Mike Pence says President Trump is “not an isolationist”
The former Vice President shares his insider take on President Trump’s second term
Mike Pence is no longer in power. And while the former Vice President has fallen out of favor with President Trump since January 6th, 2021, when Pence certified the 2020 election results, Pence is still working on the sidelines as a champion for conservatism, commending and criticizing the Trump administration when he feels it’s warranted.
“For me, nothing's ever really changed,” Pence tells Margaret in a new interview airing this weekend on PBS. “There are loud voices in and around this administration that would have America pull back from the world stage, that would embrace big government policies, that would marginalize the right to life. But I'm going to continue to be a voice... for that broad mainstream conservative agenda."
“I'm encouraged in recent days to see President Trump at home and abroad hewing back to those principles [of the Trump-Pence administration], even while the winds of populism are blowing pretty vigorously in the Republican Party,” he says.
One of Pence’s main criticisms of the Trump administration has been the isolationist wing of MAGA, which was vocally opposed to arming Ukraine in its war against Russia and the recent U.S. bombing of Iran. But Pence believes that the isolationist wing of the GOP lost influence with Trump after questioning strikes, which, as a longtime defender of Israel, Pence fully supports.
"The President Trump I served with is not an isolationist,” says Pence. “His bias is for leadership. He understands America's the leader of the free world."
With Trump now planning to revive arms shipments to Ukraine and warming to the idea of new sanctions on Russia, Pence is celebrating the administration's pivot away from isolationism, at least for now.
Pence is less pleased with President Trump's ongoing delay of enforcing the ban on TikTok. Pence says he is “very concerned” that the Trump administration is “not acting in a manner consistent with the law.” “I think that the Congress should be prepared to take action” if Trump refuses to implement the law, Pence says.
On top of foreign policy, the big news this week has been President Trump’s controversial new One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Pence fully supports it because it enshrines the Trump-Pence tax cuts, even though several independent analyses of the bill Republicans passed have estimated that it will add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade—exacerbating a debt problem that conservatives and Republicans have been lamenting for over 30 years now.
"Our administration did not do a good enough job controlling spending," says Pence. Margaret asks whether he sees any evidence that there's leadership to tackle the debt today.
"Well, there's not a lot of evidence right now," says Pence.
Pence is also critical of the administration’s position on tariffs. As President Trump threatens at least 20 countries with a fresh round of tariffs, former Vice President Mike Pence says it’s time for Congress “to take back” their authority.
“The reality is that the president is actually proposing what would be the largest peacetime tax hike in American history.”
We of course had to ask Pence, who recently received a Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Foundation, about January 6th.
In early June, Pence wrote a letter to a woman named Pam Hemphill, a January 6 rioter who was one of over 1,000 individuals pardoned by President Trump. In a remarkable move, Hemphill rejected Trump's pardon, saying that she did not want to, quote, “be part of Trump's narrative that the DOJ is weaponized."
“As a Bible-believing Christian, I believe in grace, fresh starts, new beginnings,” says Pence. “But it begins with accepting responsibility for what you've done…And I think it's an example that would inspire lots of Americans.”
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In this interview Margaret Hoover asks the toughest questions and is rewarded - as are all her viewers- with a more in depth and nuanced understanding of Mike Pence and the core beliefs he continues to adhere to.
I commend Mike Pence for not crossing the line on January 6th. I wish he maintained that integrity in reminding America that Donald Trump is unfit to serve. Even if that means women retain the right to control their bodies and the tax cuts expired. That’s real integrity.