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"What happened in Charlottesville was a tragedy, and the President has been clear on this tragedy and so have I. I spoke at length about this heartbreaking situation on Sunday night in Colombia, and I stand with the President," he said during a joint statement with the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet.

The reporter also asked if Pence believed that Confederate statues should be removed, another point that President Donald Trump defended on Tuesday as he addressed reporters. The vice president did not answer that portion of the question.

Pence went on to say that he was sending prayers to the family of the woman, Heather Heyer, who died after a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd that was protesting a neo-Nazi gathering in Charlottesville.

The vice president was vocal on Twitter on Tuesday as he met with Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, but he did not address the comments the President made during a news conference that same day.

Pence has been traveling throughout Central and South America, meeting with various leaders to put pressure on Venezuela, since Sunday. During the joint statement with Chile's Bachelet, Pence pressed other countries to cut ties with North Korea.

" It is our hope that Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Peru will join us in breaking all diplomatic and commercial ties with North Korea. And as that isolation -- economically and diplomatically -- continues, the hope for a peaceable solution and a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, we believe, becomes more attainable," Pence said.

The vice president's office announced that he would be ending his trip early and returning to the US on Thursday. His spokesman Marc Lotter told CNN, "He's cutting the trip short to do Camp David with the President and the national security team." The meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to accurately quote President Donald Trump, who said on Tuesday there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville.

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Mike Pence won't say if he agrees with Trump on 'both sides ...

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence introduces President Trump to make a statement on health care at The White House on July 24, 2017 in Washington, DC. PoolGetty Images

Vice President Mike Pence compared his boss to Teddy Roosevelt during a visit to the Panama Canal Thursday, saying the two shared a "can-do spirit" at a time when Trump has been widely criticized for his response to the violent white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville.

"In President Donald Trump, I think the United States once again has a president whose vision, energy and can-do spirit is reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt," Pence said, the Chicago Tribune reports . "Then, as now, we have a builder of boundless optimism, who seeks to usher in a new era of shared prosperity all across this new world."

While Pence invoked some of the admirable presidential qualities Roosevelt was known for, Roosevelt also called whites "the forward race" and minorities "the backward race." The latter is a fraught comparison as Trump is under fire for saying there was " blame on both sides " for the violence in Charlottesville and taking two days to explicitly condemn white supremacists.

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Mike Pence Says Donald Trump Has 'Can-Do Spirit' Like Teddy Roosevelt - TIME

While touring the Panama Canal on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence compared his boss to the man behind the creation of the canal, former President Theodore Roosevelt.

"In President Donald Trump, I think the United States once again has a president whose vision, energy, and can-do spirit is reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt," Pence said during remarks at the expanded Panama Canal on Thursday. "Just as President Roosevelt exhorted his fellow Americans to dare to be great,' President Donald Trump has dared our nation to make America great again,' and we'll do it with all of our friends in the world."

"Then, as now, we have a builder of boundless optimism, who seeks to usher in a new era of shared prosperity all across this new world. Then, as now, we have a leader who sees things not just as they are, but for what they could be. And then, as now, we have a president who understands, in his words, 'A nation is only living as long as it is striving,'" Pence added.

Pence has called Roosevelt, the cousin to Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of his personal heroes.

Pence, on a nearly week-long trip through Central and South America, touted the Panama Canal as an engineering feat that "changed the face of the Earth." The canal recently expanded its Cocoli Locks.

"Under President Trump, the United States will break new ground and break new records," Pence said. "We'll recapture the spirit and rekindle the vision of our forebears in partnership with the free nations and free peoples across this hemisphere. We will once again awe the world with all that we accomplish together."

Pence is returning to the U.S. a day ahead of his scheduled return in order to meet with Trump at Camp David on Friday.

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Mike Pence: Trump's 'vision, energy, and can-do spirit is reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt' - Washington Examiner

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RICHMOND, Va. -- Vice President Mike Pence will not be in Virginia this weekend to attend campaign events with Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie.

