Former Vice President Mike Pence has signaled he’s running for president in 2024 — even if that means going up against his former boss.
SO WHAT
Trump, despite being the presumptive frontrunner, does not appear to be clearing the field.
WHAT HAPPENED
Mike Pence, through his chief aide Marc Short, signaled to the Atlantic that the ex-veep is interested in a direct run against Trump if it comes to it.
- “If you know the Pences, you know they’ll always try to discern where they’re being called to serve,” Marc Short told the outlet. “And I don’t think that is dependent on who else is in or not in the race.”
- Pence is advised by fellow Indianan and former Vice President Dan Quayle who has long been counseling Pence on major moves, from running for Indiana governor, to 2024: “A cold-eyed political calculus suggests that 2024 would be Pence’s best and maybe last real shot,” the outlet reported.
- Pence is “one of the most likable people in either party,” claimed former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.
SHARKS SWIMMING
And even former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is licking his chops: “The wall isn’t built. Obamacare is still there. We didn’t get an infrastructure package done that we wanted, so now we’re stuck with theirs,” Trump’s ex-confidante said this week.
…It’s been argued before that if prominent former members of Trump’s circle ever challenged him on a debate stage with damaging revelations about the former president’s character, it could finally be politically effective in bringing him down.
SAME ENERGY
Historically, this is the sort of stuff that splits parties or causes the formation of new ones, such as the election of 1800 when then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson successfully challenged then-President John Adams.
Analysis done by Echelon Insights this summer argued that in a slightly different democracy, Trump and Pence would lead opposing parties– with Trump as the head of the “Nationalists” and Pence heading up the “Conservatives.”
