Mike Pence is positioned to inflict real legal damage on former President Donald Trump.
It’s not that Pence, vice president under Trump from 2017-21, has turned into a caustic critic of his former boss, along the lines of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. But federal prosecutors seem likely to compel Pence to reveal sordid details about the pressure campaign on him ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots when Trump supporters sought to reverse President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Pence knows he has no choice but to testify under oath truthfully and fulsomely. Which contradicts his campaign strategy to date in trying to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination against his old boss.
On the campaign trail, Pence insists, when asked about Jan. 6 by reporters or likely voters. that as vice president at the time he had no power to reject Biden electors. Yet a soon-to-follow clause in his campaign stump speech usually touts policy accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration, and basically tries to steer the conversation away from Trump-related topics altogether.
That’s a political straddle that always seemed questionable and is now downright untenable. Trump supporters, the bulk of the GOP primary electorate at this point, regard Pence as, essentially a traitor. Meanwhile, the former Indiana governor and 12-year House member’s call for a return to sunny, forward-looking conservative espoused by the late President Ronald Reagan seems wildly out of step with the present reality of GOP politics in its populist nationalist MAGA form.
So far Pence’s approach has yielded him low single-digits in a range of GOP primary polls, and tepid fundraising, to the point that it’s questionable if he’ll even make the debate stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 23.
Which offers Pence a fresh opportunity to break from Trump once and for all. That would mean frontally, forcefully, and consistently attacking Trump’s White House comeback bid. Such an approach would involve a louder and more confrontational rhetorical style than Pence is used to, in the mold of Christie. Pence, though, is uniquely positioned to talk up what he sees as Trump’s criminality in the federal case moving forward in Washington, D.C., and general unfitness for office.
That strategy would be, admittedly, a political longshot. It’s not an obvious political winner for Christie, let alone milder versions like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AK) or ex-Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX). Yet that pair doesn’t face the unique legal obligations of Pence, with his federal court testimony practically assured.
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Pence gets fresh openings practically every day to attack Trump, who on Sunday called his former understudy a “delusional” figure who “has gone to the dark side.” Pence has taken baby steps in pushing back, such as his campaign selling T-shirts and hats branded with the phrase “Too Honest,” which is allegedly the phrase Trump used to describe his vice president when he wouldn’t go along with his plan to overturn the 2020 results. Then in a Sunday CNN interview, Pence wouldn’t say if he would support Trump should he win the 2024 GOP nomination.
For Pence being a fierce anti-Trump partisan is really the only way to stand out in the dozen-person-plus primary field, even if it’s a political course effectively forced upon him by federal prosecutors demanding his courtroom testimony. Fair or not, good or bad for him, Pence is all in now as a Trump antagonist.
