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Franken: Pence Would Be Worse for Domestic Policy if Trump Is Impeached

Al Franken / Getty Images
June 20, 2017

Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) warned fellow Democrats that if President Donald Trump were to be impeached, Vice President Mike Pence "would be worse" for domestic policy.

"He's ideological, I consider him a zealot," Franken said during an interview with the International Business Times published Monday. "And I think that in terms of a lot of domestic policy, certainly would be worse than Trump."

Franken criticized Pence for nominations that were made while he was running the transition.

"Pence ran the transition and some of the very worst nominees, I felt—[Scott]Pruitt, [Betsy] DeVos, [Tom] Price, [Mick] Mulvaney—were Pence selections, clearly, I think," Franken said.

The Minnesota senator did allot some praise for Pence during the interview. Franken said he would be more "comfortable" with Pence handling foreign policy issues.

"If you're talking about how we handle North Korea or something like that, I'd probably be more comfortable with Pence ultimately making those decisions than Trump, because of Trump's personality and character," Franken said.

Franken's concerns lie with Trump's "outside of the norm" behavior.

"I think that [Trump] is so outside the norm in his behavior that that actually does concern me, and it concerns me that I don't know what he will do if he looks like he's going to be impeached and he wants to deflect. I don't know what he's capable of, and that really does concern me," Franken said.