Will Mike Pence As President Be Better For America Than Trump?

President Donald Trump's critics may be waiting for his exit, forced or voluntary, but Mike Pence — the man who would step into his shoes in such an eventuality — has his own set of disadvantages.

First, Pence is considered a "tool" in the hands of the right-wing billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, referred to as the "Koch brothers." The Koch brothers have donated heavily to Pence's gubernatorial campaigns, according to "The Danger of President Pence," written by Jane Mayer and published in The New Yorker on Oct. 23.

The Kochs control Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the U.S., and were accused of "buying undue influence" by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). "If Pence were to become president for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch brothers — period," Whitehouse told the The New Yorker. "He's been their tool for years."

Trump has already appointed to his administration people believed to be close to the Koch family, such as Betsy DeVos (Secretary of Education), Don McGahn (White House counsel) and Scott Pruitt (administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency).

Pence had been affiliated with the brothers since he was a Congress member from Indiana. Democrats and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon have openly complained about the Kochs' influence on Pence. "I’m concerned he’d be a president that the Kochs would own," Bannon told Mayer.

Pence has also been dismissive of climate change and said it's an invention of environmentalists in their "latest Chicken Little attempt to raise taxes." During his time in the Congress, he condemned the bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions and trade on carbon as the "largest tax increase in American history," a sentiment echoed by the Koch brothers, The New Yorker reported.

Pence's religious views have also made him the butt of Trump's jokes, according to The New Yorker article. Mayer wrote about the moment when Trump made fun of Pence's wish to get rid of the abortion protections in the Roe v. Wade decision. Trump also said that Pence wanted to "hang" gay people.

In the landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the legality of a woman's right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth amendment to the Constitution.

"During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. “You see?” Trump asked Pence. “You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.” When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, “Don’t ask that guy — he wants to hang them all!" the New Yorker article stated.

Pence, who was elected governor of Indiana in 2012 with less than 50 percent of the vote, was described by many politicos as "ambitious for the sake of ambition, with no ideological compass other than his evangelical Christianity." They thought that that unlike the previous governor, Mitch Daniels, Pence was doing the job just to check off executive experience on his presidential-candidate résume, The New York Times reported.