Pompeo faces uphill battle for confirmation
Tapped to be nation’s top diplomat, director of CIA grilled by Dems
Mike Pompeo, facing tough questions in a Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, called for using “relentless diplomacy” to avoid war but came under fire from Democrats who questioned whether he would stand up to President Trump.
WASHINGTON — Mike Pompeo, facing tough questions Thursday in a Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, called for using “relentless diplomacy” to avoid war but came under fire from Democrats who questioned whether he would stand up to President Donald Trump when necessary to restore American influence around the world.
Pompeo, 54, served six years as a tea party Republican member of Congress from Kansas before Trump picked him early last year to lead the CIA. Given the turmoil in the president’s Cabinet, he kept a low public profile but was known as a fierce Trump loyalist in a spy service that prides itself on being apolitical.
Pompeo sought to mollify his Democratic critics in an often contentious five-hour hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that did little to undermine his chances for confirmation by the full Senate, where he has numerous allies.
If he is confirmed as the nation’s top diplomat, Pompeo said, his “first priority” would be to revitalize the demoralized State Department after a year of painful staff cuts and high-level departures under Rex Tillerson, whom Trump fired last month.
“I’ll do my part to end the vacancies,” Pompeo said. He vowed to foster a State Department culture that “finds its swagger once again. We will be effective, expeditionary, diverse and successful in fulfilling our mission.”
Pompeo vowed to toughen U.S. sanctions that have targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and other senior government officials. Moscow “continues to act aggressively, enabled by years of soft policy toward that aggression. That’s now over,” Pompeo said. Russia, he added, “has not gotten the message.”
If confirmed, Pompeo also will help plan a proposed high-stakes nuclear summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a task he was already immersed in as CIA director. Trump said last week that the meeting would occur in late May or early June.
“No one is under any illusions” that a summit would produce a comprehensive agreement to strip North Korea of its nuclear weapons, Pompeo said. But it could “set us down the course to achieve a diplomatic outcome that America and the world so desperately need.”
Democrats used the hearing to criticize Trump’s erratic foreign policy and urged Pompeo to push back when necessary.
“Will you enable President Trump’s worst instincts?” asked Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “Will you stand up to (Trump) and say ‘No, you are wrong,’ or will you be a yes man?”
Pompeo said he would express his views forcefully but carry out the president’s policies once decisions were made.
He said he has been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. He said he believed the Russians meddled in the campaign, something Trump has been reluctant to do.
One Republican on the Senate committee, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, has said he will oppose Pompeo’s nomination because of his past defense of harsh CIA interrogation tactics that critics called torture.