Bad at Comebacks

Mike Pence Is Really Bad at Comebacks

ARI BERMAN

In a recent interview in The Atlantic, retiring Sen. Mitt Romney unloaded on former Vice President Mike Pence, who has attempted to distance himself from Donald Trump since the January 6 insurrection.

No one has been “more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence,” Romney said.

Pence responded to Romney in a decidedly Penceian way during an interview with CNN on Sunday.

“Look, Mitt Romney has no idea what I was doing in the administration,” Pence said. “I haven’t talked to Mitt Romney for years. He can go off into retirement.”

As The Daily Beast notes, Pence didn’t always feel that way about Romney. He praised him in a book last year as “good, public-spirited man with a servant’s heart.”

Pence has attempted a difficult balancing act with Trump, criticizing his boss for pressuring him to overturn the 2020 election while saying he was “incredibly proud” of the Trump administration’s record. That strategy hasn’t been successful so far. Pence is currently polling at 7 percent in the GOP race for president.