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Pence plans afternoon campaign kickoff — but don’t expect to hear about Trump
Mike Pence will launch his presidential campaign today in Ankeny, Iowa, with a speech set to begin at 1pm eastern time. A former governor of Indiana who also served in the House of Representatives for 12 years, this will be Pence’s first solo run for the White House, after standing twice as Donald Trump’s running mate.
If his kickoff video is any indication, you won’t be hearing much about Pence’s former boss when he launches the campaign. “I’ll always be proud of the progress we made together,” Pence says, without saying who he made the progress with. He continues: “Different times call for different leadership. Today our country and our party need a leader that can appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”
There’s not a glimpse of Trump in the video, but plenty of shots of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – foes he will face only if he somehow manages to beat his former boss in the Republican primary.
Key events
CNN has played a big role in the presidential campaign thus far by hosting town halls with GOP candidates Donald Trump, Nikki Haley as well as other candidates to come. But its handling of the event with Trump was deeply controversial, and a candid magazine profile of CEO Chris Licht did not help matters. Today, reports emerged that Licht would be stepping down:
Chris Licht, the controversial and embattled chairman and chief executive officer of the cable news giant CNN is stepping aside after a very short, turbulent time at the top, according to a report on Wednesday morning.
Licht will leave and be replaced within 48 hours, Puck News reported.
Licht was under siege from within and apologized to his employees on Monday after an Atlantic magazine profile revealed he had been aware of the “extra-Trumpy” make-up of the crowd at a widely criticized town hall with former president Donald Trump last month.
According to the Atlantic, Licht had also been critical of CNN’s performance under his predecessor, telling employees they had alienated potential viewers through hostility to Donald Trump. His tenure also included the sacking of senior presenters, and widespread unrest as he pursued a stated goal of bringing the network more into the center of US political discourse and winning over Republicans.
North Dakota’s Doug Burgum joins race for GOP presidential nomination
North Dakota governor Doug Burgum has made his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination official by filing with the Federal Election Commission. If you’re wondering who he is – and you probably are, since he leads a state that ranks 47th for population in the country and doesn’t have much of a national profile otherwise – the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly is here with the answer:
Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, has announced his candidacy for the party’s presidential nomination next year.
Burgum made the announcement in the the Wall Street Journal newspaper. A campaign event is scheduled for later on Wednesday in the city of Fargo.
“We need a change in the White House. We need a new leader for a changing economy. That’s why I’m announcing my run for president,” he said in a commentary on the Journal’s website.
The 66-year-old was a software entrepreneur, Microsoft executive and venture capitalist before becoming governor in 2016. He will be a rank outsider in a race dominated by two candidates: former US president Donald Trump and rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
Mike Pence’s problem, as this Atlantic article bluntly puts it in its headline, is that “nobody likes” him.
The author sat in on focus groups of two-time Donald Trump voters in various parts of the country. The participants held various perspectives on the former president, but when it came to Pence, the derision was practically unanimous:
“I don’t care for him … He’s just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldn’t vote for him.”
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“He has alienated every Republican and Democrat … It’s over. It’s retirement time.”
“He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.”
“He just needs to go away.”
As Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman puts it, it’s a mystery why Pence is bothering to run at all:
The problem is that there is almost no significant group of voters who does not already dislike Pence for one reason or another. While Trump added him to his 2016 ticket to shore up support with the Christian right, that group’s loyalty to Trump grew so intense that Pence became an afterthought. The Trump presidency showed that what evangelicals wanted was not someone who believed what they believe, but someone who would smite their enemies with maximum savagery.
Then there’s Jan. 6, 2021.
The most conservative Republicans, whom Pence would want to appeal to, are now more fervently pro-Trump than ever. They are also the ones who call Pence a traitor because of the best thing he did as vice president: resisting Trump’s corrupt pressure to delay the electoral count in Congress so that the former president could overturn the outcome.
When Jan. 6 is inevitably brought up, Pence will become trapped. He says (correctly) that the law gave him no authority to halt the count. But that makes it sound as though his loyalty to rules outweighed his loyalty to Trump. Which was true, at least in that moment. But Trump taught the base that rules are for suckers.
The other option — to portray himself as a hero who saved democracy in the face of Trump’s corruption — isn’t possible either because it would define Trump as democracy’s enemy. After years of sycophancy toward his boss that was embarrassing — even by the standards of the lickspittles with whom Trump has always surrounded himself — Pence just doesn’t have it in him to defy Trump, even if he didn’t have to say the last thing Republican voters want to hear.
Pence plans afternoon campaign kickoff — but don’t expect to hear about Trump
Mike Pence will launch his presidential campaign today in Ankeny, Iowa, with a speech set to begin at 1pm eastern time. A former governor of Indiana who also served in the House of Representatives for 12 years, this will be Pence’s first solo run for the White House, after standing twice as Donald Trump’s running mate.
If his kickoff video is any indication, you won’t be hearing much about Pence’s former boss when he launches the campaign. “I’ll always be proud of the progress we made together,” Pence says, without saying who he made the progress with. He continues: “Different times call for different leadership. Today our country and our party need a leader that can appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”
There’s not a glimpse of Trump in the video, but plenty of shots of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – foes he will face only if he somehow manages to beat his former boss in the Republican primary.
Mike Pence announces bid for president, joining crowded GOP field
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Republican politicians are practically flocking to join the presidential race, with former vice-president Mike Pence announcing his intention to run in a video this morning that’s heavy on God and critical of Joe Biden – the general election opponent he would face if Pence makes it that far. Standing in his way is Donald Trump, who remains the frontrunner in the polls, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis the only other candidate to crack double-digit support in most surveys out there. Pence, you will recall, was Trump’s deputy, but fell out with him after refusing to take part in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. As a result, Trump has turned his influential base against Pence, but he’s giving it a shot anyway. Also throwing their hat in the ring today: low-profile North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who this morning filed papers to run for the White House.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Are rightwing Republicans revolting in the House of Representatives against speaker Kevin McCarthy? They did yesterday, by blocking debate on a package of messaging bills the chamber’s GOP leaders were hoping to pass. We may find out more about this today.
CNN announced it will next Monday host a live town hall with Chris Christie, the Republican former New Jersey governor who yesterday announced his candidacy for president.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talks to reporters at 1pm eastern time.
