MIKE POMPEO: “PLAY DUMB” & KEEP YOUR JOB

…Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo

The Sec. of State sometimes pretends the president didn’t say things he did say.

Yes, The Post has referred to Mike Pompeo, as the “master of cluelessness”, and they are right.

This is Mike Pompeo’s secret for keeping his job.  As an example: When asked about the situation in Venezuela on Fox News Sunday, Pompeo told host Chris Wallace, “We’ve told the Russians and we’ve told the Cubans that [their interference is] unacceptable.” Wallace then pointed out that the president claimed Friday after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia is looking for “something positive” in Venezuela. Rather than attempt to reconcile Trump’s statement with his own, Pompeo simply pretended the president never said it. “[The] president’s been very clear on this,” he told Wallace, “He said — I think it was in a tweet several weeks back: The Russians have to get out. That remains our view.” Similarly, on ABC’s “This Week,” Pompeo said: “The president has said that the Russians must get out. … I don’t think anything the president said is inconsistent with that.”

Pompeo is a former congressman who became CIA Director and then became the Secretary of State.  He is one of the longest-lasting members of President Trump’s Cabinet, but unlike other Trump appointees, he has avoided both scandals as compared to the Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.  He has also avoided the president’s negative attitude such what hit the former defense secretary, Jim Mattis and the former White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly.

The obvious key to this success has been on display for months in his mastery of his deliberate cluelessness.

The other area of his “playing dumb” is to pretend to not understand a question and to not clash with the interviewer.  In the Fox interview, Wallace asked the secretary of state, “Why doesn’t the president get tough with Putin about what everyone seems to agree is clear, meddling in 2016 and the threat of meddling in 2020?”  Pompeo first insisted, “We continue to work on it,” even though he is well aware that Trump didn’t bring the issue up with Putin in their Friday conversation.  IN addition, the Republicans in the Senate have blocked bills to fund increased election security. (Trump won' admit that he wants the Russians to help like they did in 2016.)  When Wallace pressed, Pompeo sputtered: “Chris, I don’t get your point. ... You continue to be fixated on something that [special counsel] Robert Mueller wrote down,” as if Mueller writing that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election makes that less of a threat.

On another Sunday political show, while discussing China and human rights on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Pompeo referred to “up to a million [Muslims] held in reeducation camps.”   But, when host Margaret Brennan, pointed out that the Pentagon estimated closer to 3 million Muslims and called the camps "concentration camps", not re-education camps, Pompeo did not acknowledge the discrepancy.  He instead, snapped back: “Don’t — don’t play ticky-tack,” whatever that meant….?

But that’s not all that he does. 

When all else fails, Pompeo resorts to his final strategy.  That is to pretend to not know anything at all!  Will there be a Russia-U.S. summit? “I don’t know, we’ll see.” Where would he rank climate change among threats to the United States? “I can’t rank it.” Is he still the lead negotiator with North Korea? “So far as I know….?" Why didn’t Trump ask about election interference? “You’ll have to ask the White House that question.”

In every interview, Pompeo slides easily from pretending not to understand the interviewers’ questions; to pretending not to hear what the president said; to pretending not to know anything at all.

Pompeo’s version of deliberate clueness does not have the degree of pride that defines Trump’s lack of curiosity.  But similar to the Special Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, and press secretary Sarah Sanders, and other White House “survivors”, Pompeo is shamelessness in his need to get ahead in this administration.

That specific quality is Pompeo’s, and the others’ “key to success” in this White House, and it is truly disgusting and disturbing.

Copyright G. Ater 2019