Did a video show former Republican Vice President Mike Pence endorsing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for the 2024 U.S. presidential elections? No, that's not true: The video was edited to make it sound like Pence endorsed Harris and Walz, the Democratic presidential ticket. In the original footage of Pence's remarks, he stated that he could not vote for Harris or Walz. Lead Stories also found no evidence on Pence's social media accounts that he ever endorsed the two Democrats for the White House.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) on October 12, 2024. It opened with Pence saying:
Vote for Kamala Harris as president of the United States or Tim Walz as her running mate.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Oct 16 13:53:33 2024 UTC)
The video on TikTok did not tell viewers where they can watch the full version of Pence's remarks and did not provide other pieces of evidence that would corroborate its claim.
Behind Pence's head is a logo that reads, "Erick Erickson: The Gathering." To find the full clip of Pence speaking, Lead Stories searched for "Erick Erickson The Gathering AND Mike Pence" on Google (archived here). We found on C-SPAN, the public-service broadcaster, a roughly hour-long video of Pence speaking at an August 2024 conservative forum in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by radio host Erick Erickson.
At 41:34 in the video on C-SPAN, Pence stated the exact opposite of what the claim alleges:
Let me go on the record here at The Gathering: I could never vote for Kamala Harris as president of the United States or Tim Walz as her running mate.
Lead Stories searched on Google News for recent news stories mentioning Pence endorsing Kamala Harris or the Harris-Walz team. Other than fact checks of this claim, we found no actual news reports that confirmed Pence's supposed endorsement.
We also checked Pence's social media accounts for any evidence of his alleged endorsement. His X (archived here), Facebook (archived here), and Instagram (archived here) accounts did not provide any proof.
Multiple fact-checking agencies also have fact-checked this claim about Pence's endorsement: AFP, FactCheck.org and Snopes, among others.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Mike Pence are here.
