How Mike Pence Is Palling Around With the Far Right
He may break with Trump on Putin, but his visit to Israel this week shows nothing else has changed
Last week, former Vice President Mike Pence told a group of Republican donors that,“There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.” If you thought that this meant Pence was in any significant way breaking with his former boss or tacking back toward the center of the political aisle, think again.
Yesterday, Pence was in Israel, where he went out of his way to meet with far-right Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron at one of their favorite pilgrimage sites, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which sits in the heart of the city and which is also holy to Muslims. Pence tweeted that the visit was a “great honor” for him and his wife Karen to visit the site. Standing with Pence on the literal far-right of the first photo shown in Pence’s tweet is one of the most right-wing politicians in Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a member of the Knesset, the country’s parliament. In other photos of Pence’s Hebron visit, Pence stands talking not only with Ben-Gvir, but also another Jewish hyper-extremist, Baruch Marzel.
It’s hard to translate what this appearance means in the American context. Matt…
