Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks to supporters as he formally pronounces his intention to hunt the Republican nomination for president on June 07, 2023 in Ankeny, Iowa.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Several Republican 2024 presidential hopefuls criticized Donald Trump Sunday as the previous president faces 37 federal counts for allegedly hoarding documents after he left the White House.
Trump has lashed out at his critics — including members of his former staff — within the wake of his indictment, calling his former Attorney General Bill Barr a “Gutless Pig” and his former chief of staff John Kelly “weak” with a “VERY small ‘brain.'”
Former Recent Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who announced his bid for president earlier this month, said Trump’s comments suggest he’s the “worst manager within the history of the American presidency.”
“He’s a petulant child when someone disagrees with him,” Christie told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
Presidential hopeful and former Vice President Mike Pence said it’s “premature” to say whether or not he would pardon Trump were he to be convicted. Pence said Wednesday he couldn’t defend the criminal allegations against Trump, but added Sunday that he doesn’t know why many Republicans are presuming he will probably be found guilty.
“All we all know is what the president has been accused of within the indictment,” Pence told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “It’s saddening to me that we at the moment are on this moment.”
Pence questioned Trump’s commitment to conservative principles, stating that he’s “walking away” from his stance on abortion and that his position on the national debt is “equivalent” to that of President Joe Biden.
He added he had hoped Trump would “come around” to accepting the outcomes of the 2020 election, which Trump has repeatedly claimed was stolen.
“Nobody who puts himself over the Structure should ever be president of america,” Pence said.
Asa Hutchinson, the previous governor of Arkansas who can be a presidential hopeful, said he doubted Trump’s ability to pardon himself if he were reelected.
“I’m doubtful of it. I do not think that is what the Structure intends in giving the president pardon power,” Hutchinson said on ABC’s “This Week,” later adding that, though a self-pardon can be “inappropriate” and “unseemly,” doing so is “exactly what (Trump) would intend if he got elected president.”
Hutchinson also said he wouldn’t accept the Republican National Committee’s pledge to support the eventual GOP presidential nominee as a condition of participating on the controversy stage.
“I’m not going to support — identical to other voters will not be going to support — any individual for president who’s under indictment that’s potentially convicted at the moment,” said the Arkansas Republican.
But Trump had a supporter on Sunday in Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who has said the previous president must be pardoned if convicted. The biopharma entrepreneur called for dismantling institutions just like the Federal Bureau of Investigation over so-called “political viewpoints.”
The agency is “a formula for corruption,” Ramaswamy said on “Fox News Sunday,” for allegedly threatening Martin Luther King Jr. in the course of the Civil Rights era or “going after political conservatives” like Trump.
“That is about standing up for principles over politics,” he said.