Mike Pence

>> The Trump years according to Vice President Mike Pence and what's next this week on "Firing Line."

>> Life is winning again in America.

>> His deep Christian faith and conservative credentials... >> Obamacare has failed, and Obamacare must go.

>> ...earned Mike Pence, a former governor of Indiana, a spot on Donald Trump's presidential ticket.

>> I guess he was just looking for some balance on the ticket.

>> He stood by Trump's side for four turbulent years.

>> I thought that loyalty and discretion were among the most important aspects of the job.

>> But on January 6th... >> Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.

>> ...the Vice President said no to the former president.

Vice President Pence refused to overturn the will of the American people.

>> Joseph R. Biden Jr. of the state of Delaware has received 306 votes.

>> Now, with the 2024 presidential race looming, is it his turn?

What does Vice President Mike Pence say now?

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> Vice President Mike Pence, welcome to "Firing Line."

>> Thank you, Margaret.

Great to be here.

>> You have just published your book, "So Help Me God."

It's a reference to your faith and to the many oaths of office you have taken: as a U.S. representative from the state of Indiana, as governor of Indiana, and as Vice President of the United States.

You talk about your philosophy of how you approached the vice presidency.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> It was clear to you that the job wasn't to be a co-president, but it was to support the presidency that Donald Trump was elected to advance.

>> It was a great honor for me to run for and serve as vice president of the United States.

And I thought that loyalty and discretion were among the most important aspects of the job.

As Vice President Mondale said, that it's the job of the vice president to share his opinion with the president, but in private.

You know, the president would often have a bullpen around the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

And sometimes the president would turn to me and say, "What do you think?"

And I'd almost invariably say, "Let me -- Let me talk to you about that later."

Because I had a great sense that it was important that, as vice president, I was standing with the president in whatever decision that he would make, that I reflected a loyalty to the president.

And the only higher loyalty was to God and to the Constitution.

And so all throughout the administration, I sought to do that.

>> You write in "So Help Me God" about your strong record when you were in the Congress and as governor as a fiscal conservative.

And it's clear that's a very important part of your legacy when you were an executive and also a legislator.

The fiscal hawks and the conservatives have pointed out that the Trump administration maybe didn't have the most astounding record for fiscal restraint.

Over $4 trillion in new debt was added between tax cuts and increasing spending even before COVID.

And so fiscal conservatives lament the spending record of the Trump years.

Do they have a real gripe?

Is there -- Are they wrong about the spending?

>> Well, let me say two things about spending, because I do believe that more than $30 trillion in national debt on my children and all of our grandchildren is, in a very real sense, a moral issue for this country, and one that we need to contend with in the years ahead.

But I will tell you that I thought we put first things first in the Trump-Pence administration, which was a recognition that without a growing economy, we'll never balance the federal budget again, we'll never reduce the national debt.

And we set ourselves from very early on advancing policies, as I write in the book, that cut taxes across the board for businesses and individuals, that rolled back regulations at a record level, and I believe was setting us on a path to have the kind of revenues that we could begin to move toward a balanced budget and ultimately reducing debt.

But beyond that, I would tell you that the spending during COVID, as significant as it was, I honestly believe that's what government is for.

>> It's a national emergency.

>> I mean, when there's a national emergency, the government is the source of last resort.

>> Has there been a shift in the conservative movement about fiscal conservatism?

Because in 2019, Rush Limbaugh said nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore.

I mean, is there a place in the conservative firmament for fiscal conservatism anymore, and is it credible?

>> I think there is a place.

The American people know how to live within a budget and they expect the government to do the same.

You know, in a very real sense, I feel that's where our party has failed.

You know, I've been speaking on university campuses around the country.

And I think we owe it to that generation, the rising generation, to make the decisions now to put our nation back on a path of fiscal solvency.

And I believe we will.

>> In the book "So Help Me God," you describe several examples in the foreign policy arena where your approach to engaging with authoritarian leaders around the globe really was very different than the president's.

You personally confronted Vladimir Putin about his meddling in the elections in 2016.

You took a stand against the Kim family in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea.

Why was it important for you to write about that contrast in your book?

>> Well, Margaret, I'm not sure that there was a contrast.

There was a difference in style.

But if you recall, with regard to North Korea, the president was using very strong rhetoric toward the Kim regime.

I do believe that the approach that we took, whether it be with Vladimir Putin, whether it be with Kim Jong-un, whether it be with the way that we isolated Iran as never before, getting out of the Iran nuclear deal and marshaling support across the Arab world, was new.

It was innovative.

And history records that ours was the only administration in the 21st century where Vladimir Putin did not try to redraw international lines by force.

But I do believe that the combination of engagement but firm resolve about defending America's interests and the interests of our treaty allies moved us into a different season with those authoritarian regimes, and it still represents a framework for how America can deal with those nations in the future.

>> It's true that President Trump had very harsh words for Kim Jong-un.

>> He did.

>> But he never once had a harsh word for Vladimir Putin.

And many people find that curious, to say the least.

>> Well, my perception of that as I write in the book was that President Trump always had the view that a certain amount of diplomatic language toward these authoritarian leaders was a fairly cheap price to pay.

But to your point, I had a different style, a different approach, particularly when it came to Vladimir Putin.

When, in my encounters with him, I wanted to send a very clear message to him that the man standing at the side of the president of the United States knew who he was, too.

And I communicated that to him directly.

In a conversation that I recount that he and I had in Singapore, I looked him in the eye and I said, "We know what happened in 2016 and it can't happen again."

>> Did you feel the need to say that because President Trump wasn't saying that?

>> Well, look.

Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but not on behalf of any particular candidate.

>> Well -- >> That was all part of the Russia collusion hoax that would overtake Washington, D.C., for two and a half years until the Mueller report concluded that there was no collusion.

What we know from our intelligence community, Margaret, is that Russia used technology to meddle on both sides of our elections, to sow discord -- >> Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, right.

>> To sow discord in the American political process, just as they've done in many other Western countries.

And I wanted Vladimir Putin to know that we knew that.

I wanted him to hear directly from me... >> But he wasn't hearing that directly from President Trump.

>> ...that it could not happen again.

>> Was it important for him to hear it from you because he wasn't hearing it from the former president?

>> Well, I wasn't privy to the private meeting between President Trump and President Putin.

And so I can't say whether he heard the same words from me.

But I do recall the president saying that he raised the issue.

>> I'd like to move to the 2020 election.

The transition.

January 6th.

You write in your book that soon after the 2020 race was called for Joe Biden, you told Jared Kushner that you didn't believe there was enough fraud to have impacted the outcome of the election.

You still publicly supported the election challenges, the legal challenges.

>> I did.

>> And I wonder if you could explain what you saw as the best possible outcome from those challenges.

>> I shared the concern of millions of Americans about voting irregularities that did take place in a half a dozen states around the country.

>> Explain what you mean by irregularities.

>> I will.

You know, in the case of Wisconsin, a year after the election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court found that state law had been violated in two different respects with regard to drop boxes and early voting.

Now, the evidence that there was widespread fraud that affected the outcome of the election would never come.

But there were irregularities.

And I thought it was appropriate to raise issues in the courts.

Members of Congress had every right to debate voting irregularities and any evidence of fraud if it were to emerge before the Congress of the United States, because that's the system and the process that we had.

>> So it was about letting the process play itself out.

>> It was.

>> Do you think when you talk about those irregularities now, there are people who still lean on that as an article of faith that there was fraud in the 2020 election?

>> Well, the American people are entitled to their opinions.

>> But not -- >> But I don't believe that we have seen evidence of the kind of widespread fraud in any state that would have changed the outcome of the election.

>> You write about how after the election, you privately took opportunities to try to convince the president to accept the results of the election.

Around the same time in public, you were telling supporters to stay in the fight.

And on January 4th you said, "I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress."

>> You know, I know we all got our doubts about the last election.

And I promise you, come this Wednesday, we'll have our day in Congress.

We'll hear the objections.

We'll hear the evidence.

>> Help me understand how privately your communications to the president were so different than your public communications at the time.

>> You know, for four and a half years, President Trump was not only my president, he was my friend.

