Pence won't commit to supporting Trump if he's the nominee

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Former Vice President Mike Pence still won't say whether he's running for president next year, and he won't speak ill of his ex-boss, former President Donald Trump. But in an interview with CBS News in Michigan on Wednesday, he also twice declined to commit to supporting Trump if he is the Republican presidential nominee.

Instead, Pence said he believes voters in 2024 will choose "wisely again," as they did in 2016. But said he thinks "different times call for different leadership."

"I'm very confident we'll have better choices come 2024," he told CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns. "And I'm confident our standard-bearer will win the day in November of that year."

But if Pence does run, he's offering a vision of conservative principles and Trump-era like policies — without the Trump-era personality. The former vice president said his message in a speech to young voters in Michigan Wednesday was to "resist the temptation of focusing on personalities or embracing a populism unmoored to conservative principle."

"You know, I joined the Republican Party in the days of Ronald Reagan, and I really believe that the conservative movement has always been animated by ideas," Pence said. "We've had big personalities, from Reagan all the way to Donald Trump. But I think it's the ideas — of commitment to a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, limited government and traditional values — that really I think created this movement in many ways and I think they still sustain it."

Pence said recently that he would make a decision on whether to run by "this spring," which now is just weeks away. On Wednesday, Pence said he and his wife, Karen, would continue to listen to the American people and should have a clear sense of whether he should run by this spring.

Pence told CBS News he and Karen are "continuing to give prayerful consideration to entering the race."

Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence offered his most forceful rebuke to date of his one-time boss Donald Trump on Saturday, saying that history will hold him accountable for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"President Trump was wrong," Pence told assembled journalists and their guests at the Gridiron dinner, an annual white-tie event in Washington, D.C.

"I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable."

"What happened that day was a disgrace," he said. "And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day."

While he is certainly more stable, Pence would be no better than Trump due to his theocratic bent.

I have a bigger problem with his religious bent.

He didn't try to throw him under a bus... he tried to have him lynched!