A story was published by none other than The New York Times which details a story that Vice President to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, is secretly planning a run in the year 2020 for the Presidency.
“President Trump’s first term is ostensibly just warming up, but luminaries in his own party have begun what amounts to a shadow campaign for 2020 — as if the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren’t involved.”
“The would-be candidates are cultivating some of the party’s most prominent donors, courting conservative interest groups and carefully enhancing their profiles. Mr. Trump has given no indication that he will decline to seek a second term.”
“Mr. Pence has been the pacesetter. Though it is customary for vice presidents to keep a full political calendar, he has gone a step further, creating an independent power base, cementing his status as Mr. Trump’s heir apparent and promoting himself as the main conduit between the Republican donor class and the administration.”
And it really just goes on from there. A lot of nutty speculating about some of the moves that Pence has made but nothing he’s done thus far, even in the original article, points to anything uncommon of a Vice President.
When V.P. Pence got wind of the article, however, he shot it down… and hard!
As reported by Fox News:
Vice President Pence on Sunday dismissed a New York Times story saying he and other top Republicans are running shadow campaigns to defeat President Trump in 2020, calling the report “disgraceful and offensive.”
“Today’s article in the New York Times is disgraceful and offensive to me, my family and our entire team. The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this administration,” Pence said in an official White House statement.
The Times story published Sunday suggests Pence, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are visiting early-voting states and taking other actions that indicate at least a preliminary 2020 effort.
