Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In a recent interview in The Atlantic, retiring Sen. Mitt Romney unloaded on former Vice President Mike Pence, who has attempted to distance himself from Donald Trump since the January 6 insurrection.

No one has been “more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence,” Romney said.

Pence responded to Romney in a decidedly Penceian way during an interview with CNN on Sunday.

“Look, Mitt Romney has no idea what I was doing in the administration,” Pence said. “I haven’t talked to Mitt Romney for years. He can go off into retirement.”

As The Daily Beast notes, Pence didn’t always feel that way about Romney. He praised him in a book last year as “good, public-spirited man with a servant’s heart.”

Pence has attempted a difficult balancing act with Trump, criticizing his boss for pressuring him to overturn the 2020 election while saying he was “incredibly proud” of the Trump administration’s record. That strategy hasn’t been successful so far. Pence is currently polling at 7 percent in the GOP race for president.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate