Mike Pence Blasts Trump for Criticizing U.S. Foreign Policy From Saudi Arabia – A ‘Disservice’ to Veterans

Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized President Donald Trump on Sunday for remarks made during a speech last week in Saudi Arabia, calling them a “disservice” to US veterans who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Pence reacted to Trump’s speech in Riyadh last week, during which the president denounced past U.S. foreign interventions in the Middle East.

Trump said the rise of modern cities like Riyadh and Abu Dhabi was not the result of Western “nation-builders,” but was a credit to the work of locals.

“In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built,” Trump said. “The interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”

Trump’s remarks were made during one leg of a multi-day trip to the region that included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. He did not visit Israel, which NBC’s Kristen Welker noted.

Pence said he saw Trump’s trip as an overall success but criticized his former boss for the remarks from Saudi Arabia.

“But, Kristen, I’ve never been a fan of American presidents criticizing America on foreign soil,” he said. “And to have the president in Saudi Arabia questioning America’s global war on terror, and describing it as nation-building and interventionist, I thought was a disservice to generations of Americans who wore the uniform and who took the fight to our enemy, you know, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And particularly giving that speech in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers hailed from, not including Osama bin Laden, I thought was unfortunate.”

In Riyadh, Trump said, “nation-builders,” “neo-cons,” and “liberal non-profits,” had “spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad” and “so many other cities” during the war on terror.

Watch above via NBC News.