Research/Study
By the numbers: Mike Pence’s campaign was dead on arrival in right-wing media
On OAN, Trump received more than 115 times as much candidate airtime as Pence
Published
This is the first in a series of data-focused articles on how former President Donald Trump has maintained a massive lead in the Republican presidential primary with the unwavering backing of the right-wing media machine.
On October 30, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk wasted no words in responding to news of former Vice President Mike Pence suspending his 2024 presidential campaign.
“That’s awesome,” Kirk said on his Salem radio show. “That’s a great sign.”
Noting Pence’s “big mistakes” as vice president, “especially in the lead up to the vote counting on January 6,” Kirk declared that “Mike Pence tried to take his campaign on an ideological detour away from the MAGA America First base, and voters wanted nothing to do with it.”
Kirk’s brief post-mortem of the Pence campaign underscores one major point: The former vice president’s career in Republican politics is essentially dead, reduced to being viewed as a traitor to his one-time boss, former President Donald Trump. And for Pence’s brief, floundering campaign which only began in early June, his perceived betrayal of Trump on January 6, 2021, guaranteed limited, low-energy coverage of his 2024 efforts from right-wing media.
According to Media Matters' databases, the total airtime for Pence’s live events and interviews on Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network was significantly eclipsed by that of Trump on all three right-wing cable news networks from June 1 to October 28.
This difference was most pronounced on the staunchly pro-Trump OAN, which devoted over 40 hours to Trump interviews and live events during this time versus just 21 minutes for Pence — all from just one speech, during OAN’s broader live coverage of a Faith & Freedom Coalition summit that also featured other GOP speakers including Vivek Ramaswamy, one of Pence’s primary rivals.
Even on Fox News, which made half-hearted attempts to promote several non-Trump GOP candidates, Pence couldn’t catch a break, getting barely half of the interview and live event airtime that the network gave to Trump.