Pompeo would be smart to rein in belligerence

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent blowup at NPR host Mary Louise Kelly was not an isolated, out-of-character moment or a particular surprise for those who have worked with him — or been on the receiving end of one of his blasts.

Kelly’s radio interview on Jan. 24 was going fine until she pressed Pompeo on whether he owed an apology to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by President Trump from her post in Kyiv. According to Kelly, Pompeo grew testy and “glared” at her before leaving the room; he then summoned the reporter and “shouted” at her, using the “F-word.” The next day, after she described the incident on air, Pompeo called her a liar, though email evidence shows otherwise.

Pompeo isn’t the first secretary of state to blow up at a reporter or berate a subordinate. But what struck journalists and politicians who know Pompeo was that the Kelly incident wasn’t an aberration. The former congressman’s intimidating anger is so well-known back in his native Kansas that during his 2014 reelection campaign, supporters of his opponent began wearing stickers that said, “Mike Bullied Me.”

A trademark Pompeo warning to critics in Kansas was the menacing phrase, “It won’t go well for you,” one Kansas Republican told me. As director of the CIA, Pompeo became known for repeating the abrupt dismissal “Got it, got it.” Aides considered preparing humorous buttons with the phrase “You’re not in Kansas anymore” to encourage a gentler style, but decided against it.

Pompeo doesn’t like being challenged by journalists, and he’s often snide in putting them down. That includes the local Kansas press, as well as elite Washington reporters like Kelly. When reporters from The Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle asked Pompeo in March 2019 about a proposed cut in democracy assistance for Venezuela, Pompeo told them, “Yeah, you just have your math wrong. You should do better work than that. You’re more capable than that.” The reporters later wrote: “A senior administration official acknowledged the numbers were correct.”

A few months later, Wichita Eagle reporter Jonathan Shorman pressed Pompeo on whether the U.S. troop pullout from Syria had “undercut U.S. credibility.” Pompeo thundered: “The whole predicate of your question is insane.”

Pompeo likes to take questions from local journalists when he’s traveling. But when Nashville television reporter Nancy Amons of WSMV-TV pushed him in an Oct. 11 interview about Yovanovitch, and whether Pompeo had met Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani in Warsaw, Pompeo lost his cool. “You’ve got your facts wrong,” he claimed. “It sounds like you’re working, at least in part, for the Democratic National Committee.”

Pompeo’s temper surfaced in the 2014 campaign. He was challenged in the GOP primary by his predecessor, Todd Tiahrt, who had held the seat from

1995 until 2011, after he was defeated in a Senate bid. Tiahrt’s supporters complained in 2014 that they had been pressured by Pompeo’s camp. The Wichita Eagle was cautious in covering the squabble, noting only in a 2014 story that the “race has taken a mean-spirited turn toward charges of bullying, which unsettles other Republicans.”

The “Mike Bullied Me” stickers were an attempt to raise this issue, a Kansas Republican told me. Pompeo had been distributing stickers that said, “I Like Mike,” against a red and blue background, playing on a famous phrase used by Kansas’ favorite son, President Dwight Eisenhower, “I Like Ike.”

At the CIA, Pompeo won respect for his powerful intellect. That’s been true with every job since he graduated from West Point in

1986 as No. 1 in his class. Maj. Gen. John Kem, who was in Pompeo’s company for two years, said Pompeo had “a pretty deft touch” with fellow cadets, in addition to his academic brilliance.

CIA colleagues worried about the toll of Pompeo’s blistering emails, and his profane tongue-lashing of colleagues who disagreed. His deputy, Gina Haspel, now director, would sometimes clean up after Pompeo by visiting people he had criticized to reassure them.

What concerned some CIA officials most was that Pompeo could be so dismissive of dissenting views that he risked overlooking the unexpected “black swan” events that could harm America.

Pompeo has become so powerful in the Trump administration that he’s almost a prime minister. He’s unquestionably very intelligent. But he has a belligerent streak that even his supporters have long recognized is a severe liability. He should be smart enough to fix it.