GOP needs 'a lot of soul-searching' as policies threaten party: ex-Trump VP

President Donald J. Trump listens as Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks during a press conference Friday, June 5, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Few have seen President Donald Trump as up close as his former Vice President Mike Pence. Not only did he serve under Trump during his first administration, but the Commander in Chief voiced support for January 6 rioters who wanted to “hang” Pence in the final days of the term. While Pence has been fairly quiet about his former boss since leaving office, in a Tuesday appearance on the conservative outlet Breitbart, he declared that the Republican party has some “soul searching” to do on the question of Trump’s leadership.

In the runup to the 2028 presidential election, said Pence, "I think Republicans ought to do a lot of soul-searching. Republicans face a new time of choosing — whether we're going to stay on the path of the traditional conservative principles that have always defined our party for the last half century, or whether we're going to follow the siren song of populism.”

This is in reference to the fact that during his campaigns, Trump leveraged populist promises rather than an appeal to conservatism, which not only garnered him broad support among Republicans and many independents, but having won twice, allowed him to reshape the party in his image. While many on the right have been careful to avoid criticizing the president, now Pence is pointing out where Trump’s actions are misaligned with the GOP’s typical values.

"We've always been a party committed to low taxes, including low tariffs and free trade,” noted Pence. “Now, as we witnessed, the president imposed unilateral tariffs on friend and foe alike until the Supreme Court stepped in and used the Constitution to turn him back. I know Donald Trump better than his most ardent defenders know him. Okay? And he is not ideological. In fact, he often bristled when I would refer to policies as conservative. He would, with a wave of a hand, say to me, 'That's just common sense.' But now, as you see the stops and starts on our support for Ukraine under this administration, nationalizing American businesses, unilateral tariffs, price controls on everything from pharmaceuticals to credit cards…” As Pence explained, these actions are in direct opposition to normal Republican thinking.

Now with the GOP projected to take major losses in the midterms, likely losing the party’s majority in the House and perhaps even threatening its control of the Senate, and with the 2028 presidential election just around the corner, Pence wants his fellow Republicans to consider the path Trump has set them on.

“All of this should create a backdrop for a very healthy debate over whether we're going to stay moving in the direction on these issues that President Trump has led our party,” said Pence, “or whether we're going to re-ground ourselves back to those timeless conservative principles, I think, that have always made not only our party successful but, more importantly, have made America strong and prosperous and free."

While Pence has normally been careful to avoid reproaching Trump directly, this isn’t the first time he’s spoken against his former boss. During Trump’s 2024 campaign, Pence warned that the president had “demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution.” He went on to assert that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again.” More recently, he slammed Trump’s “offensive” AI-generated image of himself as Jesus while criticizing the president’s economic policies.

His latest criticisms of Trump come as polling shows the president’s approval has plunged to new historic lows amidst soaring inflation that economists attribute to a combination of tariffs and the war with Iran.

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