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Mike Pence on Kavanaugh, Trump-Putin summit and Mike Flynn

In a wide-ranging interview with Bret Baier, Vice President Pence says the White House is encouraged by the early response to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, that Trump believes in engagement with Russia, and that the president was right to dismiss General Flynn.

Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News exclusively on Tuesday that he has been "very encouraged" by the initial reaction on Capitol Hill to Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Speaking on "Special Report with Bret Baier," Pence said he predicted Kavanaugh would secure a seat on the high court, despite intense opposition from progressive groups and top Democratic senators.

"The administration's going to work very closely with members of the [Judiciary] Committee and members of the Senate to make Judge Kavanaugh available," Pence said. "We have every confidence that, as members of the Senate come to know and appreciate Judge Brett Kavanaugh ... that we'll see him confirmed."

Pence met with Kavanaugh, 53, earlier in the day on Capitol Hill, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Pence said he would confer Tuesday night with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to discuss Kavanaugh's nomination.

HOW ARE SWING-VOTE SENATORS REACTING TO KAVANAUGH'S NOMINATION?

The vice president said Kavanaugh's qualifications would be the key to his success.

"He had fully 12 different opinions that were adopted by the United States Supreme Court," Pence said."He's someone that has the character, the background, the career and the record that gave President Trump the confidence to know that when he appointed Judge Kavanaugh ... he would be another Constitutional conservative."

Potential key swing-votes on Kavanaugh's nomination were publicly noncommittal on Tuesday, although some sounded notes of optimism on the pick.

Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who has said she would not vote for a nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade, praised Kavanaugh's "impressive credentials and extensive experience" on Monday, even as she vowed to carefully vet his nomination.

ANALYSIS: RED-STATE DEMOCRATS HAVE A 'NIGHTMARE' DECISION TO MAKE ON KAVANAUGH

And Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, a fierce opponent of government surveillance that some critics say Kavanaugh would vote to legitimize, vowed to keep an "open mind" on his nomination.

But Kavanaugh's nomination has triggered consternation among pro-choice progressives who have viewed him as a threat to abortion rights.In a statement on Monday, the Women's March said ominously:"Trumps announcement today is a death sentence for thousands of women in the United States."

Pence himself inadvertently added to those concerns on Tuesday, when asked whether he still supported overturning Roe v. Wade.

"I do, but I haven't been nominated to the Supreme Court," he told CNN, alarming pro-choice advocates who said Kavanaugh was picked to curtail abortion rights.

The vice president also briefly discussed foreign affairs ahead of this week's key NATO summit in Brussels, where President Trump is expected to demand U.S. allies contribute more funding for their own national defense.

"President Trump is a realist about the world," Pence said. He added that despite North Korea's latest hostile rhetoric against the U.S., "We're going to continue to work through that; we're not going to be side-lined or side-tracked."

Gregg Re is an editor for Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @gregg_re.

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Mike Pence 'very encouraged' by reaction on Capitol Hill to ...

Mike Pence. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday urged the special counsel Robert Mueller to "wrap up" the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates played a part in it.

"Our administration has been fully cooperating with the special counsel," Pence told NBC's Andrea Mitchell. "What I think is that it's been about a year since this investigation began. ... In the interest of the country, I think it's time to wrap it up."

"I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion," Pence added, claiming the Trump administration has provided Mueller and his team with "more than a million documents" to aid the investigation.

The vice president also claimed he didn't have any knowledge about the activities of longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and referred to the troubles he's facing as a "private matter."

Pence took a much softer tone on the Russia probe than Trump, who routinely refers to the investigation as a "witch hunt."

On Monday, for example, Trump tweeted, "Is this Phony Witch Hunt going to go on even longer so it wrongfully impacts the Mid-Term Elections, which is what the Democrats always intended? Republicans better get tough and smart before it is too late!"

Mueller is also investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice at any point during the probe, including when he fired former FBI Director James Comey.

A recent CBS News poll found 53% of Americans feel the Mueller investigation is politically motivated, while 44% believe it's justified.

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Mike Pence: Mueller should 'wrap up' Russia probe ...

Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen, arrive for a State Dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron and President Trump at the White House on April 24. (AP)

Until Tuesday, it seemed that Vice President Pence had one primary function within the Trump administration: tobe morally offended by everything. There was the time that he walked out of an NFL game because some playerstook a knee while the national anthem was played.

This is not the only time Pence has walked out on an event. Last month the vice president walked out of the Summit of the Americas when Cubas foreign minister was recognized to speak after him, according to the Associated Press.

Pence has demonstrated his ability to registerhis moral disapproval even when he does not leave an event. This was the case at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics, when he refused to stand as the unified Korean team entered the stadium.

