Pence goes big on split with Trump in 2024 announcement
Mabinty Quarshie
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Former Vice President Mike Pence heavily criticized his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, in a roughly 40-minute presidential campaign launch speech on Wednesday in Des Moines, Iowa, that sets up a historic showdown between the two former running mates.
Once a loyal foot soldier for Trump, Pence unequivocally slammed Trump for his actions regarding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, his wavering conservatism, and his dithering on anti-abortion concerns. Pence and Trump split over Trump pressuring Pence not to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. But Pence reiterated on Wednesday that he couldn’t abandon his duties as the then-president of the Senate.
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“The American people deserve to know on that day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. Now, voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will,” Pence said. “My former running mate continues to insist that I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump was wrong then, and he’s wrong now.”
The former vice president vowed it was his duty to ensure the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden, whom he spent considerable time haranguing in his campaign speech.
“I had no right to overturn the election, and [Vice President] Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn our election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence added to a roaring crowd.
Pence said he had hoped Trump would “come around and see that he had been misled about my role. But that was not to be.”
Pence had even more strong terms about the worthiness of any presidential candidate. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” he said. “And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”
The former vice president also slammed Trump for abandoning traditional conservative principles, especially when it comes to anti-abortion values. “After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn,” said Pence, a staunch anti-abortion candidate. “Sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century, long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now, he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v. Wade.”
“As your president, I will always stand for the sanctity of life, and I will not rest, and I will not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land,” Pence said to loud crowd approval.
Trump has often taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, given that he nominated three Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of striking down precedent. But he has often equivocated or refused to say whether he will support a federal abortion ban, which evangelicals, a strong Republican primary base, support.
It has led to him receiving praise from influential anti-abortion groups. “Mike Pence is the definition of an unapologetic pro-life leader, a longtime friend of unborn children and their mothers,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “He has always believed ‘life is winning in America’ and has spent decades working to restore this foundational right in our law — as governor of Indiana, in Congress, and as vice president in the most pro-life administration in history, laying the groundwork for the historic Dobbs victory.”
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Pence, for his part, continued to call for a return to conservative principles in order to win the White House in 2024. “You know, what President Trump and others are forgetting is that our administration succeeded not because we compromised or abandoned conservative principles but because we acted on them,” he said. “I know we could beat Joe Biden.”
“But we must resist the politics of personality and the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles. And we must stand firm on a traditional Republican agenda of a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, and traditional values that led us to victory in the past and will lead us to victory again,” he added.