Who is Mike Pence?

02/25/20 • 46 min

Vice President Mike Pence, who has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” for decades, was born a Catholic Democrat, but rose to prominence as an Evangelical conservative. Once elected to Congress, his friendly attitude toward big business attracted the attention of billionaire donors like Charles Koch. But as Governor of Indiana, Pence became infamous for how his faith informed his politics, from praying for an answer to an HIV outbreak in Scott County, to advocating for a religious freedom policy that enabled business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. Then came Donald Trump. On the penultimate episode of the first season of Who Is, Sean Morrow turns to Pence biographer Tom LoBianco, to try to understand the man who could be the next President of the United States.

Tom LoBianco, Reporter and Author of Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House
Sarah Posner, a Reporting Fellow at Type Investigations, where she covers the religious right, white nationalism, and more. Her latest book, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, is out on May 26, 2020
Laura Ungar, a Midwest Editor and Correspondent at Kaiser Health News. Ungar recently returned to Austin, Indiana, for a look at how the city has recovered, and to evaluate the challenges faced by those living in rural America, for Kaiser Health News and NPR. Her extensive coverage of Austin may be found at https://www.courier-journal.com/

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Tom LoBianco, Reporter and Author of Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House
Sarah Posner, a Reporting Fellow at Type Investigations, where she covers the religious right, white nationalism, and more. Her latest book, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, is out on May 26, 2020
Laura Ungar, a Midwest Editor and Correspondent at Kaiser Health News. Ungar recently returned to Austin, Indiana, for a look at how the city has recovered, and to evaluate the challenges faced by those living in rural America, for Kaiser Health News and NPR. Her extensive coverage of Austin may be found at https://www.courier-journal.com/

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Previous Episode

Who is Tom Cotton?

Arkansas is one of America’s poorest states. Today, it’s also one of its reddest, and the politicians it sends to Washington, like its star senator, Tom Cotton, aim to cut the government assistance programs that many Arkansans depend on. But the state was once solidly democratic, and elected charismatic democratic politicians like former President Bill Clinton, for decades. In the second of three episodes exploring the contemporary Republican Party, and the future of the party after Trump, Sean Morrow digs into the forces that brought Sen. Cotton to power, including deep pocketed donors like Charles Koch, and untangles the complexities of white identity politics and the nationalization of Southern beliefs and attitudes.

Ernie Dumas, Journalist and Author of The Education of Ernie Dumas
Tamika Edwards, Executive Director of the Social Justice Institute at Philander Smith College
Angie Maxwell, Director of the Diane Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas

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Next Episode

Who is Charles Koch?

A billionaire among billionaires, Charles Koch is one of the most powerful men in the world. By all accounts a brilliant businessman, Charles inherited his father’s company when Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House, and, over decades, has transformed privately held Koch Industries into a massive multinational conglomerate with annual revenues of well over a hundred billion dollars. Since the 1970s, he’s not only reinvested that money in his company, but funneled it into American politics, financing ideas, organizations, and politicians, which together present a carefully engineered attempt to dismantle the regulatory state, and perhaps government itself. And he’s been very successful: Charles Koch, more than anyone else, may epitomize the pervasive influence of money on American democracy. On the final episode of the first season of Who Is, Sean Morrow explores the biography of Charles Koch, and the history of the Koch Network, for a look at how the very, very wealthy seek to control the political process, and what the rest of us can do about it.

Amy Goodman, Host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His most recent book is State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States -- and the Nation
Christopher Leonard, Author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America

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