U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence strongly denied a report that stated he was considering a run at presidency in 2020 on Sunday morning.
On Saturday, a New York Times article reported Pence and several other Republicans were already working toward a run at the U.S. presidency.
The paper spoke to more than 75 members of the Republican Party who uniformly expressed uncertainty over whether Donald Trump would be running in 2020 and noted others within the party are “engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.”
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Aside from Pence, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse were all mentioned as being interested in a 2020 run.
The report also stated that Pence would not run if Trump was seeking a second term but Kasich would still consider it.
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Pence is said to have created a political fund-raising committee, the Great America Committee.
On Sunday, Pence released a statement in which he said “the allegations in the article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this Administration.”
He went on to say: “whatever fake news man come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the President’s agenda and see him re-elected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise would be both laughable and absurd.”
White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway also dismissed the report and said Pence is readying to run in 2020 “for re-election as vice-president.”
“Vice-President Pence is a very loyal, very dutiful, but also incredibly effective vice-president, and active vice-president, with this president,” said Conway on ABC’s “This Week.” “He is a peer to the president in the West Wing.”
New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an emailed statement: “We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting and will let the story speak for itself.”
- With files from The Associated Press
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