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]]>The post Mike Pompeo RNC speech is breach of diplomatic protocol, Democrats say appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Top Democrats said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Tuesday address to the Republican National Convention while on an official trip to the Middle East was a gross breach of diplomatic protocol and another example of President Trump wrongly mixing politics with the machinery of government.
Mr. Trump is slated to accept the Republican nomination on Thursday from the White House, while Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to speak Wednesday from Fort McHenry, the historic National Park Service site in Baltimore.
First lady Melania Trump will speak Tuesday from the newly revamped White House Rose Garden.
“It’s just unfortunate that this president seems like from the venues he’s choosing … to be trampling upon the ideas that there are certain places that are sacrosanct and should not be used for politics and a political convention in this way,” said Sen. Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat.
Mr. Pompeo will deliver an address videotaped in Jerusalem, in which he will tout some of Mr. Trump’s first-term foreign policy moves and say the president has “led bold initiatives in nearly every corner of the world” to secure peace and “keep us safe and our freedoms intact,” according to speech excerpts.
The State Department said Mr. Pompeo was acting entirely in his personal capacity, but Democrats said that was a stretch for a secretary of state while traveling overseas.
“For him to do this, I think, further shows that this administration is willing to politicize the state of Israel and use it as a political wedge as opposed to a rallying cry for us to come together and continue our traditions of bipartisan support for the state of Israel,” Mr. Booker told reporters.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel said the speech violates Mr. Pompeo’s own directive last month warning State Department employees against appearing at partisan political events.
“It is important to remember that in order to avoid any confusion or misperception in this regard, the department’s longstanding policy is that U.S. citizen employees and family members may not engage in partisan political activity while posted or on [duty] abroad, even on personal time,” said the cable, which was signed by Mr. Pompeo.
“But, once again, the rules go out the window for Secretary Pompeo when they get in the way of serving his political interests and Donald Trump,” said Mr. Engel, New York Democrat.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and chairman of a foreign affairs oversight subcommittee, opened an investigation Tuesday into Mr. Pompeo’s speech and demanded that the State Department answer questions and provide records tied to Mr. Pompeo’s trip.
Mr. Pompeo is on an official trip to Israel, Sudan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The State Department said taxpayer money was not used to fund the speech.
Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden’s campaign wasn’t buying it.
“The fact that a sitting secretary of state would give a speech like this is flat-out disgraceful,” said campaign spokesman Bill Russo. “It is an abuse of taxpayer money. This is part of, apparently, official travel even if it is his personal time. It’s taxpayer money that got him there. It’s taxpayer money that’s paying for his protection. There are certainly taxpayer-funded staff on the ground.”
Before Mr. Pompeo, no sitting secretary of state in modern history had delivered a featured address for a major party’s national convention.
In the recent past, former secretaries Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Condoleezza Rice timed official travel to coincide with party conventions, ensuring they would have a reason to be elsewhere.
“As secretary of state, I am obliged not to participate in any way, shape, fashion, or form in parochial, political debates,” Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, said in 2004 ahead of the Republican convention. “I have to take no sides in the matter.”
George Shultz, former President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, did appear at Republicans’ 1988 convention but stayed on the sidelines.
P.J. Crowley, who served as an assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Obama administration, said there’s no issue if Mr. Pompeo wants to lock arms with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hail the recent breakthrough in relations with the UAE.
“But when a sitting secretary of state tapes a video to be played at the Republican National Convention, that crosses a significant line,” Mr. Crowley said.
He worked for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992 and then-Defense Secretary William Perry in 1996, and both men “scrupulously avoided” any appearance of partisan political activity during those years.
“Both were drawn into public discussions of issues that were part of the campaign,” he said. “But neither one became active participants in the campaign. This is very different.”
Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman and CIA director, has been mentioned as a potential 2024 GOP presidential contender. He recently made a trip to Iowa, site of the caucuses that kick off the presidential primary season.
Some Republicans had pushed him to run for Kansas’s open Senate seat this year, but he declined those overtures.
