Mike Pompeo is a corrupt political hack:
When you vote Republican, you get Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who corruptly subjugates our national interest to the petty political needs of the corrupt unfit disloyal (Republican) cartoon character he serves. Which has gotta make you wonder: Why do decent people vote Republican?
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has for months deflected questions about whether the Trump administration demanded political favors from Ukraine in exchange for military aid. He has refused to explain why he recalled the American ambassador, declared that it was “inappropriate” for his diplomats to testify before Congress and declined to hand over documents to impeachment investigators.
On Wednesday, Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, filled in the blanks: He said Mr. Pompeo and his top aides “knew what we were doing, and why,” and recited emails he wrote to Mr. Pompeo about the quid pro quo demanded by President Trump. “Everyone was in the loop,” Mr. Sondland said.
Mr. Sondland’s testimony has undercut any notion that Mr. Pompeo, the administration’s most powerful national security official, was not a participant in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine. It also firmly places him at the center of one of the nation’s biggest foreign policy controversies in nearly two decades, since the debate over the intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.
Whatever Mr. Pompeo’s future plans, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state is now tied intimately to the Ukraine controversy. Even before Mr. Sondland’s testimony, Mr. Pompeo was rumored to be seeking an exit from the State Department, perhaps to run for a Senate seat in Kansas, his adopted home state, with an eye toward a presidential bid once Mr. Trump leaves the stage.
No matter what he does, Mr. Pompeo will almost certainly face charges that, at best, he abetted Mr. Trump in enlisting a foreign nation to help his 2020 campaign as the price for aid in a grinding war involving Russia in eastern Ukraine. At worst, Mr. Pompeo will be seen as coordinating and approving the demands that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, announce investigations into dubious claims about the Biden family and 2016 election interference as the price for an Oval Office meeting and a resumption of American military aid.
. . . Mr. Pompeo admitted last month that he took part in the July 25 call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky, but has refused to talk in detail about his involvement in the matter. Yet several of his top diplomats have gone to Congress to pull back the curtains on Mr. Trump’s efforts, infuriating the president. State Department employees privately have cheered on those diplomats while criticizing Mr. Pompeo for what they call a failure of leadership.
Mr. Sondland noted that Mr. Pompeo and several of the secretary’s top aides received his emails about Ukraine. “On Aug. 22, I emailed Secretary Pompeo, directly copying Secretariat Kenna,” he said of one instance, referring to Lisa Kenna, the executive secretary. He also said Ms. Kenna would sometimes print out his emails on Ukraine addressed to Mr. Pompeo and “put them in front of him.”
. . . On Wednesday, Mr. Sondland painted a picture of an activist secretary of state who was informed of attempts to force Mr. Zelensky to announce opening the investigations. Replying to the Aug. 22 email from Mr. Sondland, Mr. Pompeo even approved a plan to have Mr. Zelensky tell Mr. Trump at a scheduled meeting in Warsaw that Mr. Zelensky would pledge to move forward “on those issues of importance” to the president, Mr. Sondland said.
“We kept the leadership of the State Department and the N.S.C. informed of our activities,” Mr. Sondland said, referring to Mr. Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time who oversaw the National Security Council staff. “They knew what we were doing and why.”
. . . He added, “State Department was fully supportive of our engagement in Ukraine efforts, and was aware that a commitment to investigations was among the issues we were pursuing.”
Mr. Pompeo appears to have kept his Ukraine and Russia policy staff in the dark on those efforts. In effect, that means diplomats outside the executive offices were trying to carry out the traditional American policy to support Ukraine against Russia — and get the military aid flowing — while Mr. Pompeo was involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts.
After helping Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, remove Marie L. Yovanovitch as ambassador of Ukraine — she championed anticorruption measures — Mr. Pompeo failed to inform the veteran diplomat he picked to succeed her, William B. Taylor Jr., of the political demands being made of Mr. Zelensky.
In testimony, Mr. Taylor described slowly uncovering the plan, and sending Mr. Pompeo a cable on Aug. 29 saying that withholding the aid was “folly.”
Even then, Mr. Taylor did not appear to know of Mr. Pompeo’s role.
“The Ukraine scandal is a great microcosm of how this administration’s real foreign policy machinery operates,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a former senior official at the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon who advised on Russia and Ukraine. “Our allies and adversaries all know about this. Yet it’s just so dysfunctional to have people like Marie Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor spinning their wheels out in Kyiv while Pompeo and Giuliani indulged the president’s affection for baseless conspiracy theories and hand-to-hand political combat.”
