Mike Pence launches historic 2024 battle with old boss Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence launched his presidential campaign on his 64th birthday Wednesday — making him the first VP in modern US history to directly challenge his old boss.

“Different times call for different leadership,” Pence said in a launch video a little more than two years after leaving office with former President Donald Trump.

Pence did not directly mention Trump, 76, who remains ahead in polls to win the Republican nomination despite gains from main challenger Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Pence’s own dismal polling remains in single digits.

Instead, he blamed President Biden “and the radical left” for having “weakened America at home and abroad.”

“The American dream is being crushed,” he said, decrying “runaway inflation” and “under siege” borders.

“Timeless American values are under assault as never before. We’re better than this,” he said, saying that “we could turn this country around.”

“It’d be easy to stay on the sidelines. But that’s not how I was raised.

“That’s why today, before God and my family, I’m announcing I’m running for president of the United States.”

In the nearly 3-minute video, Pence likened his aims to those of late President Ronald Reagan, who “called on Americans to renew optimism and believe in themselves again, to believe in each other.

“Every time our nation has produced leadership that has called upon this country to do hard things, the American people have always risen to the challenge. And we will again. 

“We just need government is good as our people to do it,” he said.

“God has not done with America yet, and together we can bring this country back. And the best days for the greatest nation on Earth are yet to come,” he said.

He enters the race as among the best-known Republican candidates in a crowded GOP field that also includes former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

However, his entry is historic, with historians saying there are no direct parallels for a once-loyal VP to run against the president he served under.

Joel K. Goldstein, a specialist on the vice presidency at the St. Louis University School of Law, compared it to “a 234-year flood.”

 “It doesn’t happen,” he told The New York Times. 

Pence was loyal until leaving office on Jan. 6, 2021, accusing Trump of putting his life in danger by blaming him for not trying to overturn the election, forcing him to flee the Capitol as it was being stormed.

Many pundits say that masses of voters are put off by his ties with Trump — while the latter’s supporters are equally turned off by his disloyalty.

That appears to be reflected in his dismal poll numbers at just 5% and trailing Trump by 44 points, according to one this month by Reuters/Ipsos.

A CNN poll conducted last month found 45% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they would not support Pence under any circumstance. Only 16% said the same about Trump.

His favorability has also slipped in Iowa, where he is staking his presidential hopes.

Shortly after leaving office, 86% of Iowa Republicans said they had a favorable view of Pence in The Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

But the Register’s March Iowa Poll showed that figure had dropped to 66%. The poll also found Pence with higher unfavorable ratings than all of the other candidates it asked about, including Trump and DeSantis.

And just 58% of Iowa evangelicals said they had favorable feelings toward Pence — a particularly disappointing number, given his campaign’s strategy to push his Christian values.

With Post wires