AP Photo Pence takes shot at CIA, defends Trump

Mike Pence jumped to Donald Trump's defense Friday after the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency denounced the Republican nominee as an "unwitting agent" of Russian President Vladimir Putin's operation to co-opt the presidential election.

The CIA, after all, he observed, was the same agency that gave President Barack Obama the intelligence to declare that Al Qaeda spinoffs like the group that became the Islamic State were a "JV team."


"People that know Donald Trump know that he knows how to stand up and stand strong and standing up to Russian aggression is going to be really different under a Trump/Pence administration, and everybody knows that," the Indiana governor told NBC News' Savannah Guthrie on "Today," during a remote interview alongside Indiana first lady Karen Pence from the state fair in Indianapolis.

In a New York Times op-ed published earlier Friday, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell endorsed Hillary Clinton while ripping into Trump as unfit to be commander in chief, particularly in light of his reciprocal praise of the Russian strongman.

Pence had a different assessment, remarking that in their administration, a combative Russia would face an even stronger United States.

"The reality is whether it be Putin or whether it be literally the dissolving of the map in the wider Middle East, Savannah, in Libya and in Syria, in Iraq with the rise of ISIS, the American people know that truth of history, that weakness arouses evil is on full display in this administration," Pence remarked. "Donald Trump is going to be strong."

Pence then slammed the CIA in general, remarking, "these people are playing politics, and I get all of that. You and I have known each other a while. I was in Washington a long time."

Pence continued: "You know, the American people know we've got to be stronger on the world stage, we've got to have a stronger economy at home, and I think that's why you're seeing the enormous crowds that are turning out all over the country. I think we'll see him in Iowa and Wisconsin later today. They're responding to Donald Trump's message of strength and making America great again."