Democrats complain that Mr. Trump is turning the apparatus of government into a campaign tool.
On Monday, Mr. Trump broadcast during the GOP convention from inside the White House, appearing with “frontline” COVID-19 workers and hostages who have returned to the United States during his time in office.
Mr. Trump took a shot at Democrats in the ongoing standoff over the Postal Service as he thanked a postal worker in one video.
“We’re not getting rid of our postal workers, you know? They like to sort of put that out there,” the president said. “If anyone does, it’s the Democrats — not the Republicans.”
The Hatch Act generally forbids federal employees from engaging in politics on the taxpayer’s dime, and while the law doesn’t apply to Mr. Trump or Mr. Pence, it does apply to other White House personnel.
A ruling by the Office of Special Counsel, which polices the Hatch Act, said Mr. Trump could speak from the White House, as long as certain restrictions were observed.
And Stephanie Grisham, Mrs. Trump’s spokeswoman and former press secretary for the president, said White House lawyers have provided extensive guidelines on what is allowed for speeches there.
“It’s being very, very strictly adhered to,” Ms. Grisham said.
The coronavirus pandemic upended the Republican Party’s plans to hold a full convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Democrats also canceled their convention in Milwaukee, with Mr. Biden delivering his speech from the Chase Center near his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Democrats have faced complaints they ran afoul of federal restrictions on political activity during the roll call vote to nominate Mr. Biden. Members of the armed forces stood in the background in their uniforms while American Samoa cast its votes over livestream.
The Democratic National Committee called it an “oversight.” The Army is investigating.
Several videos also featured Beau Biden, the late son of Mr. Biden who served in the Army, though images of the younger Biden in his military gear were accompanied by disclaimers that the visuals did not constitute any endorsement from the military or Defense Department.
• Ben Wolfgang contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Pompeo in Sudan, top US official to visit since uprising appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Sudan on Tuesday, the top U.S. official to visit the African country since last year’s ouster of its autocratic leader, Omar al-Bashir.
Pompeo’s visit on Tuesday is meant to discuss the normalization of ties between Sudan and Israel and also show U.S. support for the country’s fragile transition to democracy.
Pompeo is also the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the African county since 2005, when Condoleezza Rice visited. Pompeo was also to discuss the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Pompeo arrived from Israel, and while he was still airborne, he tweeted: “Happy to announce that we are on the FIRST official NONSTOP flight from Israel to Sudan!”
Pompeo’s flight was the first direct trip between Tel Aviv to Khartoum. He was in Israel Monday, the first stop of his multi-country tour in the region that came following the Aug. 13 agreement by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to establish diplomatic ties.
He is to meet with Sudanese Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
The State Department had said ahead of the tour that Pompeo would discuss “continued U.S. support for the civilian-led transitional government and express support for deepening the Sudan–Israel relationship.”
In February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Gen. Burhan, during a trip to Uganda where they pledged to pursue normalization. The meeting was held secretly and only announced after it happened.
At the time of the Burhan-Netanyahu meeting, the Sudanese military said the talks with Israel were an effort to help end Sudan’s status as an international pariah state.
Following a meeting with Hamdok on Monday, a coalition representing the protesters who helped topple al-Bashir last year, said in a statement that the transitional government “has no mandate” to decide on normalizing ties with Israel.
The coalition, known as Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, also “emphasized the right of the Palestinian people to their land and the right of free and dignified life,” the statement said.
Sudan hosted the landmark Arab conference after the 1967 Mideast war where eight Arab countries approved the “three no’s”: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations.
But in recent years those hostilities have softened, and both countries have expressed readiness to normalize relations.
Sudan is now on a fragile path to democracy after the popular uprising led the military to overthrow al-Bashir in April 2019. A military-civilian government now rules the country, with elections deemed possible in late 2022.
The transitional authorities are desperate to lift sanctions linked to its listing by the U.S. as a state sponsor of terror. That would be a key step toward ending its isolation and rebuilding its battered economy that has plunged in recent months, threatening to destabilize the political transition.
Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC.
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]]>The post Pompeo trolls Nancy Pelosi’s DNC speech with Lisa Simpson meme appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted a meme of Lisa Simpson shredding a piece of paper during Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday, a reference to the House Speaker ripping up a copy of President Trump’s last State of the Union speech on live television.
Pompeo posted the gif to his Twitter page just as Pelosi was lambasting Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for what she described as “standing in the way” of Democratic policy reform.
Simpsons showrunner Bill Oakley retweeted a response to Pompeo’s gif from another user with the caption “Denigrating Simpsons fans didn’t work well for the incumbents back in 1992, you smarmy little bastard,” a reference to then-President George H.W. Bush saying America’s families should be “a little bit more like the Waltons and a little bit less like the Simpsons.”
Bush, who was lauding a Depression-era family depicted in a 1970’s TV show, went on to lose his reelection bid, ceding the White House to Democrat Bill Clinton.
It wasn’t the first time Pompeo had used Lisa Simpson to mock Pelosi.
After the State of the Union speech in February, the secretary of state posted the same clip, earning the wrath of actress Yeardley Smith, who provides the animated character’s voice.
“I might just add f*ck you @mikepompeo for co-opting my character to troll @SpeakerPelosi. Be a leader and fight [your] own fight! Oh, wait I forgot, you’re a follower,” she tweeted at Pompeo in February.
The gif is a scene from a Season 3 episode of “The Simpsons” titled “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” a play on the 1939 Jimmy Stewart film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” about a new senator fighting corruption.
In the episode, Lisa travels to the nation’s capital for a contest, then becomes disillusioned when she discovers a congressman’s illicit activities.
The meme shows her crying and ripping up a copy of her essay, which she later rewrites to expose the congressman’s corruption.
Pelosi’s speech came during the third night of the Democratic National Convention, prior to her party’s nomination of Sen. Kamala Harris for vice president. Harris, from California like Pelosi, is the first Black woman to appear on a major political party’s presidential ticket.
Now in her second stint as speaker of the house, Pelosi lambasted Trump as an enemy of women, saying she’s witnessed “firsthand Donald Trump’s disrespect for facts, working families and for women in particular — disrespect written into his policies toward our health and our rights, not just his conduct.”
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“But we know what he doesn’t: that when women succeed, America succeeds,” Pelosi said.
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]]>The post Pompeo signs new defence deal with Poland appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]> 
Image copyright
EPA
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak bumped elbows after signing the deal
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has signed a new defence agreement with Poland that will see American troops redeployed there from Germany.
The deal will see the number of US troops in Poland rise to about 5,500.
Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the number could quickly be increased to 20,000 if a threat justified it.
US President Donald Trump has previously accused Germany of not contributing enough to Nato.
But the US move has raised concern among Nato allies worried over possible Russian expansionism.
The Enhanced Defence Co-operation Agreement (EDCA) was signed by Mr Pompeo and Mr Blaszczak in Warsaw on Saturday.
“This is going to be an extended guarantee – a guarantee that in case of a threat our soldiers are going to stand arm-in-arm,” Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said at the signing ceremony.
“It will also serve to increase the security of other countries in our part of Europe.”
About 4,500 US troops are currently stationed in Poland and another 1,000 will be added under the new pact. The headquarters of the US Army V Corps will also be relocated from Germany to Poland.
Last month the US confirmed that almost 12,000 troops – out of more than 38,000 – would be withdrawn from Germany in what it described as a “strategic” repositioning of its forces in Europe.
About 6,400 troops are being sent home with the rest moved to other Nato countries including Poland, Italy and Belgium.
President Trump said the move was a response to Germany failing to meet Nato targets on defence spending.
‘Muscular’ Poland is Trump’s kind of ally
Billed by its advocates as a means to better defend Nato and strengthen deterrence against Moscow, this new military agreement could be as much about politics as it is about strategy.
The US already contributes to and commands a small multi-national Nato battlegroup in Poland, with regular exercises drawing in additional forces. A land-based ballistic missile defence system is under construction.
