Former Vice President Mike Pence officially launched his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination Wednesday by laying into his former boss, Donald Trump, saying the former president does not deserve a second term because he put himself above the Constitution leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021.
Pence has said Trump pressured him to thwart Congress' certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6. Pence, who as vice president had the mostly procedural role of presiding over Congress that day, said he told Trump he did not have the constitutional power to do so.
Trump denied in a Truth Social post in June 2022 that he pressured Pence to overturn the election results but instead wanted him to send the electoral college votes back to the states.
Pence testified in May before a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into Trump's role in the events of Jan. 6.
"The American people deserve to know on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution," Pence said during a speech in Ankeny, Iowa. "Now, voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.
"The American people must know that leaders in the Republican Party will keep our oath to support and defend the Constitution, even when it is not in our political interests. One last word that in part brings us here today: I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again."
Pence has become the first vice president since Democrat John Nance Garner in 1940 — unsuccessfully against Franklin Roosevelt — to challenge his former boss for the party's presidential nomination. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson faced former running mate John Adams in the general election, but they represented different parties. Jefferson won.
"What President Trump and others are forgetting is that our administration succeeded not because we compromised or abandoned conservative principles, but because we acted on them," Pence said. "I know we can beat Joe Biden, but we must resist the politics of personality and the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles and we must stand firm on a traditional Republican agenda of a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, and traditional values that led us to victory in the past, and will lead us to victory again."
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