Late Sunday night, as the second presidential debate was getting into full swing, word started circulating on Twitter: Mike Pence, it seemed, might pull himself from the GOP ticket.
Today it’s clear the swirling was for naught. Speaking to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Monday morning, Pence called rumors that he had considered quiting “absolutely false” and promised to spend the next four weeks “campaigning shoulder to shoulder” with Trump. “It’s the greatest honor of my life to have been nominated by my party to be the next vice president of the United States of America,” the Indiana governor added.
But the better evidence that Pence remains firmly on Team Trump—at least until the rest of the shoe department drops on it—was obvious during the remainder of the nearly 20-minute interview, as Pence repeatedly barreled over and through Camerota’s questions in order to deliver Trump Tower–approved talking points. He praised his running mate for apologizing at the start of the debate for his offensive 2005 Access Hollywood tape, dismissed Trump’s misogynistic braggadocio as “talk, not actions,” and spoke at length about the past allegations of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton that Trump has now put at the center of his campaign.
And in case all that wasn’t enough to prove his loyalty to Trump at a time when several prominent Republicans have made it clear they’d rather Pence take Trump’s place atop the ticket, the VP nominee also returned to his reality-denying ways in order to effectively take Trump’s side in his very public disagreement with none other than Mike Pence himself.
On Sunday night, Trump was asked by moderator Martha Raddatz whether he agreed with the aggressive posture Pence had advocated the United States take toward Russia in Syria during the vice presidential debate. “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Trump responded. Asked about that remarkable statement on Monday, Pence tried to blame the whole thing on Raddatz, whom he said “misrepresented” his position when she quoted his response in her question to Trump. “You know the question that I got was about Aleppo, was about humanitarian aid,” Pence said of the VP debate query. He continued:
The question I had, and you can check the transcript, so can your viewers, was about the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, and what we ought to do. Donald Trump’s position, our position, has been that we need to establish safe zones and you need to be willing to use —you need to be willing to use resources and including military power to secure those safe zones to allow those people, including 100,000 children, to be able to evacuate. Last night [Raddatz] conflated that and referred to general provocation and involvement by the Russians in the Syrian regime and you know, Donald Trump’s made it clear our policy is safe zones for people suffering in Syria.
Let’s go to the transcript. Here was the precise wording of the question that was posed to Pence last week:
Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?
And here was the most relevant part of Pence’s response (emphasis mine):
I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue—I should say, to be involved—in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.
And here was Raddatz’s question to Trump (emphasis mine):
If you were president what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in air strikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.
Pence, then, is right when he says his question and response were about the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo. The problem: So, too, was the question put to Trump on Sunday. Raddatz did not “misrepresent” Pence’s answer. He and Trump simply had different ones. (Maybe they should talk.)
As my colleague Joshua Keating pointed out, Pence’s original answer at his debate wouldn’t have been all the surprising if he were running with someone who hewed closer to Republican foreign policy orthodoxy, like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. But Pence is sharing a ticket with a man who has advocated partnering with Vladimir Putin to fight ISIS, believes America’s “Arab partners” on the ground in Syria are in fact members of ISIS, and has said Putin “has been a leader far more than our president [Obama] has been.” Pence is a Russia hawk flying alongside a Russia dove, and so his only option is to create so many clouds that voters can’t even see the sky. But given Trump’s general reliance on misdirection and outright mendacity during this campaign, there may be no better way for Pence to prove his loyalty than by doing what he just did—pretending a thing that happened didn’t.
