Former Vice President Mike Pence revealed Monday evening that he’s prayerfully considering whether or not to run for president in the 2024 election.
“We’re giving it consideration in our house. Prayerful consideration,” Pence said in an extended interview on ABC’s “World News Tonight” with host David Muir.
The former vice president’s remarks aired just a day ahead of former President Donald Trump’s much touted Tuesday evening announcement, in which many expect he will finally officially say that he’s running for re-election.
Asked if Trump should run for reelection, Pence responded: “[T]hat’s up to the American people. But I think we’ll have better choices in the future.”
“For me and my family,” he added, “we’ll be reflecting about what our role is in that.”
During the same interview, Pence also weighed in on the events that took place during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, describing the first conversation he had with Trump after the riot took place. Pence had been overseeing Congress’ certification of the 2020 Electoral College results when the crowd began pushing into the Capitol.
Photographs of the Pence family taken shortly after the rioters breached the Capitol show Karen Pence, the former vice president’s wife, closing the curtains to the windows of the vice president’s ceremonial office near the Senate floor, reportedly fearing that rioters would see them inside, according to ABC News.
“You walk down that narrow hallway you know well from the vice president’s office to the Oval [Office] to the small dining room … . And what does the president say to you?” Muir asked the former vice president about their first conversation, five days after the riot.
“Well, he immediately asked about Karen and Charlotte,” Pence responded, referencing his daughter Charlotte Pence Bond. “He said that—he had just learned that they were at the Capitol that day.”
“Five days later?” Muir asked.
“I told him we were … fine,” Pence responded. “And then he asked, ‘Were you scared?’ I said, ‘No, I was angry.’ We had our differences, and I told him that seeing those people ransacking the Capitol infuriated me. And I sensed genuine remorse by the president.”
Pence also said that he thought Trump was “genuinely saddened by what had happened,” adding, “Well, at … one point I think he simply said, with his voice much more faint than it had ever been, he said, ‘What if we hadn’t had the rally?’ He said, ‘It’s so, it’s so bad to end like this.’”
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