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Former Vice President Mike Pence made some of his most pointed comments yet regarding the January 6 Capitol riot, distancing himself from former President Donald Trump and teasing, yet again, a potential 2024 White House run.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said on Saturday at the Gridiron Dinner, an annual event held for politicians and journalists, in Washington, D.C. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
“The American people have a right to know what took place at the Capitol on January 6th,” Pence added. “Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it any other way.”
Aside from the Capitol attack, the former vice president also took aim at the classified documents found at Trump’s Florida estate—and attempted a joke. “I read that some of those classified documents they found at Mar-a-Lago were actually stuck in the president’s Bible,” Pence said. “Which proves he had absolutely no idea they were there.”
While Trump already declared that he is running for president in 2024, Pence hasn’t formally Pence done so. He did, however, hint at his intentions on Saturday night. “I will wholeheartedly, unreservedly support the Republican nominee for president in 2024,” he said. “If it’s me.”
Although Pence took definitive steps away from Trump, which some politicians and others in the media have expressed he took too late.
New York Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted: “Mike Pence, whose life was threatened on Jan 6 by the MAGA extremists he enabled for four years, said history will hold Donald Trump accountable for his election denial. History will have no kind words for a sycophant like Mike Pence who dutifully aided and abetted Trump.”
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“Where was this bravado after January 6? For the months after that? The years now after that?” said Lincoln Project senior advisor Tara Setmayer on “The Saturday/Sunday Show” on Sunday. “Anyone else that had a spine would have spoken out immediately and led the charge against Donald Trump…And then all of a sudden, now [Pence] has this sanctimonious, strong reaction to Donald Trump.”
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Pence, who is religious and who the Human Rights Campaign once called “the worst vice president for LGBTQ people,” lambasted the only openly gay member Cabinet member in U.S. history, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and may have taken the jokes too far. He said that, despite the country’s ubiquitous travel issues, Buttigieg took “maternity leave” after adopting newborn twins with his husband.
Pence remarked: “Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets post-partum depression.”
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