POLITICO
Mike Pence tosses out a now well-honed line whenever he’s asked how he could go from loyally defending Donald Trump to throwing spears at him on the debate stage.
“I’ve debated Donald Trump a thousand times,” he said in Indianapolis at a gathering for state lawmakers at the National Conference of State Legislatures here Wednesday. “Just not in front of the cameras.”
The former vice president was answering an audience member’s question about how he would win over skeptical Trump backers at the first GOP debate. In Milwaukee next week, he may get that chance — one that he studiously avoided for four years of never breaking publicly with the former president. During their tenure together, Pence during one 2018 meeting went so far as to sync putting down his water bottle almost simultaneously with Trump, and in one Cabinet meeting praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes.
Now, Pence is relishing the opportunity to draw a contrast with Trump according to two senior aides and two longtime friends and allies.
“We’re ready,” Marc Short, Pence’s senior adviser, told POLITICO. “It’s let’s-get-it-on time. We’ve been waiting for this for a while.”
If, that is, “former President Trump has the courage to show up,” said Pence communications adviser Devin O’Malley in an earlier statement, parroting the former president’s incorrect and now frequent punchline suggesting that the vice president could overturn the election results if only he had the requisite “courage.”
Privately, Pence aides say sharing the stage with Trump will provide the kind of contrast for which they’ve been pining: Pence, staid and sober and studious on policy, versus a mercurial and braggadocious bluffer. Pence, who took part in high school National Forensics League speaking tournaments, has debated both Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Vice President Kamala Harris in two vice presidential debates…
