Pence shows distance from Trump with speech hinting at 2024 run

Bloomberg

Mike Pence is getting a one-day head start on rallying the Republican base in Washington before his former boss, Donald Trump, returns to the US capital for the first time since the violent end to his presidency.
The timing of the speeches —Pence on Monday, Trump on Tuesday —is shaping up as a contest between the two men. Both have increasingly hinted at 2024 White House runs, potentially setting them on a collision course on the primary trail and in debates.
They’re taking the stage at separate venues just days after the latest US House committee hearing on the storming of the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which portrayed Trump as watching the insurrection on television as a mob of his supporters searched for Pence, chanting death threats.
A Pence adviser said the former vice president’s speech at the Heritage Foundation would show how conservatives could focus on policies to put the US on the path to a better future, and that Americans want a leader with plans for that future, rather than unhealthy fixations on the past — a dig at Trump’s obsession with re-litigating the 2020 presidential election that he lost.
Trump plans to deliver the keynote address Tuesday at the “America First Agenda Summit,” hosted by a nonprofit group formed by several of his former cabinet officers and White House aides.
Pence’s speech was scheduled before the July 14 announcement that Trump would headline the America First event, according to his advisers.
While Pence hasn’t been afraid to challenge his former boss and sometimes is criticized by Trump loyalists for refusing to reject Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, he has been careful to praise Trump’s policies, often referring to the achievements of the “Trump-Pence administration.”
Before Pence rejected Trump’s demand to help undo his defeat to Joe Biden, their relationship was defined by the vice president’s unbounded loyalty and deference toward the president. It has since spiraled, with Trump still insinuating some 18 months later that Pence wilted under pressure when he refused to overturn the election results.
But Pence has countered in both direct and subtle ways.
On Friday, he campaigned in Arizona for his favored gubernatorial candidate, Karrin Taylor Robson, as Trump was in the state to stump for Kari Lake, whom he has endorsed.