Pence to rebuke Trump: 'There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin'

• Pence has stepped up his criticism of Trump in recent months.
• "Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom?" Pence is expected to say.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to say in a speech on Friday night that the GOP "has no room" for "apologists for Vladimir Putin," a thinly-veiled barb at former President Donald Trump's repeated praise of the Russian leader both before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin," Pence will say in the speech for top Republican donors in New Orleans, according to excerpts obtained by Insider. "There is only room for champions of freedom."

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey first broke the news.

Trump called Putin "savvy" and a "genius" for his strategy in invading Ukraine, and has since claimed his remarks were misrepresented.

Pence will also reject the suggestion that Putin's new war was prompted by NATO's expansion.

"Ask yourself, where would our friends in Eastern Europe be today if they were not in NATO?" Pence is expected to say. "Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom?"

As vice president, Pence defended Trump after he face criticism and later impeachment for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden. The US froze military assistance to Ukraine for months during the Trump administration, a fact Democrats argued was evidence that Trump should be impeached.

"I mean, the fact that my predecessor had a son who was paid $50,000 a month to be on a Ukrainian board, at the time that Vice President Biden was leading the Obama administration's efforts in Ukraine, I think that's worth looking into," Pence said in October 2019. (No evidence was ever found that then-Vice President Biden did anything untoward as vice president when his son Hunter was serving on the board of Burisma, an energy company.)

Pence will also criticize Trump and other Republicans for continuing to talk about the 2020 presidential election. None of Pence's criticism explicitly mentions the former president, but Trump's repeated public statements and the reporting about them make it clear who he's targeting.

"We cannot win by fighting yesterday's battles, or by relitigating the past," Pence is expected to say.

Pence's veiled critiques are nothing like what he has to say about Biden. Pence is slated to slam Biden's State of the Union address for "talking like a Republican while governing like a socialist." He'll also attack the White House for showing "weakness" before Putin's invasion, a favorite line of many Republicans.

"It's no coincidence that Russia waited until 2022 to invade Ukraine," Pence is expected to say. "Weakness arouses evil – and the magnitude of evil sweeping across Ukraine speaks volumes about this president."

Pence's latest criticism comes after his declaration last month that Trump was "wrong" to claim that Pence could have overturned the election results when he presided over Congress' certification of the Electoral College's ballots. Legal experts have overwhelmingly agreed with Pence's argument that the vice president plays a largely ceremonial role in what itself is a perfunctory task of formally counting the certified election results of each state.

"This week, our former president said I had the right to 'overturn the election.' President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said in a rare public rebuke of Trump during a speech at the Federalist Society.

Spokespeople for Pence and Trump didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.