“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Sunday grilled Vice President Mike Pence on why President Donald Trump can’t seem to find “a negative thing” to say about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Todd asked Pence to respond to a segment from an interview set to air Sunday on Fox News in which Trump dismissed concerns about Putin’s authoritarian regime by saying that the United States is not “so innocent.”
“Moral equivalency?” Todd asked. “Is there a moral equivalency there? What was that, Mr. Vice President?”
“No, no, not in the least. Not in the least,” Pence said. “What you’re hearing there is a determination by the President of the United States to not let semantics or the arguments of the past get in the way of exploring the ability to work together with Russia and with President Putin in the days ahead.”
“You know the Putin record here,” Todd pressed. “What American leader has done something similar?”
“That’s not, not what the President said in the least,” Pence replied.
“Then why can’t he say a negative thing about Vladimir Putin?” Todd asked.
“Well, he has expressed himself in the campaign, an election that he won, that he was determined to go forward and see whether or not we might be able to start anew in a relationship with Russia,” Pence said.
He described Trump as “someone who is not going to look in the rearview mirror so much as looking out the windshield.”
“Are you comfortable with using those same words to describe Vladimir Putin?” Todd asked. “That basically, you know, yeah, he’s a bad guy, but we’ve done some bad things too. Are you comfortable with that moral equivalency?”
“Again, I don’t accept that it’s a moral equivalency,” Pence said. “I really don’t.”
“You think he misspoke?” Todd asked.
“No, I truly believe—look. President Trump has been critical of American policy in the past and I expect he’s always going to continue to be candid with the American people,” Pence replied.
Watch the exchange via NBC News, starting at 8:37:
