The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday said Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at the Munich Security Conference should have been more in line with remarks from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said President Trump and his aides were sending conflicting signals about the administration’s commitment to NATO.
“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.
Pence, in his first major foreign policy address as vice president, assured European leaders that he spoke for Trump when he vowed to uphold the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Schiff said he was not in attendance for McCain’s remarks, but did see Pence’s, which he said received a “subdued” reaction from guests.
Karl pushed back, asking why Pence’s promise to maintain NATO would not have been a solid affirmation.
“Nikki Haley said we don’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but that still begs the question, is the vice president or Nikki Haley really speaking for the president?” Schiff said. “I think certainly here when Mike Pence said ‘we want NATO members to pay up,’ they knew, in that case, he was speaking for the president. But when he talk about American commitment to NATO, the commitment to Europe, I think there are still profound questions about whether in those cases he’s speaking for the president or himself.”
A day earlier, McCain had warned Trump’s suppression of the press was “how dictators get started.” He added that having a free press is a “fundamental part of the new world order.”
