WASHINGTON — Eighteen months after leaving the nation’s capital for the last time as president, Donald J. Trump returned Tuesday to face federal investigations, fresh doubts about his viability in an increasingly likely third House bid Blanca and an emerging rivalry with his former running mate.
Addressing two hotel ballrooms less than a mile from Washington, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, the vice president he had left at the mercy of a mob of his supporters during the Capitol riots, starkly showed one of the uneasy divisions within his party.
Competing speeches on the same day would have been unthinkable for a former president and his own vice president not long ago. But the demise of precedent has long been a hallmark of the Trump era.
The strange picture also illustrated the frustrations and reservations of many Republicans about a Trump campaign in 2024, which a recent New York Times/Siena College poll suggested could cause large numbers of Republican voters to abandon the party in a general election.
In his 90-minute speech, Mr. Trump repeatedly went off script to complain about “cheating” investigations, brag about surviving two impeachments and lie about his 2020 election loss. Pence, instead, urged the party to look ahead and come together for the upcoming political battles.
“Some people may choose to focus on the past, but the election is about the future,” Pence said.
A battered Mr. Trump leaned on ominous images of an America beset by violent crime and in desperate need of a rescue that only he could provide.
“Our country is going to hell,” he said. “It’s a very unsafe place.”
The two appearances also underscored the wide gulf in Republican enthusiasm between Trump and any other potential challenger in 2024.
While Mr. Pence received lukewarm applause during his 30-minute speech to about 250 attendees at an event hosted by the Young America’s Foundation, Mr. Trump received a standing ovation from an audience of about 800 people at a meeting of the America First Policy Institute. . The former president’s speech appeared to double as a gathering of former administration officials, campaign aides and informal advisers.
Almost everyone, that is, except Mr. Pence.
Mr. Pence has been a recurring target of criticism from Mr. Trump, who has denounced the former vice president’s refusal to delay the certification of the results of the 2020 election to January 6, 2021. In his speech, Mr. Pence only referred to the subsequent attack on the Capitol, when he was forced to hide as rioters shouted for him to be hanged, as a “tragic day.”
Last week, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot detailed Mr. Trump for not canceling the violence and fear felt by members of the Secret Service of Mr. Pence for their lives.
Donald Trump, post-presidency
The former president remains a powerful force in Republican politics.
The hearing sparked a startling shift in the conservative media. In scathing editorials from two newspapers controlled by the Murdoch family, The New York Post said Mr Trump was “unfit” to be president again, while The Wall Street Journal opined that he had “completely failed” in his duty to manage the crisis.
And on Monday, news emerged that two of Mr. Pence had testified before a federal grand jury in Washington as part of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the events surrounding the riots.
Although Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence were in somewhat regular contact immediately after leaving office, speaking several times by phone in conversations that avoided the subject of the Capitol riot, they have not had similar discussions in months, according to the their advisors In an interview last year, Mr. Trump said he had never told Mr. Pence that he regretted not acting faster to stop the attack, and that Mr. Pence had never apologized.
But behind the scenes there has been a rivalry.
A source of tension has been the book that Mr. Pence is writing about his time in the administration. When Mr. Trump learned of the memo, titled “God Help Me,” to be released on Nov. 15, the former president was still thinking about striking a deal of his own.
This year, the two men have strayed from each other on the midterm campaign trail. They have backed opposing candidates in several primary races, including next week’s Republican gubernatorial race in Arizona, and the party’s gubernatorial primary in Georgia in June, when Mr. Pence, Gov. Brian Kemp, easily defeated his Trump-backed challenger. David Perdue.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pence left out of his speech the kind of effusive praise for Mr. Trump that he had regularly injected into his addresses as vice president and instead referred to the achievements of the “Trump-Pence” administration.
A mild-mannered former governor of Indiana, Mr. Pence remains a reviled figure among much of the Republican base, largely because he resisted attempts by Mr. Trump to subvert the 2020 election.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll of Republican voters this month, only 6 percent said they would vote for Mr. Pence if he ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, compared to 49% who said they would support Mr. Trump and 25% who supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Still, Mr. Pence has been praised by some fellow Republicans for his firmness during and after the Capitol riot. Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, told House investigators that Mr. Pence deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the nation’s highest honors, for enduring Mr. Trump – and remain in the Capitol amid the violence – to certify the election.
Mr. Pence also defended himself, directly contradicting Mr. Trump, in a February speech at the Florida Federalist Society where he said the former president incorrectly believed the vice president had the authority to overturn election results.
“President Trump is wrong,” Mr. Pence said at the time. “He had no right to annul the election.”
But the former vice president has been reluctant to revisit the issue. On Tuesday, he drew subtle distinctions between Mr. Trump for the 2020 election and his own preference to focus more broadly on his hopes for the conservative movement.
In his speech, Mr Trump received some of his biggest cheers when he deviated from his prepared remarks, including his call to prevent transgender women from playing women’s sports, and again when he claimed he had won the presidency for the second time
Mr. Trump also called for sprawling homeless encampments outside cities, which would have bathrooms and medical staff, and urged aggressive crime-fighting policies. He renewed his support for the death penalty for drug dealers and controversial law enforcement tactics that he said would help “return to the police their power and prestige”.
“Leave our police alone,” Trump said. “Every time they do something, they’re afraid they’ll be destroyed, their pensions will be taken away, they’ll be fired, they’ll be put in jail. Let them do their job.”
In his speech, Mr. Pence celebrated the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down the federal right to abortion and called for a movement of cultural conservatives to roll back a “pernicious woke agenda” that he argued was ” allow the radical left to continue dumping toxic waste into the headwaters of our culture.”
“Save the babies, save America,” he said.
Still, Mr. Pence could not escape the direct contrast with Mr. Trump. As Mr Pence finished his speech, the first question from the audience of young conservatives was about the former president “and the division between the two of you”.
“I don’t know that our movement is so divided,” said Mr. Pence. “I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues, but we may differ on approach.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.