It was not his best soft power moment, but Pences defenders would argue that being rude to dignitaries from North Korea and Cuba just shows how righteous he really is. Pence himself would likely respond withhis patented sorrowful head shake. Hisbrand is as a man of serious moral values who can serve as Trumps envoy to people of faith. McKay Coppins got at this in his recent Atlantic profile of Pence:

He says he has just hung up the phone with Donald Trump and that the president asked him to say hello. He delivers this message with a slight chuckle that has a certain, almost subversive quality to it. Watch Pence give enough speeches, and youll notice that this often happens when hes in front of a friendly crowd. Hell be witnessing to evangelicals at a mega-church, or addressing conservative supporters at a rally, and when the moment comes for him to pass along the presidents well-wishes, the words are invariably accompanied by an amused little chuckle that prompts knowing laughter from the attendees. Its almost as if, in that brief, barely perceptible moment, Pence is sending a message to those with ears to hear that he recognizes the absurdity of his situation; that he knows just what sort of man hes working for; that while things may look bad now, there is a grand purpose at work here, a plan that will manifest itself in due time.Let not your hearts be troubled, he seems to be saying.Ive got this.

Pences presence in the White House has been a boon for the religious right. Evangelical leaders across the country point to his record on abortion and religious freedom and liken him to a prophet restoring conservative Christianity to its rightful place at the center of American life. Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician, Richard Land, the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and one of Trumps faith advisers, told me. I dont know anyone whos more consistent in bringing his evangelical-Christian worldview to public policy.

So it is worth noting what Pence, the Trump administrations righteous man, did in Arizona on Tuesday. According to the Hills Jacqueline Thomsen:

Vice President Pence praised former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court, as a tireless champion of the rule of law during an event in Arizona on Tuesday.

Pence said at the tax event that he was honored by the former sheriffs attendance, andcalled Arpaio a great friend of this president and tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law, to cheers from the crowd.

Heres some video:

Needless to say, most observers do not view Joe Arpaio as a real big fan of the rule of law. Indeed, Arpaio probably would have fit right into either the Cuban or North Korean regimes. Read this PostEverything essay by Francisco Chairez, whowas incarcerated in one of Arpaios tent jails.

It is not just Arpaios victims who feel moral outage. The National Review editorialized in January:

Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt last summer for willfully violating a federal court order. Specifically, he was convicted of violating an order that he cease arresting and detaining peoplefor whom there was no plausible criminal charge i.e., the court asked him, pretty please, to stop detaining Mexicans for publicity purposes. Arpaio says he was arresting illegal immigrants, and he may well have been, but it is not a criminal offense simply to be illegally present in the United States. (That is a civil matter.) Until such a time as Congress passes a law making such presence a crime (and delegates enforcement of that federal statute to the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.), arresting people under color of law for that non-crime isnt law enforcement its lawlessness.

But Sheriff Joe has a thing for arresting people who havent committed any crime. He arrested a Republican critic the county supervisor on trumped-up charges in 2008 and ended up handing over $3.5 million of taxpayers money in a wrongful-arrest settlement. He tried to bully the mayor of Phoenix in much the same way, demanding phone logs and other records as part of a nonsensical investigation designed to silence a critic. In another spectacular abuse of power, Arpaio teamed up with a friendly county attorney and filed a federal lawsuit seeking the federal prosecution of several judges and lawyers his political enemies under the RICO organized-crime statute. Arpaio, being Arpaio, held a press conference announcing the investigation, which the federal courts immediately threw out as patently frivolous. Millions more taxpayers dollars were paid out in settlements.

Red States Sarah Quinlan offers up a detailed list of Arpaios abuses of the rule of law while he was the former sheriff, concluding: Nothing about Sheriff Joe Arpaio resembles any sort of justice or law and order under the United States Constitution, and it is disgraceful for Pence to pretend otherwise.

Note who Im quoting here.These are conservative outlets one would expect to be in lockstep with a good Christian conservative like Pence. But they are appalled and they are not theonlyconservatives to react this way. In these politically polarized times, Mike Pence has managed to appall just about everyone across the political spectrum. That takes some doing.

Calling Arpaio a tireless champion of the rule of law is like calling Donald Trump a beacon of moral rectitudeand, oh, now I get how Pence can do this. As Kellyanne Conway told Coppins, Mike Pence is someone whose faith allows him to subvert his ego to the greater good. In this case the greater good appears to be the political absolution of Arpaio, who Trump pardoned and is now running for the U.S. Senate.

I have little insight into why Pence did this, and to be honest I do not care. All I know is that the number of officials in the Trump administration who can claim to have preserved their moral bearings in this administration keeps shrinking by the day.

It is possible thatthe vice president reads this and cancels his Washington Post subscription in a fake moral outrage. It would be on brand for him.It would not change the fact thathe has sullied his standing with this act of moral appeasement.

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Mike Pences peculiar sense of morality - The Washington Post

There will be plenty of guns at the National Rifle Convention in Dallas this week, but one room will be completely free of weapons.

The NRA announced gun owners, even those legally allowed to carry them, will not be allowed to carry guns or knives during Vice President Mike Pence's address Friday at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Arena.

"Due to the attendance of the Vice President of the United States, the U.S. Secret Service will be responsible for event security at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum," the NRA's statement to attendees reads. "As a result, firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum prior to and during his attendance."

