CNN's Kate Bolduan seemed to catch former vice president Mike Pence off guard with a fact check on one of president Donald Trump's signature campaign promises.
Trump's first-term vice president appeared Thursday morning on "CNN News Central" to discuss a variety of topics, and he praised his old boss' handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and foreign policy crises elsewhere, but Bolduan pressed Pence to define the president's overarching principle.
"You add this together with just what you said, and the strikes on Iran, and you have isolationists, as you say, the isolationist wing of [the Republican Party] – get, no more, get out of every foreign conflict," Bolduan said. "You've been speaking out against it, against that growing part of the Republican Party? Do you see Donald Trump as a hawk or an isolationist?"
"President Trump is not an isolationist," Pence stated.
"What do you say to the isolationist wing of the party that says he is?" Bolduan countered. "And he ran on it."
Pence was briefly flummoxed and shifted in his seat before settling on an answer.
"I said this in a major address in Washington last fall that the president I served with is not an isolationist," Pence said. "His bias is to lead. I think he understands that America is the leader of the free world. One of the reasons our administration demanded that our European allies live up to their commitments, and I'm also very encouraged with the news that our NATO allies are now moving to 5 percent [contributions]. Again, that's that is that's not the action of an isolationist, that's the action of a president who understands that America's role is to lead the free world."
"But make no mistake about it, there's a there's a vigorous debate in the Republican Party today by some of the loudest voices around the president that say that America needs to pull back, that we need to we need to pull the shutters in, we need to worry exclusively about what's happening here at home," Pence added, "and while while we should always be concerned about what's happening in our country first – our economy, our security, our prosperity, our values – I think for the better part of the last century, the American people have understood that our role is to lead the free world."
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