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When Vice President Mike Pence addressed a joint U.S.-Georgian force in Russia's front yard Tuesday, he presented a united front. "The president and Congress are unified in our message to Russia," Pence told the allied troops.

It was an authoritative, bold, even presidential message. And it lasted less than 48 hours.

Any of those soldiers on Twitter this morning watched that united front crumble in less than 140 characters. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low," Trump tweeted, "You can thank Congress, the same people that can't even give us HCare!"

Coming the day after the president signed a veto-proof bill from Congress instituting new sanctions against Russia, this is the very definition of off-message.

More than most, this presidential tweet should be especially embarrassing in context. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described Trump as an "incompetent player" yesterday and this morning the American proved the Russian right. After all, who else would sign a major piece of legislation into law, send their vice president across the Atlantic to talk tough, and then undercut the entire operation with a single tweet?

But by now, diplomatic discomfiture should be the least concern. What's more significant is this administration's dangerous and increasingly frequent habit of talking out of two sides of its mouth. For instance, asking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders about North Korea will result in three very different answers.

Of course, as some will protest, there is no reason to reveal American strategy ahead of time. After rightly knocking his predecessor for telegraphing his diplomatic and military plans, Trump promises to keep his geopolitical foes in the dark. And that's fine, but his administration is also keeping its own allies guessing.

Whether or not the president has a case, regardless of whether Congress is to blame for deteriorating Russian relations, the common sense move would be to keep quiet. The longer Trump does otherwise, the more likely he is to humiliate his staff, prove himself incompetent, and endanger national security.

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Trump just contradicted Vice President Mike Pence on the world stage - Washington Examiner

US vice president Mike Pence and his Republican colleagues in Congress seem to be working in tandem to constrain president Donald Trump over Russia.

Last week, only five out of 535 members of Congress voted against a bill designed to nix any chance of Trump cozying up to the Kremlin, by taking away his power to relieve sanctions on Russia without Congresss say-so. The majority was so enormous that, despite a few days hesitation, Trump had no choice but to sign it into law on Aug. 1.

At the same time, his number two has been touring Eastern European allies who are terrified by Trumps attempts to make nice with Russias Vladimir Putin, and by his initial refusal to back the cornerstone of the NATO alliance. By contrast, Pences trip almost seemed one long anti-Russia diatribe.

In Estonia, he declared: To our allies here in Eastern Europe, we are with you, we stand with you on behalf of freedoms. He added, presumably to raised Baltic eyebrows, that, the president has made it very clear that Russias destabilizing activities, its support for rogue regimes, its activities in Ukraine, are unacceptable.

In Tbilisi, Pence stood next to Georgias president and said, the United States of America strongly condemns Russias occupation on Georgias soil. He even reiterated Americas support for Georgia becoming a NATO member, something that has long raised Russian hackles.

In Montenegro, he told a conference of Western Balkan leaders, Russia has worked to destabilize the region, undermine your democracies, and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe. He insisted, The Western Balkans have the right to decide your own future.

The trip seemed to align with a major effort by the Republicans to hamstring Trump over Russia, says Spencer Boyer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former senior state department and intelligence official. The aim, he says, is two-fold: to reassure allies that they are supported and to protect the Republican partys own image. They need to maintain the GOPs brand as strong on security and they feel that Trump is undermining thatthat the investigation into him and his potential ties with Russia during the campaign really hurts their storyline, Boyer says.

Senator John McCain has been playing a similar role, but it doesnt seem allies are actually feeling very reassured, says Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School. In some ways its a Potemkin village because the president is still there, but the message is appreciatedhow much its actually believed is a different question, she said.

The main thing this should do, Boyer says, is send the message that somebodys home in Washington who understands what these issues are, and provide hope that Trump might be pressured to change his mind over time by the likes of Pence and new chief of staff John Kelly. The chances of that actually happening, however, arent great, Boyer says: Being willing to admit he was wrong about Russia means letting go of some of his ego and Im not sure he can do that.

