On Thursday, Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence defended Donald Trump‘s statement that Russian president Vladmir Putin is a “stronger leader” than Obama. The VP pick even called the sentiment “inarguable.”
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Pence never missed a chance to compare his running mate favorably to the Gipper. At one point, he insisted that “it was Ronald Reagan who who met with Gorbachev and demonstrated that you can, as Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘walk softly and carry a big stick.’ You can speak boldly and plainly and have relationships with people around the world stage.”
Bash asked Pence whether he personally believes that Vladmir Putin is a stronger leader than President Obama. “I think it’s inarguable that Vladimir Putin has been a stronger leader in his country than Barack Obama has been in this country,” the Indiana Governor replied. “And that’s going to change the day that Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America.”
Pence also defended Trump’s remark that “the generals have been reduced to rubble.” He argued that it was meant as a criticism of Obama, not the generals. “I think he was talking about the commander-in-chief reducing the influence of generals to rubble,” Pence said. He feels Trump was merely describing a “sense that he got recently that in fact our president had not taken all of the counsel of our military advisers in confronting and defeating ISIS.”
(Via CNN)
