NEW YORK: Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not be backing Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, weighing in for the first time since the former president became the presumptive GOP nominee. Pence ran against Trump for their party’s nomination but dropped his bid before voting began last year.
The decision makes Pence the latest in a series of senior Trump administration officials who have declined to endorse their former boss’s bid to return to the Oval Office. While Republican members of Congress and other GOP officials have largely rallied behind Trump, a vocal minority has continued to oppose his bid.
It also marks the end of a metamorphosis for Pence, who had long been seen as one of Trump’s most loyal defenders but broke with his two-time running mate by refusing to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional scheme to try to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. When Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, trying to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s win, Pence was forced to flee to a Senate loading dock as rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” outside.
In order to participate in the Republican primary debates, Pence was required to sign a pledge saying that he would support the party’s eventual nominee. And during the first debate in Milwaukee, Pence was among the candidates who raised their hands when asked whether they would support Trump even if he were convicted in one of his four criminal indictments.
But Pence had made clear he had come to harbor serious reservations about Trump’s actions and his policy stances.
“I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” he said during his campaign launch speech.
As the campaign progressed, he raised alarms about the party’s resistance to sending aid to Ukraine and called on his fellow Republicans to reject what he called the “siren song of populism” espoused by Trump and his followers.
In the interview on Fox’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” Pence said he was “incredibly proud” of his and Trump’s record in office, but said, “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.”
“I mean, 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 went on, also referencing what he called Trump’s “reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force” the sale of the popular TikTok app.
“In each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. And that’s why I cannot in conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” he said.
Pence declined to say whom he would be voting for — “I’m going to keep my vote to myself,” he said — but made clear it wouldn’t be Biden.
“I would never vote for Joe Biden,” he said. “I’m a Republican.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence says he’s not endorsing Trump
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Former Vice President Mike Pence says he’s not endorsing Trump
- “I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States," says Pence, who served was vice president during Trump's term
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado march in cities worldwide
- Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January
CARACAS: Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado demonstrated Saturday in several cities worldwide to commemorate her Nobel Peace Prize win ahead of the prestigious award ceremony next week.
Dozens of people marched through Madrid, Utrecht, Buenos Aires, Lima and other cities in support of Machado, whose organization wants to use the attention gained by the award to highlight Venezuela’s democratic aspirations. The organization expected demonstrations in more than 80 cities around the world on Saturday.
The crowd in Lima carried portraits of Machado and demanded a “Free Venezuela.” With the country’s yellow, blue and red flag draped over their backs or emblazoned on their caps, demonstrators clutched posters that read, “The Nobel Prize is from Venezuela.”
Venezuelan Verónica Durán, who has lived in Lima for eight years, said Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated because “it represents all Venezuelans, the fallen and the political prisoners in their fight to recover democracy.”
The gatherings come at a critical point in the country’s protracted crisis as the administration of US President Donald Trump builds up a massive military deployment in the Caribbean, threatening repeatedly to strike Venezuelan soil. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is among those who see the operation as an effort to end his hold on power, and the opposition has only added to this perception by reigniting its promise to soon govern the country.
“We are living through times where our composure, our conviction, and our organization are being tested,” Machado said in a video message shared Tuesday on social media. “Times when our country needs even more dedication because now all these years of struggle, the dignity of the Venezuelan people, have been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Machado won the award Oct. 10 for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado, 58, won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González, who had never run for office before, took her place.
The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. It all increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.
González sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.
Meanwhile, Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in what ended up being an underwhelming protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The following day, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term.
