Pence did the same thing every politician would have done. There is only one person in politics who would have taken thr arrows that a different play would have produced and it’s Donald J. Trump. For all of the DeSantis fans I suggest to you he would have done exactly the same thing as Pence. Trump is different everyone else is just a politician.
There’s no way to know unless they were in that position. Pence chose his fate.