Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized his one-time running mate, now 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, for snubbing the second Republican National Committee primary debate scheduled for next week.
This is the second debate Trump will skip after declining to participate in last month's debate and instead releasing a competing interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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"I think it's a missed opportunity for Donald Trump," Pence told CBS News, "and I think it's a missed opportunity for Republican voters. Look, this country is in a lot of trouble. Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad, and I think the former president, just like all the rest of us vying for the Republican nomination, owe it to the American people to express what our agenda will be for turning this country around."
Former President Trump will skip next week's GOP presidential debate, which former Vice President Mike Pence tells @costareports is "a missed opportunity." Pence also discusses his concerns with Trump's foreign policy positions. pic.twitter.com/gB6xzNBWkC
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 19, 2023
Pence then pivoted to claiming that Trump is no longer running as a conservative, an echo of a speech on populism he gave in New Hampshire earlier this month. "When we ran in 2016, Donald Trump promised to govern as a conservative, and we did govern as conservatives, but he makes no such promise today," Pence continued. "As we discussed on the world stage, we hear increasingly Donald Trump and some of his imitators are talking about walking away from America's role as the leader of the free world."
Trump will reportedly give a prime-time speech to 500 rank-and-file United Auto Workers members who are on strike on Sept. 27, the same day as the second debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The move is sure to steal some of the debate's thunder once again and deprive his rivals of attention.
Another fellow Trump supporter-turned-presidential rival, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, took aim at Trump for also snubbing the debate this week. "We've got Joe Biden, who campaigned all these years ago in a basement. We now have Donald Trump, who's hiding behind the walls of his golf clubs and only going into very controlled circumstances where, you know, he doesn't get to be asked questions by voters," Christie told Fox News. "I mean, I think this is incredibly disrespectful to voters. They have a right to hear from him about his record when he was president, about what his plans are if he were to be the nominee again, and he just is ignoring it."
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"It's disrespectful for him not to, and, quite frankly, it's cowardly," he added.
As the front-runner of the GOP primary race, Trump's support has barely abated since he began signaling his lack of appetite to appear on the debate stage months ago. A RealClearPolitics poll average has Trump leading all of his 2024 Republican rivals at 58.8%, far above Pence at 4.1% and Christie at 2.3%.