In a hostile interview with Mike Pence on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie actually interrupted the exchange to play a 26-second clip of a Clinton campaign attack ad ripping the Indiana Governor’s vice presidential debate performance. She then demanded Pence respond to the partisan hit job.

While Guthrie noted that Pence was “getting a lot of credit” for his handling of the debate, she quickly added that “a lot of people have noticed that you spent time denying things that Trump said that he did, in fact, say.” The anchor then dutifully teed up the Clinton campaign’s smear: “As one paper put it, ‘It’s a Clinton attack ad waiting to happen.’ And sure enough, take a look.”

The portion of the ad that followed showed alleged contradictions between Pence’s statements in the debate with past statements from Donald Trump. Following the clip, Guthrie touted: “Governor Pence, that ad actually goes on for more than a minute with a bunch of contradictions.” She then threw him this loaded question: “...even though it worked in the moment, was it the wrong approach to deny statements that you know are on video and on audio, are going to come right back to bite you the next day?”

Pence pushed back: “Oh, I don't think so at all, Savannah. And the mischaracterizations and the way Tim Kaine and Hillary Clinton continue to take Donald Trump's statements out of context was something I just wasn’t gonna tolerate during the debate.” Guthrie stopped him: “But those are direct quotes, in context.”

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After Guthrie’s interrogation, it was fellow co-host Matt Lauer’s turn to rip into the Republican vice presidential nominee:

Governor, on a couple of occasions – on a couple of occasions, Tim Kaine gave you a laundry list of insulting comments that Donald Trump has made over the course of the last year and asked you to defend them. And instead of defending them, you either said he really didn’t say those things or you changed the subject to Hillary Clinton. Do you find it hard – can you say to us today that you cannot defend some of the things that Donald Trump has said about women and Mexican immigrants and John McCain and a federal judge of Mexican heritage?

Pence called out the hypocrisy of Clinton’s running mate: “What I think what most Americans saw was that after Tim Kaine ran through a rapid, obviously memorized litany of personal insults, then he said that Donald Trump and I were running the insult-driven campaign. It was remarkable.”

Lauer promptly dismissed the observation: “Yeah, but you just – in all due respect, Governor, you just did it again.”

The contentious segment concluded with Guthrie trying to trip Pence up: “Short question, Governor Pence. Do you think that Donald Trump is a role model for children?” To her frustration, Pence diffused the attempted gotcha: “I frankly think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have many admirable qualities that young people can look up to today.”

On Wednesday, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd appeared on the morning show and predicted that Pence would lose the post-debate “spin,” despite winning the debate itself.

After the first presidential debate, NBC and the other networks all lined up to hammer Pence over Trump’s performance.

Here is a full transcript of the October 6 interview: