On CNN, former Vice President Mike Pence was asked if President Trump brought "the highest level of integrity" to the presidency.
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00:00It was nearly 10 years ago, almost, hard to believe, that you said, on the campaign trail in 2016,
00:07character matters to the presidency, and Donald Trump will bring the highest level of integrity to the highest office in the land.
00:14You can count on it.
00:16Do you still feel that way today?
00:19Well, I want to be very clear.
00:22I'm very proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration.
00:25President Trump and I had a good professional and personal relationship for four and a half years.
00:32I surprise people sometimes when I tell them that we never had a crossword between us until those fateful days at the end.
00:40We're very different men.
00:42We have different ways of expressing ourselves and, in some ways, different priorities.
00:46But we had a great working relationship, and I think we delivered for the American people.
00:51For me, ultimately, character in public life is about doing what you said you're going to do, and we did that in our four years.
00:59And I will tell you that in the early days of this new Trump administration, I think the president, in many ways, has been doing that again.
01:06He's delivered on securing the border.
01:09He's restored morale in our military.
01:12We're now recruitment in our military, having been flagging over the last several years, is now exceeding goals in every branch of our service.
01:20We took the fight to the Houthis on their soil on our terms and fought back after the Biden administration had largely abandoned the region.
01:31And I think all those steps give evidence of the fact that President Trump is keeping his word to the American people, just as we did.
01:41Where I'm going to continue to seek to be a voice as a happy warrior and the conservative that I've always been is where I see this Trump administration departing from the successful policies of our administration,
01:57whether it be making the tax cuts permanent when some in and around the administration are talking about actually raising the top marginal rate,
02:04a move that would be an enormous tax increase on small business owners across this country, where I see the wavering support for Ukraine.
02:13It contradicts the strong leadership on the world stage that President Trump and our administration provided in our first four years.
02:23And where I see a marginalizing of the right to life, both in personnel and in policy decisions, that's different from our administration.
02:32What do you attribute those changes to?
02:33We stood strong for the right to life.
02:35What do you attribute those changes to?
02:36I mean, if those were the policies when you were there and this is what's happening now, is it because you're not there?
02:43Is it staffing or is it the president himself that's changed?
02:47Well, I can't account for it.
02:50I know that it's true to say the personnel is policy.
02:55We had a diversity of views around the president.
02:58His leadership style was to put a lot of people around that resolute desk in the Oval Office, hear a lot of ideas.
03:07And I hope even from the outside that I and others can maybe give the president another thought, remind him of the policies that succeeded in our administration,
03:18that created security and prosperity and strengthen the values of the American people, preserved our liberties and our courts.
03:26And whatever the future holds for me, I'm going to try and be a consistent voice for those conservative values that I think are not only the right policy for the Republican Party,
03:35but I think they're the best way forward for a boundless future for the American people.
03:42Vice President Pence, thank you for your time.