Marc Short, one time Chief of Staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, recently tore into controversial U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R. FL), who is currently under investigation for sex trafficking of a minor.  During last week’s Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida, Gaetz suggested that Pence has no chance of becoming the next next president of the United States and Short took exception to that.

via Twitter

Gaetz said:

“Let me just say what everyone here knows…Mike Pence will never be president.”

Marc Short responded by saying that he’d be “surprised if [Gaetz] is still voting:”

“I don’t know if Mike Pence will run for president in 2024, but I don’t think Matt Gaetz will have an impact on that – in fact, I’d be surprised if he’s still voting…It’s more likely that he’ll be in prison for child sex trafficking by 2024, and I’m actually surprised that Florida law enforcement still allows him to speak to teenage conferences like that.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence via Flickr / Gage Skidmore https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

A Gaetz spokesperson told Insider in resonse:

“Marc can repeat debunked conspiracies on CNN, but nobody can deny that dunking on Pence was Gaetz’s best applause line of an epic speech.”

A growing number of former Trump officials speaking out against the former president as part of the Jan. 6 hearings has made the grwoing riff in the GOP more public and apparent in the last several months.

CNN reported that Short gave his private testimony to the January 6 grand jury on Monday, making him the highest-ranking former Trump official to testify.

“Donald Trump & Mike Pence” by Gage Skidmore is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Insider suggests that Short’s comments illustrate the ever-widening gap between Trump and his former VP:

“Short’s position as a former Pence staffer might speak to the growing rift between Pence and Trump. Olivia Troye, a former Pence aide, said last week that it’s ‘a known thing in Pence’s orbit’ that he intended to run for president. This would put the former vice president on a direct collision course with his ex-boss Trump, who has long teased a 2024 run.”

You can see Gaetz’ comments here.

 

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Christopher Powell