Here’s how the two are after the 2020 election.
In a recent interview with Fox News, former Vice President Mike Pence revealed he hadn’t spoken to former President Donald Trump in months.
After overseeing the joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election results, Pence has been in an uncertain position among much of the GOP base. At the time, right-wing extremists determined to prevent the congressional certification of now-President Biden were chanting “hang Mike Pence,” who was at the Capitol when the attack took place.
Many speculated that Pence and Trump’s relationship has fissured since the event as Pence chose to follow his constitutional duties rather than follow Trump’s directions to overturn the results.
For the year since the January 6th insurrection, Pence has described the events at the Capitol that day as “tragic,” saying he did “the right thing” by performing his Constitutional duties. Yet, while he admitted he and Trump would never “see eye to eye on that day,” he was adamant he and the former President had kept in touch.
On several occasions, Pence stressed that he and Trump were in contact. In a speech he made in New Hampshire last June, Pence stated that he and President Trump “have spoken many times since we left office.”
In September and October, he repeated similar statements. Telling “Ruthless” podcast host he and the former President had “spoken probably a dozen times since the inauguration, and again telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity in October reiterating that they had “talked a number of times” after leaving office.
Yet on Thursday (January 27), Pence told Fox News’ host Jesse Watters that he and Trump had last spoken in the summer of 2021 when asked by Watters, “when was the last time you talked to former President Trump?”
Pence went on to reiterate previous statements he made about doing his “duty under the Constitution of the United States” and sitting down with the former President after the event parting “amicably.”
However, Pence and Trump could be contending in 2024 for the GOP presidential nomination, as Trump continues to suggest he may be running for President.
Most recently, Trump was recorded describing himself as the “45th and 47th President of the U.S. in a video posted on the Instagram account of Yeshiva World News.
In a campaign-style rally on Saturday (January 29), Trump again alluded to a Presidential bid, saying he would pardon January 6th rioters if he was President again.
Pence has also been making early moves.
Currently, he is crisscrossing the country to assist fellow Republicans with their respective bids in the upcoming midterms. During a stop in New Hampshire, he revealed to Fox News in December that once the midterms were over, he would be reflecting and praying on where to serve next.
But Trump has doused any chances of Pence having success. At a December event in Florida that he thought Mike was “very badly hurt by what took place in respect to Jan 6th,” before relaying that he believed Pence was “mortally wounded, frankly, because I see the reaction he’s getting from people.”
