Pence's prepared speech lifted words directly from Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s prepared remarks for a speech in New Hampshire this week lifted words directly from an address his former boss, Donald Trump, delivered nearly four years ago.

According to the remarks that were prepared for delivery to the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, Pence was set to declare the following:

“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.”

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.”

Following publication, POLITICO obtained audio of the speech that indicated Pence did not end up delivering the lines in question. Pence’s and Trump’s speeches also did end up diverging after that specific 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 in 2019 said “My mission is to put our country on the very best footing to thrive, excel, compete and to win.”

The overlap in the prepared remarks came as Pence sought to emphasize his status as a pre-Trump Republican. In his speech, Pence explicitly outlined some policy differences that set him apart from the Trump era, including being critical of his own administration’s “overspending.”

The similarity between the two speeches, as they were prepared, appears to come down to who authored them. The speechwriter responsible for Pence’s remarks worked as a speechwriter in Trump’s orbit when the New York Economic Club remarks were delivered, before going to work for Pence in 2021. A person familiar with Pence’s speech and granted anonymity to speak freely about its preparation said the speechwriter “inadvertently” recycled his own words. A Pence adviser declined to identify the speechwriter.

The New Hampshire speech, said Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for Pence, was designed for Pence to draw a contrast with other candidates in the race and to show he is running a forward-looking campaign. He noted that the portion of the prepared speech that included recycled remarks was rhetorical and not substantive in nature.

“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.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Pence accused now-President Joe Biden’s campaign of plagiarizing the Trump coronavirus response plan.

“Looks a little bit like plagiarism … which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about,” Pence said in the 2020 vice presidential debate, a thinly veiled reference to Biden’s 1987 plagiarism scandal, when he lifted the words of the British politician Neil Kinnock.