Hume: Hard To See 2024 Lane For Honorable But “Dull” and Talking Points-Reliant Pence

Listen Below:

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: Joining us now once again is chief political analyst here at Fox News, Brit Hume. Brit, always great to talk to you. Welcome back.

Brit Hume: Thank you, Guy. Glad to be talking to you.

Guy Benson: All right. So let’s start with some movement on the Republican side. Looking ahead to the 2024 election in the battle for the nomination. A couple of big developments happening today. Chris Sununu, we just had him on the show last week. Governor of New Hampshire. He’d been testing the waters, dipping his toe, thinking about running for president. He said his decision was coming within a week or two. I came away from that conversation sort of slightly suspecting that he was not going to run. Didn’t know that for sure. He announced today, indeed, he is not running for president. He said he is he does not want to crowd up the field. He thinks it’s too important to nominate someone other than Donald Trump. Not only is he a figure in Republican politics, Brit, he’s the governor of a very significant state in this process. Let’s just start with that. Your reaction to Chris Sununu taking a pass?

Brit Hume: Well, I think it’s probably helpful to the rest of the field for obvious reasons, but it’s also a less important development than it would have been had he gone in because of his presence in New Hampshire as Governor, where he’s quite popular and where he would have made it more difficult for anybody to challenge Donald Trump there.

Guy Benson: I think that’s probably right. And it’ll be very interesting to see if because he’s sort of framing this from a we need to move on from Trump posture. That’s why he’s made this decision. He wrote about it in an op ed. Would that mean at some point he would throw his weight politically and his popularity behind someone? Specifically, will he be endorsing? That’s a question perhaps you’ll ask him if we get Governor Sununu back on the show, someone who’s not taking a pass, Brit, who is now officially in, at least based on the paperwork, is the former vice president, Mike Pence. His team has officially filed. He is running for president of the United States. They’ll be some sort of formal announcement at some point. This was largely expected. We’ve been kind of waiting a while for this. He said he was thinking on it. He’s doing a listening tour. He was praying on it and all of that. But it seemed for a while like he had designs to run and now he’s joining the fray. Your thoughts on the significance of Pence getting in?

Brit Hume: I don’t think it’s terribly significant. Pence for all of his decency and and for all the honorable conduct which he illustrated, particularly with regard to the goings on on January six and for all of his undoubtedly solid conservative credentials, has never really excited people in the Republican Party very much. He’s an honorable guy, good guy, intelligent guy. He’s got a kind of a rote style in his discourse. I remember when back when I was anchoring temporarily again back in 2016, one of the first shows I did when I was doing that temporary anchor work, Mike Pence was a guest. And I respect Mike Pence. He was a terrible guest. He was boring. He was rote. He was, you know, talking points spilled out there. I never felt I could get past the boilerplate and I never had him on again, although, you know, nothing against him personally, but he’s dull.

Guy Benson: By the way, Brit, as an aside, when I’ve heard you in the past talk about your stints returning to the anchor chair for brief periods of time, it’s often with a bit of a chuckle and a roll of the eye on your part. Am I gleaning correctly that you were not interested in guest hosting for me this Summer?

Brit Hume: Guy In about three weeks, less than three weeks, I’ll be 80. So hey, I think you can be president. Guest guests. I know, And I’m not. I’m too old to be president, and I’m in better shape than he is.

Guy Benson: And we’ll come back to him in just a second. Brit. One other name I want to throw out there and actually, before I do, just to get your take on this related to Pence, before I let the thought pass. And I have a lot of respect for Pence, We agree on a lot of things. We disagree on some things. I think much of your assessment is something that I would that I would share. I’m just trying to figure out when people jump into a race, someone of this caliber, the most recent Vice President of United States from the party that’s currently out of power. Clearly, there’s at least some thought that there’s a viable path. And whether it’s delusional or whether it’s realistic or people really feel like they can get there. I’m just trying to figure out when it comes to Pence, the hard core people who love, love, love Trump for the most part, hate Mike Pence for various reasons. I think often for bad ones as an allusion to January 6th. But all the people who also dislike Donald Trump and oppose him strongly also dislike Mike Pence because he was a very loyal Vice President, part of the administration for four years. I’m just trying to figure out how wide the remaining lane is.

