Pompeo, Mattis meet with Australian officials
STANFORD >> Two high-ranking members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis — are in the Bay Area this week for two days of meetings with Australian officials at Stanford University, as they try to move on from a series of diplomatic eruptions for the Trump administration.
Their visit comes amid a roller-coaster week and a half, from the uproar over Trump’s Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he appeared to call into question whether Russia interfered in U.S. elections, to his all-caps tweet Sunday night threatening dire “consequences” for Iran.
The White House also said Monday that it was looking into revoking the security clearances of former intelligence officials who publicly criticized Trump, including Obama administration CIA chief John Brennan, who accused Trump of treason for his Putin press conference.
On Sunday, Pompeo spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, outlining the administration’s case against the Iranian government and declaring that “The regime in Iran has been a nightmare for the Iranian people.” He was interrupted by a protester denouncing the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families.
The talks with Australia, which include Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop and Minister for Defense Marise Payne, are expected to be less newsworthy. North Korea is likely at the top of the agenda during discussions Monday and today — Pompeo was in Pyongyang to continue negotiations over the rogue state’s nuclear program a few weeks ago.
Trump has had rocky relations with Australia before, hanging up on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on a bilateral phone call eight days into his presidency. But the two leaders patched things up, and Turnbull described him and Trump as “mates” at a later visit to the White House.
Pompeo, Mattis and their Australian counterparts are expected to take questions at a press conference this morning at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
About a dozen people protested the kickoff of the two-day talks on Stanford’s campus Monday, said Steve Rapport, a taekwondo instructor from Pacifica and a member of the anti-Trump group Indivisible, who showed up with a handwritten sign declaring “traitor.”
“We’ve had very little chance to protest directly at any Trump cabinet members,” Rapport said. “I felt like we needed to express the fact that they’re complicit with the Trump foreign policy — we want to say it’s not right to alienate our allies and coddle foreign dictators and tyrants.”
More small protests are expected today.
Only a few Trump cabinet members have been to the Bay Area in the first year and a half of his administration. Former EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt briefly visited San Francisco last month, while Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue went to farms near Gilroy in February. Trump himself came to San Diego to review construction on border wall prototypes earlier this year, but skipped Northern California.