ormer Vice President Mike Pence has doubled down regarding whether he plans to support his former boss and running mate, Donald Trump, now that it appears more than likely Trump will formally become the nominee next week.
After briefly running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Pence announced that he would not be supporting Trump this time, stating that the former president’s policies are not conservative enough.
Following the January 6 riots, Pence’s relationship with Trump deteriorated. The president criticized him for not returning disputed electoral slates to state legislatures as president of the Senate, which the then-vice president argued he did not have the constitutional authority to do so.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year. I’m incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world,” Pence said on Fox News.
Pence also said that Trump was evading his conservative bona fides this time around, such as being committed to lowering the debt and the “sanctity of human life.”
He further remarked that Trump’s recent statements regarding China and his stance against banning TikTok in the U.S. represent a significant shift from his previous strong opposition to the Chinese-controlled social media platform during his presidency.
“What I’m going to spend the rest of this year on is talking about what we should be for. And that is the broad mainstream conservative agenda that’s defined our party and always made America strong and prosperous and free,” he said.
Meanwhile, a leading Super PAC backing Trump’s 2024 White House bid, Make America Great Again Inc., reported raising $104 million in the second quarter of 2024 fundraising, which ran from April to June.
Additionally, MAGA Inc. noted that it has close to $114 million in cash in numbers initially disclosed to Fox News on Friday.
The announcement from MAGA Inc. comes a week and a half after Trump’s campaign revealed that it and the Republican National Committee raised an incredible $331 million over the previous three months, surpassing the enormous $264 million that the Democratic National Committee and President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign received during the same period.
A portion of Trump’s haul came from a fundraising boom that followed the former president’s historic guilty verdicts in his criminal trial this spring.
The Super PAC declared a month ago that it would assist the former president with a $100 million summertime advertising campaign in the crucial battleground states.
This coincides with a recent Pew Research Center survey showing Trump to be ahead of Biden despite the latter’s poor performance in last month’s debate.
Approximately 68% of respondents told Pew Research that they are typically dissatisfied with the presidential options available to them.
The Pew study, which was released on Thursday, is the first to be released following Biden’s disorganized and occasionally incomprehensible performance during the June debate. Trump’s approval rating stands at 44%, while Biden’s is at 40%. Notably, Trump has a double-digit lead over Biden in three crucial areas.
Regarding immigration policy, Trump leads Biden by 17 points (52–35%), economic policy by 14 points (54–40%), and foreign policy by 10 points (49–39).
A Rasmussen Reports poll that was shared on Friday is disastrous news for both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The poll showed that 55 percent of those asked want the president to get out of the presidential election. Another 50 percent said that Democrats should pick someone new, not Harris, as his replacement.
“Importantly, nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters at least somewhat agree that Biden should step aside and let the Democratic Party choose another candidate,” the poll said.
