President Donald Trump believes in American values and works to serve the best interests of the United States, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
"While the language may be different, and we might talk about needing to deal with policy, I think you're going to see … that Americans' interests in values are always linked," Rice, who served former President George W. Bush, told Deirdre Bosa on "Squawk Box" on CNBC.
"It's early days in this administration," she added. "Let's remember that."
Interviewed at the KPMG Women's Leadership Summit at the Olympia Fields Country Club outside Chicago, Rice noted Trump's warning earlier this year to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on using chemical weapons against his own citizens.
"I believe every president of the United States stands for our values," Rice said. "You heard President Trump say, for instance, after the Syrian chemical attack, we can't let that stand.
"What he was saying was the president of the United States can't let that stand," she added.
Rice said that she believed that Trump would develop alliances with democratic nations around the world.
"We're going to see a president who understands the value of alliances, the value of the democratic alliances – and democracies are amazing," she said.
"They don't attack their neighbors. They don't trade in soldiers. They don't trade in human trafficking in the sex trade. They don't harbor terrorists.
"I think we'll see that people understand that democracy is not just a moral cause, it's a necessity in our world," she said.
On Russia and the presidential election, Rice told Bosa that Moscow should be viewed as a "hostile power."
"Any interference in our election has to be investigated — and not just investigated to see what happened, but to see how it doesn't happen again," she said.
Rice was confident that special counsel Robert Mueller will fully investigate any Kremlin meddling, but that "in the meantime, we need to go about the business of governing because that's really what the American people want."
Regarding North Korea, she said that Pyongyang's nuclear program must be stopped.
"While Kim Jong Il was a dictator, and someone that we couldn't ultimately do a deal with" in the Bush White House, "we have to worry that Kim Jong Un might be even more reckless than his father was."
Kim Jong Un became North Korea's leader after his father died in 2011.
"I do have regrets that we weren't able to stop" Pyongyang's nuclear efforts "more forcefully," Rice told Bosa.
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