EXCLUSIVE: Former Vice President Mike Pence said he is “well-known,” but “not well-known,” telling Fox News Digital this week that he will hit the campaign trail in hopes that voters will see him GOP “in a new light” — one that shows that he is “the most qualified, the most tested and the most proven conservative of the race” who can get the country “back.”
“We need new leadership in the Republican Party. We need an American leader who, on day one, can advance a proven conservative agenda and understands how to mobilize Washington and how to get our country back,” Pence told Fox. News Digital. “And if people are looking for that, I’m your guy.”
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Pence said most Americans know him as “Vice President Mike Pence.”
“But they don’t know that I was a leading House conservative for 12 years; that I fought big spenders in our own party; that, when I chaired the Republican Study Committee, I actually led the fight against Wall Street bailout in 2008,” he said. “They don’t know that I’m a conservative governor who fought with leaders in my own party to pass the largest tax cut in Indiana history and expand the largest school choice program in the nation and achieved the work record before being elected vice president.”
Pence said his “reason for running” for the White House this cycle is because he believes “the country is in a lot of trouble.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, 2024 Republican presidential candidate, speaks to members of the media during the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 11, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad. American families are struggling in this economy. The enemies of freedom are on the march around the world,” he said.
“I want the American people to know that, based on my lifetime of service, that we will be ready on day one to implement the conservative principles of the agenda that will make this country safe and prosperous and free,” Pence said.
The former vice president touted the Trump administration’s record, saying Republican voters appreciate “everything President Trump has accomplished during our time in the White House.”
“But people recognize that different times call for different leadership,” Pence said. “I very much welcome the opportunity to step beyond the role I take very seriously as vice president of the United States and let people, hopefully, hear my heart and mind, as the conservative leader that I have always been.”
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Pence explained that as vice president, he “didn’t want the story to be about me.”
Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Clinton County GOP Hog Roast in Clinton, Iowa, on July 30, 2023. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“I’m there to inform, to be ready, to serve and support the president and move the agenda that he was elected to advance,” he said. “I’m proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration — I was proud to defend our record [during the debate] on stage, but I really welcome the opportunity for people to see me in a fresh light and hear my own passion and my leadership.”
Pence said he hopes his performance in the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee this week is “the beginning of a new look at our candidacy for many Americans.”
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“I’m grateful for the opportunity to talk about the issues, but I’m just grateful for people to understand, my leadership style, and my willingness to fight for what I believe in. And what I believe in is the conservative. agenda.” he said. “You know, it was the Reagan conservative agenda that brought me to the Republican Party – a commitment to a strong national defense, American leadership in the world, limited government, free market economics, traditional values and the right to life. , and I still do. believe that, while there are other voices in this campaign, there are other priorities that want to take our party in the direction of populism that is not tied to conservative principles.”
