Former Vice President Mike Pence appears to be having trouble managing the Republican party’s base after he got heckled at a Christian conservative conference and called a “traitor.”
Pence, who is expected to run in the GOP presidential primary in 2024, was speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to the Majority” conference today when the audience got out of control.
Related: Trump appointee busted for insurrection. He worked for a hate group before rioting for Trump.
Pence was thanking Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed – who also created the Faith & Freedom Coalition – when people in the audience started shouting.
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“I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” Pence said, using a line he has used many times in the past. But now his voice was drowned out by shouting that sounded like “Traitor!”
Pence gets drowned out by hecklers at the Faith & Freedom Coalition summit, some of whom appear to be chanting "traitor!" pic.twitter.com/pAQxavsK3O
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) June 18, 2021
He's now being shouted down with boos and yells of "traitor" as he speaks. People are being escorted out. https://t.co/PXWsfskgCv
— Steve Contorno (@scontorno) June 18, 2021
Pence has faced sharp criticism from supporters of Donald Trump since he presided over the Senate accepting electoral votes from each state on January 6. It’s usually a ceremony that goes unnoticed by the American public, but this year Trump held a rally in D.C. on the same day and Republican voters who believed that the election had been stolen marched to the Capitol and attempted to stop Pence and Congress from certifying the election results. Conservative media had been saying for weeks that Pence had the power to reject the election results.
The mob chanted for the death of Pence and even set up a noose in front of the Capitol. The Secret Service swept Pence to safety before the insurrectionists could harm him.
Pence later skipped Trump’s send-off ceremony the day that President Joe Biden was sworn into office, but both Pence and Trump insist that there is no bad blood between them.
