Former Republican Vice President Mike Pence has a good chance of nailing the 2024 presidential nomination due to his “loyalty” to former President Donald Trump, according to longtime colleague John Boehner, the former House speaker.
In an interview to discuss his new book, On the House: A Washington Memoir, Boehner told Secrets that of all the Trump associates, Pence should be first in line in the eyes of Trump fans.
His chances, said Boehner, “should be pretty good with the Trump types because you’re never going to find anybody as loyal to the president as Mike Pence was. I mean loyal when it hurt to be loyal.”
He noted that even in the face of adversity, especially in the final days of the 2016 election, “Mike Pence stood there like a rock on behalf of Trump and for the next four years did the same thing.”
Despite that loyalty, Trump turned on Pence when it was clear that the vice president was not going to challenge the Electoral College election of Joe Biden on Jan. 6.
At a rally that day, and before pro-Trump protesters threatened Pence by storming the Senate chamber the election was being certified in, Trump said: “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories.”
Said Boehner, “For the president to say what he did about Pence on Jan. 6 was really a sad spectacle.”
The Trump attacks have prompted many of the former president’s supporters to be suspicious of Pence. Trump, speaking to donors last weekend, repeated that he was “disappointed” in Pence for not throwing the election back to the state legislatures to decide.
On the 2024 race, Boehner predicted that many Republicans would be running. “We’re going to have a lot of people compete for the nomination, a lot of really good people. It’s a long way off,” he said.
In his book, the No. 7 best-selling nonfiction book on Amazon, Boehner told a story of how Pence turned from being a “fire-eater” to the “unflappable” GOP leader most people are familiar with.
Boehner wrote:
Pence was a good member, but he needed an outlet for his energy. I tried to guide him toward being more measured in his approach to governing, to show him that not every single action he may not have fully approved of needed its own scathing press release, and that sometimes you have to pick your battles. Over time, and certainly by the time he became Conference chair in 2009, he had developed into a calm, collected, unflappable professional — a skill set he used to great effect as vice president of the United States.
