Very rarely does a POTUS candidate get to pick VP choices.
Do you think Reagan would have chosen GHW Bush? The party controls that.
Trump was about to get totally snookered (that's the nice way of saying it) by the maniacal little runt and the scarf bitch. Maybe by the scarf bitch even more than by the maniacal little runt.
Peter Navarro, inside of five minutes of having met the little runt, was advising Trump to fire his maniacal little ass, and one might infer likewise of the scarf bitch too, but Pence, as "Head of Pandemic Policy" was just blahblahblah. Hey, that's what local AM talk radio guys from flyover country do when they want to get along.
Once he, Pence, was actually in charge of something, he just went on with the blahblahblah and really had no problem with the murdering little runt and his toady the scarf bitch, both of them lacking only the makeup to qualify for a Batman episode.
Pence was looking out for other interests... whomever it was, as you point out, who put him there to begin with.
Or mcstain choosing Palin
So it took several idiots to come up with Quayle?