Pence not accept it,” Kellogg said, referring to the former vice president’s chief of staff.

Short didn't dispute that characterization, telling RCP Tuesday that “the fact that he thought Pence deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom should say all it needs to about whether Gen. Kellogg’s perspective is sincere.”

He added, “Certainly, the statement he put out last night contradicts everything he has told Pence in private over the last two years.”

After Short read emails on air that Kellogg had sent him during the Capitol riot, the general tweeted Tuesday evening that it was his hope to reconcile Trump and Pence with the Medal of Freedom. “You didn’t even try,” Kellogg said addressing Short, “and failed your principal.”