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EXCLUSIVE – Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a scathing assessment of Vice President JD Vance’s midterm election post-mortem that the war in Iran cost Republicans control of Congress, with the former vice president saying Americans became frustrated not because President Donald Trump started the conflict but because his administration failed to end it.
Pence, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the first after the midterm elections, also took aim at the vice president’s statements on Israel, saying he was “very concerned about what I heard coming from the vice president’s office regarding Israel.”
Asked for Vance’s assessment, Pence said, “I disagree with the vice president on the reasons for the outcome of the midterm elections.”
“There is no doubt that the war in Iran has become a frustration for millions of Americans, but that’s not because President Trump started the war or took on Iran. It’s because we stopped in our tracks and didn’t end it,” Pence said. “As Americans have seen the appeasement policy adopted by the administration, one negotiation after another, I think people have become… frustrated with the lack of progress, frustrated with the price of fuel at the pump.”
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But the former vice president stressed that “the reasons for these midterm elections were much more complex than gas prices or the war in Iran. So I respectfully disagree with my successor on this point.”
“If the world knows nothing else, the world should know that America stands with Israel. Israel is our most valuable ally. It is the only democracy in the Arab world,” said Pence, a longtime supporter of Israel.
Pence said he was “very troubled by the way criticism of Israel on the left and right too often devolves into anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic rhetoric. There is no place in America for anti-Semitism on the left or the right and people who are wringing their hands over American support for Israel, I sometimes feel like they are just using that as a thinly veiled excuse for their anti-Semitism.”
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Vance, in an assessment the morning after Election Day, wrote: “The reason we lost was the war. The president himself said this last night. »
The vice president also cited an anonymous pollster in his X post who said voters who had abandoned the GOP wanted the administration to end the conflict, address inflation and the cost of living, put America first and change its relationship with Israel.
A Vance ally, responding to Pence’s criticism, told Fox News Digital: “Former Vice President Pence had to retreat into the think tank world because his policies never moved beyond the Bush-era neoconservative warmongering that got us into the Middle East in the first place.” It’s ridiculously out of touch with how people feel in the real world. »
VANCE, CRUZ AND DESANTIS DIAGNOSE GOP MID-TERM CATASTROPHE AS 2028 BATTLE BEGINS
Vice President JD Vance shows President Donald Trump during the Republican convention Thursday, September 10, 2026 in Dallas. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)
Pence, who served as vice president in Trump’s first term, pointed to tariffs in the president’s second term, the administration’s handling of abortion drugs and the growing wealth of the first family as factors in the Republican Party’s electoral defeat, arguing that Republicans must return to traditional conservative principles to reclaim their congressional majority.
While the high cost of living and the war in Iran were key issues in the midterms, the Fox News poll of voters also highlighted that 55% of respondents said government corruption was a “crucial” factor in their vote for Congress, and another 36% said it was a major factor.
Pence argued that “I don’t think you can ignore the air of corruption that has emerged around this administration, the self-dealing. The American people have seen a first family see their wealth increase by more than $3 billion, including more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency.”
Asked by Fox Digital if he thought the president and his family had taken unfair advantage of their presence at the White House, Pence replied: “I would have no way of knowing and I wouldn’t want to speculate.”
“Mike Pence’s complete and utter lack of courage has caused incalculable damage to our great country,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said. “If Republican voters cared about what Mike Pence had to say, he wouldn’t have had to withdraw from the presidential race months before the Iowa caucuses.”
The former vice president, referring to the midterm results that saw Democrats storm back to capture a large majority in the House, take control of the Senate and win the majority of the nation’s governorships, said “it wasn’t just a rout, it was a settling of scores.”
“I believe our voters rejected President Trump’s reorientation of our movement toward protectionist tariffs, toward appeasement policies toward Russia and even Iran, toward a marginalization of the right to life, and I think the era of corruption around the Trump administration was very concerning to millions of Americans, including our voters,” Pence said. “I don’t think the American people have turned left. I think they’ve been turned off, and that’s the outcome of this election.”
Republicans turn on Trump after devastating midterm losses and hand control of Congress to Democrats
Looking ahead, Pence said Republicans “now more than ever…must recommit our party to the conservative principles that have defined our movement for more than 50 years.”
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“There is no doubt that the direction the president has taken for our party has been roundly rejected by voters,” he charged. “The key to the party’s success, and more importantly, the key to the country’s success, is to return the Republican Party to advancing and defending the conservative principles that have always made America strong, prosperous and free.”
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