An aide for Vice President Pence told CNN the vice president wanted to open up his plans upon his return to the U.S. to give flexibility to his schedule.

He will be at Camp David on Friday.

On Tuesday, August 15, Americans for Prosperity invited media to the group's 11th annual Defending the American Dream Summit in Richmond on Saturday. The event was to feature Vice President Pence and Gillespie as keynote speakers, according to Americans for Prosperity spokesperson Gabrielle Braud.

This development occurred in the wake in the wake of Saturday's violent protests in Charlottesville. Protests that initially centered around Confederate monuments.

On Wednesday, Gillespie issued a statement on his thoughts about Confederate monuments in Virginia.

"I believe that decisions about historical statues are best made at the local level, but they should stay and be placed in historical context," he wrote. "These are legitimate differences, and I know Virginians are engaging in an ongoing, thoughtful conversation about these sensitive issues, one marked by respect and understanding."

Click here to read the full statement.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Governor Ralph Northam also released a statement on the matter.

"I support City of Charlottesville's decision to remove the Robert E. Lee statue. I believe these statutes should be taken down and moved into museums. As governor, I am going to be a vocal advocate for that approach and work with localities on this issue," he said. "We should also do more to elevate the parts of our history that have all too often been underrepresented. That means memorializing civil rights advocates like Barbara Johns and Oliver Hill, who helped move our Commonwealth closer towards equality."

Today, in response to the City of Charlottesvilles decision to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park, Dr. Ralph Northam released the following statement:

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Vice President Pence cancels Virginia visit - wtvr.com

It would be nice to believe that Steve Bannons departure from the White House will end, or least diminish, Donald Trumps flirtations with bigotry. Alas, thats almost certainly not the case.

Bannon's Exit Leaves Trump Untethered

As Trump himself likes to note, Bannon joined his campaign late, in August 2016. By that time, Trump had already called Mexican immigrants rapists, falsely accused American Muslims in New Jersey of celebrating the 9/11 attacks, said Islam hates us, and declared that Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not fairly judge the case against Trump University because was Mexican American. Bannons hiring was not a cause of the Trump campaigns dalliance with Islamophobia, nativism, and white nationalism. It was a result.

In fact, Trump has been exploiting bigotry since before he hired Bannon, before he ran for President, before he even entered public life. In 1973, at the age of 27, Donald Trumpthen President of Trump Managementwas sued along with his father for discrimination against African Americans by the Justice Department. In 1989, when four African American and one Hispanic teenagers (the Central Park Five) were arrested for rape, Trump took out newspaper ads declaring that the accused should be executed and forced to suffer. When DNA evidence exonerated the young men in 2012, Trump denounced New York Citys decision to compensate them, saying I think people are tired of politically correct. As late as 2013, he still tweeted, Tell me, what were they doing in the Park, playing checkers?

Steve Bannon was not advising Donald Trump when Trump demanded to see Barack Obamas college transcripts and launched a crusade to prove that he was not an American citizen. Bannon was not advising Trump in 2013, when the real estate tycoon tweeted that, Im much smarter than Jonathan LeibowitzI mean Jon Stewart or told Republican Jews that, Youre not going to support me because I dont want your money. And in recent weeks, as Bannon has reportedly lost influence, Trump has not become any less racially inflammatory. His Tuesday press conference about Charlottesville, and his Thursday tweet suggesting the United States should look to a false story of U.S. Army General John Pershings supposed war crimes in the Philippines as the right model for how to treat suspected Muslim terrorists, all occurred while he was reportedly weighing Bannons firing. Indeed, reporting suggests that the thing that really bothered Trump about Bannon was his penchant for stealing the spotlight. Not his religious and racial views.

Perhaps, on issues on which Trump has no strong beliefs, Bannons departure could make a difference. But Steve Bannon did not teach Trump what to think about Muslims, blacks, women, and Jews. When it comes to religion, gender, and race, Trump developed his views long ago. The only way he might change them would be if he grew convinced that they are hurting him politically. And probably not even then.

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Steve Bannon's Departure Won't Change Donald Trump - The Atlantic