Trump says he won’t pick Pence as running-mate in 2024: ‘Mike committed political suicide’

Former president Donald Trump says in a new book that he will not pick his former vice president Mike Pence to serve as his running mate if he launches another White House bid in 2024.

Mr Trump made the remarks in The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, written by Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, The Guardian reported. Mr Baker and Ms Glasser interviewed Mr Trump in April and November of last year.

“It would be totally inappropriate,” the former president said. Mr Trump’s main objection to his former vice president is that Mr Pence refused to overturn the 2020 presidential election results on 6 January 2021. “Mike committed political suicide,” Mr Trump told the authors.

Mr Pence famously rebuffed a plan by Mr Trump’s attorney John Eastman to overturn the election results. Mr Pence consulted with former vice president Dan Quayle and former Judge J Michael Luttig, who advised him against taking on Mr Eastman’s plan.

In response, during his January 6 rally at the White House Ellipse, Mr Trump urged his voters to “fight like hell” and later tweeted that Mr Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”

In response, rioters who breached the Capitol yelled “Hang Mike Pence.”

Mr Pence, for his part, has defended his decision.

“President Trump is wrong,” he said in February at a Federalist Society conference. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Mr Pence spoke about his point of divergence with the former president at the Young America Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference in Washington back in July.

“I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to serve as vice president,” he said. “But I don’t know if our movement is that divided. I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues. But we may differ on focus.”