Tuberville Says He Told Trump About Pence’s Evacuation From Capitol Before Cutting Call Short

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Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) claimed Wednesday that he cut a call with former President Donald Trump short after informing him that he needed to evacuate the Capitol with former Vice President Mike Pence.

“I said ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,'” Tuberville told reporters on Capitol Hill, speaking in reference to the Jan. 6 unrest in Washington, D.C. that led a crowd to break into the Capitol complex. Video footage showed Pence fleeing the building just after 2:00 p.m. that afternoon.

The timing suggests Trump took to Twitter to blast his vice president just minutes after speaking with Tuberville. “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” he wrote in a Twitter missive at 2:24 p.m.

One woman, 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, a 14-year Air Force veteran, was shot as Capitol Police sought to defend lawmakers who had failed to vacate the building, where they had been attempting to certify President Joe Biden’s election.

Tuberville’s call with Trump was well known in Washington, but not the time that Trump learned Pence was in danger. Pence was allegedly livid over the ordeal at the time. “I’ve known Mike Pence forever,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told reporters on Jan. 7. “I’ve never seen Pence as angry as he was today.”