Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on Tuesday. | Rick Scuteri/AP In Trump's war on press, Pence gamely nods along The conservative vice president was once an outspoken advocate for press freedom, but has now joined his boss’ attacks on ‘fake news.’

Vice President Mike Pence, once an outspoken advocate for press freedom, has become one of the rare senior Republicans to join President Donald Trump's full-throated war on the press.

Pence thrust a finger at the media pen Tuesday night, coaxing a Phoenix crowd to rain boos on the press, which Pence accused of "ignoring and distorting the facts."


Pence then yielded the stage to Trump — whose leadership, he said, "inspires me every single day" — after which the president spent nearly an hour and a half veering off script in a series of rollicking attacks. Most were aimed at the press.

"These are really, really dishonest people, and they're bad people," Trump said. "And I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that."

"These are sick people," he added.

Other senior Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, have expressed discomfort with Trump's harsh rhetoric toward the press and have eschewed his term for coverage he disagrees with: "fake news."

Pence has not appeared to share such unease.

After a recent New York Times article about Pence's potential positioning for his own run in 2020, should Trump not seek reelection, Pence lashed out at the press. In a statement provided by his office, Pence dismissed the report as "fake news," "disgraceful and offensive" and "absurd."

As Trump's running mate, Pence at first struck a more conciliatory note toward the media, quietly lifting a campaign "blacklist" barring certain outlets from his solo events. The move seemed in character for Pence, who in Congress championed a national shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal sources.

That’s not to say he’s always had a smooth relationship with the media. Pence expressed skepticism about statehouse reporters during his time as Indiana governor, and even floated the idea for a state-run news service to compete with local media.

And as the presidential campaign wore on last year, Pence grew more vocal about his frustration with the press. He regularly assailed the media in his stump speech and, after the election, denounced BuzzFeed as "fake news" for publishing an unsubstantiated dossier on Trump's ties to Russia.

Pence was silent when Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter in May. "We're not going to comment," Pence's press secretary said at the time, even as other prominent Republicans spoke out. Gianforte, who won the House seat, later pleaded guilty.

When pressed Wednesday about some of the president's more derisive remarks toward the media, Pence's office provided POLITICO with some of Pence's recent statements that seem to soften the president's stance.

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"Rest assured that both the president and I strongly support a free and independent press. But you can anticipate that the president and all of us will continue to call out the media when they play fast and loose with the facts," Pence said at a NATO summit in February, in remarks provided by his office.

"President Trump and I support the freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment. I’ve been an advocate of the free and independent press for a long time," Pence said in March, a quote his office also highlighted in a Washington Post story titled, "The dramatic difference between Mike Pence and Donald Trump when it comes to the press."

