Mike Pence will not endorse for president Donald Trump, the man he served as vice-president for four years but whose supporters chanted for Pence to be hanged as they attacked Congress on January 6.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” the former Indiana governor and former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination told Fox News on Friday.
Asked why, given that he previously promised to endorse the eventual nominee, Pence mentioned 6 January 2021, the day a mob attacked Congress and Trump was reported to have told aides Pence “deserved” to be hanged for refusing to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
But Pence placed more emphasis on policies pursued by Trump as he has secured the Republican nomination, a success achieved despite now facing 88 criminal charges under four indictments and suffering multimillion-dollar civil penalties over his business affairs and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.
Pence said he was “incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world.
“But that being said, during my presidential campaign” – which he ended in October, months before the first vote, in Iowa – “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 6.
“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.”
The US national debt ballooned under Trump and Pence.
On abortion rights, the supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwingers did remove federal rights in 2022. But Republicans have since suffered a succession of election defeats as Democrats campaign on the issue.
As Trump claims credit for appointing those justices, Democrats are positioning to make reproductive rights a central issue in November.
Pence also cited Trump’s “reversal” on “getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s effort to force the sale of … TikTok”.
Pence refused to speculate on why Trump has come out against forcing the sale by ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company.
He said: “What I can tell you is that 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 good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.”
Most of Trump’s former rivals for the Republican nomination have now endorsed him. The last to drop out, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, has not.
Opponents of Trump welcomed Pence’s decision not to endorse.
Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who retired from Congress over his opposition to Trump, said simply: “Good job Mike Pence.”
Tommy Vietor, an aide to Barack Obama turned political commentator, said: “I did not expect this from Mike Pence. Credit to him for showing some backbone. This is a big deal.”
But Pence, who has outlined plans to spend $20m this year in an attempt to shape the conservative agenda, told Fox News he would not vote for Biden.
“I’m a Republican,” he said. “How I vote when that curtain closes, that’ll be for me.”