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Mike Pence spent his Eastern Europe tour undermining Trump's Russia policy at every stop - Quartz

Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday the recently-signed sanctions bill sends a clear message that "Russia's destabilizing activities" will not be tolerated.

"By signing this legislation, we're sending a very clear message that Russia's destabilizing activities, its support for rogue regimes are no longer going to be tolerated. But, our hope is that it will lay a foundation for better relations with Russia," Pence said in an interview with Fox News during a trip to eastern Europe.

The bill, signed by President Trump on Wednesday morning, places sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The bill passed in the Senate and House with an overwhelming majority, but the President had voiced concerns about signing it.

"President Trump believes whatever frustration that we feel for Congress limiting his authority on foreign affairs, that, on balance, this legislation reaffirms the president's strong commitment to ongoing sanctions with Russia, to make it clear their destabilizing behaviors are not acceptable to the United States, and that ongoing provocations from North Korea and Iran will no longer be accepted," Pence said.

The bill would limit Trump's ability to relax sanctions without congressional approval. Some members of Congress have previously expressed unease over Trump's language praising Putin and his criticising of traditional allies.

"The president sent me here, sent me to the Baltic states, sent me to Georgia with a very clear message that America is going to stand with our allies, that America First does not mean America alone," Pence said.

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Mike Pence: Sanctions bill sends a 'very clear message' to Russia - Washington Examiner

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanitys place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now U.S. vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion.

For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms.

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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an event celebrating National Military Appreciation Month and National Military Spouse Appreciation Day at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., May 9. Joshua Roberts/File Photo/Reuters

How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word theory as used in sciencethat is, a hypothesis (or idea) that has stood up to repeated testing. Pences argument will then be exposed to be what philosophers call an equivocation an argument that only seems to make sense because the same word is being used in two different senses.

Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences:The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness.

If you take this approach, you have failed to understand the purpose of Pences rhetoric, or why it is so appealing to creationists. Pence is an accomplished politician, and knows exactly how to appeal to his intended audience. He is also an accomplished trial lawyer, which makes him a conjuror with words, and like any skilful conjuror he has pulled off his trick by distraction. Pence has drawn us into a discussion about words, when our focus should be on the evidence.

I would suggest the opposite approach. The problem is not really with the word theory at all. Students will have learned its meaning in the same way they learn meanings in general: by seeing how the word is used.

Charles Darwin J. Cameron/CC

They will have heard of atomic theory, which no one has seriously doubted for over a century. And what about the theory of gravity? Finally, they may have seen how Darwin himself uses the expression my theory,"although at the time it was neither comprehensive nor well supported (there were huge gaps in the fossil record), to refer in a very general way to his linked ideas about mutability of species, common descent, and the power of natural selection.

So if anyone says, Evolution is a theory," dont give them a lecture on the meaning of the word theory."If you do, youve fallen into the trap of making it seem that how we define words should affect how we see reality. You will be fighting on ground of your opponents choosing, since arguing about how to apply words is the stock in trade of theologians, preachers and lawyers like Mike Pence.

The correct response is to say that evolution is a theorylike gravity is a theoryand then redirect attention to the evidence. And that evidence is overwhelming.

Start with family relationships. Carl Linnaeus showed how living things can be classified into species, genera, families and so on, and Darwin pointed out that this is exactly the structure we would expect from a family tree. All dogs are canines, so dogs share an ancestor with foxes; all canines are carnivora, so dogs share a more remote ancestor with bears; all carnivora are mammals, so dogs and sheep are, albeit more remotely, related, and so on.

Then look at the discovery over the past few decades of family relationships at the molecular level, and the fact that the molecular family tree matches that based on anatomical resemblances.

