Former President Donald Trump won’t like this one bit.
It appears almost certain that Mike Pence is preparing to challenge his former boss in the upcoming 2024 Republican presidential primary — and that’s not all.
Pence directly challenged Trump as the Republican Party kingmaker over the weekend.
Trump has repeatedly hinted he’s planning to run for president again in 2024 and has reportedly warned off would-be Republican competitors that are considering challenging him for the position.
Pence ignored that warning over the weekend when he announced an upcoming fundraising trip on December 8 to the critical early primary state of New Hampshire.
Pence will keynote a New Hampshire Senate Republicans fundraising event in Manchester next month, Fox News reported on Sunday.
That’s not all he has planned for his trip to the Granite State.
“Pence is also headlining a Heritage Action event against tax increases while in New Hampshire. The former vice president joined the Heritage Foundation, one of the oldest and most influential think tanks in the conservative movement, as a distinguished visiting fellow earlier this year,” Fox News reported.
It’s the former vice president’s second trip to New Hampshire in the past year.
In June, Pence was invited to the Hillsborough County Republican Party’s Lincoln-Reagan dinner as the keynote speaker and was warmly received by the conservative powerbrokers there.
“It’s great to have former Vice President Mike Pence back in the Granite State and we’re thrilled that he is helping the New Hampshire Senate Republicans’ efforts to maintain the majority we won in a hard fought 2020 campaign,” Chuck Morse, the New Hampshire state senate president, told local news station WMUR in a statement Sunday.
“It will be refreshing to hear former Vice President Mike Pence’s perspective and insight into what needs to be done to get our nation headed back in the right direction,” Morse said.
These trips to New Hampshire are not a coincidence. Pence has also made repeated trips to Iowa, the first state in the 2024 primary race this year, as well as stops in early voting states Nevada and South Carolina.
Pence has also made a more direct challenge to Trump as a would-be kingmaker for the party this week when he told the Republican Governors Association that he would back establishment GOP governors over any Trump-backed challengers over the weekend.
“I want to be clear,” he promised. “I’m going to be supporting incumbent Republican governors.”
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The Horn editorial team