But since 2018 in particular, Polish politicians have been pushing for much more, at one stage arguing that a full US division should be permanently based in the country with Warsaw shouldering at least some of the cost; a plan dubbed by some as “Fort Trump”.
The new agreement falls well short of this. But it sends a clear signal about Mr Trump’s preferences. Muscular Poland, with relatively strong defence spending, is the sort of ally the president likes. By contrast he has already announced the pull-out of some US forces from Germany, which he believes does not carry its share of the defence burden.
It is not clear that the shifting around of forces will necessarily strengthen Nato at a time when many of its key problems seem to relate to internal cohesion.
“We don’t want to be the suckers any more,” Mr Trump told reporters shortly after the move was announced. “We’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills; it’s very simple.”
Mr Trump has long complained that European Nato members should spend more on their own defence and not rely so heavily on the US to shoulder the costs of maintaining the alliance.
The row between the allies focuses around the target agreed by all Nato members that defence spending should reach 2% of GDP (gross domestic product, the total value of goods produced and services provided in a country) by 2024.
Germany, along with other countries, has yet to meet this target.
German officials have criticised the US move, suggesting it could weaken Nato and embolden Russia.
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]]>The post Mike Pompeo: Rejecting Iran arms embargo extension would ‘mock’ UN Security Council mission appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The United Nations Security Council will “make a mockery of its mission” if it rejects a U.S.-led push to renew an arms embargo on Iran that expires in October, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday.
U.S. officials have insisted that the embargo, which was put in place as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal from which the Trump administration withdrew three years later, should remain in place, citing Iranian violations of the Obama-era pact.
The U.S. is gearing up to offer a resolution to extend the embargo this week. But in order to pass, the resolution needs nine votes in favor and must avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members of the council, which includes China and Russia.
Both Beijing and Moscow have opposed the extension.
“If the @UN Security Council doesn’t extend the Iran arms embargo, it will make a mockery of its mission to maintain ‘international peace and security,’” Mr. Pompeo tweeted.
“The proposal the U.S. will put forward is reasonable and needed. We will do the right thing.”
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]]>The post Pompeo warns TikTok users’ personal info could be going ‘directly to the Chinese Communist Party’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo supported President Trump’s proposed ban of social media phenomenon TikTok, explaining to Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” just how use of the app exposes Americans to having their personal information sent straight to the Chinese government.
Trump’s call for a ban came amid concerns over the national security risk posed by the app’s collection of personal data, as Microsoft has been in talks to acquire the platform’s U.S. operations.
TRUMP SAYS HE PLANS TO BAN TIKTOK FROM US
“These Chinese software companies doing business in the United States,” Pompeo said, “are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus. Could be [users’] facial recognition pattern, it could be information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends, who they’re connected to. Those are the issues that President Trump’s made clear we’re going to take care of. These are true national security issues.”
Pompeo said that in the past, the U.S. had a relaxed approach to the Chinese companies if companies were making money off of them or enjoying their products.
“President Trump has said, ‘enough’,” Pompeo told host Maria Bartiromo.
Pompeo said that Trump will take measures in the coming days to address “a broad array of national security risks” presented by software companies.
TIKTOK IS SHOPPING ITSELF AND MICROSOFT IS INTERESTED
Microsoft has paused its efforts to acquire the U.S. operations of TikTok, which allows users to share and post short videos. Bartiromo asked Pompeo if having those operations under Microsoft would remove the risk of Chinese spying. Pompeo would only say that the Trump administration “will make sure that everything we have done drives us as close to zero risk for the American people.”
Pompeo called out leaders of tech companies who claimed that they were unaware that the Chinese Communist Party was trying to steal American intellectual property.
“I saw statements from senior American CEOs of the big tech companies this week saying they hadn’t heard or seen about intellectual property theft in the United States. That’s crazy talk,” he said.
In Congress and in the rest of the world, however, Pompeo said that leaders are understanding the problem the Chinese government poses.
