ASHINGTON — Mike Pence returned to Washington Tuesday morning to rally a conference of conservative students ahead of the November midterm elections — but all eyes are on the tension between the former vice president and Donald Trump stemming from the events of Jan. 6.

Pence’s speech comes a year and a half after his former boss and two-time running mate, Donald Trump, instigated a mob that wanted to kill Pence at the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s also happening days after the House select committee investigating that attack and Trump’s role in it held its ninth hearing, and just hours before Trump, who has been itching to announce another bid for president, makes his first return to Washington since leaving the White House.

During his speech Tuesday morning at the Young America’s Foundation, Pence mentioned Trump only in the context of the “Trump-Pence administration” and made a glancing reference to Jan. 6, using his stump-speech shorthand for it as “that tragic day in our nation’s capital.”

But the tension between the vice president who helped stop the insurrection and the president who spurred that attack, and painted a target on Pence’s back in the process, has been unavoidable.