Mike Pence Suspends Presidential Bid: ‘This Is Not My Time’
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/mike-pence-suspends-presidential-bid-this-is-not-my-time-5518770
Former Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that he has ended his bid for the White House.
He came to the conclusion after traveling across the country in the last six months, Mr. Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas.
“Last June, I announced my intention to seek the Republican nomination for president of the United States because I believe this country is in a lot of trouble,” he said on the stage. “[After] traveling across the country over the past six months … it’s become clear to me: this is not my time.”
“So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president, effective today,” Mr. Pence added. “I’m leaving this campaign, but let me promise you I will never leave the fight for conservative values, and I will never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land.”
Mr. Pence’s announcement came after disappointing poll results, and it makes him the first major candidate to leave a race that has been dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from August found that the majority of U.S. adults, 57 percent, viewed Mr. Pence negatively, with only 28 percent having a positive view.
The decision, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses that he had staked his campaign on, saves Mr. Pence from the embarrassment of failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate, on Nov. 8 in Miami.
Christie: GOP Needs to ‘Get Rid of Donald Trump’ — He Can’t Beat Biden from a Courtroom
Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believed the Republican Party needed to “get rid” of former President Donald Trump.
Christie said, “I wouldn’t count on anything from Donald Trump, except one thing you can always count on, he will lie to get himself ahead and he will always put himself first before any interest and certainly before our country and Israel.”
He continued, “Donald Trump never finishes what he started. He said he was going to build a wall across the entire border of the United States and Mexico, he built 52 miles of new wall in four years. He said he was going to balance the budget, he added $7.8 trillion in debt. In the same way he said he was going to bring peace to the Middle East, he did not do that, because he didn’t finish the job.”
He added, “Look, if he couldn’t do it in the first term with good people around him, imagine what he would do in a second term with the clowns and rogues gallery he would have around him in his second Trump term, because that’s the only people that would actually work with him. We need to keep focused on one thing, Donald Trump is not going to be able to beat Joe Biden from a courtroom in Washington, D.C., while he’s fighting his indictment on the January 6th case. And let me tell you, that indictment got much tougher for him to beat when his own chief of staff has now accepted immunity and will testify against him about the lies he has told in the aftermath of January 6th, and what he was told by his own people about the fact that he had lost the election.”
Christie concluded, “This is going to be a big problem for our party and we need to cut it off at the pass, get rid of Donald Trump and move on to honest, strong leadership that will tell the truth.”