2023-10-28 21:32:34
Former US Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday night that he is withdrawing from the race for the Republican Party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
“I came here tonight to tell the American people what has become clear to me: now is not my time,” Pence said, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) conference in Las Vegas, the Associated Press reports.
“After much thought and prayer, I have decided to suspend my campaign for the presidency,” announced Donald Trump’s former vice president, who was facing funding problems and very low polling.
Pence thus became the first candidate to drop out of a race dominated by his former boss-turned-opponent, Donald Trump.
Mike Pence announces he is withdrawing from the election race
“Saved from… Embarrassment”
As the American agency notes, this decision, more than two months before the Iowa elections, in which he had staked his campaign, saves Pence from the embarrassment of not qualifying for the third Republican primary debate, on November 8 in Miami .
But the withdrawal is a huge blow to a politician who spent years waiting for his time as Trump’s most loyal deputy, only to be scapegoated in the final days of his term when Trump convinced that Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep both men in office — something a vice president could not do.
While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting the plan, it angered Trump, as well as many of his supporters, who believed the former US president’s lies and still see Pence as a traitor.
Among Trump’s critics, meanwhile, Pence was seen as a stickler, defending the former president at every opportunity and refusing to repeatedly criticize even Trump’s most gratuitous actions.
As a result, an Associated Press – NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from August found that a majority of US adults, 57 percent, viewed Pence unfavorably, while only 28 percent had a favorable view.
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