Mike Pence is a man who usually seems very comfortable in a church. But on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he elected to make an appearance at Metropolitan Baptist—a historically black church in Maryland—just a few days after Donald Trump derailed a bipartisan immigration negotiation when he opined that it was too kind to people from African countries and Haiti, and not quite welcoming enough to those from places like Norway.

On Sunday, while delivering a sermon before many congregants from the countries that Donald Trump referred to as "shitholes," Metropolitan Baptist pastor Maurice Watson held nothing back, calling the president's racism "visceral" and "dehumanizing."

I stand today as your pastor to vehemently denounce and reject any such characterizations of the nations of Africa and of our brothers and sisters in Haiti... And I further say: Whoever made such a statement, whoever used such a visceral, disrespectful, dehumanizing adjective to characterize the nations of Africa, whoever said it, is wrong. And they ought to be held accountable.

As the congregants stood to applaud, Pence, according to WUSA, became "visibly red-faced several times"—a charge that the vice president denied. Watson, for his part, says that he felt "led by God" to speak on the subject, though perhaps having Trump's understudy as a captive audience was a powerful motivator, too.

Pence has previously demonstrated his willingness to serve as a useful prop whenever Trump can't summon the courage to appear in public, and perhaps this is another instance of that dynamic in action. But it has to be tough for Pence to feign outrage over the word "dehumanizing" when the guy he shills for has proven to be such a bigot that newspapers can publish comprehensive lists of every racist thing he's ever done. If the strongest retort the vice president can muster is to deny that he was visibly embarrassed while a pastor condemned Donald Trump's desire to see fewer people of color in the United States, he's either missing the point or running out of spin.