Former vice president Mike Pence will not endorse former president Donald Trump, his running mate during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
Pence appeared on The Story with Martha McCallum, a Fox News show, on Friday and said he will not be endorsing Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence told host Martha McCallum.
“I’m incredibly proud of the record of our administration, it was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, that saw conservatives appointed to our courts, and a more peaceful world.”
He cited the January 6 Capitol riot, competition with China, and abortion as reasons he is not backing Trump this time around. Pence referred to the differences he pointed out during his failed presidential campaign.
“In each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda we governed on during our four years. And that is why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence added. He did not say who he would vote for this November but ruled out voting for President Joe Biden.
Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and the former vice president was one of the Republicans who unsuccessfully ran against Trump in the GOP primary. Pence struggled to find his footing throughout the campaign and dropped out months before the Iowa caucuses.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy are among the GOP primary opponents who have endorsed Trump after dropping out. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley did not endorse Trump when she suspended her campaign following Trump’s dominant showing on Super Tuesday.
The relationship between Trump and Pence fell apart after Pence refused to comply with Trump’s pressure to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to President Biden. Pence repeatedly defended his actions on January 6 when he was running against Trump, despite the negative effects his stance had on his approval ratings among Republicans.
During his campaign, Pence sought to disentangle conservatism from the populist shift the right has undergone in the Trump era, particularly on foreign policy and free trade. He is now working on a project to combat the growing relationship between conservatism and populism led by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. The “American Solutions Project” Pence launched last month will bolster the operations of Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the advocacy group Pence founded to promote his vision of conservatism. AAF is seeking to preserve a conservatism anchored by “limited government” in contrast to “the populist right and progressive left” who might think differently.
Pence’s break from Trump is happening at the same time the two take opposite positions on the congressional legislation designed to facilitate the sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company. The bipartisan legislation passed the House on Wednesday and faces a difficult journey ahead in the Senate.
Pence and AAF support the TikTok legislation for national security reasons whileTrump opposes it for supposedly empowering Facebook. The Trump administration previously pursued a change of ownership for the short-form video platform.