Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not support Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“It should come as no surprise that I will not be supporting Donald Trump this year,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News on Friday, for the first time since the former president became the presumptive Republican Party nominee. for their party’s nomination, but dropped the bid last year before voting began.

The decision makes Pence the latest senior Trump administration official to refuse to support his former boss’ bid to return to the White House. While Republican members of Congress and other Republican officials have largely sided with Trump, a vocal minority continues to oppose his election campaign.

It also marks the end of a metamorphosis for Pence, who was one of Trump’s most loyal defenders before and during his vice presidency, but broke with his two-time running mate by refusing to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional plan to to remain in power. losing the 2020 election. When Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, Pence was forced to flee to a Senate loading dock as rioters chanted: Hang Mike Pence! outside.

To participate in the Republican primaries, Pence had to sign a pledge saying he would support the parties’ eventual nominee. And at the first debate in Milwaukee, Pence was among the candidates who raised their hands when asked if they would support Trump even if he were convicted on one of his four criminal charges.

But Pence had made clear that he had come to harbor serious reservations about Trump’s actions and policy positions.

I believe that anyone who puts themselves above the Constitution should never be President of the United States and that anyone who asks someone else to put him or her above the Constitution should never be President of the United States again, he said during his campaign launch speech.

As the campaign wore on, he sounded the alarm about the party’s opposition to sending aid to Ukraine and called on fellow Republicans to reject what he called the siren song of populism embraced by Trump and his followers.

In the interview on Fox’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” Pence said he was incredibly proud of the record he and Trump had, but added, “During my presidential campaign, I made it clear that at some point there were deep disagreements between me and President Trump. range of issues, and not just our disagreement over my constitutional duties that I exercised on January 6.

I mean, as I’ve watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve watched him walk away from our promise to address the national debt. I have seen him shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life, he said, referring to abortion, which Pence strongly opposes. Pence also mentioned what he called Trump’s reversal of getting tough on China and supporting our government’s efforts to force the sale of the popular TikTok app.

In each of these cases, Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that runs counter to the conservative agenda we have governed by for the past four years. And that is why I cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump in this campaign,” he said.

Pence declined to say who he would vote for. “I’m going to keep my vote to myself,” he said, but made it clear it wouldn’t be President Biden.

“I would never vote for Joe Biden,” he said. I’m a Republican.

Colvin writes for the Associated Press.