"The president wasn't pleased about it. Neither was I," Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview. | M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico 2020 Elections Pence 'not pleased' with 'send-her-back' chant, but declines to urge an end

Vice President Mike Pence said both he and President Donald Trump are "not pleased" with the "send her back" chant that broke out at Trump's recent reelection rally.

Still, Pence declined to condemn any attempts to repeat such cheers, saying "If it happened again, [Trump] ... might make an effort to speak out against it."


"The president wasn't pleased about it. Neither was I," Pence said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "The president's been very clear about that. But what we're also not pleased about is the fact that there are four members of Congress who are engaging in the most outrageous statements."

Asked several times by host Major Garrett if he "wanted to see them repeated," Pence said: "The president was very clear that he wasn't happy about it. And that if it happened again he — he might — he might make an effort to speak out about it."

The crowd at a North Carolina Trump rally Wednesday night began shouting "send her back" after the president spent several minutes attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who immigrated to the U.S. as a child refugee from Somalia.

At the time, Trump didn't speak for 13 seconds as the chant continued. Later, he disavowed the behavior, claiming he "started speaking very quickly" to end it.

In his CBS interview, Pence asserted that "millions of Americans share the president's frustration about sitting members of Congress engaging in that kind of reckless rhetoric — whether it be anti-Semitic rhetoric, whether it be referring to Border Patrol agents as running concentration camps — and the president thought it was important to stand up to them.

"And I'm glad he did it," Pence concluded.