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“The good news is we’re getting nearly every member of Congress aligned along the administration’s policies on China,” Pompeo said, adding that “the tide is turning … not only here in the United States, but all across the world” in recognizing the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Pompeo also addressed the ongoing abuse of Uighurs in China, calling it “the greatest human rights violation of this century to date,” saying the U.S. has imposed sanctions on those involved.
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]]>The post Pompeo announces end of ‘blind engagement’ with communist China: ‘Distrust but verify’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Declaring at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library that “the old paradigm of blind engagement with China has failed,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday announced a new approach toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): “Distrust but verify.”
In stark and sobering remarks, Pompeo warned Americans that “if we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the CCP, whose actions are the primary challenge to the free world.”
Pompeo’s address came a day after the FBI revealed that the CCP has implemented a “program” to secretly and illegally plant military researchers in several U.S. universities to pilfer sensitive materials. Earlier in the week, the State Department announced that China’s consulate in Houston would be closed, with Pompeo saying the complex was “a hub of spying and IP theft.” China has vowed retaliation.
Against that fraught backdrop, Pompeo promised action that he distinguished from Cold War-era “containment,” which aimed to stop the spread of communism and keep the Soviet Union isolated.
CHINESE MILITARY SPY IS HOLED UP IN SAN FRANCISCO EMBASSY, FBI ALLEGES
“It’s true that unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the global economy,” he said. “But Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them.”
Hours after the FBI alleged a coordinated scheme by China to “send military scientists to the United States on false pretenses with false covers or false statements about their true employment,” Pompeo emphasized that the immigration system was prone to abuse.
“We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the CCP exploit our free and open society,” Pompeo continued, in perhaps his most pointed remarks directed at the Chinese government. “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.”
Throughout his address, which also warned of the encroaching national security threats of major Chinese technology companies, Pompeo took pains to distinguish the CCP from the Chinese people.
“Communists always lie, but the biggest lie is that the Chinese Communist Party speaks for 1.4 billion people who are surveilled, oppressed, and scared to speak out,” Pompeo remarked. “Quite the contrary. The CCP fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foreign foe. And save for losing their own grip on power, they have no reason to.”
Pompeo specifically honored Tiananmen Square survivor Wang Dan, as well as the man Pompeo identified as the “father of the Chinese democracy movement, Wei Jingsheng,” who “spent decades in Chinese labor camps for his advocacy.”
The only way to truly change Communist China, Pompeo went on, “is to act on the basis of what its leaders do, not what they say. President Reagan dealt with the Soviets on the basis of ‘trust but verify.’ When it comes to the CCP, I say, ‘Distrust and verify.'”
Previous Trump administration measures against Chinese officials, students and researchers have included travel bans, registration requirements and other steps intended to reduce the country’s footprint in the United States. The administration also has announced its outright rejection of virtually all Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea.
CHINA THREATENS RETALIATION AFTER U.S. CLOSES EMBASSY
These actions have come as Trump has sought to blame China for the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., where cases have soared. Trump himself said more closures could be coming if China didn’t change its behavior. “It’s always possible,” he told reporters at the White House.
Pompeo similarly hit that theme. “Just think how much better off the world would’ve been if the doctors in Wuhan had been allowed to raise the alarm about the outbreak of a new coronavirus,” he said.
The State Department announced it ordered the consulate closed within 72 hours after alleging that Chinese agents have tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system statewide and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
There were indications consulate staff were preparing to leave: Papers were being burned on the consulate grounds late Tuesday night — a common practice when a diplomatic post is being shuttered on short notice.
Cai Wei, the Chinese consul general, told KTRK-TV in Houston the order to shut down was “quite wrong” and “very damaging” to U.S.-China relations.
Asked about accusations of espionage and stealing data, Cai said, “You have to give some evidence, say something from the facts. … Knowing Americans, you have the rule of law, you are not guilty until you are proved guilty.”
