Saying he likes people seems to be something Trump does on a regular basis, and we don't know in what way he means he likes them. It could be he likes them because they've done something nefarious that gives him an opportunity to make a point.

I'm with you, and you articulated it well. I easily can wait until hindsight to have a strong opinion on Pence.

However there remain two strong points for me that Pence was indeed in on all this:

• Mike Pence either a) would have to have known that the Q plan was real, or b) could easily have been clued in to whatever degree necessary to convince him that Fcking Around was really not in his interest... if the plan required him to reject the electors. Which is really seemed to not, because...
• Exactly what the OP said... if this is indeed the plan (and it's not only looking more and more certain by the day by the day that what we're seeing is precisely "the plan", but also becoming more and more clear the necessity of the depth that our country had to be dragged through in order to uncover the jaw-dropping extent of the total rot of the Deep State and its destructive, invasive tentacles), it required Mike Pence to do exactly what he did.