Former Vice President Mike Pence said this week that he will be “staying out of the presidential campaign.”

“For my part, I’m staying out of the presidential campaign,” Pence said at “The Gathering,” an annual multiday event organized by conservative Christian radio host Erick Erickson.

“The fact that we have a platform that removed 50 years of pro-life language, made no mention of the national debt, advocated massive taxes at our borders. And abandoning commitments that we have to allies around the world are deeply troubling to me and deeply disappointing,” Pence said of the Republican platform.

Pence noted that Kamala Harris “owns the record of the Biden-Harris administration and all its failures.” 

In March 2024, Pence said he would not be endorsing Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News Channel at the time.

Pence ran against Trump for their party’s nomination but suspended his campaign before voting began last year.

“During my presidential campaign I made it clear that there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues, and not just our difference on my Constitutional duties that I exercised on January the 6th,” Pence continued.

“I mean, as I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life,” he said.

“In each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. And that’s why I cannot in conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.”