Mike Pence couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the value of Black lives during a recent interview about George Floyd, police brutality and Juneteenth.

After being pressed by an interviewer on television to say the “Black Lives Matter,” the Vice President fumbled through his words for a while before deciding to instead reply that “all lives matter.”

During an interview with Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI-TV, the vice president was asked by anchor Brian Taff to “utter those words’ Black lives matter.

“Let me just say that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy,” Pence responded. 

“And in this nation, especially on Juneteenth, we celebrate the fact that from the founding of this nation we've cherished the ideal that all, all of us are created equal, and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights,” he continued. “And so all lives matter in a very real sense.”

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“Forgive me for pressing you on this, sir,” Taff followed up with Pence, “but I will note you did not say those words, 'Black lives matter,' and there is an important distinction. People are saying, of course all lives matter, but to say the words is an acknowledgment that Black lives also matter at a time in this country when it appears that there's a segment of our society that doesn't agree. So why will you not say those words?”

“Well, I don't accept the fact, Brian, that there's a segment of American society that disagrees, in the preciousness and importance of every human life,” Pence responded. “And it's one of the reasons why as we advance important reforms in law enforcement, as we look for ways to strengthen and improve our public safety in our cities, that we're not going to stop there.”

Juneteenth commemorates the day that enslaved Black people in Texas finally learned of the end of slavery, which was signed into law via the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior. On June 19, 1865, General Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the news.

Watch the back-and-forth below.