Mike Pence calls reports of 2020 run ‘disgraceful’
Vice president assails newspaper’s story
Vice President Pence is pushing back against The New York
Times’ suggestion that he’s among Republicans running a “shadow campaign for 2020,” calling the story “disgraceful and offensive to me, my family, and our entire team.”
“The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this administration,” he wrote in a statement Sunday. “Whatever fake news may come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the President’s agenda and see him re-elected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise is both laughable and absurd.”
The story says Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke he’s “acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field” for 2020. It also highlights trips to Iowa by GOP Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ben Sasse of Nebraska and a possible return trip to New Hampshire by former presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has not ruled out another presidential bid. It says “would-be candidates” are cultivating prominent donors and courting prominent conservative interest groups.
The story says the “sheer disarray” surrounding Trump’s presidency has prompted Republican officeholders “to take political steps unheard-of so soon into a new administration.”
“Mr. Pence is methodically establishing his own identity and bestowing personal touches on people who could pay dividends in the future,” the report says. “He not only spoke in June at one of the most important yearly events for Iowa Republicans, Senator Joni Ernst’s pig roast, but he also held a separate, more intimate gathering for donors afterward.”
Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that Trump “plans on being a two-term president.” She said she has “zero concern” that Pence is setting up a shadow campaign, calling the allegation “complete fiction.”
“It is absolutely true that the vice president is getting ready for 2020 — for re-election as vice president,” she said.