And we developed a close relationship.

And as I said earlier, I didn't always agree with every decision the president made, but I always shared my counsel in private.

And in the aftermath of the 2020 election, I did that regularly.

And I'll never forget that day in the Oval Office before we left for Christmas.

It was just the two of us there.

And he looked at me and he said, "What do you think we ought to do?"

I said, "If nothing changes, just take a bow.

Let's go travel the country, let's go thank people for what we did.

Let the future take care of itself."

And I remember he pointed at me as if to say, "that's worth thinking about."

And I'll always wish he had, much more deeply.

But that was the approach that I had in my relationship with the president.

And in fact I had hoped, all the way up until January 5th, that he would come around particularly about my role.

I remember on the evening of January 4th, the president opened his speech that night, as I watched on television, referring to me.

And he said, "Our great vice president is going to have to come through for us" or words to that effect.

But then he said, "Or if he doesn't, maybe I won't like him as much."

But then he stopped himself, Margaret.

And he said to the crowd, "No, no, one thing you know about Mike Pence is he always plays it straight."

>> You know one thing with him -- you're going to get straight shots.

He's going to call it straight.

>> And I remember watching on television and thinking, "I think he's coming around on my role," which to me, I'd made clear to him for many weeks that I had no right to overturn the election, that the American presidency belongs to the American people.

And the very idea that any one person would have the authority to decide what electoral votes to count and which not to count was un-American.

And I'd made that clear.

Now, with regard to my rhetoric, I will tell you that I fully supported the election challenges in the court.

And what I wanted to assure voters was that they needed to stay in the fight for election integrity, not just through January 6, but going forward.

And I'm very pleased that in the last two years, many Republican-led states around the country have passed common-sense election integrity reforms that have bolstered the confidence of the American people in that one-person, one-vote principle at the heart of our democracy.

And I believe that by channeling the great frustration that Republicans felt in the election into the legal processes that exist under the Constitution and the law, we would have a better chance of moving through that difficult time.

>> One of the things I noticed as I read your book, "So Help Me God," was you never recounted a moment where you said, "Mr. President, the election was fair and legitimate."

Did you ever tell the president, "Mr. President, the election was fair and legitimate and we lost"?

>> Well, as I say on the first page of "So Help Me God," it was an election we lost.

And I made that clear to the president over and over again.

But I never wanted to discount every opportunity that we had to air concerns that tens of millions of Republicans felt about the election, either in the courts or before the Congress of the United States.

What saddened me, and ultimately angered me, was that in the waning days leading up to January 6, the expectation of a fulsome debate that would hear of irregularities and any evidence of fraud gave way to an expectation greatly facilitated by a group of outside lawyers that were allowed to advise the president -- people that not only should never have been in the Oval Office, but they shouldn't have been let on the White House grounds -- that communicated to the public that in some way I could change the outcome of the election.

And I'll never forget driving up to the Capitol that day with my daughter at my side.

And I looked out and I saw many Americans standing just beyond a rope line.

They were literally cheering our motorcade.

>> Thinking that you would be able to overturn the election?

>> My heart went out to them.

And I looked at my daughter and I said, "Those people are going to be so disappointed."

>> Just try to characterize what I think I understand you're saying -- you were trying to channel that frustration in a constructive way that would play out in a rules-based system, that your intent was to channel it constructively, not to fan the flames.

>> I think that's especially well said.

And it's exactly what my sentiment was with one caveat, and that is that in the days immediately following the election, we didn't know what we didn't know.

>> In your book, you tell the story of when you visited the Capitol in January 6, 2001, and you watched Vice President Gore certify the election.

>> I did.

>> Two decades later, you did the same thing, but I would submit under far greater pressure.

Do you see your actions that day, having done your duty, as heroic?

>> The heroes that day were all wearing uniforms.

Law enforcement personnel that were overwhelmed by violent rioters, Capitol Hill police, federal law enforcement that quelled the violence.

They made it possible for the Congress to reconvene the very same day.

May God bless all who serve here and those who protect this place.

And may God bless the United States of America.

Let's get back to work.

