Ex-US Vice President Mike Pence announced on Friday that he will not be supporting Donald Trump’s bid for a second term in the White House.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News.
The US media described this announcement as a “bombshell” and “startling,” but in reality, deep divisions have caused the two men to drift apart since leaving office, making an endorsement unlikely.
Their relationship soured after Trump pressured Pence to help overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. When Pence refused to comply, Trump attacked him on social media multiple times.
Following failed attempts to challenge the election results, Trump supporters storm the Capitol, where they vandalized the building, and some even called for Pence to be hanged.
Pence told Fox News that Trump was “pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.”
The 64-year-old made these comments shortly after Trump won enough delegates to become the Republican nominee to run against Biden in November.
Pence was one of Trump’s early competitors in the primary race for the 2024 election, but he dropped out last October after not polling well.
Pence did not endorse any other candidate and stated that he would never vote for Biden, who won the Democratic nomination this week.
Pence served Trump loyally for years before the insurrection in Washington.
However, he criticized the president’s actions on January 6, 2021, calling them “reckless” and stating they put his family in danger.
Trump had asked Pence, a former governor of Indiana, to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral victory by Congress.
Pence refused, which led to Trump’s hardcore supporters turning against him and him being shunned by the far-right “Make America Great Again” movement.
The evangelical Christian faced negative publicity after he left office due to an FBI search of his home, which was part of a larger scandal in Washington involving mishandled classified documents. He also received a subpoena to testify in a federal investigation into the Capitol riot, which he refused.
He defended the accomplishments of the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, stating that he was very proud of what was achieved during his interview on Fox News.
“It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world,” he said.
“But that being said, during my presidential campaign I made clear there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues.”
