What do we know about 55-year-old Tea Party member and one-time Republican Congressman, CIA Director, and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo?
Well, we know that he loves to brag about having graduated first in his class at West Point.
Okay . . . that’s nice but, if character is so important, is that something Pompeo should brag about?
We know that Mike Pompeo can’t or won’t control his weight, but since it’s his health that could be at risk, we’ll put our concerns aside and let the boy eat as much and as often as taxpayer dollars will allow.
We know that when Pompeo was a Congressman representing Kansas’ 4th congressional district from 2011 to 2017, he joined fellow then-majority GOP members Trey Gowdy, Jim Jordan, and four others on the United States House Select Committee on Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi in gleefully wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and nearly two years they should have devoted to serving their constituents.
After all the money spent and time lost, what did Pompeo and his Republican pals accomplish?
Nothing because Hillary Clinton, their primary target, did nothing wrong.
How about that?
Oh well, that was then and this is now – we can’t judge poor Mike Pompeo simply because he’s a paunchy braggart or because he joined Gowdy, Jordan, and other Republicans in pretending to investigate attacks on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya when Pompeo and his cohorts were actually working their little hearts out, trying to destroy Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming America’s first female president, can we?
Or did Pompeo’s holier-than-thou Benghazi jibber-jabber portend something perhaps a bit more sinister about the former West Pointer’s real character?
Hmmm . . . could be.
After all, it now appears that the man who bragged about West Point character development and its honor code may well have failed its ‘character test.’
You see, it was Mike Pompeo who stood by in abject silence when Donald Trump defended Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud against CIA charges of having ordered the killing and dismemberment of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
It was Mike Pompeo who denied listening in on the Trump extortion call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, it was Mike Pompeo who publicly skewed intelligence to make Trump look good (if that is at all possible; have you noticed how bloated Trump looks these days?), and it is Mike Pompeo who now repudiates the system of check and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to make sure that no president can destroy our democracy.
Why?
It’s simple . . . if Mike Pompeo dared to live up to West Point values of character and honor, Donald Trump, the person who’s given him virtually unlimited power and privilege, would take away that power and privilege, and throw him under the bus in less time than it took you to read this line.
In light of everything we know and, since we pay the bills, it seems to me that we have the right to ask, “Seriously . . . is Mike Pompeo the best we can do?”
Don’t we?