Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday commended Vice President Mike Pence on his inaugural foreign policy speech at the Munich Security Conference, despite his friend, Arizona Sen. John McCain, criticizing the Trump administration in front of world leaders.
The former 2016 GOP presidential candidate and rival of Trump’s said European leaders “feel better” having heard from Pence on Saturday.
“‘America first’ has been a little hard to understand. A lot of people over here believe it is going back to the ’20s and ’30s isolationism where America sort of retreats from the region,” Graham said. “Vice President Pence’s speech was terrific. We are going to be more involved in NATO, not less. We are going have more troops supporting our friends in Europe against aggression by Russia. There seems, the theme ‘America first’ is not withdrawing from NATO or the world, but asking our partners to do more, and they should.”
Pence, in his first major foreign policy address as vice president, assured European leaders that he spoke for Trump when he vowed to uphold NATO.
The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday said Pence’s speech at the conference should have been more in line with remarks from McCain, who said Trump and his aides were sending conflicting signals about the administration’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“I wish the vice president had given the kind of speech that John McCain gave because I think that would have done a lot to reassure all of the NATO members, European allies, and others that are here today,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told ABC’s “This Week” guest host Jon Karl.
