President Trump said Vice President Pence is getting “great praise” for walking out of an NFL game after some San Francisco 49ers’ players kneeled during the national anthem and acknowledged the trip was “long planned.”

“The trip by @VP Pence was long planned. He is receiving great praise for leaving game after the players showed such disrespect for country!,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Pence left Sunday’s game between the Indianapolis Colts and the 49ers moments after the playing of the national anthem and quickly posted a tweet saying, “I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.”

But some — including reporters in Pence’s media detail — questioned whether the walkout was a political stunt after the journalists were told to remain in the van at the stadium in Indianapolis because the vice president might make an “early departure.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it a “multi-million dollar political stunt paid for by taxpayers.”

Government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which slammed Pence’s action on Sunday, questioned Trump’s tweet about the “long-planned” trip.

“Is he saying the stunt was long planned? As in, “planned to waste hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on flights before the Price scandal”?” the group posted on its Twitter account moments after Trump tweeted.

Pence, the former governor of Indiana, traveled to Indianapolis from Las Vegas where the vice president spent Saturday taking part in ceremonies honoring the victims of the shootings.

After the game, he headed to California for a number of Republican fund-raisers.

Estimates put the cost of Pence’s trip at $242,500 – not counting Secret Service protection, support on the ground and advance personnel, CNN reported.

It costs about $30,000 an hour to operate Air Force 2, the C-32 model aircraft Pence travels on, the report said, citing the US Air Force.

His flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis on Saturday took three hours and 20 minutes – or $100,000, CNN reported.

The flight from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took four hours and 45 minutes, cost about $142,500.

The Republican National Committee will pay for some of the costs for his flight to Los Angeles because Pence was attending political events, the report said.

An aide to Pence said the game had been on the vice president’s schedule for weeks, and if he hadn’t attended the NFL contest, he would have traveled back to Washington.

“If the Vice President did not go to Indiana for the Colts game, he would have flown back to D.C. for the evening – which means flying directly over Indiana. Instead, he made a shorter trip to Indiana for a game that was on his schedule for several weeks,” the aide said.