Ronald Reagan famously said that the most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." This exemplifies the ideological Republican view that government = bad. And right here handy is a Republican government to prove they've been right all along.On Wednesday, Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, filled in the blanks: He said Mr. Pompeo and his top aides “knew what we were doing, and why,” and recited emails he wrote to Mr. Pompeo about the quid pro quo demanded by President Trump. “Everyone was in the loop,” Mr. Sondland said.
Mr. Sondland’s testimony has undercut any notion that Mr. Pompeo, the administration’s most powerful national security official, was not a participant in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine. It also firmly places him at the center of one of the nation’s biggest foreign policy controversies in nearly two decades, since the debate over the intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.
Whatever Mr. Pompeo’s future plans, Mr. Trump’s secretary of state is now tied intimately to the Ukraine controversy. Even before Mr. Sondland’s testimony, Mr. Pompeo was rumored to be seeking an exit from the State Department, perhaps to run for a Senate seat in Kansas, his adopted home state, with an eye toward a presidential bid once Mr. Trump leaves the stage.
No matter what he does, Mr. Pompeo will almost certainly face charges that, at best, he abetted Mr. Trump in enlisting a foreign nation to help his 2020 campaign as the price for aid in a grinding war involving Russia in eastern Ukraine. At worst, Mr. Pompeo will be seen as coordinating and approving the demands that Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, announce investigations into dubious claims about the Biden family and 2016 election interference as the price for an Oval Office meeting and a resumption of American military aid.
. . . Mr. Pompeo admitted last month that he took part in the July 25 call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky, but has refused to talk in detail about his involvement in the matter. Yet several of his top diplomats have gone to Congress to pull back the curtains on Mr. Trump’s efforts, infuriating the president. State Department employees privately have cheered on those diplomats while criticizing Mr. Pompeo for what they call a failure of leadership.
Mr. Sondland noted that Mr. Pompeo and several of the secretary’s top aides received his emails about Ukraine. “On Aug. 22, I emailed Secretary Pompeo, directly copying Secretariat Kenna,” he said of one instance, referring to Lisa Kenna, the executive secretary. He also said Ms. Kenna would sometimes print out his emails on Ukraine addressed to Mr. Pompeo and “put them in front of him.”
. . . On Wednesday, Mr. Sondland painted a picture of an activist secretary of state who was informed of attempts to force Mr. Zelensky to announce opening the investigations. Replying to the Aug. 22 email from Mr. Sondland, Mr. Pompeo even approved a plan to have Mr. Zelensky tell Mr. Trump at a scheduled meeting in Warsaw that Mr. Zelensky would pledge to move forward “on those issues of importance” to the president, Mr. Sondland said.
“We kept the leadership of the State Department and the N.S.C. informed of our activities,” Mr. Sondland said, referring to Mr. Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time who oversaw the National Security Council staff. “They knew what we were doing and why.”
. . . He added, “State Department was fully supportive of our engagement in Ukraine efforts, and was aware that a commitment to investigations was among the issues we were pursuing.”
Mr. Pompeo appears to have kept his Ukraine and Russia policy staff in the dark on those efforts. In effect, that means diplomats outside the executive offices were trying to carry out the traditional American policy to support Ukraine against Russia — and get the military aid flowing — while Mr. Pompeo was involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts.
After helping Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, remove Marie L. Yovanovitch as ambassador of Ukraine — she championed anticorruption measures — Mr. Pompeo failed to inform the veteran diplomat he picked to succeed her, William B. Taylor Jr., of the political demands being made of Mr. Zelensky.
In testimony, Mr. Taylor described slowly uncovering the plan, and sending Mr. Pompeo a cable on Aug. 29 saying that withholding the aid was “folly.”
Even then, Mr. Taylor did not appear to know of Mr. Pompeo’s role.
“The Ukraine scandal is a great microcosm of how this administration’s real foreign policy machinery operates,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a former senior official at the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon who advised on Russia and Ukraine. “Our allies and adversaries all know about this. Yet it’s just so dysfunctional to have people like Marie Yovanovitch and Bill Taylor spinning their wheels out in Kyiv while Pompeo and Giuliani indulged the president’s affection for baseless conspiracy theories and hand-to-hand political combat.”
When you vote Republican, you get Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who corruptly subjugates our national interest to the petty political needs of the corrupt unfit disloyal (Republican) cartoon character he serves. Which has gotta make you wonder: Why do decent people vote Republican?
