Former Vice President Mike Pence formally launched his presidential campaign with direct and indirect jabs at both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump.
Pence released a video titled “Best Days” on June 7 – his 64th birthday – that paints a grim picture of the state of the country and the world.
“Today, our country is in a lot of trouble,” said Pence. “President Joe Biden and the radical left have weakened America at home and abroad. The American dream is being crushed under runaway inflation. Wages are dropping. Recession is looming.”
“Our Southern border is under siege and the enemies of freedom are on a march around the world,” he continued over images of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “And worse still, timeless American values are under assault as never before.”
“We’re better than this,” said Pence. “We can turn this country around. But different times call for different leadership.”
He said the Republican party and the country “need a leader that will appeal, as [President Abraham Lincoln] said, ‘To the better angels of our nature.’”
The former one-term Indiana governor described himself as a “son of the heartland, grandson of an Irish immigrant” and that his family has been “blessed beyond measure with opportunities to serve this nation.”
“Every time our nation has produced leadership that has called upon this country to do hard things, the American people have risen to the challenge – and we will again,” said Pence. “We just need government as good as our people to do it.”
The outspoken Christian, who is widely believed to be a favored candidate among evangelical voters, said “God is not done with America yet.”
President Joe Biden also opted to virtually launch his presidential campaign with a prerecorded video on April 25. He warned that “MAGA extremists are lining up” to take “bedrock freedoms” away from Americans by cutting taxes for the wealthy, “dictating” health care, and “banning books” as somber music played.
“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are,” said Biden.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is considered Trump’s most formidable challenger in the Republican primary, opted to launch his campaign virtually on Twitter. The May 24 Twitter space has several technical issues after 580,000 users joined to listen to the announcement, which was hosted by venture capitalist David Sacks.
“I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said in a second Twitter space set up in response to the persistent technology issues and delays.
Pence’s launch speech shared similar concerns to those expressed by DeSantis.
“We know our country’s going in the wrong direction — we see it with our eyes, and we feel it in our bones,” said DeSantis, per TechCrunch. “Our southern borders collapse, drugs are pouring into the country, our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime, the federal government’s making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle class lifestyle, and our president, [who] lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation’s challenges and he takes his cues from the woke mob.”
Pence is currently polling in third place among Republican presidential candidates. He has 5.4% support, behind DeSantis’s 21.3% and Trump’s 53.7%.
