Former VP Pence makes first public remarks, testing waters for 2024 run

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Making it clear that South Carolina will not be treated as a flyover state for Mike Pence, the former vice president with possible 2024 presidential aspirations told a room of hundreds of Christian conservatives that winning back the White House in four years will start here.

The time has come to “stand up and unite behind a positive agenda” and “win back America,” Pence said in Columbia at a fundraising dinner.

In his first public remarks since leaving

Washington — a departure marred by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot when a proTrump mob stormed the federal building, sending Pence and members of Congress to hide and barricade themselves — Pence took aim at the Biden administration. He said it’s poised to derail the success the Trump administration made over the past four years.

“In 2020, the American people did not vote for that agenda,” he said. “They did not vote for the agenda of the radical left.”

Thursday’s event was hosted by Palmetto Family, a conservative nonprofit founded to “persuasively present biblical principles” that often lobbies the state Legislature as it did this year when it passed a restrictive abortion ban, now challenged in court.

Pence did not mention in his roughly 30-minute speech what he will do in four years, though he hinted he will have more to say in the coming months. He also did not talk in-depth about his relationship with former President Donald Trump, which appeared fractured after the Capitol riots but has since been mended, CNN reports.

Instead, Pence touted the successes of the Trump administration, from getting three COVID19 vaccines off the ground to tackling international terrorism.

Pence, 61, has kept a relatively low public profile since leaving Washington, signing a book deal and working at conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and Young America’s Foundation.

The last year did pose challenges, Pence said, listing the global COVID19 pandemic, civil unrest after the deaths of Black men and women, particularly at the hands of police, the divisive election, the “tragedy at our nation’s Capitol” and the new administration.

“But through it all, I want you to know that I have hope,” Pence said.