Former Vice-President Mike Pence made it clear on Friday that he will not be involved in the 2024 presidential election because he cannot endorse the current Republican Party platform.
“The fact that we have a platform that removed 50 years of pro-life language, made no mention of the national debt, advocated massive taxes at our borders. And abandoning commitments that we have to allies around the world are deeply troubling to me and deeply disappointing,” Pence said while speaking at ‘The Gathering’ an annual conference organized by conservative radio host Erick Erickson.
“For my part, I’m staying out of the presidential campaign,” he added. “For the reason that I cannot endorse this growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage that’s taken hold in parts of our party,” he said. “I cannot endorse ignoring our national debt that reached $35 trillion just in the last week. I cannot support marginalizing the right to life in our party as we saw in our national platform.”
Pence also cited Trump’s pressure campaign to get him to block the certification of electoral results in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 as another contributing factor to his decision.
“I cannot endorse President Trump’s continuing assertion that I should have set aside my oath to defend the Constitution and acted in a way that would have overturned the election in January of 2021,” he said.
Pence, who unsuccessfully ran for the GOP nomination for president this year, previously said he will not be endorsing his former boss in the 2024 election.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence told Fox News in March.