Brit Hume: Yeah, it’s a good question. I’m not sure what his lane is. I mean, look, all all these people are running to to try to get to be the alternative to Donald Trump, to get one on one with Donald Trump, with the view being that a majority of Republican, even a majority of Republican voters do not support Donald Trump. And if they can garner that support, they can win the nomination and possibly the presidency. The problem is, of course, it was a field is scattered with all these different candidates. You know, the sort of the conventional wisdom is, well, they they they they scatter the the non-Trump vote across all these candidates. And Trump slides through winning, as he did in 2016, pluralities in state after state after state and winner take all states and you end up with the nomination. So that’s that’s the challenge. I’m not sure that that that’s how this is going to turn out. But on paper, at least, that’s how it looks.

Guy Benson: Yeah, And as long as Trump is where he is right now and that can change or maybe it doesn’t. I mean, it’s you can make a plausible, persuasive argument in either direction, but right now it’s almost academic. I mean, he’s got a majority in a lot of these places. So it doesn’t matter how scattered everyone else is. But if things do get closer if his numbers come down, then the dynamic that you’re describing becomes very relevant again, as it was back in 2016. Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor, he’s widely expected now to get in this week. That’s the report. I got an email from his team that he’s doing an event in New Hampshire, a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. And it looks like Christie 2024 is a go. What do you make of that, Brit? I know some people are saying, well, he’s just going to be a wrecking ball against Trump and that’s why he’s getting into this race. He doesn’t expect to win. He just wants to add his voice to that conversation, especially on that front. Does that make sense to you? Where do you come down on this?

Brit Hume: Well, I think that might work. I mean, I think that, you know, if anybody if you want somebody to take on Trump who knows how to play rough in debates and so on, Christie could be your choice. But I don’t think, you know, the history of these things is that when one candidate takes on another, that candidate who takes on the frontrunner, whoever can often do a lot of damage. We saw the damage that Christie was able to do to Marco Rubio famously in 2016, but it didn’t help. But it didn’t help. Didn’t help Christie. It’s hard to take on somebody in a really forthright, straightforward, tough way and look good doing it. So it may be that’s what he’s prepared to do sort of as a service to the party to try to help knock Trump off.

Guy Benson: Kamikaze.

Brit Hume: Yeah, but it would be it might well be a kamikaze mission. That’s right. That’s what. So who knows? But, you know, you’d be surprised. I’ve always been struck, Guy, by the number of politicians who think that they could be and should be President. We’re not going to have, you know, the almost unknown governor of North Dakota thinks he should be. Wow.

Guy Benson: Yeah. I wasn’t even going to bring him up. I met him once, Seemed like a nice guy. But What? it took me a second. I saw the name. I was like, hang on. I had to just go through the, like, the file in my brain, The Rolodex. Who is this? What is that about?

Brit Hume: You’re talking about somebody nobody’s ever heard of. I mean, this guy is really a stranger to the national scene, but that may be why he’s running to to develop some name recognition and to get his, you know, get his portfolio out there for people to examine. But I think he’s the longest shot in the field right now.

Guy Benson: Yes. He’s he’s a less known Asa Hutchinson in some ways. Let’s talk about the sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden. The New York Times with a big piece inside the complicated reality of being America’s oldest president. And in some ways, they kind of gloss over certain things and frame it in a way that’s friendly to Biden. In other ways, they’re they’re pretty straightforward about some of these issues that he’s facing, Brit. And one of them that’s stood out to me, rather, was reflecting and basically confirming reporting that we heard a couple of weeks ago from Axios that for the most part, the President’s own aides. Try not to schedule him for events any time other than between like 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and nothing early or nothing later if it can be helped. And don’t bother him on weekends. That’s remarkable to me Brit. I mean, that’s the President of the United States.

Brit Hume: Oh, it is in the piece in The New York Times. It did acknowledge those things that you just pointed to and when properly so. What I noticed about the four further parts of the article that I thought were quite forgiving was they relied very heavily on quotes and comments from Trump aides. So that and what that what that means that these are things that we hear that Trump is able to do behind the scenes, that we can’t see what we see we as journalists and we as citizens is what he shows in public. And what he shows in public does not is not the picture of a man who is really on top of it.

Guy Benson: So you’re saying some of the the White House aides, the Biden folks are saying, oh, no, trust us, we see this. You might not see it all the time, but we do. I mean, I guess people can kind of make their own conclusions and draw those conclusions based on what is made available to all of us, on not only not always even a regular basis or a daily basis, at least part of the problem to this whole point. Brit Hume, chief political analyst here at FOX. Our guest on The Guy Benson Show.