Mike Pence files for 2024 White House bid in face-off with Donald Trump after dig at ex-president over 'better choices' | The Sun
MIKE Pence has filed paperwork declaring his candidacy for president in 2024, setting up a battlefield with Republican powerhouses Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
The former vice president is expected to formally launch his bid during a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, according to AP News.
Pence's White House bid comes months after he took a swipe at Trump's campaign, saying he's "confident" there will be "better choices" on the ballot than the former president.
Pence, who served under Trump during his presidential term from 2017 to 2021, said fellow potential Republican candidates would offer an alternative to the former president.
"Well, I think the times call for different leadership. And I'm confident we'll have better choices than my old running mate come 2024," the former vice president told NBC News in February.
Pence, 63, fractured his relationship with Trump after refusing to overturn the 2020 election.
Before the deadly riots on January 6, 2021, Trump had pressed Pence to “do the right thing” and send electoral votes “back to the states to recertify,” claiming that if Pence “does the right thing, we win the election.”
However, Pence refused to reject the Electoral College votes, denying Trump's false claim that he had the power to overturn election results.
"President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," he said in a speech to a gathering of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, in February.
"There are those in our party who believe that, as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes.
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"The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone," he added.
"And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."
The field for the Republican nomination is expected to grow this week with an anticipated entry by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former North Dakota Governor Dough Burgum.
Pence's campaign will aim to regain the support of GOP supporters and build his individual profile while pulling out from under Trump's shadow.
Pence served for over a decade in Congress and as Indiana’s governor before being tapped as Trump’s running mate in 2016.
During his time in the White House, Pence had been a loyal defender of Trump until the days leading up to January 6, 2021.
On the day of the Capitol riots, as Trump spewed lies that the 2020 election had been stolen, a mob of Trump supporters chanted: "Hang Mike Pence!" as the former Vice President, his staff, and family ran for safety, hiding in a Senate loading dock.
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