It's now a given that the U.S. secretary of state is a living, breathing joke. The nation's supposed top diplomat has no credibility outside the United States, and no credibility inside the country. He's a laughingstock, at best. And yet: "The United States condemns the move by China to expel three @WSJ journalists. Mature, responsible countries understand that a free press reports facts and expresses opinions. China should not restrict #freespeech," tweeted Secretary Mike Pompeo this morning.
You know what's coming next, right? Of course you do. Mike Pompeo, who AS WE ALL REMEMBER recently expelled a National Public Radio reporter from his government plane because he didn't like a different NPR reporter asking him a question he didn't want to answer, was immediately mocked by responders as the worst possible person to be piping up on this one.
Mike Pompeo has continued to respond to his own reported involvement with the Ukraine scandal by dodging questions, lying to the public, and demanding interviewers not ask him about any of it as a condition for their interviews. He's a pathetic, cowardly man whose plight would almost be sympathy-inducing, given how utterly irrelevant he and his entire government agency have become in an administration in which foreign policy is dictated by a delusional manchild's tweeted fiats, until you remember that no, the ex-House Republican has always been a terrible person, continues to be a terrible person, may or may not have done something criminal in the ouster of a U.S. ambassador whose anti-corruption efforts were thwarting a president's lawyer's very important efforts to be corrupt, and continues to cling to political power by mirroring his crackpot boss' every anti-democratic, anti-press move.
So verily, sod off with that.
That the United States has lost all credibility on the world stage, on issues from press freedoms to election integrity to the simple question of whether we will sell out our allies for the sake of small, petty corruption, is a very real problem. Mike Pompeo being a damn laughingstock, in the eyes of the entire world, is a very real problem.
Having Pompeo and other top United States officials burping out statements about "fake news" by media outlets that the United States’ Dear Leader has declared "enemies of the people" means, among other things, that the United States now has far, far lower credibility in condemning genuine attacks on press freedom by other nations. How is China retaliating against the Wall Street Journal for its reporting substantively different from Mike Pompeo retaliating against National Public Radio for the same? Is it that one is owned by the kingmaker of Fox News, and the other is not?
Why do some countries get to carve up Washington Post reporters with bone saws and still get deferential, positively royal treatment from the United States administration—including, for example, this very week—and others do not? Is it the military contracts?
The State Department is now an empty shell. It serves, for the moment, no purpose that cannot be undone by Dear Leader for Dear Leader's own gain. It is led by a man considered either self-servingly malevolent, a pudding-head, or both. And the United States regains its credibility, presuming it ever does ... how?