...In the 2016 primaries, Pompeo was one of the loudest critics of Donald Trump’s candidacy, until the exact moment it became clear that Trump wasn’t being stopped, at which point Pompeo flipped, Lindsey Graham-like, to becoming one of Trump’s loudest supporters. Pompeo parlayed that swerve into a stint as Trump’s CIA Director, and then as his Secretary of State...Pompeo was a central culprit in Trump’s failure to pardon Julian Assange in the last days of his presidency. Not only that, but Pompeo diverted the Trump Administration into literally plotting Assange’s murder. <click link for details>...
The article you’re about to read is probably unnecessary. Nothing is ever certain in American politics, but some things are nearly certain, and there is nothing we are more nearly certain of than this: Mike Pompeo is not going to be America’s next president.
We can assert, with almost 100% confidence, that Mike Pompeo will never win a single Republican primary, let alone win the nomination, let alone win the presidency.
But you know what, why take the chance?
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For as long as he’s been a major player on the political scene, Pompeo remains surprisingly anonymous, perhaps because he is a shape-shifter.
It is not inconceivable that, somehow, a friendly media and more nimble frame will allow Pompeo to bafflingly and inexplicably squeeze into the brains of GOP voters as an acceptable choice. Or hey, maybe a meteorite will slam into a GOP primary debate stage and leave Pompeo as the only survivor. We’re just spitballing here.
The point is, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Pretty much every politician dreams of reaching the top, but even knowing that, Mike Pompeo’s naked ambition for the office is well-known, and drives almost everything he does.
That’s why, out of the blue, Pompeo is taking calculated swipes at the president who plucked him from the House to serve as his CIA director.
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” Pompeo was asked whether he would do a better job than Trump managing national debt, prompting him to say, “I think a President Pompeo or any conservative president will do better than not only [what] we did in the four years of the Trump administration, but Barack Obama, George Bush.
…
Anchor Shannon Bream followed up to ask whether he was suggesting that Trump wasn’t a true conservative leader.
“$6 trillion more in debt. That’s never the right direction for the country, Shannon,” Pompeo said. [Fox News]
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Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
In the 2016 primaries, Pompeo was one of the loudest critics of Donald Trump’s candidacy, until the exact moment it became clear that Trump wasn’t being stopped, at which point Pompeo flipped, Lindsey Graham-like, to becoming one of Trump’s loudest supporters. Pompeo parlayed that swerve into a stint as Trump’s CIA Director, and then as his Secretary of State.
But now, having deduced he has sucked every drop of gain to be had from Trump, Pompeo is discarding him like a used-up husk.
“Don’t hand that government more power under the guise of conservatism,” the likely GOP presidential contender and former secretary of state said [at CPAC]. “We shouldn’t look for larger-than-life personalities, but rather we should fight power in the rooms like this one.”
Pompeo continued: “We can’t become the left, following celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics — those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality. … We can’t shift blame to others, but must accept the responsibility that comes to those of us who step forward and lead.”
In case it isn’t obvious, Pompeo is talking about his former boss, Donald Trump. [WaPo]
That Pompeo would turn on Trump is the most obvious development in the universe, and not just because of Pompeo’s grandiose ambitions. It was inevitable because Pompeo totally rejects every positive development of the Trump realignment. The man who was the top Congressional recipient of Koch-linked money in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 did not suddenly pivot to populism; what he pivoted to was keeping his own career alive.
His years of vocal Trump support didn’t involve any kind of ideological evolution or growth on his part. Instead, it meant dragging down the Administration with the same brand of hawkishness and Deep State worship that derailed the Bush Administration before it.
Before his presidency even began, Donald Trump learned that the American intelligence apparatus was out to sabotage him with bogus allegations of “Russian collusion” and the like. These nakedly political investigations should have made Trump predisposed to rejecting the intel world’s priorities and airing its dirty laundry. Yet quite disappointingly, that rarely happened. Why? Thanks to Mike Pompeo, of course.
Initially, President Trump planned to declassify all remaining documents pertaining to the JFK assassination. This ought to be a pretty easy lift: JFK was murdered closer to World War I than today, and everyone plausibly linked to Kennedy’s death is dead or a nonagenarian.
But it didn’t happen, all courtesy of Pompeo. “Six months” of review quickly became an indefinite delay. In 2021 Trump left office, and now once again Americans are stuck wondering if they will ever be told the full extent of the government’s knowledge concerning Kennedy’s murder.
After a quiet pause, Trump even acknowledged Pomeo’s role in blocking the release of JFK files in his bombshell interview (now with over 7 million views) with Revolver’s Darren Beattie
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Similarly, Pompeo was a central culprit in Trump’s failure to pardon Julian Assange in the last days of his presidency. Not only that, but Pompeo diverted the Trump Administration into literally plotting Assange’s murder.
The then CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and his top officials were furious about WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7”, a set of CIA hacking tools, a breach which the agency deemed to be the biggest data loss in its history.
Pompeo and the CIA leadership “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7”, Yahoo cites a former Trump national security official as saying. “They were seeing blood.”
Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration went as far as to request “sketches” or “options” for killing Assange. “There seemed to be no boundaries,” a former senior counterterrorist official was quoted as saying. … Pompeo raised eyebrows in 2017 by referring to WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”. The Yahoo report said that it was a significant designation, as it implied a green light for a more aggressive approach to the pro-transparency group by CIA operatives, who could treat it as an enemy espionage organization. [The Guardian]
In an America inhabited by people like Michael McFaul and Lindsey Graham, Pompeo manages to stand out as perhaps the single most fanatical and ridiculous warmonger in the public square. Pompeo is such an anti-Iran hawk, both under Trump and in the years since, that U.S. taxpayers are spending more than $2 million a month providing him 24/7 security to protect him from being assassinated by Tehran.
When President Trump sought to get U.S. troops out of Syria for good after the defeat of ISIS, he found himself aggressively opposed by…yep, Mike Pompeo!...Yet despite flopping about and undermining Trump’s agenda repeatedly, Pompeo stuck around. Why was that? In a single sentence, by being a colossal suck-up.
“He’s a craven toady,” a person familiar with the Trump/Pompeo relationship told Revolver. “No one kissed Trump’s ass more assiduously. ..On the Russia-Ukraine war, Pompeo has taken the position of attacking Biden for not funneling enough money and weapons into the war...Why is it important that America go all-out helping Ukraine? Why, to protect Taiwan, of course!...<HOLY FUCK - details at article>...
