It has been alleged that former Vice President Mike Pence stole sentences verbatim from the speech of his former running mate.
Pence delivered the contentious speech in New Hampshire earlier this week. It is widely believed that he is considering a run for the candidacy of the Republican Party for president in 2024. According to the report that was published by Politico, the transcript had an eerie similarity to a speech that Donald Trump gave almost four years ago.
Pence was scheduled to make the following statements when he spoke at the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, as stated in the prepared comments that he was going to deliver there:
“If we want our families and communities to prosper, America must be the best place on earth to work, invest, innovate, build, master a trade, or start a business. We want companies to move to America, stay in America, and hire American workers,” Politico reported.
However, as described by the outlet, this is practically word-for-word copied from a speech previously given by Trump:
“The two-sentence passage is almost identical to words Trump uttered in a speech to the New York Economic Club on Nov. 12, 2019, according to an archived transcript of his remarks from the White House:
‘If we want our families and communities to prosper, America must be the best place on earth to work, invest, innovate, build, pursue a career, hone a craft, or start a business. We want companies to move to America, stay in America, and hire American workers,’” Politico reported.
Politico noticed that there were some alterations made to the speech following that particular moment.
“It is not clear if Pence delivered the remarks as prepared, as the event was not live-streamed. Pence’s and Trump’s speeches did diverge after that passage. ‘We want every American to be able to afford their American dreams,’ Pence said in his prepared remarks ‘But for millions of Americans today, the American Dream is slipping further and further out of reach with each passing day.’
In contrast, Trump stated in 2019, “My mission is to put our country on the very best footing to thrive, excel, compete, and win,” according to Politico.
The prepared speech overlapped because Pence wanted to demonstrate his status as a pre-Trump Republican. Pence specifically emphasized in his address a number of policy distinctions that set him apart from the Trump administration, including the criticism of his own administration’s “overspending.”
It seems that who prepared the two speeches is what makes them similar to one another. Before beginning to work for Pence in 2021, the speechwriter who wrote Pence’s statements was a speechwriter in Trump’s inner circle at the time the remarks to the New York Economic Club were made. The speechwriter “inadvertently” reused Pence’s own words, according to a person familiar with the preparation of Pence’s speech who was given anonymity to speak freely about it. The speechwriter’s identity was withheld by a Pence advisor.
The purpose of Pence’s address in New Hampshire, according to a spokesperson for him, was to set himself apart from the competition and demonstrate that his campaign is focused on the future. He pointed out that the rhetorical rather than substance nature of the prepared speech’s passage that contained rehashed statements.
“No one should be shocked that instead of covering a speech outlining an economic policy that could transform the lives of millions of Americans suffering under President Biden’s economy, POLITICO chose to focus on a gossipy process story about how a speechwriter inadvertently used words from a speech he wrote four years ago,” O’Malley said.
Previously, Pence charged the Joe Biden campaign with copying the Trump coronavirus response strategy during the 2020 presidential race.
“Looks a little bit like plagiarism … which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about,” Pence said in a barely disguised allusion to Biden’s plagiarism scandal from 1987, during the 2020 vice presidential debate when he quoted British politician Neil Kinnock.