On Sunday, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence stopped by Meet The Press, where he discussed the flood of sexual assault allegations that have been reported against his running mate in the past week. Donald Trump denied that he ever acted on the behavior he boasted about in a leaked Access Hollywood tape during last week’s presidential debate, but nine women have since come forward asserting that Trump behaved toward them in the exact way he described to Billy Bush in 2005. Trump’s VP pick, however, is sticking by his side and claiming that any accusations against his running mate are merely “unsubstantiated claims.”
Todd opened the conversation by reminding Pence that he had formerly dismissed Trump’s accusers. “We now have nine accusers that have come out since you have said it’s just talk,” Todd said. “Do you really believe it’s just talk?” Pence replied that he did believe so: “You know, what, what we have this week is a, is a series of, of unsubstantiated allegations.” Todd tried to explain that “unproven” accounts are not the same as unsubstantiated claims, but Pence disagreed. He then tried to steer the conversation to the subject of Hillary Clinton:
“But I have to tell you it really is astonishing to most Americans that as these unsubstantiated allegations are, are treated with an enormous amount of coverage on this network and other networks that revelations coming out of Secretary of State Clinton’s years in the state department and the Clinton Foundation are virtually ignored by the national media. I mean we, we discovered this week that state department officials actually directed contracts for the Haitian recovery effort after the earthquake to friends of the Clintons. And literally that got, that got almost no media attention while, while those that step forward with these unsubstantiated claims that, that Donald Trump has denied, were treated with headline news and continuous coverage.”
But the Meet the Press host was not convinced, but Pence continued to insist that all allegations against him are “categorically false.”
