Landing back in his home state for the first time as a former vice president, Mike Pence delivered a welcome home address to a small crowd on the tarmac, with a brief message to his former boss, Donald Trump.
“Well, hello, Indiana. To Lt. Gov. Crouch, congressman Pence, all my fellow Hoosiers, it is great to be back home again,” Pence said, at times appearing to choke up. “To be able to fly home to my hometown means more than I can tell you, but to look out at this crowd and, so far, I haven’t seen one face that I haven’t known for years, and I thank you for that.”
In his speech, Pence congratulated his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Biden before delivering a few words to Trump.
“Let me also take a moment to say thank you to President Donald Trump and Melania for all they have done to make America great again,” Pence said. “We will always be grateful for the opportunity that they gave us to serve and the way they allowed us to make a difference in the life of this nation, rebuilding our military. In our first three years, reviving the economy and taking it to heights it had never seen before. And appointing a record number of principled men and women to our federal courts at every level, including three Supreme Court justices, including Indiana’s own, Justice Amy Coney Barret.”
The inauguration on Wednesday ended a yearslong partnership between Trump and Pence that largely saw the former vice president acting as a loyal ally to Trump and his goals — until Pence refused to overturn the results of the election and reject the votes of the Electoral College, claiming that the Constitution provided no “unilateral authority” for the vice president to do that.
As pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to disrupt Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote, Trump branded Pence a coward, saying that he “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
After the Capitol Hill attack, Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said that he’d “never seen Pence as angry as he was today.”
“I had a long conversation with [Pence],” Inhofe said. “He said, ‘After all the things I’ve done for [Trump].'”
Pence and Trump reportedly didn’t talk to each other until Jan. 11, five days after the attack. A senior administration official called it a “good” conversation, suggesting that the two had, at least temporarily, made amends.
Trump thanked Pence and his family in a farewell video posted Tuesday and a speech during a farewell ceremony at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Inauguration Day before flying to Florida. Pence did not appear at that event, instead attending Biden’s inauguration.
Pence and Trump’s relationship will set up a compelling dynamic leading up to the 2024 presidential contest. Had Trump won in 2020, Pence would have been a top contender for the GOP ticket. But speculation that Trump will attempt to pull off a Grover Cleveland, the only U.S. president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, put those plans in jeopardy.
