The intensifying rivalry between former US President Donald Trump and his once fiercely loyal vice president, Mike Pence, was on full display on Tuesday as the two dueled in Washington over the future of the Republican Party. Trump, in his first return to Washington since Democrat Joe Biden ousted him from the White House, repeated the false allegations of voter fraud that sparked the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, while Pence, in a separate speech, implored the party to move on from Trump. defeat. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence that the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s claims of fraud have also been rejected by the courts, including by judges he appointed. “It was a disaster, this election,” Trump told a crowd of cheering supporters at the America First Summit, about a mile from the White House he once called home. Hours earlier, addressing a student conservative group, Pence said: “Some people may choose to focus on the past, but the election is about the future.” The speeches highlighted divisions within the party between Trump loyalists who still refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and other Republicans who believe the party should focus on the future heading into the fall midterm elections and beyond. And they come as both men have laid the groundwork for expected presidential bids. Trump, in particular, has been teasing his intentions and said Tuesday that “maybe he should just do it again,” as he addressed a group of former White House officials and cabinet members working on an agenda for a possible second Trump administration. Pence, once a staunch Trump vice president, talked about his own “Freedom Agenda” as he laid out a different vision for the party at a convention nearby. “I believe that conservatives must focus on the future to win back America. We cannot afford to take our eyes off the road ahead because what is at stake is the very survival of our way of life,” he said in a speech. to Young America’s Foundation, a student conservative group; Trump, too, said America’s survival was at stake. In a speech seen as focused on public safety, he painted a dark picture of a nation in decline and a nation in immediate danger from rising crime. Among his proposals, he called for executing drug dealers, sending the homeless to tent cities on the outskirts of cities and expanding the wall along his southern border. Biden chimed in — on Twitter — rejecting Trump’s claim that he was a law-and-order president. Referring to the riot on Capitol Hill, he tweeted: “I don’t think inciting a mob to attack a police officer is ‘respect for the law.’ You can’t be pro-insurgency and pro-police — neither pro-democracy nor pro-American.” Trump, in his remarks, also spent plenty of time airing his usual grievances, even as some advisers urged him to move on. “If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to remain silent, if I stayed home and just took it easy, the prosecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately,” he said. “But I won’t do that.” Despite Trump’s reputation for harshly criticizing his opponents, Pence and other potential GOP candidates are increasingly brazen in their willingness to take on the man who remains a dominant force in the GOP despite his actions on Jan. 6. when he stood by his side crowds of his supporters ransacked the Capitol and tried to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Former White House aides also campaigned for rival candidates in Arizona on Friday, while Pence’s former chief of staff Mark Short recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the attack on the US Capitol. Short was in the building that day as Pence fled from an angry crowd of rioters who called for his hanging after Trump wrongly insisted that Pence had the power to overturn the election results. Pence has repeatedly defended his actions that day, even as his decision to stand up to his boss turned large parts of Trump’s loyal base against him. Polls show Trump remains, by far, the top choice of GOP primary voters, with Pence trailing far behind. That contrast was on display Tuesday as Trump addressed an audience of hundreds of cheering supporters gathered for the America First Policy Institute’s two-day America First Agenda Summit. The group is widely seen as an “administration-in-waiting” that could quickly move into the West Wing if Trump runs again and wins. The event had the feel of a Trump White House reunion — but without Pence. Pence, meanwhile, received a friendly — but less exuberant — welcome from the students, who struggled to break out the “USA!” chant. In his remarks, Pence repeatedly touted the “Trump-Pence administration.” But the first question he took during a brief question-and-answer session that followed his speech was about his growing estrangement from Trump, which is especially stark given the years he spent as the former president’s most loyal aide. Pence denied that the two “differ on issues” but acknowledged that “we may differ on focus.” “I truly believe that the election is about the future and that it’s absolutely necessary, at a time when so many Americans are hurting and so many families are struggling, that we don’t give in to the temptation to look back,” he said. . Pence has spent the past few months giving political speeches, traveling to early voting states and writing a book that Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday will be titled “So Help Me God” and will be published in November. The publisher said the book, in part, will chronicle “President Trump’s termination of their relationship on January 6, 2021, when Pence fulfilled his oath to the Constitution.” Trump, meanwhile, has spent much of his time since leaving office spreading lies about his loss to cast doubt on Biden’s victory. Indeed, even as a Jan. 6 House committee exposed his efforts to stay in office and his refusal to withdraw a violent mob of his supporters as they tried to stop a peaceful transition of power, Trump continued to try to push officials to overturn Biden’s victory, despite the fact that there is no legal means to validate it. The America First Policy Institute is one of several Trump-allied organizations that have continued to support his priorities in his absence. In addition to the summit, the group is preparing for another potential Trump administration, hoping to avoid the early chaos of Trump’s first term by “making sure we have the policies, personnel and process in place for every key agency when we get the White House back said AFPI President Brooke Rollins, who previously served as head of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. While the agency was once dismissed as a landing zone for former Trump administration officials shut out of more lucrative jobs, it has grown into a behemoth, with an operating budget of about $25 million and 150 employees, including 17 former senior White House officials and nine former members of the cabinet overseeing nearly two dozen policy centers. —— AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report
