Former Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News on Friday that he “cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.” His statement has been received as a momentous development in Republican politics. Analysts and commentators have called it a “bombshell,” a “surprise” and a “major statement.” My sharp colleague Steve Benen called it “extraordinary.”
Allow me to strike a dissenting note. Pence’s statement — if you listen to all of it — is the weakest possible non-endorsement of Trump he could have articulated. It hardly represents a sharp rejection of Trump, and to the extent that it does, it does so for reasons that shouldn’t comfort us. It’s not a bombshell but a whimper, and a signpost of complicity in Trump’s assault on the republic.
Pence’s announcement that he won’t endorse Trump is particularly weak because he refuses to rule out voting for him.
Pence’s announcement that he won’t endorse Trump is particularly weak because he refuses to rule out voting for him. When Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked whether he’d vote for President Joe Biden, Pence replied that was going to “keep my vote to myself” and pledged that he would “never vote for Joe Biden.” That means, if he casts a ballot, he’ll vote either for a third-party candidate or for Trump. By publicly refusing to rule out a vote for Trump, his non-endorsement looks more like performative piety than it does a punch at his former boss — and a far cry from fomenting resistance within the GOP.
Pence’s rationale for his non-endorsement sheds light on why he took such a soft position. The former vice president isn't drawing a line in the sand over protecting democracy, but, rather, he's mewling about how Trump has moved away from the mainstream conservatism that predated Trump. Pence discusses how he was “incredibly proud” of the work he and Trump did. In his list of reasons for describing his move away from Trump he briefly mentions “our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised on Jan. 6,” framing Trump’s attempts to overturn the election as negotiable, a subjective interpretation. A firmer criticism would’ve characterized Trump as attempting to pressure Pence to renege on his constitutional duties, and as recruiting him to participate in a coup against his own government. But most of what Pence lists are complaints about Trump’s deviation from Pence's own vision of conservatism, which includes attention to reducing the national debt and taking the most radical position possible on prohibiting abortion. He also disapproved of Trump’s odd flip-flop on banning TikTok.
Pence’s mealy-mouthed criticism of Trump tracks with his catastrophic 2024 campaign. More than any other candidate, he had the most visceral basis for laying into Trump — on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters were calling out “hang Mike Pence,” Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done." (And Trump aides claim that behind the scenes Trump supported those chanting for Pence to be hanged.) To be fair, Pence has in the past used more forceful language to call out Trump over Jan. 6. But he's hardly been a champion of preserving bedrock institutions and the rule of law. He initially declined to criticize Trump as the former president was slammed with criminal charges and Pence called into question the legitimacy of the legal system. Pence’s criticism of Trump often focused on Trump’s departure from Reaganite conservatism (his policies on social spending or Russia, for example), rather than on Trump’s assault on the very foundation of multicultural democracy.
During his Fox interview, Pence expressed no concern over Trump’s promises that his presidency would symbolize “revenge,” his open ambitions to be a dictator, or his fascistic rhetoric about migrants’ not being human.
Pence’s remarks would have been a bombshell if he had said something like “Despite my disagreement with him on almost every policy issue, I feel compelled to vote for President Biden out of my continued duty to protect the Constitution of the United States. I encourage my fellow Republicans to do the same — and fight for renewing American conservatism at the presidential level after this emergency passes.” But Pence doesn’t appear to consider the specter of a slide into autocracy an emergency. At least not a bigger one than another Democratic presidential term.
What is Pence’s conscience telling him, exactly? It doesn't allow him to publicly back Trump. But it might allow for him to vote for the man threatening to wreck the Constitution that Pence purports to hold dear. Sounds more like a public relations dial than a moral compass to me.
