During an interview with Tucker Carlson on Friday, former vice president Mike Pence defended his view that the U.S. can both support Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion and solve the many domestic problems plaguing the country.
During the interview at the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Iowa, Pence criticized President Biden for signaling “incredible weakness” abroad on the Ukrainian conflict and on the United States’ “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan. He accused the Biden administration of being “slow in providing military support” to the Ukrainians.
“I believe that it is in the interests of the United States of America to continue to give the Ukrainian military the resources they need to repel the Russian invasion and restore their sovereignty,” Pence said as several members of the crowd booed.
Carlson pushed back: “You are distressed that the Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks? Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years.”
“Drive around — there’s not one city that’s gotten better in the United States and it’s visible,” the former Fox News host said. “Our economy has degraded, the suicide rate has jumped, public filth and disorder and crime have exponentially increased and yet your concern is that the Ukrainians — a country most people can’t find on the map, who’ve received tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars — don’t have enough tanks? I think it’s a fair question to ask, where’s the concern for the United States in that?”
“Well that’s not my concern, Tucker,” Pence replied. “I’ve heard that routine from you before, but that’s not my concern.”
Pence said he’s running for president “because I think this country is in a lot of trouble,” and that President Biden has weakened America at home and abroad.
“As president of the United States we’re going to restore law and order in our cities, we’re going to secure our border, we’re going to get this economy moving again, and we’re going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God given liberties enshrined in our constitution,” he said.
He added: “Anybody that says that we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth. We can do both. And as president of the United States we will secure our border we will support our military we will revive our economy and stand by our values and we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration.”
Carlson has been a vocal skeptic of the United States’s support for Ukraine.
Pence, by contrast, has warned he has “no doubt” that if Vladimir Putin were to overrun Ukraine that “in a short period of time [the] Russian military is going to cross the border of a NATO country that our armed forces will have to go and defend.”
“I never want to see American armed forces in Ukraine,” he said. “I want to give the Ukrainian military what they need to fight and repel the Russian invasion.”
Pence is one of several Republican presidential candidates who will participate in interviews with Carlson at the FAMiLY Leadership Summit, including Senator Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.
Former president Donald Trump was notably absent from the event. Bob Vander Plaats, the organization’s president and CEO and an influential Evangelical leader in Iowa, said Trump’s team offered to send Senator J. D. Vance as a surrogate, but Vander Plaats declined, per the New York Times’ Jonathan Swan, because the organization has a policy of declining surrogates or video presentations for its events.