Former Vice President Mike Pence told a room full of Long Islanders that, just one week away from Election Day, he could never endorse Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.
But, he also refrained from endorsing his former running mate Donald Trump.
“I’m conservative, I’m not in a bad mood about it, but they just represent a philosophy that I couldn’t ever support,” Pence said of Harris and Walz.
But the man who once served alongside Trump and later had his life threatened by a mob incited by the former president said he also could not endorse that ticket because he disapproves of the direction the Republican Party is shifting to.
“I see increasing voices in our party prepared to walk away from our allies and American leadership in the world, voices that are prepared to ignore the national debt, voices that are marginalizing the sanctity of life,” Pence said. “And the former president’s continued insistence that I should have set aside my oath on that fateful day [of Jan. 6, 2021].”
He cautioned against the Republican Party’s move toward the “siren song of populism.”
Despite questions over the civility, or lack thereof, that many anticipate after the election, Pence said he is not concerned because he has faith in the American people’s ability to get along.
“Our politics are more divided than any time in my life,” Pence said. “I’m just not convinced the American people are as divided as their politics.”
He compared today’s division to the New Yorker’s response in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—the first time he had ever visited the city. He said the unification of the city and all those affected gives him hope that there is more that unites people than divides them.
“But it’s harder to see in ordinary times,” Pence said. “But on that day it wasn’t hard to see at all.”
The former vice president spoke at the Long Island Association’s fall luncheon on Tuesday afternoon, where he had a question-and-answer conversation with the organization’s President, Matt Cohen.
Pence’s conversation drew laughter from the crowd, and his responses included his impersonations of Ronald Reagan, self-deprecating jokes and his former Democratic alignments.
Pence spoke on topics ranging from his actions as vice president, the day of the Jan. 6 riots, his relationship with Trump, his denouncement of Russia’s war on Ukraine, his first meeting with Reagan – the politician who influenced him becoming a democrat – and his thoughts on the upcoming election.
In recalling the day of the Jan. 6 riot, Pence said what guided him that day was the oath that he gave, with his left hand placed on former President Reagan’s bible, devoting himself to defending the Consitution.
“But it ended with a prayer: so help me god,” Pence said of his oath. “And as I told the Congress that day, I thought it was a promise that I had made to the American people but it was also a promise that I had made to god. The Bible says in Psalm 15 ‘he keeps his oath even when it hurts.’ I know something about that.”
After a video was shown of Pence’s speech given to Congress after the attack on the capitol, the room erupted in standing ovation.
Pence said it is against the intent of the presidency to dictate what votes were and were not counted.
“The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone,” Pence said.
He said while it was a tragic day, it was also a “triumph of freedom.”
Pence said he and Trump never had a “cross word” between themselves over four and a half years, touting the accomplishments that the two of them achieved during the four-year term, but attributed their newfound difference amounting on Jan. 6 to a group of lawyers who were influencing Trump’s decisions.
He said they soon after reconciled but since have gone their separate ways.
“To be honest with you, I always thought he would come around to see that he had been misinformed,” Pence said about his validation of the 2020 election and Trump’s fueling of the Jan. 6 riot. “…But that was not to be; as time went on, he returned to much of the rhetoric that preceded that way.”
Pence defined himself as a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, exactly in that order. He referenced his Christian faith multiple times, saying it has guided him through every action.
