JFK's Grandson Criticizes Mike Pence for His "Total Perversion" of Kennedy's Legacy

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Town & Country

Vice President Mike Pence tried to invoke John F. Kennedy's legacy to publicly defend Donald Trump—but JFK's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, is having none of it.

Schlossberg took issue with an opinion piece Pence published in the Wall Street Journal last week, which used JFK's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1957 book, Profiles in Courage, as a jumping-off point to criticize Trump's impeachment.

In his essay, the Vice President focuses on a chapter in JFK's book about Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross, who held the deciding vote in President Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment, and ultimately decided to break with his party to acquit the President. After explaining Ross's story—which JFK celebrates as a praiseworthy "stand against legislative mob rule" in Profiles of Courage—Pence goes on to urge senate Democrats to acquit Trump, even if it means going against their party's wishes.

Photo credit: Boston Globe - Getty Images
Photo credit: Boston Globe - Getty Images

"Then as now, a political faction has forced a partisan impeachment through the House in the heat of an argument over a difference in policy," Pence wrote. He went on, "the true profile in courage, as Kennedy understood it, would be a Senate Democrat willing to stand up and reject a partisan impeachment passed by the Democrat-controlled House," and concluded the article by asking "Who will be the 2020 Profile in Courage?"

Schlossberg was quick to criticize Pence's interpretation of JFK's book. Two days after Pence's article appeared in the Journal, he took to Twitter to pen a lengthy thread, which he subsequently reposted on Instagram. "Mike Pence’s recent piece in the @WSJ, “A Partisan Impeachment, a Profile in Courage,” is a total perversion of JFK's legacy and the meaning of courage. As Kennedy's grandson, and a member of the Profiles in Courage Award Committee, I took special interest," Schlossberg began.

"[Pence] is right to celebrate Ross, a public servant who, foreseeing his own defeated, nonetheless summoned the courage to vote his conscience, and put the national interest above his own. But let’s not be confused," he wrote. "[Trump] was impeached because he did the exact opposite -- he put his own interests ahead of our country’s national security and, in the process, broke federal law."

Ultimately, Schlossberg argued that a proper reading of Profiles in Courage would lead to the opposite argument: that Republicans should vote to remove Trump from office, even though it means standing up to party leadership. "I would argue instead that today, as in [1868], political courage might require a Republican Senator to risk his or her own political future by breaking lockstep from the President and agree to hear from witnesses, review the evidence, and put the national interest above their own."

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