Former US VP Mike Pence announces presidential run

Former US Vice President Mike Pence will run for US President, joining the already wide range of Republican Party politicians who have applied to fight for the keys to the White House, writes the British broadcaster BBC.

Pence, 63, will officially launch his campaign on Wednesday with a video, speech and event in Iowa. With this step, Pence confronts Donald Trump, a politician in whose administration he held the position of vice president from 2017 to 2021. Trump has also announced his candidacy for the US presidential election and is currently the main favorite for the Republican Party nomination.

Pence, who describes himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” was a staunchly loyal supporter of Trump for most of his four years as vice president. But he has distanced himself from his former boss since riots by Trump supporters at the US Capitol in January 2021.

It has long been rumored that Pence plans to run for president. In the coming months, the pre-election period will begin, in which all Republican candidates will hold both debates and campaign events to win the trust of their party’s voters in the so-called primaries. It is the winner of the primaries who will win the nomination of the Republican Party in the elections scheduled for 2024.

A wide range of politicians will fight for the Republican nomination – along with Trump and Pence, the governor of the state of Florida Ron DeSantis, the senator of the state of South Carolina Tim Scott, the former US ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Nikki Haley and others have joined the fight. According to several experts, the large number of candidates directly helps Trump, as the votes against the ex-president are divided in this way.

The current president of the United States, Joe Biden, has announced that he will fight for another four years in the influential position. It is expected that Biden will also win the nomination of the Democratic Party, despite the fact that several Democratic voters have expressed concern about his age (Biden is currently 80 years old) and also that, according to public opinion polls, Biden is currently a very unpopular president . You can read more about the early plans and challenges of Biden’s re-election campaign here.