Trump calls on “disloyal” Pence to endorse him

Shortly after former Vice President Mike Pence (R) suspended his 2024 presidential campaign over the weekend, Donald Trump (R) called on him to endorse his own candidacy.

“I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence told the crowd at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas Saturday, according to NBC News. “I have no regrets. The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we never tried at all.”

Related: Mike Pence’s doomed campaign was always an exercise in humiliation

Mike Pence’s political career ended on January 6, 2021, but he needed the humiliation of his presidential run to prove it to himself.

The virulently anti-LGBTQ+ Pence has struggled to connect with Republican primary voters, failing to even qualify for the upcoming second GOP primary debate on November 8. Following his announcement on Saturday, a source with his campaign told NBC News that they would be surprised if Pence endorsed one of the other Republican candidates.

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But that didn’t stop Trump, who is still considered the Republican frontrunner, from calling on his former vice president to endorse him.

“He should endorse me,” the former president said during a speech in Las Vegas on Saturday. “You know why? Because I had a great successful presidency, and he was the vice president. He should endorse me. I chose him, made him vice president. But people, people in politics can be very disloyal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Trump tapped the then-Indiana governor as his VP pick during his 2016 presidential campaign, a move observers believe was calculated to shore up support from Evangelical Christian voters. Pence remained loyal to Trump during his time in the White House, but their relationship deteriorated after Pence refused to comply with Trump’s demand that he not certify the results of the 2020 election on January 6, 2021 — something the vice president does not have the authority to do.

During the ensuing insurrection at the Capitol, rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence,” egged on by a tweet from Trump saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

According to CNN, Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House chief of staff, told the House January 6 committee last year that the former president had suggested that he approved of the chants. In an interview for journalist and author Jonathan Karl’s 2021 book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Trump seemed to defend the threats on Pence’s life.

Throughout the current Republican primary, Trump has consistently attacked Pence, while the former vice president has maintained, correctly, that Trump’s belief that he could overturn the 2020 election was wrong.