(CNN) Vice President Mike Pence offered a defense of Confederate Civil War monuments in an interview on Fox and Friends Tuesday, declaring that he's "someone who believes in more monuments, not less monuments."

Pence also referred to the various campaigns seeking the monuments' removal as a "contemporary political cause" when asked about President Donald Trump's much-criticized response to the recent racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the debate over Civil War monuments that followed. In a wild, impromptu press conference last week, Trump bemoaned the loss of monuments marking the Confederacy, suggesting that the campaign for their removal is a slippery slope: "I wonder, is it George Washington next week?" he said.

On Fox and Friends Tuesday, the Vice President answered with typically measured rhetoric but offered an unmistakable endorsement for those advocating the preservation of Confederate Civil War monuments.

"I hold the view that it's important that we remember our past and build on the progress that we have made," Pence said. "What we have to walk away from is a desire by some to erase parts of our history just in the name of some contemporary political cause."

Pence was asked specifically to weigh in about Confederate statues in the United States Capitol building (each state is allowed two statues in the Capitol, and 12 of the 100 statues there today depict Confederate leaders).

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