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Mike Pence quote about not voting for Donald Trump is fabricated | Fact check

Joedy McCreary
USA TODAY

The claim: Mike Pence said he 'will not be voting for Donald Trump' in 2024

A March 16 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows former Vice President Mike Pence glaring at former President Donald Trump from behind along with a supposed statement from Pence.

"I will not be voting for Donald Trump in 2024,” the post quotes the former vice president as saying in March 2024.

It was shared more than 200 times in three days.

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Our rating: False

That’s not what Pence said. What the former vice president announced in March is that he would not endorse Trump for president. Pence has not stated whether or not he will vote for him. The only candidate he said he will not choose is President Joe Biden.

Pence statement spoke about endorsement, not vote

The Facebook post includes two statements attributed to Pence. But only one of them is authentic.

His quote that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States” came during a June 2023 speech in which he announced his 2024 presidential bid. He dropped out of the race four months later.

But there is no credible evidence Pence stated in March, or at any other time, “I will not be voting for Donald Trump in 2024.” Searches of legitimate news outlets for that quote do not produce any results. The former vice president has on multiple occasions declined to state directly if he will – or won’t – vote for Trump.

Fact check: Mike Pence did not have the power to overturn 2020 election results, keep Trump in office

The timing of the post strongly indicates it refers to – but ultimately distorts – comments Pence made during a March 15 interview on Fox News in which he said he would not publicly endorse Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” he told host Martha MacCallum on her show.

Then, on multiple occasions in the interview, Pence was given opportunities to clarify whether his endorsement extends to his personal voting choice. Each time, he declined to do so. When asked directly who he will vote for, he stated, “Like most Americans, I’m going to keep my vote to myself.”

Pence said he would “never” vote for Biden, but declined to address whether he would opt for a third-party candidate. He instead reaffirmed his desire to keep his choice a secret: “How I vote when that curtain closes, that will be for me."

Pence echoed that position in a March 17 appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS, telling host Margaret Brennan, “I won’t be endorsing Donald Trump this year. I want to be clear.” But he again did not give a clear answer when asked directly if he will vote for Trump.

Pence came under fire from Trump in January 2021 for refusing to go along with his plan to block the certification of Biden’s election. That prompted a crowd of Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to call for the then-vice president’s hanging.

But Pence has said those collective events were not the only cause of their rift. During both his presidential campaign and the Fox News interview, he pointed out “profound differences … on a range of issues” from the national debt to Trump’s opposition to a bill that could effectively ban Chinese-owned TikTok.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

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