Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that Donald Trump’s second administration has departed from the conservative principles that shaped the Republican Party for decades. In an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press, Pence said the White House is no longer committed to the agenda that began with Ronald Reagan and was built around American leadership, limited government, free market economics and the right to life.
Pence’s comments land now because they go straight at the direction of Trump’s second term while Republicans are already fighting over what the party should stand for in the next election cycle. He said he still believes GOP voters share those core beliefs and argued that if Republicans “this fall and in 2028” defend those principles, those voters will rally to their cause.
He went further, saying the overwhelming majority of people in the MAGA movement still believe America is the leader of the free world, support less government, lower taxes and fewer regulations, and would reject ideas such as nationalization of businesses, price controls and broad-based tariffs. Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president from 2017 to 2021, framed the split as a question of whether the administration has kept faith with the conservative movement that carried the party for a generation.
The sharpest break came on abortion and the Justice Department’s anti-weaponization fund. Pence said the administration is trying to push the right to life into a state-only issue and accused it of having a pro-abortion secretary of Health and Human Services who has done nothing to curb access to the abortion pill. He also called the nearly $1.8 billion fund, which could pay people who say they were unfairly targeted by the federal government, a bad idea from the start and urged the administration to drop it.
That criticism carried extra weight because Pence called the idea that Jan. 6 rioters charged and sentenced for their role in the Capitol attack could receive payouts from the Justice Department deeply offensive. Pence was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the 2020 election results when the riot broke out, and Trump later pardoned roughly 1,500 people charged for their actions that day after beginning his second term.
Pence’s public break does not amount to a full rejection of Trump’s base. He said Republicans have lost their way but Democrats have lost their mind, and predicted the party could still hold the Senate and has a real shot to keep the House because of Democratic extremism. Even so, his argument makes clear that the fight inside the GOP is no longer just about personalities. It is about whether Trump’s movement still belongs to the conservative playbook Pence says many of its voters still accept.
