The Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, is vehemently denying press reports that he's making preparations to launch his own Presidential campaign in 2020.
The New York Times and other media outlets claim the Vice President is already actively fund-raising and lining up Republican backers for a Presidential run in a year that - under normal circumstances - would see President Trump campaigning for a second four-year term in the White House.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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If there is one thing President Donald Trump cannot abide it is disloyalty.
And because he's currently on what the White House calls a "working vacation" at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey…..we can only surmise the scene there when he read Sunday's report in The New York Times.
Based on more than 70 interviews with Republican sources, the newspaper described Vice President Mike Pence as the "pacesetter" in the race for the party's Presidential nomination in 2020…..courting high value donors, influential Republican grandees, and engaging in what the paper called "barely veiled contingency planning" for President Trump's political implosion.
In a highly unusual statement the Vice President called the newspaper's claims "disgraceful….offensive …categorically false….and fake news".
Claims repeated by President Trump's top adviser Kellyanne Conway in an interview on ABC.
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But that may be wishful thinking on her part…..she is, after all, the woman who has previously claimed the Trump White House traffics not in lies but in "alternative facts".
Of course….if you listen to Mike Pence's speeches over the last few days there isn't a glimmer of daylight between him and the President who brought him to Washington.
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But with subpoenas now flying in the Russia investigations….a Grand Jury now helping the Special Prosecutor decide whether to bring charges against anyone in the President's inner circle….and a President increasingly de-linking himself from Republican lawmakers who don't seem to have enough fire in their bellies to advance his legislative agenda……in crude political terms the Vice President would be crazy not to be thinking about his own personal career options.
The mere thought process, though, is fraught with danger….which is why the Vice President moved so quickly to tell the world…and more importantly, President Trump….that he's a fully paid up member of the team.
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