(Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump said this week that he would not pick former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate again if he decides to launch another presidential bid in 2024.
“I don’t think the people would accept it,” Trump told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Pence is a “really fine person,” Trump added, but their relationship soured after the 2020 election when Pence refused to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win.
“Mike and I had a great relationship except for the very important factor that took place at the end. We had a very good relationship,” Trump said. “I haven’t spoken to him in a long time.”
Unconstitutional rules changes implemented by mostly blue-state governors that bypassed state lawmakers’ authority to oversee elections opened the door for a barrage of challenges and lawsuits that put Pence in a unique position.
The US Constitution says only that the vice president shall oversee the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote, but it does not specify whether the position is more ceremonial or if it entails any actual authority.
Trump had urged Pence to send electoral votes from several swing states—including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin—back to their Republican-controlled legislatures so state lawmakers could nominate him instead of Biden.
However, Pence refused to break with customary protocol, which might futher undermine the already contentious process.
“Mike thought he was going to be a human conveyor belt, that no matter how fraudulent the votes, you have to send them up to the Old Crow,” Trump said, using his nickname for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“But that turned out to be wrong—because now, as you know, they are feverishly working to try and get it so that the vice president cannot do what Mike said he couldn’t do,” he added, referring to congressional Democrats’ efforts to revise the Electoral Count Act. “Obviously, they were either lying, misrepresenting, or they didn’t know.”
Trump has not confirmed whether he will run again in 2024, though he has continued to hint at it.
“We are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful White House,” he said at a rally last week. “I wonder who will do that. I wonder, I wonder.”
He has also made it clear before that his relationship with Pence is not the same. Late last year, he remarked that there are plenty of other potential VP candidates vying to take Pence’s spot.
Pence’s name—along with those of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, both Trump allies—has often cropped up as a potential 2024 presidential contender if Trump decides not to run.
