Since Donald Trump is still pouting in the White House, it's fallen on toady Mike Pence to attend the international summits that Trump just skipped out on. Part of his job is to convince leaders in Myanmar to respect the rights of the free press, but rest assured he's not taking the job seriously and there's not a damn person on the planet who thinks he is.
Foreign-policy analysts say Trump’s persistent attacks on news outlets, combined with his embrace of authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, have emboldened repressive governments to ignore U.S. pressure.
Just to paint the picture here, Mike Pence is off lecturing human rights abusers about the necessity of the free press while 1.) his administration flagrantly and openly lies about the actions of a member of the U.S. press, using those lies as pretext for barring him from White House reporting and 2.) the Trump administration is caught offering up a trade to Turkey: You agree to play down your concerns about the U.S. resident journalist tortured and murdered by the Saudis, and we'll deliver up a U.S. resident that you have been itching to torture and/or murder yourself.
So no, Mike Pence doesn't have a stitch of credibility on the worldwide human rights scene, not when his officemates back home are probing whether they can defuse the crisis caused by the murder of one dissenter by giving the other side a torture-worthy dissenter of their own. Mike Pence is a worldwide laughing stock; Mike Pence will be lucky if he gets through his not-Trump trip without having a shoe store thrown in his general direction.
The more central problem, of course, is that Donald Trump is getting people killed. His repeated declarations that the free press is "the enemy of the people" is becoming a rallying cry for other authoritarian shouters peeved at receiving objective scrutiny. His team's plain frustration at the thought of having to hold the Saudi government to account for a murder, and their frantic efforts to avoid doing so, are another clear signal to future assassins that These Things Will Pass, so long as there's something in it for your good friend Donald Trump.
This is where Mike Pence could, as the only member of the administration not directly under Trump's thumb, have made a difference at some point. Instead, he appears to exist only as a Speak-n-Spell for whatever Trump has last fixated on. Whether it's the dangers of would-be immigrant terrorists or nodding his head to the latest Sarah Huckabee Sanders falsehood, he is devoted to being loyal Trump franchise manager. And so the world ignores the United States, and brushes it aside while more serious voices attempt to grapple with humanity's problems while Trump stews, furiously punching his Diet Coke button while his aides scurry to avoid him, and this is the best we can hope for until at some point a non-sociopath is put back in charge.
At that point, if that point ever arrives again, it will take at least a decade to undo the damage. The world knows full well it cannot trust the United States to stand by its past word. The world will hardly be keen to listen to American pleas to protect the free press when they suspect the next president will forgive whatever it is they might do, in exchange for permission to build a new top-tier hotel.