Whereas he appeared on the campaign trail with Donald Trump right up to the eve of election day, Mike Pence has kept a low profile in public since the results began filtering in – and even as the Trump administration fought back hard against indications the president was losing.
And the day after the race was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice president’s public schedule appeared to be empty. He has not tweeted since the race was called.
At the time of writing, this makes him somewhat unusual among the president’s allies.
While some Republicans have begun distancing themselves from the president and his false claims that the election was stolen from him, others – such as senator Lindsey Graham and much of the top White House staff – seem determined to fight it until the bitter end, doubling down on the president’s statements (most of them issued via Twitter).
Mr Pence, for now, is in neither camp, raising questions about what he will do next even as it remains unclear He is not usually kept in the background by the administration, and has no particular record of breaking with the president publicly at politically tense moments.