Mike Pence will decide on 2024 presidential run by June

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday said he will decide no later than June whether to run for the White House in 2024.

“I think if we have an announcement to make, it’ll be well before late June,” Pence said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“Anyone that would be serious about seeking the Republican nomination would need to be in this contest by June. If we have an announcement to make, it will be well before then,” he said.

Pence served as ex-President Donald Trump’s vice president and would have to topple Trump to win the Republican Party nomination — an apparently formidable task by today’s poll standards.

The two had a falling out when Pence voted to certify Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 elections, which Trump claimed without evidence were rigged.

Trump’s supporters chanted for Pence to be hanged when they stormed the US Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

Pence has defended his actions as legal and appropriate and slammed Trump as “reckless.

 “President Trump was wrong. 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,” Pence said in March.

Meanwhile, Pence said he will not appeal a judge’s order requiring him to testify before a federal grand jury weighing potential criminal charges against Trump related to the Jan. 6 riot.

But the former vice president also slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case as “political prosecution.”

Pence, a former Indiana governor and congressman, has been preparing for a presidential run for months.

He has put together a political staff, published a memoir and stumped in early-voting states.

On Saturday, he was in Iowa, the first voting state for the GOP nomination, attending an event sponsored by the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Asked which way he was leaning on a run, Pence said at the time, “Well, I’m here in Iowa.”

Trump has a commanding lead in the primary polls, with Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to declare his expected candidacy, coming in second. Many Republicans have indicated they want to move beyond Trump, who is unpopular in general-election surveys. 

Pence is tied for third place, with 4%, in most polls with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador to the US under Trump. She announced her bid for president in February.

Other Republican candidates include South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said the GOP has to move beyond Trump.