So Pence is willing to lie for Trump, and he’s willing to excuse Trump’s infantile and reckless personal attack on a federal judge. I guess we knew that, since he was willing to be his VP.

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday defended President Trump’s personal attack on the federal judge who blocked his travel ban on seven predominately Muslim countries, saying that the president’s remarks did not risk undermining the bedrock principle of the separation of powers.

Asked about Mr. Trump’s reference on Twitter to the “so-called judge” who ordered a stay of the president’s executive order, Mr. Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “Well, look, the president of the United States has every right to criticize the other two branches of government. And we have a long tradition of that in this country.”

Oh stop. “Criticize” is one thing, and “insult via Twitter” is quite another. Criticism is not the same thing as publicly saying a federal judge is not actually a judge but an impostor.

Asked on the ABC program “This Week” about whether Mr. Trump had failed to respect the judicial branch’s check on his authority, Mr. Pence said the president was merely “speaking his mind,” as Americans have come to expect from him.

Right, like all those times he called Senator Warren “Pocahontas,” and that time he bragged about being able to grab women “by the pussy,” and the countless insults to women, and all the rest of the toxic stew. We know. But he’s president now, so that’s an additional reason he should stop “speaking his mind” in that way – additional to the ones about not being an evil belligerent misogynist racist shit.

Critics in both parties said the president had demonstrated a lack of understanding of or a disregard for the nation’s three equal branches of government.

Or both. He appears not to understand that the judiciary can rule on his orders, and we can be pretty sure that he would carry on the same way even if he did understand.