- A GOP strategist told Politico that Mike Pence "could not go to a Trump rally and be safe."
- After Jan. 6, Pence has both chided Trump and sought to endear himself to conservative base voters.
For four years, Mike Pence was a loyal vice president to Donald Trump, defending the president at virtually every turn while promoting the conservative agenda being pursued by the administration.
While Trump came to the White House as a political outsider, Pence had served in the US House for 12 years before his election as governor of Indiana and had deep ties with religious conservatives, something that the then-president lacked.
However, as Trump went through his term in office, his grip over the Republican Party became vise-like, with his loyalists soon taking control of state parties across the country.
After Pence rejected Trump's repeated entreaties to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 presidential win, the relationship between the two men shifted. Trump has continued to insist that Pence could have declined to certify the election results, while Pence has stood behind his decision, pointing to his adherence of the Constitution.
But among base Republicans, many of whom remain solidly behind Trump as the 2024 presidential election approaches, Pence has lost much of his luster.
Sarah Longwell, a GOP political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark, told Politico's Adam Wren that Pence doesn't animate primary voters and suggested that he would be largely unwelcome among the very rallygoers with whom he would routinely engage with just two years ago.
"Mike Pence could not go to a Trump rally and be safe," she told Wren.
Longwell told Wren that after holding roughly 100 GOP focus groups since 2020, the former vice president generally received "meh" reactions from prospective primary voters.
"A relic of a different time," she said of Pence.
Over the past year, Pence has opened up about the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, speaking of his anger at seeing the desecration of the ornate building, while also remarking on Trump's role that day and the immediate aftermath of the attack.
During an interview on Fox News earlier this month, Pence said that Trump appeared "remorseful" about January 6 — when the then-president spoke at a rally at the Ellipse and perpetuated debunked theories of voter fraud to his supporters — in the days after the attack.
"I sensed he was deeply remorseful about what had happened," Pence said of Trump while on Fox News. "He immediately asked about Karen and Charlotte, who were with me all day and night on January 6th and 7th. He asked me how they were and I responded sternly, 'They're fine, Mr. President, they wouldn't leave.' And then he said to me, 'Were you scared?' And I said, 'No, I was angry.'"
Pence during the midterms campaigned for Republican candidates across the country — including ones like Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia who have frustrated Trump in the past — while continuing to mull over a 2024 presidential bid of his own.
With Trump having already launched his campaign, a potential entry into the race by Pence would add another chapter in the unique political relationship between the two men.