Former Vice President Mike Pence is refusing to endorse former President Donald Trump for president despite most of his fellow GOP presidential candidates doing so after dropping their campaigns.
Mike Pence says he will not endorse Donald Trump for president pic.twitter.com/GHS6pMdFX2
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 15, 2024
Pence made the revelation on Friday during Fox News Channel’s “The Story” when he was asked by anchor Martha MacCallum if he planned to follow in the footsteps of some of Trump’s former rivals and endorse him.
“President Trump sewed up the nomination, which he did earlier this week. He has received endorsements from some of the people running against him. We have not heard from you. Will you be endorsing your former president, you were on the ticket with him last time around?” MacCallum asked.
In response, Pence said that “It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”
“Look, I’m 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,” the Trump Admin vice president added before pointing out what he called “profound differences” between him and Trump on some issues.
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life,” he said.
He also brought up Trump’s opposition to a ban of TikTok in the U.S., in which he claimed that a House bill looking to force a ban on TikTok if its parent company ByteDance does not sell its stake would only favor Facebook, who he believes is “an enemy of the people.”
Pointing to how Trump’s position on the TikTok bill is a reversal on his initial stance on the platform, Pence said, “Last week [was] his reversal on getting tough on China, and supporting our administration’s effort to force a sale of ByteDance [and] TikTok.”
While he could not exactly state the reason behind Trump’s change of heart on TikTok, Pence took an issue with Trump’s support for a platform “at odds” with the conservative agenda he and Pence led for four years from 2017 to 2021.
Despite his lack of support for Trump who he recognizes as the Republican voters’ choice for the 2024 election, Pence has no intentions of voting for President Joe Biden. He, however, declined to reveal who he will be voting for come November, saying, “How I vote when that curtain closes – that’ll be for me.”
