Vice President Mike Pence was forced to cancel a trip Tuesday after being mysteriously summoned back to the White House.
Pence was scheduled to travel to New Hampshire for a talk on the opioid crisis when he was suddenly recalled to l600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House has been oddly quiet about the sudden schedule change. Pence’s press secretary sent out a cryptic tweet that did little to clarify the situation.
“Something came up that required the @VP to remain in Washington, DC. It’s no cause for alarm. He looks forward to rescheduling the trip to New Hampshire very soon,” Alyssa Farah tweeted
Change of plans
Air Force Two was scheduled to land in New Hampshire Tuesday morning, but the vice president’s itinerary experienced a sudden shift. A crowd in Salem that was expecting Pence was told by a staffer that he would not be coming after all.
“We do have a situation where the vice president was called back to Washington,” Randy Gentry, a Pence staffer said to the assembled audience.
Naturally, the cancellation set off immediate speculation among reporters in Washington that there was a crisis brewing. White House staffers sought to tamp down the buzz, with Pence staffers claiming that the vice president never actually left Washington, D.C.
“Something came up that requires the VP to remain in DC. There is no cause for concern,” Deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters, echoing Farah.
“The @VP never left Washington, DC. There was no “emergency callback.” Something came up that required the VP to stay in DC. We’ll reschedule NH shortly” Farah said in a follow-up tweet.
Contrary to reports that Pence’s flight turned around shortly before it was expected to land, Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short said that he got on the plane but disembarked before take-off.
What’s going on?
As of Wednesday evening, not much is known about why Pence was summoned back. The White House has been quiet on the cause of Pence’s sudden change of plans.
Short was brief with reporters, telling them curtly that the public would learn “in a few weeks” what happened. White House officials told reporters that the abrupt cancellation had nothing to do with the health of Pence or President Trump, or matters of national security.
After leaving Air Force Two, Pence returned to the White House where he met with Trump.
The reversal comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin also adjusted his schedule amid a lethal submarine fire in the country’s territorial waters that killed 14. It also comes not long after the Senate received a briefing on UFO sightings by the Navy, although there is no indication that the White House has received any communications from another galaxy.
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