Mike Pence is not planning to endorse Donald Trump’s re-election bid, the former Vice President announced Friday, rebuking the man he served with for four years until a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building, erecting a makeshift gallows and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence told Fox host Martha MacCallum, saying he “could not in good conscience support” the campaign.
Pence’s refusal comes as the GOP has largely closed ranks behind the presumptive nominee, who currently faces 88 charges across four criminal cases and crippling civil penalties in his business fraud case. Legions of former Trump opponents have announced their fealty as he’s run away with the nomination, including some of the former president’s rivals on the primary campaign trail.
The former vice president, who dropped out of the primary before a single vote was cast, refused to say whom he plans to vote for in November, saying he would keep “how I vote when the curtain closes” to himself. He only said that he would “never vote” for President Joe Biden. He also said he had no plans to run as a third-party candidate.
When he embarked on his abortive presidential campaign, Pence indicated that he would ultimately lend his support to Trump if he became the nominee. Back in August, he raised his hand when GOP debate moderator Brett Baier asked the candidates whether they would support Trump as their party’s 2024 standard-bearer even if he were “convicted in a court of law.”
With two exceptions—former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson—the rest of the field agreed. That included former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race earlier this month without endorsing Trump.
In the Friday interview, Pence attributed his refusal to endorse to “profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised on January the 6th,” when Pence rebuffed Trump’s calls to refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt,” he said. “I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life and, this last week, his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force a sale of ByteDance TikTok application.”
Since January 6 and throughout his campaign, Pence has struggled to figure out how to address his relationship with Trump. In his memoir, released in 2022 a prelude to his presidential bid, Pence continually referred to his former running mate as “my friend” while castigating him for his conduct on January 6, which Pence wrote “had endangered my family and all those serving at the Capitol.”
Pence maintained Friday that he was “incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world.”
