Former Vice President
Mike Pence
Mike Pence’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination never gained much traction, so it wasn’t a big surprise when the former vice president decided to end his longshot bid Oct 28. The news came two days after the New York Times reported Pence had not qualified for the third Republican presidential debate, based on his poll rankings and fundraising. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has ended his presidential campaign, was still actively for the GOP nomination for president during a recent visit to the offices of NH Business Review to appear on our Down to Business Podcast: Primary Edition with Publisher Ernesto Burden and Managing Editor Amanda Andrews. Here are selected highlights from the interview, edited for space and clarity by Editor Mike Cote. Listen to the complete interview at nhbr.com.
Q. President Biden is being blamed for the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel by Republicans who tie it to the $6 billion the U.S. paid to Iran. You cast blame toward your GOP rivals Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis saying they have signaled, “a retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.” How would you reclaim that global leadership?
A. What’s unfolding in Israel today is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions, the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. To see the murder of men, women and children, people taken hostage, including not only Israeli but Americans. It’s just important first and foremost that we speak with one voice in this nation and say, America stands with Israel, we stand with Israel today, we stand with Israel tomorrow, and that we will stand with Israel as Israel does the hard work necessary to crush Hamas once and for all.
But I do believe this is what happens when you have an American president like Joe Biden, who’s projected weakness on the world stage. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the kowtowing to the mullahs in Tehran for the last two years, culminating in a $6 billion ransom payment, I believe has emboldened the enemies of freedom in this moment and put our allies at risk. Weakness arouses evil.
I believe the weakness of this administration has shown has resulted in not only the violence that’s unfolding in Israel, but to no less extent, the unconscionable Russian invasion in Ukraine. I also do believe that the leading voices in the Republican primary, who have been calling into question our commitment to support the Ukrainian military in their fight against that Russian invasion, have also been stepping away from America’s role as leader of the free world.
Q. How did the events of Jan. 6, 2021, affect your decision to run for president?
A. I’ll always be proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, but Jan. 6 at the end was a tragic day. I had no right to overturn the election, and President Trump was wrong to ask me to use my role as the presiding officer of a joint session of Congress to reject a return of votes. No vice president in American history had ever asserted that role or ever should. The presidency belongs to the American people. And I know by God’s grace I did my duty that day. But in the way that it shaped my candidacy, I will tell you that I really do believe no one who ever puts himself over the Constitution should ever be president of the United States, and no one who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should ever be president of the United States again.
Q. What were the most important achievements of the Trump-Pence administration?
A. Providing for the common defense is always the first priority of the national government. And then creating the conditions for prosperity in and job creation and growth comes after that. And I would tell you that I was not only vice president and a governor and a congressman, but I’m the father of a captain in the Marine Corps. I’m the father-in-law of a lieutenant in the Navy. I’m proud of what we did to build up our military. And we have the strongest military in the world today.
But unless we make a commitment to spend a minimum of 3.5% of our GDP on military, China will overtake the United States in military strength in a matter of just a few short years. We have got to continue to build a military fitted to the challenges of the 21st century and on job creation.
I labored hard on Capitol Hill to get that tax cut passed at the end of 2017. Seven million jobs created. Wages are rising at their fastest pace in 10 years. I want to make those Trump-Pence tax cuts permanent.
Q. New Hampshire has one of the lowest unemployment rates and faces a shortage of workers. What are some things that you would do on a federal level?
A. Gov. Chris Sununu has done a phenomenal job proving that you can cut taxes and balance budgets and make investments in ways that improve the quality of life in the state. My hat’s off to Gov. Sununu and to the leadership of your state Legislature that’s brought those advances about. As I travel around New Hampshire, I hear about labor shortages. I hear the impact that has on housing shortages across New Hampshire.
And I think there’s really two keys to that. Number one, I think we’ve got to stop paying able-bodied people not to work. It’s a hard truth in our system today that we’ve got an awful lot of people that are fully capable of working, have no dependents in their home and yet are drawing a variety of forms of welfare that pay them better than they conclude they can be paid in the workplace. That’s got to end. Let me be clear: If you have dependent children or dependents in your household, we’re here to help. But if you’re an able-bodied adult without dependents, doggone it, we need you in the workforce.
The second one is, we’ve got a crisis at our southern border right now. We got an avalanche of more than 6 million people coming into our country because of the open-borders policies of the Biden administration. If I’m president, we’ll secure the border just as we did before. But I think we’ve got to fix this broken immigration system. We ought to have an immigration system that says, what are the needs in the economy in the United States? And then have an immigration system that opens the way for people that want to want to fill jobs that Americans are not there to fill, to come into our economy and to work.
Q. Home prices are rising, inventory is low and interest rates are high. As president, how you would address this?
A. It’s all derivative of the failed policies of the Biden administration. Mortgage rates today in America are at nearly a 25-year high, and we are pricing out of the American dream of being able to buy a home and get your life started. I think we got to get inflation under control. I think that begins by turning off the spigot of runaway spending.
Q. How would your energy policy curb high energy costs?
A. I think that we can get back to energy independence more quickly than you could imagine. Joe Biden, when he was running for president, said that he was going to “end fossil fuels.” And he’s been working to do that from day one. They essentially launched a war on energy, shut down the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. They’ve off-lined natural gas development. And in millions of acres around the country, they’ve off-lined oil development in the continental United States as well as in Alaska. And the American people have been paying the price.
