Pence: The media gave us no ‘honeymoon’
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday chided the news media for its aggressive coverage of the new administration’s first week, saying that “if there was a honeymoon, it was pretty short” because he doesn’t remember it.
“I have to tell you that in all of my life there was always a grace period, right?” Pence said, phoning into conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh’s program. “New president’s coming in. I think they call it a honeymoon, right, where the media, like the others, gives the new administration a chance to come in and start to do what they do. And boy, if there was a honeymoon, it was pretty short. I sure don’t remember that.”
Pence, asked about his response to what Limbaugh described as “vitriol” from protesters and some people in the news media, said the administration respects the rights of “Americans who disagree with our agenda...to be heard from.” But he added that he has found some negative news coverage “striking.”
The vice president’s critique of news organizations was much less pointed than what President Donald Trump or his press secretary, Sean Spicer, have said in the administration’s first days. Earlier Wednesday, Trump referred to CNN as “fake news” unprompted at a White House meeting with some African-American supporters.
In the generally friendly conversation with Limbaugh, Pence also praised Trump’s Tuesday night appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The White House is encouraged, Pence said, by the initial reaction, especially the handful of Democrats in the Senate who have come out to say Gorsuch deserves a hearing and vote.
Pence also pushed back against Democrats’ argument that the seat on the Court belongs to Merrick Garland, the Barack Obama appointee whom Republicans refused to give a hearing. Pence argued that the court belongs to the “American people” and so they voted to give Trump the chance to pick the person to fill the seat (although Trump did not win the popular vote).