Donald Trump returns to Washington for 1st time since leaving office for speech
Global News
Former President Donald Trump will be delivering a speech hours after his former Vice President Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, called on the party to stop looking backward.
Former President Donald Trump is returning to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since leaving office and will be delivering a speech hours after his former Vice President Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, called on the party to stop looking backward.
Trump’s appearance in the nation’s capital, his first trip back since Jan. 20, 2021, when President Joe Biden was sworn into office, comes as some who are mulling runs have been increasingly willing to challenge him directly. They include Pence, who on Tuesday outlined his “Freedom Agenda ” not far from where Trump is to speak before an allied think tank that has been crafting an agenda for a possible second term.
While Trump still often complains about the election he claims was stolen from him a year and a half ago, Pence said, “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but elections are about the future.”
“I believe conservatives must focus on the future to win back America,” Pence said before the Young America’s Foundation, a student conservative group. “We can’t afford to take our eyes off the road in front of us because what’s at stake is the very survival of our way of life.”
The former White House partners are making dueling appearances again after campaigning for rival candidates in Arizona on Friday. And they come amid news that Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, has testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Short was at the Capitol that day as Pence fled an angry mob of rioters who called for his hanging after Trump wrongly insisted Pence had the power to overturn the election results.
Asked about the growing divide between Trump and himself, a man who was once the former president’s most loyal sidekick, Pence said the two don’t differ on issues.
“But we may differ on focus. I truly do believe that elections are about the future and that it’s absolutely essential at a time when so many Americans are hurting and so many families are struggling, that we don’t give way to the temptation to look back,” he said.