Former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser said he would back former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential matchup over his former boss, describing in an interview with the Washington Examiner a disappointing breach between the teams that played out Tuesday in dueling appearances in Washington.
Retired Gen. Keith Kellogg said that while he talks to Pence occasionally, his loyalties lie with Trump. Speculation over Pence’s presidential ambitions has swirled as the former vice president attempts to stake out a post-Trump political path. Pence spoke to a conference of young conservatives in downtown Washington on Tuesday morning, hours before Trump was set to deliver remarks of his own.
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But despite Kellogg’s ties to Pence, the top security adviser said he was committed to backing the former president should he choose to enter the race.
“Sometimes, you have to pick the lane you’re gonna run with,” Kellogg told the Washington Examiner in an interview Tuesday. “I’ve always been a Trump guy.”
Trump is weighing a possible announcement ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, stoking the prospect of a broad Republican field of presidential candidates facing off against one another in 2024.
The former president addressed the America First Policy Institute conference in downtown Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, organized by the think tank where Kellogg is a top adviser. Trump’s appearance marks his first time returning to the capital since leaving office and follows testimony by a top Pence adviser to a Jan. 6 grand jury.
The divides between the Trump and Pence camps have drawn new scrutiny in the wake of the Jan. 6 hearings.
Earlier Tuesday, Pence addressed a room of young conservatives across town, urging the group to look toward the future.
“In order to win, conservatives need to do more than criticize and complain,” Pence said in prepared remarks. “We must unite our movement behind a bold, optimistic agenda that offers a clear and compelling choice to the American people.”
Further stoking speculation about Pence’s political ambitions is his forthcoming memoir, which will be published days after the midterm elections on Nov. 15.
The book will chronicle “Trump’s severing of their relationship,” according to an announcement Tuesday by publisher Simon and Schuster.
Kellogg said the divide between the two leaders was disappointing but didn’t have to be this way.
“We tried to bring him in tight,” Kellogg said of Pence. “It’s not because we haven’t reached out to him.”
He suggested those around Pence had stoked the conflict.
Pence’s advisers, “like Marc Short,” Kellogg said, had “pulled away from the Trump team.”
Trump barred Short from the White House on Jan. 6, blaming him for advice he gave Pence on certifying the results of the 2020 election, which the president had urged his vice president to challenge.
A senior adviser to Pence, Short was with the vice president at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and has emerged as a central character in the investigation by Congress.
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Still, Kellogg, who said he talked to Trump a couple of weeks ago, could not say what the former president’s final decision about a third run for the White House would be.
“If I was putting money in Las Vegas down on the table as to whether he is going to run or not, I think he is running,” Kellogg said, “but I don’t know.”
