Former vice president Mike Pence questioned during an interview that aired Sunday whether former president Donald Trump will vow to “govern as a conservative” and suggested the former president’s stance one the national debt is “identical” to President Biden’s.

“To me, the Republican Party has to be the party of growth, and fiscal responsibility, and reform,” Pence said during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I think we owe it to those kids of mine and yours, to my granddaughters, to square our shoulders and be straight with the American people about the magnitude of this national debt.” 

Pence, who is running against Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, went on to say the former president “promised to govern as a conservative” in 2016, but “he makes no such promise today.” 

“Not only has he been walking away from a clear commitment to the right to life, but, look, we have a national debt the size of our nation’s economy,” Pence said. “Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency. He won’t even talk about the 70 percent of the federal budget that represents entitlements, that’s driving that debt.”

Host Chuck Todd noted that Trump took entitlements off the table in an effort to attract more voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

​​“Inflation’s gone up 16 percent in the last two and a half years. It’s crushing the family budgets of millions of Americans, two- thirds of which are living paycheck to paycheck,” Pence said. “They’re starting, in my judgment, to understand that, as government wraps up debt, inflation is happening, and it’s crushing.”

Trump called on Republican lawmakers not to “cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security” when they began negotiations with Biden and Democrats over a measure to raise the debt ceiling in January. He has said he would not touch the programs if he is elected. Pence said he would create a new program to give Americans “a better rate of return than they have in the government.”

Pence also discussed Trump’s federal indictment during the NBC interview and said it sends a “terrible message to the wider world.”

He said the indictment has “only served to further divide our divided politics.” While Pence called the charges “serious,” he said he wished the Justice Department found another way to handle the investigation.