Transcript: Former Vice President Mike Pence on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," May 31, 2026

Face The Nation Transcripts Transcript: Former Vice President Mike Pence on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," May 31, 2026 .chip { background-image: url('/fly/bundles/cbsnewscore/images/chip-bgd/chip-bgd-face-the-nation.jpg'); } May 31, 2026 / 12:41 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google The following is the transcript of the interview with former Vice President Mike Pence that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 31, 2026.MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We are joined now by former Vice President Mike Pence, who has a new book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience. Good morning to you, Mr. Vice President.MIKE PENCE: Good morning, Margaret. Good to see you.MARGARET BRENNAN: You clearly think your party needs some reminders here, and you write that Americans are confused about what it means to be a conservative. You say for many right-wing populists, grievance dictates policy. Who or what are you thinking about there?MIKE PENCE:  Well, I think, look, from all of my adult life, the Republican Party has been defined by a commitment to a conservative agenda to America as leader of the free world, to limited government, free market, economics, and traditional moral values, especially the right to life. And I'm proud to say that from the Reagan administration to the first Trump administration, we governed on that agenda, but I wrote "What Conservatives Believe," because just in the last four or five years, there's been a rise of what I call the populist right that focuses more on what we're against than what we're for, focuses more on grievance than a positive conservative agenda. I mean the conservative movement has always been battling politically with the progressive left, but now there's a new threat from the populist right that would embrace policies of isolationism abroad, that would embrace big government and protectionism at home, marginalize the right to life, and as we go into th...