In fact, everything from selfie sticks to laser pointers and toy guns will be banned from the arena during Friday's keynote address.

The NRA also notes there will be no storage available for firearms.

Texas has more registered firearms than any other state, according to the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The agency's 2017 report shows there are 588,696 guns in the state. Texas also leads the country by a wide margin in number of licensed dealers, with 771, according to the ATF report from April 2017. Only one other state (Florida, 402) has more than 250 gun dealers.

Other politicians speaking before Pence include Rep. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

"It's an honor to have Vice President Pence address our members in Dallas," Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA-ILA, said in a statement. "He is a lifetime supporter of the Second Amendment and he has a long a record of fighting to defend our freedoms. Now more than ever we need principled people in public office who will fight to defend the Constitution."

Pence was given an "A" rating by the NRA in 2003 while he was governor of Indiana. He was not one of the politicians rated on the NRA's most-recent grades in 2010. Cornyn was also given an "A" in the same 2003 grades.

In Pence's final State of the State address as Indiana governor in January 2016, seven months before he was named Donald Trump's running mate, he said, "Hoosiers know firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens ... makes our communities more safe, not less safe. Indiana will always defend the right to keep and bear arms."

The NRA's Annual Meeting in Dallas begins May 3.

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Guns banned from NRA event during Mike Pence address

Please buy it for your children, buy it for any child you know or buy it because you know it would annoy Mike Pence, Mr. Oliver told his viewers. Parody aside, he assured them, This is a real book for children.

And buy it they have. By Tuesday the book, which beat Ms. Pences to Amazon by two days, had risen to the No. 1 spot on the websites best-seller list, knocking pre-ordered copies of the upcoming memoir by James Comey down to No. 2.

Ms. Pences book on Marlon Bundo had reached No. 4 on the list by late afternoon.

Mr. Comeys book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, has been highly anticipated for potential insights it could provide into the tumultuous Trump White House and Mr. Comeys abrupt dismissal as director of the F.B.I. last year.

Dueling tweets over the weekend between President Trump and Mr. Comey appeared to have propelled enough advance orders to lift Mr. Comeys memoir to the top spot. The memoir, scheduled to be released on April 17, has been advertised as a frank account of Mr. Comeys never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career.

Mr. Olivers book is very different than that.

In it, Marlon Bundo, a snappily dressed bunny with a penchant for bright bow ties, falls in love with a bespectacled boy bunny named Wesley. Things seem to be going pretty well for the two lovebirds (love bunnies?) until a powerful stinkbug who bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Pence decrees that male bunnies cannot marry each other.

In the grand tradition of childrens literature, the story ends on a happy note. An image released by the books publisher, Chronicle Books, shows Marlon Bundo and Wesley standing in a field, wearing tuxedos, as a cat in clerical garb marries them.

The tale also comes in the form of an audiobook voiced by a string of celebrities including Jim Parsons as Marlon Bundo and John Lithgow as the stinkbug, as well as Ellie Kemper, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and RuPaul. On Tuesday, it also beat Mr. Comeys audiobook to be the No. 1 best-seller on Audible.

Mr. Oliver played clips from a cartoon version of the audiobook on his show on Sunday. In it, Marlon Bundo introduces himself to Wesley as BOTUS.

Its short for Bunny of the United States, he says, with typical first-date awkwardness. Its a long story.

Ms. Pences book is more sober childrens fare. It is not known if it identifies Marlon Bundos sexual orientation at all.

Charlotte Pence seemed to take the John Oliver parody in stride. His book is contributing to charities that I think we can all get behind, she said in an interview with Fox Business Network on Tuesday. We have two books giving to charities that are about bunnies, so Im all for it really.

Some of the proceeds from her book will be donated to A21, an organization that fights human trafficking. Mr. Oliver said all of his books profits would be donated to The Trevor Project, a charity for L.G.B.T. youth, and AIDS United.

That was a pointed jab at Mr. Pence, who is a longtime opponent of L.G.B.T. rights, which he opposed as both governor of Indiana and a member of Congress.

Last year, Mr. Pence described James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, which teaches that people can vanquish same-sex attraction if they cooperate with God in the process of becoming more like Jesus, as a friend and a mentor.

Mr. Pence has also long been dogged by claims that he supports anti-gay conversion therapy due in part to language contained on the website of his 2000 campaign for Congress. A spokesman for Mr. Pence said in 2016 that he does not support the practice, which has been denounced by the medical community.

The success of Mr. Olivers book marks the second time in recent months that criticism of Mr. Pences record on L.G.B.T. rights has turned into a pop culture moment.

In January, the figure skater Adam Rippon, the first openly gay American man to qualify to compete in the Winter Games, attracted wide media attention and became an overnight gay icon when he denounced Mr. Pences gay rights record and refused to meet with him during the Games. The vice presidents staff said Mr. Rippon had misrepresented Mr. Pences views.

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Childrens Book About Mike Pences Gay Bunny Jumps to No ...