Observe the fossil record. Once lamentably full of gaps (Darwin was among the lamenters), it is now densely populated. A century ago, it still made sense to point to the missing link between humans and pre-human apes. Now we know of several different hominin species living alongside each other, and the problem becomes one of distinguishing our grandparents from our great uncles. And yes, there are missing links in the chain, but without evolution we would not have a chain at all.

A display of a series of skeltons showing the evolution of humans at the Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut, circa 1935. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

And then theres biogeography: for example, why marsupials are only found in South America and Australasia, and except for a few species that made their way across the Isthmus of Panama, are never found elsewhere.

Plus we can actually observe evolution, and study it in the field or in the lab. The emergence of pesticide resistance is evolution in action, as shown in the justly famous Harvard/Technion demonstration evolution on a plate." So is the delightful Russian experiment of breeding tame foxes. Artificial selection, just as much as natural selection, is evolution in action.

And finally, and most convincingly, we must look at the way that these different lines of evidence mesh together. We can apply biogeography to the fossil record, and link it to what we know about the movements of the continents. Using the methods of molecular biology, we can identify and time the mutations that led different species to diverge from their common ancestor, and match the timing against the fossil record.

Sperm whale. Whales are related to hoofed animals. Hiroya Minakuchi/Minden/National Geographic Creative

Thus the fossil record, deep anatomical resemblances, and DNA evidence agree in showing that whales, for instance, are closely related to hoofed mammals, diverging from them in the Eocene period. There are many other examples of such consistency.

Then, and only then, pause to explain how a scientific theory is an interlocking connection of ideas that explain things about the world, and that evolution is one of the most successful examples. And challenge the Mike Pences of this world to spell out exactly what they would like to see taught alongside the Theory of Evolutionand why.

Paul Bratermanis Hon. Research Fellow; Professor Emeritus atUniversity of Glasgow

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How to Slam Dunk Creationists like Mike Pence When It Comes to the Theory of Evolution - Newsweek

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence pledged support Tuesday for the former Soviet republic of Georgia, his second stop on a European trip backing nations that feel threatened by Russian aggression.

Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008, which lead to two breakaway Georgian regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, declaring independence. Russia has since been supporting the regions both financially and militarily.

The U.S. "strongly condemns Russia's occupation on Georgian soil," Pence said Tuesday at a joint news conference with the Georgian prime minister in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. "We will reject any claim at any time by any nation that undermines this enduring principle."

The visit comes a day after Pence met with the presidents of three NATO countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Estonian capital of Tallinn and pledged that "an attack on one of us is an attack on us all."

Georgia and the three Baltic nations were all occupied for nearly five decades by Soviet troops before regaining their independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Later on Tuesday Pence will inspect troops taking part in joint U.S.-Georgian military exercises.

Pence's European trip comes several days after the U.S. Senate voted last week to approve the new financial sanctions against Moscow. The legislation bars U.S. President Donald Trump from easing or waiving the penalties on Russia unless Congress agrees.

Pence told reporters on Tuesday that Trump would sign a bill on a new package of U.S. sanctions against Russia, adding the package was "improved significantly."

The bill underwent revisions to address concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russia's energy sector could backfire on them to Moscow's benefit. U.S. lawmakers said they also made adjustments so the sanctions on Russia's energy sector didn't undercut the ability of U.S. allies in Europe to get access to oil and gas resources outside of Russia.

Russia on Friday ordered the U.S. Embassy and three U.S. consulates in Russia to drastically cut its personnel there. President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that means 755 staffers have to go. Russia also ordered to shut down the U.S. Embassy's recreational compound on the outskirts of Moscow. The Russian leader warned that he has more tricks up his sleeve to hurt the U.S., but he voiced hope that he wouldn't need to use them.

Pence indicated the U.S. was willing to improve ties with Russia but for that to happen "Russia has to change its behavior," he said, referring to Russia's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Russia is planning Zapad 2017 military exercises with 13,000 troops near the Baltic states' borders in September, a move that may further strain relations.

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Pence pledges support for Georgia, condemns Russian moves - ABC News