Condoleezza Rice: I feel bad for 'lonely' President Trump

Condoleezza Rice used her time on "The View" Tuesday to offer some supportive words for President Donald Trump.

Rice, who served as secretary of state under former President George W. Bush, appeared on the daytime talk show to promote her new book, "Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom," and tried as they might, the liberal hosts couldn't get Rice to say anything negative about Trump or his Cabinet.

While noting that Trump is a "different kind of president," Rice expressed some sadness for the president:

He had never been in government before. And when you haven’t been in government before, sometimes it looks kind of easy in there, until you get in there. And when he said, you know, "This job’s a lot harder than I thought," I actually kind of felt bad for him, because it is a really hard job, and it’s a lonely job, and you want people around you who you trust.

Whoopi Goldberg rolled her eyes at Rice's comments while the rest of the panel attempted to get Rice to talk negative about the Trump administration, including on alleged connections to the Russian government and the Kremlin's possible influence in U.S. elections.

Rice noted that it made "good sense" to investigate purported Russian ties to the Trump administration as well as its involvement in the 2016 presidential election; but she warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is an "eye-for-an-eye" type of man.

"Vladimir Putin is an eye-for-an-eye kind of person," Rice said. "And we questioned — or Secretary [Hillary] Clinton questioned the legitimacy of his election in 2012. Now he’s saying, 'I’m going to question the legitimacy of your election by hacking into it' and so forth.”

Rice urged viewers: “Don’t let him get the satisfaction that we don’t believe our own elections to be legitimate.”

Rice seemed to support Trump's presidency, however, and noted that it was in the hands of U.S. citizens to be "smart."

"I trust the people who voted in Wisconsin and Texas and Alabama and California to have voted on the basis of who they thought was best going to represent their interests,” Rice said. “So I’m not going to question the legitimacy of their vote because Vladimir Putin tried to interfere in the election."

"Let’s trust our fellow citizens to have been smart enough to vote for the people they ought to have been voting for," Rice said.