With eye on 2024, Pompeo grows more combative
WASHINGTON — As secretary of state during the Trump administration, Mike Pompeo had little regard for his job’s genteel diplomatic protocols, routinely throwing verbal punches against foreign governments, political opponents and the mainstream media.
Out of office for more than two months, Pompeo has not stopped punching. In a series of speeches, interviews and Twitter posts, he is emerging as the most outspoken critic of President Joe Biden among former top Trump officials. And he is ignoring, much as he did in office, the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship.
In back-to-back appearances in Iowa and during an interview in New Hampshire over the past week, Pompeo questioned the Biden administration’s resolve toward China. In Iowa, he accused the White House of reversing the Trump administration’s immigration policy “willy-nilly and without any thought.” He derided Biden for referring to notes during his first formal news conference March 25.
“What’s great about not being the secretary of state anymore is I can say things that when I was a diplomat I couldn’t say,” Pompeo said the next morning, to a small crowd at the Westside Conservative Club near Des Moines.
Never mind that he was hardly known for biting his tongue, even as the nation’s top diplomat. It seems clear that Pompeo, a onetime Republican congressman from Kansas, is animated not just by freedom but also by a drive for high elective office that has long been evident to friends and foes. His appearances in a pair of presidential battleground states only seem to confirm his widely assumed interest in a 2024 presidential campaign.
“Usually former presidents and secretaries of state try not to quickly trash their successors — especially in foreign policy,” said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian. He said Pompeo “probably believes he is demonstrating his Trumpiness by castigating the performance of the newly installed President Biden.”
“This hastiness is not a sign of self-confidence,” Beschloss said. “Presidential aspirants who have faith in their staying power are not so grabby.”
Pompeo’s political strategist
did not respond to messages seeking comment or an interview, but people close to Pompeo said Democratic secretaries of state before him, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, were openly critical of President Donald Trump.
But Kerry largely held his tongue for the first months of the Trump presidency, growing more openly critical — if less relentlessly so — after Trump announced in June 2017 that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement. By the time Trump took office earlier that year, Clinton, his election opponent, had long shed any nonpartisan diplomatic veneer.
Pompeo has notably steered clear of directly criticizing Antony Blinken, the current secretary of state, with whom he said he had a “productive” meeting in January before Biden’s inauguration.
But he has since repeatedly denounced policies in which Blinken plays a key role.
Last week, Pompeo tweeted that the Biden administration’s plans to restart aid to the Palestinians canceled under Trump were “immoral” and would support terrorist activity. “Americans and Israelis should be outraged by the Biden administration’s plans to do so,” Pompeo wrote.
But his commentary goes beyond foreign policy. Pompeo has also condemned Biden’s “backward” “open border” policies. And on March 19, he simply tweeted the number 1,327 — an apparent reference to the number of days until the 2024 election.
Pompeo appears to have a heightened sense of animosity toward Kerry, who is back in government as Biden’s climate czar. That appointment, in part, does “not bode well for American energy and for affordable energy here at home,” Pompeo said in Iowa.
And in a Feb. 22 appearance on Fox News, Pompeo unloaded on his predecessor over meetings Kerry had during the Trump years with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, which Pompeo called an “un-american” effort to undermine Trump’s foreign policy.
There is little sign that Pompeo’s criticism has struck a nerve among Biden officials and their allies. Asked about the remarks last month, a State Department spokesman, Ned Price, declined to respond directly but said the Biden and Trump administrations shared the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“No one cares,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted in response to a recent news report about a Pompeo critique of Biden’s policies.
Republicans say Pompeo stands a chance of uniting the Trump movement with the party’s more traditional Reaganite wing, in which he has his roots. But he will have a steep climb.
Some polls show him lagging far behind nearly all other 2024 Republican contenders in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even Trump, when asked during a Fox News interview last week, neglected to mention Pompeo when naming Republicans he expects to shape the party’s future.
“It’s going to be a very crowded field, and somebody like Pompeo needs time to break through, which is why he’s starting so early,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former aide to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-fla.
Pompeo has cast his recent politicking as assistance for Republican congressional midterm candidates.
“If we get 2022 right, 2024 will solve itself,” Pompeo said in Iowa.
When pressed, Pompeo has not denied that he is considering a presidential campaign.
“I’m always up for a good fight,” Pompeo told the Fox News host Sean Hannity in a March 3 interview when asked if he would run. “I’ve been a part of the conservative movement for an awfully long time now. I aim to keep at it.”
“I’ll take that as a strong maybe,” Hannity replied.
“That’s perfect,” Pompeo said.
In a separate Fox News appearance last month, Pompeo complained that former Obama officials like Kerry had sought to remain active, at least when it came to world affairs.
“They lost an election, and they should have just gotten off the stage,” Pompeo said.