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that the closure was “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”
Fox News’ Nicholas Kalman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Mike Pompeo China speech defends Trump hawkish position appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week will deliver a major speech on the shortcomings of American foreign policy toward China, arguing that the record clearly supports President Trump’s new and tougher approach to Beijing.
The policy speech, set for Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum near Los Angeles, will be the fourth in a series of addresses by the most senior national security officials of the Trump administration. Taken together, the speeches mark the most systematic and comprehensive response by a U.S. administration to address the challenges posed by China’s rise as a global economic and military power.
“We put together a series of remarks aimed at making sure the American people understood the ongoing, serious threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to our fundamental way of life here in the United States of America,” Mr. Pompeo told The Washington Times in an interview.
Mr. Pompeo contends that the basis for U.S.-Chinese relations since the 1970s — ever-deeper engagement and large-scale business, manufacturing and investment ties — is obsolete. The Trump administration, he said, is fashioning U.S. policies based on a relationship more in line with American values and principles.
The secretary of state also is expected to meet with a group of Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy advocates during his one-day visit to California.
In the interview, Mr. Pompeo said he plans to explain in detail how Mr. Trump has recognized the threat from China and the decades of harm it has caused to U.S. and other Western economies.
In response, the administration has begun to take “true concrete responses that can begin to reshape the relationship in a way that is fundamentally more fair and reciprocal for the American people, middle-class workers in America,” he said.
Past engagement policies, he said, failed to produce a moderate, pro-Western China. Mr. Trump is pursuing polices aimed at making sure China treats Americans “in a way that’s consistent with how we ask every country to behave,” Mr. Pompeo said.
The Pompeo speech will be the culmination of a series of high-level efforts to highlight the threat posed by China. White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Attorney General William Barr also have weighed in on various aspects of U.S.-Chinese policy, each time drawing a sharp rebuke from Beijing.
Taking on the deep state
In the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Pompeo discussed the problem of bureaucratic resistance in the State Department and in the CIA, which he used to run, to Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda. He said the administration is well-positioned to protect the security of the upcoming presidential election from foreign threats.
Mr. Pompeo also warned China not to arm Iran with advanced weapons when the arms embargo on Tehran ends in October. Beijing and Tehran are reportedly discussing a major economic and security pact in defiance of U.S. sanctions on Iran.
On the “deep state” opposition within the U.S. government, Mr. Pompeo said he has dealt with the resistance at the State Department, with its 75,000 employees, and during his role as CIA director.
“As for my experience now, 3½ years in, having first run the CIA and now as America’s chief diplomat, these are indeed big bureaucracies,” Mr. Pompeo said. “There are big bureaucracies in the private sector too, but inside government it takes a special capacity to get them all moving in the right direction.”
Policy opposition comes from “those who sit inside these bureaucracies and have policy differences.”
“I’m fine with people having different judgments, different views,” he said. “Even the senior leadership team at the State Department has different views. Air and vet them, make the case, build data sets around your argument, present them in a way that is rational and convincing.”
Disagreements also arise at the Cabinet level, but they are sorted out.
“When we’re done with [debate] and all that’s been sorted through, and the president has given guidance and I’ve issued implementation directions, the entire team has to work together to do that,” he said.
“There have been those who have decided they didn’t want be part of that,” he said. “So be it. They should leave. But everyone who remains, everybody who’s got their oar in the water still trying to pull America in the right direction has the true responsibility to execute in a way that’s consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy objective. And my mission is to make sure this organization, the State Department, and the CIA before that, did precisely that.”
Mr. Trump in May fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. Mr. Pompeo said Mr. Linick was dismissed for “undermining” the State Department. He did not elaborate. Congressional Democrats have said Mr. Linick was dismissed for investigating policy and personal matters related directly to Mr. Pompeo.
Ties with Iran
On Iran, recent news reports said Beijing is in the final stages of concluding an economic and military deal with Iran worth $400 billion for infrastructure, and closer defense and intelligence cooperation. China, which supports the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration repudiated in 2018, in the past has provided missiles and other military hardware to Iran despite nuclear sanctions.
