He may have dropped out of the 2024 race, but Mike Pence will get the last laugh against former President Donald Trump, according to legal analyst Glenn Kirschner.
Mike Pence, the former vice president under Trump and former governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017, officially dropped out of the presidential race on Saturday after months of his campaign failing to gain traction. Pence was among the crowded field of candidates seeking the GOP nomination who have so far languished in the shadow of Trump, who is seeking reelection and has regularly gained 50 percent support from likely Republican voters in national polling averages.
“It’s become clear to me it’s not my time,” Pence said during his speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference. While speaking in Las Vegas on Saturday, Trump suggested that Pence should endorse him for president while also deriding him as “disloyal,” which he has done frequently ever since Pence declined to participate in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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“Everybody that leaves seems to be endorsing me. You know people are leaving now, and they’re all endorsing me,” Trump said. “I don’t know about Mike Pence; he should endorse me. He should endorse me, you know why? Because I had a great successful presidency, and he was the vice president. He should endorse me.”
Trump continued: “I chose him, made him vice president, but people, people in politics can be very disloyal.”
Kirschner, a veteran federal prosecutor turned legal analyst known for his critical views of Trump, posted a video about the situation to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday. In it, he said that even if Pence doesn’t have the chance anymore to beat Trump for the GOP nomination, he can still come out on top over his one-time running mate by testifying against him in court.
“It looks like Mike Pence will not be the 2024 Republican nominee for president, but he remains a sharply and directly incriminating witness against his former boss,” Kirschner said. “Mike Pence will have the last laugh when he’s called as a prosecution witness in that courtroom in Washington, D.C., and Donald Trump will be convicted by a jury of his peers so fast it will make his head spin.”
The day after Pence dropped out of the race, legal analyst Danny Cevallos said on MSNBC that it was “almost a certainty” that he would testify against Trump now in special counsel Jack Smith‘s investigation into the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“I don’t think there’s going to be much impediment to Mike Pence racing in to testify,” Cevallos said. “There is absolutely nothing holding him back now.”
Newsweek reached out to representatives for Pence via email for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
