Mike Pence took his former running mate Donald Trump to task during a Tuesday speaking engagement after the former president accused General Mark Milley of “treason” and suggested he should be subject to the death penalty.
Addressing the crowd at a Georgetown University national security and foreign policy event, Pence called Trump’s remarks “inexcusable.”
“Frankly what Donald Trump said about him in that tweet, about treason and death, was utterly inexcusable,” Pence said.
Towards the end of the Trump administration, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley made authorized phone calls to his counterparts in China, assuring them that the U.S. had no intention of starting global war after the chaos of the January 6 riots. On September 22, Trump published a comment on his social media network, Truth Social, declaring that Milley had committed “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH. A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”
Milley, who retired from his post Saturday, has himself defended the calls as “routine” and “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job, and that they were made “to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure strategic stability.” Milley was appointed Joint Chiefs chairman by Trump in 2019 and remained in the post through September 30 of this year.
During the event, Pence, who has struggled to break through in the GOP presidential primary, also advocated for a muscular approach to foreign policy and criticized the growing contingent of the GOP, led by Trump, that is skeptical of American involvement in foreign affairs.
“America is the leader of the free world. If we’re not leading the free world, the free world is not being led.”
Pence has been particularly vocal about the need for America to support Ukraine in its efforts to repel the Russian invasion order to secure American interests in the long run. The former vice president argued that a loss in Ukraine would only entice greater aggression in the region, particularly from China.
“I believe that if Vladimir Putin and the Russian military overruns Ukraine, it will not be long before they cross the border of a NATO country where our men and women in uniform would be required to go and fight… I really do believe that if Russia overruns Ukraine, that’ll give a green light to China to move against Taiwan,” Pence said. “And quite frankly, if we don’t check the efforts by authoritarian regimes to redraw international lines by force, the rest of the 21st century could look a lot like the first half of the 20th century.”
During the conversation, Pence also reacted to the news of Kevin McCarthy’s forced exit as Speaker of the House as it relates to America’s image abroad. After a long pause, Pence replied: “Chaos is never America’s friend.”
The event, co-hosted by Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and The Associated Press, was the first installment in a series of conversations with GOP presidential candidates.