For four years, former Vice President Mike Pence was known for his unwavering allegiance to former President Donald Trump. Then came their loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Jan. 6 Capitol riot in which protesters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
The long-suffering loyal vice president broke with his boss on certifying that election and two years later is one of the several Republicans challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. And this disagreement came back to the forefront when special counsel Jack Smith unveiled a third indictment against Trump on Tuesday, focusing on 2020 and Jan. 6.
DONALD TRUMP INDICTED: TIMELINE OF 2020 ELECTION INVESTIGATIONS
Pence, no longer beholden to Trump, isn’t hesitating from lobbying attacks against the former president. It’s a notable shift for Pence, who previously hesitated on harshly criticizing his former boss. But political experts said that it was a necessity for Pence to lean into his actions in early 2021 as he seeks the White House.
“This is Mike Pence’s only strategy. Other candidates seem to be waiting for Trump to implode and then hope to pick up his voters then,” national Republican strategist Brian Seitchik told the Washington Examiner. “That is not proving to be a worthwhile endeavor. It didn’t work in 2016. And it has not worked for the campaign thus far. So I really think it’s Mike Pence’s only option here.”
“The fact is he’s been mired in low single digits. He has not yet qualified for the debate. So a strategy change was certainly required,” he added. “I’ll take him at his word that this comes from an intellectually moral and honest place. But that aside, he needed to switch things up if he wanted to get into the debate and into the real hunt for the nomination.”
Pence is mentioned multiple times in the 45-page indictment, including his “contemporaneous notes” of Trump discussing election fraud in the wake of his defeat. The former vice president defended his actions surrounding the 2020 election, especially his refusal to bend when Trump pressured him not to certify the results of the election. “Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence said in a statement after the indictment was unveiled.
A day later, Pence claimed Trump “was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers that kept telling him what his itching ears wanted to hear.” His campaign is now selling T-shirts and hats branded with the phrase “Too Honest,” a nod to the indictment.
Pence, unlike other 2024 rivals, is in an unusual role in his battle against Trump, experts said. “Pence is in really a unique position for a vice president running for president. In that, he’s running against the president under whom he served. That’s relatively unprecedented, certainly in modern times,” said Joel Goldstein, a vice presidential scholar at Saint Louis University. “Normally when the vice president runs for president, he inherits the support from the administration. And that hasn’t happened in this instance.”
In response to Pence’s attacks, Trump hit back on his social media platform Truth Social. “I feel badly for Mike Pence, who is attracting no crowds, enthusiasm, or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him,” Trump posted. “He didn’t fight against Election Fraud, which we will now be easily able to prove based on the most recent Fake Indictment & information which will have to be made available to us, finally -—a really BIG deal. The V.P. had power that Mike didn’t understand, but after the Election, the RINOS & Dems changed the law, taking that power away!”
Trump is currently the undisputed front-runner in the GOP primary race. Republican primary voters favor him at 53.9%, while Pence trails far behind at 4.4%, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average of the 2024 field. Matt Dole, a Republican political consultant based in Ohio, contends that Pence may have found an opening to truly distinguish himself from Trump with the latest indictment.
“I think Pence feels as though the cuffs are off and he can speak more candidly about it,” Dole said. “There’s a lot of people in the race for president, and they’re all trying to find their path. And Mike Pence has the best case to make for being wronged by the president and finding his own course that he believes is reasonable. And I’m sure there are many voters who feel it was a reasonable course that Mike Pence took, and so it makes political sense as well to sort of forge this trail.”
There is some unpredictability regarding how effective this new strategy from Pence will be. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an unrepentant Trump critic, has been booed at conservative gatherings by Trump acolytes who take issue with his attacks against the former president. Another Trump critic and 2024 rival, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, has struggled to poll above 1% in several national surveys. Pence hasn’t met the donor requirement to participate in the first Republican National Committee debate on Aug. 23, yet his campaign has suggested he’ll qualify by next week’s end.
But the specter of Jan. 6 will likely hover over Pence’s debate appearance, irrespective of how harsh his comments are against Trump.
“I think for him, I mean, Jan. 6 is not going to go away, and I think he’s trying to adapt to it,” Goldstein said. “What Pence is trying to do, I think, on the one hand, is to say, ‘Look, for the entire administration, I was on board with what the administration was trying to do. But when I was asked to violate my oath to the Constitution and to do something that was beyond my powers, I refused to do so.'”
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Dole, the Ohio Republican, suggested that Pence will get some boon out of his current anti-Trump comments. “I think it helps. He’s getting coverage out of this,” he said. “Whether it helps him once you get to the debate or whether it helps him long term with the Republican primary coalition. I don’t know the answer to that. It depends whether eventually there’s a tipping point within that coalition that enough is enough with the president. I don’t think this indictment does that. But the candidates who oppose Trump have to find a way to cut into his coalition and peel people away.”
“I can’t say whether it will be successful or not. It seems as though it’s an uphill battle. But his best chance is going hard and strong against the president,” Dole added.
