'There’s no one else': Ex-Pence staffer speaking at DNC urges him to publicly oppose Trump

21 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump's selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his 2024 running mate served as a reminder to many of what happened to former Vice President Mike Pence, who went from being Trump's right-hand man to MAGA's public enemy #1. Now, one of his former staffers is calling on him to campaign against the ex-president.

In a recent interview with CNN, former Pence advisor Olivia Troye – who is speaking on night three of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago tonight — urged Pence to speak out against his old boss ahead of the 2024 election. She told host Jim Acosta that given how Pence was treated by the MAGA movement on January 6, it would be "amazing" if the former Indiana governor was at the DNC this week with other anti-Trump Republicans.

"There's no one else that has lived what Donald Trump and the danger that he is, that he poses, more than him," Troye said. "I have seen him in varied moments of crisis where he had to navigate how we were going to handle Donald Trump and how we were gonna not let him derail things that we were trying to do when we were trying to help the American people, especially during times of Covid."

"Again, in mass shooting situations that were actually hate crimes and domestic terrorism ... how do you message in a moment that requires true leadership to the American people, while also countering the fact that it's the person sitting in the Oval Office at the time who's actually driving some of the hate crimes and some of these incidents that are happening in the country by the rhetoric that he's using?" She added.

Pence famously declined Trump's request to interfere with Congress' certification of the Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021. It was later revealed that Pence sought the counsel of former Vice President Dan Quayle on how he could legally do so, only for Quayle to tell him that the role of the vice president in the Congressional certification of election results was only ceremonial and that he had no Constitutional authority to declare any result invalid.

Still, as a violent mob of Trump supporters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol and chanted "hang Mike Pence," Trump angrily tweeted that Pence lacked the "courage" to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The outgoing vice president was rushed out of the Capitol by his Secret Service detail while the mob that erected a gallows outside of the capitol roamed the halls of Congress searching for Pence.

The events of January 6 were likely the chief contributor to Pence's decision to not endorse Trump when Fox News host Martha McCallum asked him about it in March. He has so far not endorsed the Democratic ticket, and has said he plans to stay out of the 2024 election entirely.

Earlier this month, he condemned the GOP's "growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage." And while he said he wouldn't be endorsing President Joe Biden, he specified in an interview with far-right activist Eric Erickson that he "could never vote for Kamala Harris for President of the United States."

Troye will be speaking Wednesday night at the United Center in downtown Chicago, along with former Georgia Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. Both anti-Trump Republicans will be sharing the main stage with prominent Democrats like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former President Bill Clinton and Minnesota Governor (and 2024 vice presidential nominee) Tim Walz.

Watch Troye's segment on CNN below, or by clicking this link.

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