“We’re watching the reporting … about the relationship between Iran and China,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We will hold every nation accountable that violates U.S. sanctions.
“I hope that the Chinese Communist Party sees that it is not in their best interest to support and provide weapons systems to the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.”
Mr. Pompeo said he hopes Beijing will support U.S. efforts at the United Nations to block the lifting of the arms embargo on Iran. China, Russia and even some European allies have sent strong signals that they will oppose Washington’s efforts to preserve the embargo, a provision of the 2015 nuclear deal.
“It should not be the case that the world is going to stand by and allow an Iranian regime that continues to sponsor terror all around the world to allow them to be an arms merchant, allow them to purchase air defense systems and other capabilities that will protect them so that they are more capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We’re not going to allow that to happen. I hope that the Chinese Communist Party will join alongside of us.”
Mr. Pompeo said the Trump administration is seeking to overhaul and improve U.S. radio broadcasting and information programs now that the first chief executive, Michael Pack, is now in place at the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Mr. Pack dismissed all the directors of several government-funded radios, and the director of the flagship Voice of America, Amanda Bennett, stepped down before she could be fired. Mr. Trump has criticized VOA broadcasts, leading some critics to accuse the administration of threatening the service’s journalistic independence.
The message to be beamed abroad will be that “America is a force for good and that the threats that emanate from regimes like the Chinese Communist Party need not be tolerated and that America will be there to support those freedom-loving nations,” Mr. Pompeo said.
China and its neighbors
On recent tensions between Taiwan and mainland China, Mr. Pompeo said Mr. Trump is following the path forged by President Reagan in supporting Taipei’s defenses.
For the first time in decades, the administration agreed to sell new F-16 jets to Taiwan and has supplied other important weaponry in a bid to bolster the island’s defenses against China’s growing encroachment in waters along its periphery, Mr. Pompeo said.
Mr. Pompeo also said that what he called China’s failure to abide by its commitments in Hong Kong — Beijing recently approved a tough security law for the enclave that critics say violates a 1997 handover agreement to respect self-rule and autonomy in the former British colony — is raising worries about China’s threats to use force against Taiwan.
China has “a series of commitments they’ve made to the people who live in Taiwan and to the world, the fact that they will not use military force,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We set out in every conversation we have with our Chinese counterparts our expectation that they will live up to those commitments.”
China’s neighbors in the region, he added, increasingly appreciate the American security commitments in the face of Beijing’s aggressiveness.
Mr. Pompeo said the Trump administration is actively supporting Hong Kong activists in their challenge to Chinese rule. Asked whether the curbs on freedom can be rolled back and democracy restored, Mr. Pompeo said, “The people of Hong Kong are going to demand it.”
An election is set for September, and Hong Kong voters will have a chance to “raise their voices” against Beijing in “demanding the freedom that the Communist Party promised them.”
China ignored the appeals. As a result, the administration has rescinded Hong Kong’s special economic status, Mr. Pompeo said.
On Chinese expansive maritime claims to own most of the South China Sea, Mr. Pompeo said the U.S. conducted a careful legal review before the State Department declared last week that those claims are illegal under international law.
“The Obama-Biden administration turned the other cheek when China violated basic promises” on not building military bases on disputed islands in the sea, he said. Chinese President Xi Jinping told President Obama in 2015 that China had no plans to deploy military forces on disputed islands.
Mr. Xi “then did, and the previous administration did nothing,” Mr. Pompeo said.
Beginning in April 2018, the Pentagon detected the deployment of Chinese anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles on several South China Sea islands. Mr. Pompeo said the U.S. is preparing a series of actions in response to Chinese militarization in the sea.
The Trump administration has begun providing assistance to nations China has challenged in the South China Sea. After last week’s statement from Washington, Mr. Pompeo said, China seems to have backed off the legal claim and is now negotiating agreements with individual states in the region in a bid to “pick them off one by one.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that [the Chinese] are not successful at that,” he said. “We cannot let China claim all of that sea as their maritime empire. This is a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
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