Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that he would like a Republican alternative to former President Donald Trump within the 2024 presidential election.
“I feel we will have higher decisions” than Trump, Pence said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked if the GOP should nominate someone aside from the previous president next 12 months. The potential 2024 candidate Pence didn’t explicitly rule out supporting Trump if he became the GOP nominee.
The ex-vice president, who served under Trump within the White House for 4 years, also appeared to take a soft swipe at his former boss when discussing Republicans’ underperformance within the midterm elections.
“Our candidates that were focused on the past, particularly on relitigating the last election, didn’t do well, including in areas that we should always have done thoroughly,” Pence said.
Pence is anticipated to be considering his own presidential run — a move that would put him in direct competition with Trump, who has attacked him for refusing to assist overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. After Pence said on Jan. 6, 2021, that he would not go together with Trump’s scheme, a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, sending the then-vice president and congressional lawmakers into hiding.
But Pence offered only a cryptic answer about his presidential plans in the brand new interview Wednesday.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Pence said when asked if he sought the Republican presidential nomination.
Pence demurred as a few of his would-be challengers have begun to file into the GOP primary. After several relatively quiet months when Trump was the one notable Republican on the campaign trail, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley last week became his first major primary challenger. One other candidate, entrepreneur and right-wing culture warrior Vivek Ramaswamy, entered the presidential race on Tuesday.
A bunch of other Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are believed to be gearing as much as announce their very own White House bids.
Mike Pence on CNBC, Feb. 22, 2023.
Source: CNBC
As he stayed mum on the prospect of a presidential bid, Pence delved into among the thorniest policy questions facing the country. When asked about talks in Congress to lift the U.S. debt ceiling, and the prospect of reforming Medicare and Social Security, he said the U.S. should consider long-term changes to the favored but expensive programs.
Some House Republicans have targeted the programs as a part of a possible deal to lift the U.S. borrowing limit, evoking sharp criticism from Democrats and prompting a protracted back-and-forth. Leaders of each parties are vowing not to the touch the entitlements.
“I’m glad to see the Republican majority saying we want to make use of this debt ceiling to start out us back within the direction of fiscal discipline, but look, everyone knows where the actual issue is when it comes to long-term debt,” Pence said.
“I respect the speaker’s commitment to take Social Security and Medicare off the table for the debt ceiling negotiations. We have got to place them on the table in the long run,” Pence said.
“We’re taking a look at a debt crisis on this country over the following 25 years that’s driven by entitlements, and no person in Washington, D.C., desires to discuss it,” he said.
Pressed on what reforms he would make, Pence said there have been “plenty of good ideas.” He referenced former President Ronald Reagan working to lift the retirement age, together with long-term personal savings accounts. But “the primary job is to be straight, the second job is, get everybody on the table,” he said.
The Trump administration didn’t pursue entitlement reforms. Confronted with that fact, Pence argued that the Trump administration’s first objective was to “get the economy moving again” after a sluggish Obama-era recovery from the 2008 recession.
“Then history showed up in the shape of Covid,” Pence said — though he added, “I do not think we did nearly enough.”
Pence repeatedly said the country needed “leadership” on the presidential level, and said the 2022 midterm results showed that “elections are in regards to the future.”
“I mean, our candidates who were focused on the problems affecting Americans today, and solutions for the longer term, did thoroughly,” Pence said. But “our candidates that were focused on the past, particularly on relitigating the last election, didn’t do well, including in areas that we should always have done thoroughly.”
Trump never conceded the 2020 election to Biden, and has spent the years since his loss falsely claiming that the race was tainted by widespread election fraud. Lots of Trump’s handpicked midterms candidates, who echoed those false claims or otherwise forged doubt on the 2020 consequence, lost in high-profile races.
“I do not think anybody could have defeated Hillary Clinton aside from Donald Trump in 2016,” Pence told CNBC.
But now, he said, “I truthfully hear people talking to me very often about wanting to get back to the policies, but wanting to return to the form of politics that makes it possible for us to tackle a few of these long-term, intractable problems.”
