Donald Trump said Mike Pence, his former vice president who is now challenging him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has turned to the dark side after comments Pence made about the former president’s latest indictment.
A day before Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday in Washington, D.C., to a four-count federal indictment about his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results, Pence went on the attack against his former boss in an interview with Fox News.
“The American people deserve to know that President Trump and his advisers didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election," Pence said Wednesday, adding had he listened to Trump and “his gaggle of crackpot lawyers, literally chaos would have ensued.”
Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday to respond to the remarks by Pence, who has struggled to gain traction in his campaign for the GOP nomination.
“WOW, it’s finally happened!” Trump wrote. “Liddle Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side. I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.’
"He’s delusional, and now he wants to show he’s a tough guy. I once read a major magazine article on Mike. It said he was not a very good person. I was surprised, but the article was right. Sad!”
Trump is far ahead of the field of Republican candidates as the first primary debate, on Aug. 13 in Milwaukee, approaches. In the latest RealClear Politics average of polling, Trump, who is not expected to attend the first debate, is at 53.1%, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (17.6%), multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (5.2%), and Pence (4.8%).
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