Trump’s former vice president also called the administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund “deeply offensive.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s second administration has “departed” from traditional conservative principles.
Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president from 2017 to 2021, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that the administration is no longer committed to “the conservative agenda that has defined the Republican Party since the days of Ronald Reagan, and before that an agenda of American leadership, limited government, free market economics, the right to life.”
Trump says all the quiet things out loud. The things you’d hear at the country club and black tie events. Things that Mike Pence thinks but won’t say out loud, even though most of his conservative brethren have been since Trump made it acceptable.
He’s such a fascinating paradox. He’s pure id, so he lies constantly, but he also constantly blurts out the truth because he’s too stupid to know when it’s a smart time to lie and when it’s a smart time to shut the fuck up.
He’s banking on, and probably mildly correct, that there’s voters who want to go back to that era and like MTG, want to distance themselves from Trump and his methods but not the power/results. He’ll never get anywhere though. They’ve sold their souls 3x to support Trump and will again rather than risk splitting conservatism and creating openings for opposition to win.
Trump brand conservatism appeals to everyone from Boomers yearning for a return to the privilege of mid-century America to Gen Zs who think mid-century America was the Golden Age it’s said to be and that they’ve been denied. Nobody wants a polite, stick-up-his-ass, Victorian sensibility patriarch that has the personality of wet cardboard.