Trump's Already Dismissed At Least One VP Candidate for Potential 2024 Run

Former President Donald Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence, haven't exactly seen eye-to-eye since rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, threatened to hang the former Indiana governor for refusing to reject the results of a 2020 election that his boss baselessly alleged was stolen.

It is unlikely the two will ever team up again, especially since Pence has all but declared his intention to mount his own run for president in 2024. But if Pence has yet to rule out the possibility of a return engagement as VP, Trump already has, according to a new book.

"It would be totally inappropriate," Trump told reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser of the prospect of running alongside Pence for their upcoming book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.

Pence, Trump said, "committed political suicide" by refusing to reject Electoral College votes from closely contested states Trump lost, a decision Pence said would have violated the constitution and the traditionally ceremonial role the vice president plays in certifying the results of the election.

Most voters—nearly three-quarters of Americans—side with Pence on that front, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. However, most Republicans still side with Trump.

Though Trump and his attorneys have consistently failed to demonstrate any proof of systemic election fraud that could have impacted the outcome of the election, polling has shown a significant majority of Republican voters continue to doubt the veracity of the final result.

Meanwhile, Trump by and large, remains the clear front-runner in a prospective 2024 Republican primary, boasting double-digit leads over conservative figures like Ron DeSantis and more traditional Republicans like Nikki Haley, both of whom remain top prospects to potentially serve as vice president under Trump.

Pence has already sought to define himself as the potential leader of a conservative movement beyond Trump, however.

Pence has been relatively withdrawn about his feelings around January 6. He has yet to sit for an interview with the Select Committee investigating the causes of the riot, even after reports Trump allegedly said during the riots that his vice president "deserves" to be hanged for refusing to overturn the result.

Though he has said he is open to testifying, he also said he believes the "partisan" nature of the committee was a "squandered opportunity" to thoughtfully examine what took place that day, while defending the broader brushstrokes of Trump's political agenda.

In recent months, however, Pence has appeared to loosen up. He wrote that he was "angry at what I saw" on January 6, according to a back-cover description from his upcoming autobiography, So Help Me God, obtained by Axios, and was upset at how the day's events "desecrated the seat of our democracy and dishonored the patriotism of millions of our supporters, who would never do such a thing here or anywhere else."

However, he has also continued to praise Trump. At a recent black-tie gala celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Pence praised Trump for "keeping his word" and nominating conservative justices who favored eliminating federal abortion protections.