Mike Pence news: Ex-VP contradicts himself on Trump charges at CNN town hall launching 2024 campaign

Remaining on gun rights and school shootings, Bash notes that most mass shooters intend to die when they commit these atrocities and questions how much of a deterrent the death penalty would be.

Pence doubles down on his answer saying he believes in the force of the law.

Pence is asked by an audience member how he would attract diehard Trump supporters and said he believes the two people who would unite the Republican party are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

He says whoever the party’s standard bearer is at the end of the primaries would be enough to attract voters who have suffered economically under the Biden administration.

Bash asks Pence how he can both pledge to support the eventual nominee whomever it is while saying that someone who puts themself above the Constitution — as Pence says Trump did on January 6 — can never be president again.

He doesn’t give a precise answer but says he hopes Trump comes around to understanding he was wrong.

Bash pushes Pence on what he would do if Trump is the nominee.

Pence says there is an excellent field of candidates including him and he does not believe Trump will be the nominee, adding that he hopes that it is him.

Ending on a question about how to unite the country as Biden promised he would do, Pence talks about his relationship with civil rights legend John Lewis, who passed away in 2020.

Eric Garcia writes:

But Mr Pence likely sealed his fate as a presidential candidate not when he filed the paperwork to become a contender this month, but on January 6, when he made the correct decision to break from Mr Trump and his advisers’ cockamamie scheme to overturn the election. Mr Pence mentioned this during his announcement speech, excoriating the president for inciting the mob that wanted to lynch him and putting American democracy in peril.

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Southern Baptists form a core part of the white evangelical Christian bloc that has reliably and overwhelmingly voted Republican in recent elections, and is expected to again in 2024.

But Southern Baptists are weighing their options in the GOP presidential primary field — some already lining up behind Donald Trump, others wary of the former president, whom most evangelical voters supported in previous elections despite his vulgar language, serial marriages and sexual bravado. Some are looking at what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or other candidates might offer.

But even critics of many Baptist voters’ embrace of hard-right politics have little doubt where this is headed in November 2024 — support for whichever candidate emerges from the GOP nomination process. The only question is the extent of the fervor they bring to the polls.

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Former vice president Mike Pence on Wednesday announced that he is entering the running for the 2024 presidential election, setting up a heated competition for the Republican nomination with former president Donald Trump.

In a launch video for his campaign, Mr Pence said a “different leadership” could turn the country around to prevent the American dream from being “crushed”.

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports.