‘Mike Committed Political Suicide’: Trump Says He’ll Never Run With Pence Again
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Former President Donald Trump made it abundantly clear he’ll never forgive his former vice president, Mike Pence, for refusing his illegal order to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.
The Guardian obtained an early copy of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, the soon-to-be-published book from New York Times correspondent Peter Baker and The New Yorker writer Susan Glasser. The husband and wife reporter duo interviewed Trump twice for the book, and the former president told them he has ruled out Pence as his running mate if he pursues the White House again in 2024.
“It would be totally inappropriate,” Trump said, according to the book. The ex-president goes on to say “Mike committed political suicide” by not rejecting the electoral college votes that Congress certified to establish President Joe Biden’s victory.
The Divider is set to be published on September 20, and the previewed remarks from Trump come as Pence prepares to release his own memoir — So Help Me God — in mid-November. Excerpts from Pence’s book show that he devotes the final chapters to reflections on January 6th, and the former vice president recalled his anger that day for how Trump’s supporters violently laid siege to the U.S. Capitol while demanding his hanging.
“I was angry at what I saw, how it desecrated the seat of our democracy and dishonored the patriotism of millions of our supporters, who would never do such a thing here or anywhere else,” Pence writes.
The Guardian reports that Baker and Glasser use their book to describe how Pence remained loyal to Trump until the Capitol riot. Trump has repeatedly defended his rioting supporters from January 6, he has repeatedly proposed pardons for those convicted for their actions during the attack, he refused to condemn his supporters who chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” and Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath that Trump thought Pence “deserved” to be hanged by the Capitol mob.
