CNN town hall with Mike Pence

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday night he supports US aid to Ukraine and called out former President Donald Trump for his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Pence's remarks put him in stark contrast with Trump, who — during his town hall — would not say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. The former president glossed over the question when asked in May.

“I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying,” Trump said at CNN’s town hall moderated by CNN's Kaitlan Collins. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

Pence, for his part, took a defiant tone about Russia and Putin, saying he has spoken to the Russian leader, looked him in the eye and told him things he did not want to hear.

"Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana 'another thing coming.' He has no intention of stopping. He's made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe," he said.

Pence then admonished Trump for calling Putin a genius in February on a conservative radio show.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said he would not bring back his administration's controversial family separation policy to manage migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Pence was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about former President Donald Trump's answer to a question about the issue at a previous CNN town hall. Bash said that Trump asserted “your administration's family separation policy was an effective deterrent and refused to rule out bringing it back as president. Would you bring it back?”

"No," Pence said.

This is different from Trump's position that he would return the separation policy if he was elected president again.

“When you say to a family that if you come, we’re going to break you up, they don’t come,” Trump said. His comments came just before Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic public health restriction that became a key tool officials used to expel migrants at the US-Mexico border, was expiring.

However, Pence said Title 42 should be reinstated.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said that if elected president, he would marshal Congress to build a military to specifically respond to provocations by China.

Asked by CNN's Dana Bash about how a Pence administration would deal with concerning military encounters with China, the former vice president responded:

Former Vice President Mike Pence said he would support a federal ban on the Chinese- owned app TikTok and said "everything TikTok gets, the Chinese communist government has access to."

Vice President Mike Pence reaffirmed his stance as pro-life and pointed to initiatives and legislation throughout his career that advanced that position.

He said that the first time he ran for Congress 20 years ago, his pro-life stance was central to his motivation to go to Washington

“All my time in Congress, I stood for the right the life. I authored the first legislation to defund Planned Parenthood,” he said to applause from the audience.

When he was governor of Indiana, Pence said that while continuing to uphold his pro-life beliefs, his administration also promoted adoption reform. 

“I believe that if you’re going to be pro-life you need to be pro-adoption," Pence said.

Some background: Pence has long charted a political identity with anti-abortion advocacy at its core since his days as a conservative congressman from Indiana. Just weeks after the Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, the former vice president traveled to South Carolina to deliver a speech outlining a Republican policy blueprint for “post-Roe America.”

He and his wife Karen Pence have raised funds for crisis pregnancy centers and in keynote remarks at a gala for Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America in September. Pence also appeared to endorse Republican efforts to shepherd a national abortion ban through Congress.

At a CNN town hall in November, Pence praised the Dobbs decision, saying it gave “the American people a new beginning for life.” While suggesting that laws around abortion had been “returned to the states and the American people, where it belongs,” Pence also said he remains hopeful that all 50 states will eventually “stand for the sanctity of life.”

Pence has also been more willing than his 2024 rivals to embrace a national effort to outlaw abortion. He said on New Hampshire’s WMUR last month that he would “look for ways to advance the sanctity of life at the national level.”

The former vice president also touted his hand in appointing pro-life judges during his time serving in the Trump administration, namely the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn federal abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.

When asked about investigations into former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence said "no one is above the law" but indicting a former president sends a terrible message to the world and would “be terribly divisive to the country." 

CNN's Dana Bash pressed Pence on whether that means he believes investigators shouldn’t move forward with an indictment even if they believe Trump committed a crime.

Pence replied that “no one’s above the law” and added “I would just hope that there would be a way for them to move forward without the dramatic and drastic and divisive step of indicting a former president of the United States.”

Pence also said it would “be terribly divisive to the country” if Trump were to be indicted by federal investigators over possible obstruction of justice and mishandling of classified documents. 

“This kind of action by the Department of Justice I think would only fuel further division in the country,” Pence said. He added later, “I hope the DOJ thinks better of it and resolves these issues without an indictment.”

CNN reported earlier Wednesday that the Justice Department recently informed Trump’s legal team that he is a target in the federal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, a sign that prosecutors may be moving closer to indicting the former president. 

Asked if he would pardon Trump if he’s convicted of crime, Pence said he would not speak about hypotheticals. Pence again said that “no one’s above the law” and that “the handling of classified materials is a very serious matter.”

He said that he doesn’t “know the facts of the former president's case. But what we’ve got to have in this country is equal treatment under the law.”

Pence added he was “troubled” over the search warrant executed by the Justice Department at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “There had to be dozens of ways that could have been handled other than that kind of behavior,” he said.

He then pivoted to criticizing President Joe Biden over his timeframe of alerting the DOJ about documents found in his office.

More on the Mar-a-Lago documents probe: The special counsel’s investigation has scrutinized Trump’s handling of classified documents he brought with him to his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort after leaving the White House, including actions that were taken after Trump received a subpoena in May 2022 to return all classified materials in his possession. Last August, FBI agents retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago after obtaining a search warrant.  

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Paula Reid, Sara Murray, Jeremy Herb and Kristen Holmes contributed reporting in this post.  

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday night that he has "no interest or no intention" of pardoning people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our capitol. They need to be answerable to the law,” Pence told Dana Bash during a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa.

He referenced a statement he made on Twitter the day of the attack urging people to leave the Capitol and discouraging violence.

Pence's comments contrast with former President Donald Trump, who said he was “inclined to pardon” many of the pro-Trump rioters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the Capitol. He said he won’t be able to pardon “every single one” but said “it will be a large portion of them.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also suggested that he would consider pardoning some convicted on January 6 charges.

CNN's Veronica Stracqualursi contributed reporting to this post.

Asked Wednesday if a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution, Mike Pence referred to his experiences during the January 6 insurrection, where Trump asserted Pence had the right to overturn the election results.

"I said today President Trump was wrong then, he's wrong now," he added.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said he is running for the Republican presidential nomination because he believes "this country is in a lot of trouble."

He pointed to issues like inflation and foreign policy where he thinks Democrats have not been doing a good job.