GOP Rep. Banks: Pence has maintained ‘personal friendship’ with Trump since leaving office

Rumors of a severance between Mike Pence and Donald Trump apparently aren’t true.

The former vice president spoke fondly of Trump at a meeting this week with Republicans and has said that they keep in touch, the Washington Examiner reports.

Staying in touch

According to the Examiner, Pence met with Republicans from the Republican Study Committee on Tuesday at his office in Virginia, where they discussed the future of the GOP.

“He spoke very favorably about his relationship with President Trump,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who was at the meeting, said. “I got the sense they speak often and maintain the same personal friendship and relationship now that they have for four years.”

Tensions were seen as having come to a head between Trump and Pence after a January riot at the Capitol, which saw Trump denounce his No. 2 as a coward for failing to press his election grievances.

Trump has remained the dominant figure in the party, despite a failed impeachment, and he has been meeting with Republican leaders at home in Palm Beach to discuss next steps.

He is expected to make a grand return in a major speech asserting control of the GOP at CPAC this weekend, where Pence will be absent.

“Republicans are united”

However, Banks said that all is well between the two men, and that Pence wants to be a team player in helping Trump and the GOP win going forward.

“He’ll be launching an organization defending the successful Trump-Pence record of the last four years,” Banks said, as the Examiner reported.

As members of the GOP fight over the party’s future — and Trump’s role in it — many on the left have tried to depict a party in disarray, but Pence had a more optimistic view, Banks said. The former VP sees the GOP as more united and ready to take back the majority from leftist “overreach” in two years.

“As far as he’s concerned — and as far as I think we’re concerned — Republicans are more unified than some are giving us credit for,” Banks remarked, according to the New York Post.

“The more Democrats overreach, the more likely we are going to have a 2010-type midterm to win back the majority,” the congressman added. “[Pence] sort of senses the similarity in that moment to this moment.”

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