Mike Pence faced some pushback on CNN in his defense of President Donald Trump's policy priorities.
Trump's former vice president appeared Wednesday morning on "CNN News Central" to promote his new book, "What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience," and he justified some of the president's policies, including tariffs, that he personally did not support.
"Look, the president comes by his support for tariffs honestly," Pence said. "I mean, he has supported broad-based tariffs throughout his career. Now, during our administration, we use tariffs as a means of leverage, the threat of tariffs. That's how we renegotiated NAFTA, that's how we we renegotiated a trade deal with South Korea, and we're working on trade deals around the world before we left office. But this administration is different with the 'liberation day' tariffs against friend and foe alike. The Supreme Court turned them back."
Pence pointed out the U.S. Trade Representative announced another round of tariffs this week, and host Kate Bolduan interjected.
"No one's making Trump do anything, right?" she said. "I mean, Donald Trump is supercharging that populism."
Pence disagreed and suggested that outside voices were nudging Trump toward right-wing populism.
"He comes by that very honestly, he really does," Pence said. "But I would tell you, this new cabinet, that new voices, I mean, the idea of literally having the federal government take a percentage share of American businesses would have, I think, never even been discussed in the first Trump administration, and it comes from the outside."
Bolduan interjected again to fact check the former vice president.
"He's so excited about it," Bolduan said. "He just said in an interview he wished he'd taken a bigger stake in it."
Pence chuckled and begged to differ.
"I get that, I understand it, but the point that I make in the book is that Republicans have always believed in limited government and free market economics, in free enterprise," he said. "Those policies, big government policies that have made their way into this administration are at odds with that long-standing tradition, but here's the thing I would say to you, there's no question in my mind that the president remains the leader of the Republican Party and Republican primary voters."
The former vice president praised Trump's success in getting his favored candidates elected in GOP primaries around the country.
"I think that comes from the fact that Republicans are grateful that for 10 years, Donald Trump has been willing to fight the radical left," Pence said. "He did it during our years and through the lawfare times of the Biden administration and since."
Bolduan pointed out that Pence's book explicitly was intended to nudge the Republican Party back to its pre-Trump norms, and asked what part of the MAGA agenda he did not want to endure.
"I want a lot of it to endure," Pence insisted. "Look, I love my country, I want to see the president be successful. But what I don't want to see is people on the populist right conflating the president's personal popularity with with a new agenda that's far afield from the conservative agenda, and that's where I why I wrote 'What Conservatives Believe.'"
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