Donald Trump may have a bigger Mike Pence problem than you think

| 7:00 pm EDT August 4, 2023
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While the vice presidential candidate of a major political party usually has an easy path to becoming that party’s nominee for president (think George H.W. Bush in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, and even Joe Biden who had a relatively easy path to being nominated in 2020,) Mike Pence is basically the exception to that rule, with a floundering campaign that never quite got off the ground, and the likely foreknowledge that there isn’t anything else for him following his one-term stint as veep, when he was hoping to cruise to the nomination in 2024 on Trump’s coattails. Now, he’s largely derided by his own side as a traitor, for not carrying out the former guy’s Jan 6 scheme, while winning over no one on the left or in the center, because his politics are still awful.

While he spent much of the 2016 campaign trying to downplay just about every awful thing Donald Trump did on the campaign trail, Pence is now speaking up about Jan 6 – something he spent all of last year avoiding, despite pressure to testify before Congress.

Now that the former guy is indicted, Pence sees an opening in the narrative for him to be the hero, and he fiercely denounced the plot – perhaps even giving undeniable testimony to lead to Trump’s downfall.

Of course, we shouldn’t give Pence any more credit now than we did in 2021, but it’s worth seeing if Trump’s other opponents will follow suit – making it that much harder for the party to be united when it comes to Trump’s indictment and impending legal troubles.