[ Applause ] I closed my statement and just said off the cuff, "Let's get back to work," and was deeply moved when members on both sides of the aisle stood up and applauded.

Not for me, but for a moment that showed our universal commitment to preserving American democracy.

And I believe that's why that day of tragedy ultimately became a triumph of freedom.

And as long as I live, I'll remember it in no other way.

>> From your perspective, is there ever a case where you think it is appropriate to indict a former president of the United States?

>> Well, let me say, no one is above the law.

But I would hope that there would not be that case, especially with regard to my former running mate.

>> Attorney General Bill Barr told me last month that it would be appropriate for the Justice Department to indict a former president in the case of a serious crime, and that he believes that it is possible that President Trump committed a serious crime, and that the Department of Justice is gathering that evidence.

If that were the case, he thinks it would be appropriate.

Do you agree with him?

>> Well, I just don't know if it's a crime to take bad advice from lawyers.

I would hope the Justice Department and the now new special counsel would move very judiciously and very cautiously, understanding that any such action against a former president of the United States would be deeply divisive of the American people and it would send the wrong message to the world.

>> But no one's above the law.

>> But no one's above the law.

>> You were a Democrat until the 1980s.

But you write that your mother placed you on a Barry Goldwater float that drove through your town in 1964.

Two years after you rode on that float, Goldwater appeared on the original "Firing Line" with William F. Buckley Jr., and he discussed the challenges he believed Republicans would face trying to unseat a Democratic incumbent in 1968.

Take a look at this.

>> I take pleasure in introducing a great man and a good friend, from whom I'd like to hear first whether it's getting more and more difficult to defeat any incumbent president?

>> Well, Bill, to answer your question, I think this country has become pretty much a two-party -- a two-term country.

So I think it's pretty much up to the president.

If he decides to run again, the chances of the Republicans beating him are not excellent.

>> Of course, that incumbent was Lyndon Baines Johnson, and he wound up withdrawing from the Democratic primaries.

Former Vice President Richard Nixon steps in and wins the presidency.

My question for you is, looking ahead to 2024, if Joe Biden runs again, how can Republicans overcome the power of incumbency?

>> Well, I think just like Barry Goldwater said, this is a good two-party system.

And if the Republicans articulate a vision for the future that's grounded in those common-sense, conservative principles, we'll not only win the next election, but we'll win a boundless future for the American people.

>> You've been clear that you're going to visit with your family over Christmas, the holidays, the first time all of you are together, to think about what it might look like, what your future might look like.

And it's clear to me that you feel very driven to run.

But how will you know that you are called to run?

>> Well, as you just alluded, a friend of mine told me many years ago, there's two kinds of people in politics -- people that are called and people that are driven.

And as you can read in my book, I've been both.

I think I know the difference.

I've developed a healthy distrust for my own ambition.

Ronald Reagan once said the American people have a funny way of letting you know if they want you to run for president.

And as I've traveled around the country over the last year and a half, we've gotten a pretty consistent message from the American people that they want to get back to the policies of the Trump-Pence administration.

You know, I think our politics are more divided right now, Margaret, than any time in my lifetime.

But I'm not convinced the American people are as divided as our politics.

And as we think about what role we might play, for me it'll be about discerning whether we might play a role in helping to have government as good as our people, that standing and fighting for all the same ideals that we fought for in the Trump-Pence years, but brings a level of civility and respect that I think, and hear, the American people would like to see restored to our national debate.

>> You're incredibly reluctant to criticize your former boss and friend.

And I wonder if that's because it doesn't go well for people who criticize Donald Trump.

Are you reluctant to criticize him because you don't want to run the risk of infuriating the MAGA base of support?

>> I think if people read "So Help me God," they'll see that I'm incredibly proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, what we did for the American people.

But I'm also candid about differences that we had along the way, especially at the end.

And for whatever the future holds for the Pences, I'll always -- I'll always hope that people will, in these pages, have a better sense of who we are, the role we played.

And we'll be spending time in the weeks and months ahead to determine if the American people and the good Lord has any more use for us.

>> We'll be waiting.

Mike Pence, Mr. Vice President, thank you for joining me here at "Firing Line."

>> Thank you, Margaret.

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