Former Vice President Mike Pence is jumping into the White House race, joining a growing line of 2024 Republican candidates to take on former boss Donald Trump, Fox News has confirmed.
Pence is expected to kick off his presidential campaign next week at an event in Iowa, where the party’s caucuses are at the top of the Republican presidential nomination calendar.
Sources familiar with the former vice president’s thinking confirmed to Fox News that Pence will announce his candidacy next Wednesday at an event and campaign video in Des Moines, Iowa, in June. 7.
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Former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen attend an autograph session at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, November 18, 2022. (Fox News)
Pence has spent the past two years scurrying across the country campaigning and fundraising for the Republican Party running for the 2022 election, so experts have long suspected Pence could be the 2024 candidate. was considered high. On these trips, Pence made multiple visits to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, the first four states to vote on the Republican presidential nominating calendar, where early voting usually precedes the start of the presidential election. strengthened ties with states in presidential primaries and caucuses. White House campaign.
The former vice president also spent several months traveling around the country late last year and early this year as part of a publication tour for his memoir, “So Help Me God.” The autobiography describes his career, including four years in the Trump administration. And behind the scenes, he’s been busy adding members to his core team of longtime advisers and building teams in key early voting states.
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In interviews with Fox News and other news outlets, when asked about running for president, Pence and his wife, Karen, reiterated, “Wherever I feel called, I make decisions, and when I’m called, I go.” .
Former Vice President Mike Pence greets customers at Simply Delicious Bakery in Bedford, New Hampshire, December 8, 2021. (Fox News)
In addition to Trump, who launched his third White House candidacy in mid-November, Pence will join another Trump administration veteran, former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, as the burgeoning Republican president join the candidates.
After Haley announced her candidacy in mid-February, Pence dropped another hint about 2024, saying, “Soon she may get more company in the presidential race.”
Colin Reed, a longtime Republican consultant, said Mr Pence “has a strong congressional, governorship and administration experience, and that’s a powerful triple threat.”
“He’s been through fire before. He knows how. He has a network of experienced people around him. He knows who he is and why he runs.” And he’s been through the wringer before, and you’ll discount it,” said Reed, a veteran of the Republican presidential and Senate campaigns. added.
But polls for the 2024 Republican nomination race show that Pence, along with Haley and other real-life Republican presidential nominees, are Trump and Ron DeSantis, who launched the campaign at the White House last week.・It has been suggested that he is far behind the Governor of Florida.
Pence has included South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, billionaire entrepreneur and conservative commentator Vivek Ramaswami, and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson. He will join the Republican nominee for the nomination. South Dakota Governor Doug Bergum is also expected to run in the next few weeks, along with Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Snunu and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, and former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers. Lawmakers are also seriously considering running for 2024.
Pence is a former congressman and governor of Indiana when President Trump nominated him for vice president in 2016. And for four years, Pence was Trump’s loyal vice president.
Then-President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence pose together on stage. (Getty Images)
However, on January 6, 2021, right-wing extremists, including those chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” entered Congress to overturn the congressional recognition of President Biden’s electoral college victory overseen by Mr. Pence. Everything changed because of the attack on the Capitol.
More than two years after the fall of the Trump administration, the distance between the former president and the vice president has grown even greater. And Pence singled out his former boss when discussing Trump’s claims that Pence could overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Earlier last year, Mr. Pence said near the end of a speech at a Federalist Society conference in Florida: “There are people in our party who, as President of the Joint Congress, have unilateral powers to deny me the electoral vote. There are people who believe that he was,” he said. .
“President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong… I didn’t have the right to overturn the election,” Pence said from a conservative lawyer in the crowd. Applause broke out.
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Pence called the deadly attack on the Capitol “tragic” and “dishonored the millions of people who have supported our cause across the country.” And he stressed that he did “the right thing” and fulfilled his “constitutional obligations.” He has also repeatedly pointed out that he and President Trump may never “see eye to eye” that day.
And in recent months, when asked about Trump’s third run for the White House, Pence has repeatedly said, “I think I can make better choices in 2024.”
