Former Vice President Mike Pence said he could not “in good conscience” endorse Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
During an interview on Fox News on Friday, host Martha MacCallum asked Pence if he planned to endorse Donald Trump after he was declared the presumptive nominee earlier this week.
“I appreciate the question, and it should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” he said.
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Pence explained that while he remains proud of their administration’s conservative record, Trump is “pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.”
“During my presidential campaign, I made it clear that there were 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,” he said.
Trump has turned his back on specific GOP principals, Pence said, and he just can’t get behind it.
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I have seen him walking away from our commitment on confronting the national debt, I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life,” said Pence, who dropped out of the 2024 Republican primary in October.
He also said he was disturbed by Trump’s recent reversal on “getting tough on China,” and voicing resistance to a bill which would ban TikTok if it is not sold by its owner ByteDance, a Chinese company.
Last week, Trump expressed resistance to the U.S. House’s TikTok ban in a post on Truth Social. Meanwhile, on Thursday, a former Trump ally expressed his interest in organizing a group to buy the app from its owner ByteDance.
Pence’s refusal to endorse Trump comes soon after Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would support the former president despite their sometimes hostile relationship.
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” he said in a statement last week. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
