Pence strongly chides Trump in campaign announcement
Former Vice President Mike Pence announced his presidential campaign in Iowa on Wednesday with a dismissal of Donald J. Trump, portraying his former boss — and now rival — as unfit for the presidency and going further than ever before in condemning the character and the values of the man he served faithfully for four years.
Before a crowd of several hundred on the campus of Des Moines Area Community College, Mr. Pence focused on something many in his party have desperately tried to avoid: Mr. Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.
“Jan. 6 was a tragic day in the life of our nation,” Mr. Pence said. “But thanks to the courage of law enforcement officials, the violence was quelled and we reconvened Congress. That same day, President Trump’s reckless words endangered my family and everyone in the Capitol.”
He added: “But the American people deserve to know that on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and our Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”
No other major Republican presidential nominee has even mentioned the attack on the Capitol in an announcement speech. Most elected Republicans have contorted themselves into never talking about that day — believing it will only alienate their voters. A growing number of Republicans are going even further, falsely trying to reframe the attack on the Capitol as an inside job by the FBI or by leftist groups masquerading as Trump supporters.
Instead, Mr. Pence described his own actions that day in confirming Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. as a defining moment that proved his mettle, and Mr. Trump’s actions that day as a disqualification.
“The Republican Party should be the party of the Constitution of the United States,” Pence said to applause.
“Anyone who puts himself above the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” he said. “And anyone who asks anyone else to put them above the Constitution should never run for president again.”
Mr. Pence’s use of the word “never” took him over a line he had not yet crossed, even though he has criticized Mr. Trump since January 6. His announcement speech brought him closer to more outspoken Republicans, such as former Rep. Liz Cheney, who have described Mr. Trump as morally unfit to occupy the Oval Office.
With his remarks, Mr. Pence immediately posed a question for his campaign: As a criterion for participating in GOP primary debates, the Republican National Committee requires each candidate to sign a pledge that he will support the party’s eventual nominee.
Mr. Pence has put himself in the potential position of having to endorse a candidate in Mr. Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican Party, who he says should “never” run for president.
Despite this, just minutes into his speech, Mr. Pence promised in an interview with Fox News that he would support the Republican candidate for president, “especially if it’s me.”
The former vice president addressed a thorny issue of his highly anticipated candidacy: How does he explain his years of supporting a candidate whose character and positions were well known in 2016, and whose presidency was consistent with some of those expectations. According to Mr. Pence, the Mr. Trump with whom he shared a ticket has in fact changed.
Mr. Pence addressed three issues to create an ideological contrast to Mr. Trump: abortion, fiscal conservatism and foreign policy.
“When Donald Trump became president in 2016, he promised to run as a conservative. And together, we did just that,” Mr. Pence said, ignoring the inconvenient fact that the Trump-Pence administration added about $8 trillion to the national debt.
“Today he does not make such a promise,” he added. “After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are stepping down for the cause of the unborn.”
While Mr. Pence went after Mr. Trump in his speech, earlier in the day he used an announcement video to attack President Biden. “Our country is in big trouble,” Pence said in his nearly three-minute announcement video, accusing Biden and the “radical left” of weakening America “at home and abroad.”
Citing “runaway inflation”, a looming recession, a southern border “under siege”, unchecked “enemies of freedom” in Russia, China “on the march” and what he calls an unprecedented assault on “timeless American values”, he promised he to deliver what he said the nation desperately needed.
“We’re better than this,” says Mr. Pence. “We can turn this country around. But different times call for different leadership. Today our party and country need a leader who, as Lincoln said, will call upon the better angels of our nature.”
In his speech, Mr. Pence further made it clear that unlike other Republican candidates, he would not be afraid to cut Social Security and Medicare to deal with the country’s debt crisis.
Then he turned to foreign policy. He said Trump had moved away from America’s traditional role on the world stage. He described the United States as “the leader of the free world” and an “arsenal of democracy”. He criticized Mr. Trump for describing Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin as a “genius” and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.”