Mike Pence went on CNN to sell a book about conservative values and ended up in a live fact-check over whether Donald Trump is being steered toward right-wing populism or charging toward it entirely on his own. The former vice president appeared Wednesday morning on “CNN News Central” to promote his new book, “What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience,” and spent much of the segment downplaying Trump’s enthusiasm for policies Pence personally opposes.
Pence claimed that Trump’s embrace of tariffs and federal equity stakes in private companies was the work of outside influences, a departure from the first administration. Host Kate Bolduan interrupted to note that Trump himself had just said in an interview he wished he’d taken a bigger stake in a company. “He’s so excited about it,” Bolduan said.
Pence pivoted. He acknowledged Trump “comes by his support for tariffs honestly” and has backed them throughout his career, but suggested the current version of Trumpism represents something new. “The idea of literally having the federal government take a percentage share of American businesses would have, I think, never even been discussed in the first Trump administration, and it comes from the outside,” Pence said.
The former vice president is trying to separate Trump from Trumpism
Pence is attempting something that has eluded nearly every other Trump critic in the Republican Party. He’s not attacking Trump directly. He’s praising Trump’s personal popularity while arguing that the policy agenda now attached to Trump’s name is “far afield from the conservative agenda.” It’s a softer version of the argument that lost Pence the 2024 primary and cost him any remaining leverage in the party. The difference this time is that Pence has a book deal and a CNN segment instead of a campaign.
The problem with the frame is that Trump is not being nudged into populism by shadowy advisers. He’s leading it. Pence acknowledged as much when pressed, noting that Trump has supported tariffs “throughout his career” and remains “the leader of the Republican Party.” But Pence still tried to separate Trump’s popularity from the policies Trump is publicly excited about, which requires pretending the two are not the same thing.
Pence told Bolduan he wants Trump to be successful and believes “Republicans are grateful that for 10 years, Donald Trump has been willing to fight the radical left.” But he added that he doesn’t want “people on the populist right conflating the president’s personal popularity with a new agenda.” The entire premise of the book tour appears to be stopping that conflation.
The real tension is whether anyone in the GOP still listens to Mike Pence
Pence’s pitch is not new. Limited government, free markets, and fiscal conservatism were the Republican talking points before Trump reshaped the party in 2016. Pence was vice president for four years of that reshaping and spent most of that time nodding along. Now he’s on a book tour arguing that the party should return to principles it abandoned nearly a decade ago, at a moment when Trump’s favored candidates are winning primaries and the former president is polling ahead in key states.
Bolduan asked Pence directly what part of the MAGA agenda he does not want to endure. Pence insisted he wants “a lot of it to endure,” then pivoted back to his book. The answer did not clarify which parts of the agenda Pence supports and which parts he’s trying to rewrite with a 300-page manifesto.
At some point, promoting a book that explicitly argues the Republican Party should reject the policies of the man you yourself call the leader of the Republican Party requires explaining how that’s supposed to work. Pence is praising Trump’s popularity, crediting Trump with fighting the left, and acknowledging that GOP voters remain loyal to Trump. At no point in the segment did Pence explain how any of this redefinition is supposed to happen, or why Republican voters who have spent ten years backing Trump’s version of conservatism would suddenly prefer his.
What we’re watching
The thread is not whether Pence’s book will change the Republican Party. It won’t. The thread is whether Pence’s attempt to create a post-Trump conservatism while Trump is still very much leading the party will position him as a voice of the old guard or simply confirm that the old guard no longer has a constituency. Pence praised Trump’s success in getting favored candidates through GOP primaries, which suggests Pence understands exactly how much influence Trump still has. What’s less clear is whether Pence believes his own framing, or whether the book tour is an audition for a future where Trump is no longer in the picture and someone needs to remind the party what it used to believe.
Bolduan’s fact-check landed because it named the gap between Pence’s framing and Trump’s actual record. Trump is not being steered toward tariffs and equity stakes. He’s steering. The federal government taking a stake in private companies may be new, but Trump’s enthusiasm for economic nationalism and government intervention in markets is not. Pence knows this. He was there.
The question is whether Pence’s strategy of praising Trump personally while quietly trying to dismantle the policy legacy Trump built will give him any relevance in a party that has already moved on, or whether it will simply underscore how thoroughly Trump redefined what it means to be a Republican, with or without Mike Pence’s approval.
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