Former Vice President Mike Pence said he was “heartened” to learn that Julia Curlee, a transgender former CIA officer who served as his daily intelligence briefer during President Donald Trump‘s first term, credited him with treating her “with great dignity” despite his long record of opposing LGBTQ policies.
“I appreciate the kind words. My conservative values are fairly well-known, but maybe some people didn’t quite know that among our Christian values is my wife, and I believe in treating others the way that we’d like to be treated, with decency and respect. And I was heartened to hear Julia reflect that that was the experience that took place in our office,” Pence said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
Curlee noted that despite Pence’s public record opposing same-sex marriage and transgender military service, he never made her feel small, saying she was treated with “profound respect and dignity,” Curlee told MS Now.
Curlee recalled that Pence took notes, asked questions, and invited her family to the White House when her assignment ended, at one point taking her mother’s hand and telling her, “You must be very proud of your daughter.”
Curlee’s comments came as she detailed her ouster from government service in a new essay in the Atlantic titled “The Wrong Kind of American.”
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She wrote that she learned she had been fired from her National Security Council post in late March 2025, the same day right-wing activist Laura Loomer publicly called for the removal of a transgender “Biden holdover” from the NSC’s intelligence office.
Pence’s office has not commented further beyond his statement expressing appreciation for Curlee’s remarks.