Pence was pretty clearly the a relatively establishment pick to balance the ticket for the GOP. Pres and VP always pretend to be friends because that's good PR and that's what the public wants but it's never actually been true. VP is picked to balance the ticket more than anything else, which selects for people who aren't close allies. Trump had few die hard loyalists in his administration, and picking one of them to be VP would have been a mistake.
Uh huh, sure, how about you look at Cheney and Biden and what they actually did as VP, instead of going on about the 'ideal' reason for a VP pick.
Neither Trump nor Pence covered themselves in glory on Jan 6th. Trump didn't march with his supporters and then ran away to the bunker for a few hours and then waited a few hours to smear and denounce them before Ashli Babbit's body had cooled.
The shit at the Capital started before Trump even finished speaking, and no way was the Secret Service going to let him 'march' on the Capitol either.
Nor did Trump smear his supporters that day. I was on Twitter and watching events as they unfolded that day via CSPAN; Trump called for calm and non-violence before he was kicked from Twitter. The idiots who tried to break into the Chamber as the proceedings were occurring were fools and idiots who blew the last best chance Trump had.
Yes, some people were let into the Capital peacefully, but some very much not so, and there were no small amount of Antifa agitators disguised in MAGA gear, either.
I do not hold Trump responsible for what happened on the 6th, because the words he actually said (as opposed to what the media reported he said) were in no way incitement to storm the Capital or engage in violence. Marching peacefully, but loudly, outside the Capital was what I expect Trump actually wanted his supporters to do.
Even with Pence, Trump frankly could not have pulled it off on Jan 6th and clearly hadn't been preparing to do so. Sure, Pence isn't great and the Right should not rely on him, but IMO acting like he was some sort of special Judas and not just an ordinary Republican obscures the real lesson here, which is that the issue is ordinary Republicans doing ordinary Republican half measures and failing to grasp the extent of the issues and what is necessary to fix them (something true of Trump fairly often as well).
We will never know if Trump could have pulled something off on the 6th, even with Pence's traitorous ass, because the option was taken from him by Antifa agitators dressed in MAGA gear and who purposefully engaged in violence to give the Left their Reichstag Fire. He was also effectively silenced for many hours by his own lawyers and by social media suspending or banning him on false pretenses.