South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is a frontrunner to become former President Donald Trump’s running mate run awaying comradedeclined to say whether former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing in endorsing him for the 2020 presidential election during a recent interview.
Noem was asked if he thinks Pence is doing the right thing by overseeing the certification process in Congress. January 6, 2021while he rejected pressure from Trump to reject the results.
“This situation will not happen again because the law has been changed. So I don’t answer hypothetical questions,” Noem told NewsNation.Elizabeth Vargas reports.”
In an interview Monday, he doubled down on a similar response, saying, “Looking back on that day, I wasn’t in the position. I didn’t have — he didn’t have the knowledge.” He gave it to CNN he also said that Pence has “failed Donald Trump ever since.”
A spokeswoman for Noem did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday evening.
Noem’s comments about Pence this week came amid a rough patch for the second-term governor as he promoted his new book, No Return, a mix of autobiographical details and policy proposals.
Noem faced a somewhat ambivalent response transitions in a book including that describes he killed his young dog, he said elsewhere met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Noem said Monday that the anecdote about Kim shouldn’t have been in the book, even though it was refused to say in interviews that he met her. Its publisher confirmed this week that the link would be removed.
During the same interview, Noem criticized Pence for not supporting Trump in the 2024 election.
“I wish Mike Pence would support President Trump. This is what makes me angry at the moment,” he said.
Pence dropped out of the GOP primary in Octoberhe said in March that he would not approve Trump. He told Fox News at the time that “President Trump and I had deep differences of opinion on a number of issues, and not just on my constitutional duties that I performed on January 6th.”