Ex-US VP Pence withdraws from the race

He had struggled with low polling and alienated pro-Trump Republicans in the Republican Party.

Mike Pence, a former US vice president, has withdrawn from the 2024 presidential race. Pence, who stands for the establishment part of the Republican Party, was unable to win over sceptic conservative supporters with his fervent support for Ukraine.

During a speech on Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas, he declared his retirement from the race.

After spending the last six months around the nation, I’ve come to the conclusion that now is not the right moment for me. Therefore, with great prayer and thought, I have chosen to halt my presidential campaign as of right now,” Pence stated.

Pence cut ties with his former employer, Donald Trump, during the Capitol Hill incident on January 6, 2021. Pence, who had been a devoted supporter of Trump but was now one of his most outspoken critics, declared his candidature in June with the goal of bringing the party back to a “commonsense conservative agenda.”

This strategy, for Pence, means raising money for the Ukrainian conflict while cutting domestic spending. Republican voters were turned off by Pence’s neoconservative stance, which is why Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News personality, criticised Pence at a conservative convention in July.

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Carlson apologised to Vice President Pence for his remarks, which implied that President Joe Biden hadn’t dispatched sufficient military equipment to Kiev. Are you upset that there aren’t enough American tanks with the Ukrainians? Your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people have never heard of, don’t have enough tanks, despite the fact that our economy has collapsed, the suicide rate has skyrocketed, public disorder and filth, and criminality have all increased dramatically.

Pence appeared to respond that these American issues were “not my concern” as the audience clapped for Carlson.

In contrast, Trump has made it clear time and time again that he will stop providing military support to Ukraine and compel Vladimir Zelensky to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia. Republican voters appear to favour Trump’s positions on these and other topics significantly more than Pence’s; a compilation of recent polling, released on Saturday by FiveThirtyEight, revealed that 57% of respondents supported Trump for the GOP nomination, while just 3.8% supported Pence.

Following a series of public appearances that failed to garner more than a handful of fans, Politico last week called his campaign “dwindling” and “sad.” According to Pence’s most recent campaign papers, his team was $621,000 in debt and had only $1.18 million in funding remaining, according to the Associated Press.

Pence declared on Saturday that he was leaving the party, but he would still be involved in politics and “never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land.”