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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Trump’s Enablers, Part 2: How Mike Pompeo’s Loyalty to the President Has Affected Diplomacy in Ukraine
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Trump’s Enablers, Part 2: How Mike Pompeo’s Loyalty to the President Has Affected Diplomacy in Ukraine
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A
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This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about Politics. It's Thursday, October 3rd. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was listening in on President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump urged Zelenskyy to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the supposedly improper political behavior of Joe Biden, one of Trump's foremost Democratic rivals in the 2020 election. Pompeo has been evasive when asked about the call, and this week he accused the House of intimidation when committee members requested five State Department officials involved in U S. Ukraine relations to testify before members of Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry. During a press conference yesterday in Rome, Pompeo confirmed that he had witnessed the call and he had this to say about Trump's conversation with Zelensky.
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C
I know precisely what the American policy is with respect to Ukraine. It's been remarkably consistent, and we will continue to try to drive those set of outcomes. It's what our team, including Ambassador Volker, were focused on was taking down the threat that Russia poses there in Ukraine. It was about helping the Ukraine Ukrainians to get graft out and corruption outside of their government and to help now this new government in the Ukraine build a successful, thriving economy. It's what the State Department officials that I had the privilege to lead have been engaged in, and it's what we will continue to do even while all this noise is going on.
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B
Susan Glaser, a New Yorker staff writer, joins me to discuss what we know so far about Pompeo's role in the Ukraine scandal, his loyalty to Trump and his conduct as secretary of State. Susan, welcome back.
- [03:29]
D
Thanks so much, Dorothy.
- [03:31]
B
So the phone call with Zelenskyy and the whistleblower complaint indicate a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that is peculiarly focused on a debunked theory about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Last week I spoke with Jane Mayer, Jeff Toobin and David Rhode about three of the president's men, Vice President M. Pence, Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr, who are enabling Trump to bypass the normal channels of diplomacy. I want to talk to you about Pompeo, who has been, I think it's fair to say, obsequiously loyal to Trump, first as CIA director and now as secretary of state. Not so long ago, though, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Pompeo said that Trump would be an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution. So why did he go to work for this president?
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D
The eternal why? That is the question for a lot of these Republicans. And of course, it's important to remember that Mike Pompeo was a member of Congress during 2016. And almost all of the Republican members of Congress were opposed to Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries, many of them like Pompeo, vehemently so. And interestingly, it was particularly people who were focused on national security and foreign policy who were the most opposed to Donald Trump. And Pompeo counted himself as one of those. Trump basically seemed to know nothing really about Pompeo when he appointed him to be CIA director and actually found out from someone calling into the White House the day the appointment was announced that Pompeo had been the congressman who had been denouncing him a few months earlier, and Trump was reportedly furious. And so to then see him emerge as the most slavishly loyal Trump soldier has been one of the more remarkable and in some ways undercovered stories of this administration. But also Watching over the last few days, it's been fascinating, the extent to which people were surprised, where perhaps they shouldn't be, that Pompeo would be carrying out Trump orders. That would seem to go right against the interests of the State Department, that it's his job to lead.
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B
Someyou spoke to some insiders who expressed a kind of admiration for Pompeo's agility in handling the president. How has he gone about that aspect of the job, which, as we all know, is crucial.
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D
Well, so this, of course, is crucial. And now in the middle of this impeachment inquiry, I think it's going to become really a subject of scrutiny. Pompeo, I was told in White House meetings, was particularly adept at, at trying to stay on the right side of Trump and wanting to do so no matter what the situation, so that he would hang back in meetings, trying not to express a viewpoint until he was clear what the president was gonna come down saying, that even where he had a difference of opinion, he would gloss over it. Whereas others, especially early in Trump's tenure, such as Rex Tillerson or Jim Mattis, would more explicitly disagree with Trump. And, of course, John Bo, his most recent national security adviser, Pompeo was both a bureaucratic rival of many of those folks, but mostly he was just understanding who was really the boss there and that he wasn't going to ever get crosswise with Trump.
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B
So, according to the Washington Post, Attorney General Barr has been asking foreign intelligence officials for help in the justice department's inquiry into CIA and FBI activities in 2016. And it's also clear from the whistleblower's complaint that Giuliani, who we must emphasize has no official role in the government, has been actively involved in the administration's policy toward Ukraine. I've read that Pompeo's unhappy with Giuliani's freelance diplomacy, but apparently not enough to stop it. And I wonder if you could tell us what his relationship is with Barr.
- [07:39]
D
Well, that's a very good question. You know, I do know from my reporting that he does have a connection with Barr. He set up an advisory group that didn't become public at the CIA that included sort of luminaries from in and out of government. And Barr, before he became Attorney General, was placed on that board, which is an interesting kind of group of advisors, like his kitchen cabinet. But you're right that, you know, Pompeo is a turfy guy by all accounts, and you can only imagine that he was not very happy at the notion that Rudy Giuliani was running essentially a Second, shadow foreign policy at the personal behest of the president. And remember, this unfolding impeachment inquiry also involves the question of the firing and the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, one of Pompeo's, in effect, employees. And that again, seems to have been ordered directly by the President himself and at the behest of Rudy Giuliani, his own Son, Don Jr. Tweeting about the U.S. ambassador and demanding her removal, which then came just a few weeks later. So what role did Pompeo play in this? Did he protect her or not? Obviously, he didn't publicly speak up. And he was on the phone call with the President of Ukraine in which Trump threatens the ousted ambassador.
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B
Once again, what does he think? What does Pompeo think specifically about Trump's and Barr's deep state theories about the 2016 election? And maybe first, tell us a little bit more clearly what those are. I think a lot of listeners are just confused by all of this.
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D
Well, I mean, look, there are many remarkable aspects of this. One particularly notable thing is that you have the President in the Oval Office appearing not only to believe in, but to promote conspiracy theories about his own election in 2016. And he seemed to repeat that in the transcript of the phone call that his own White House released with the Ukrainian president in which he said, saying, essentially, does Ukraine have a server that is from this American firm called CrowdStrike that was making the allegation that Russia was involved in hacking the 2016 election? It's very contorted, but essentially he's promoting the idea that Ukraine somehow was setting up Russia, which was setting up Trump's election and calling that into question.
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B
Do we know the origins, by the way, of that theory?
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D
You know, it seems to be in the murky world of far right conspiracy theories, it has gained currency in various right wing media over the last couple years. And Giuliani seems to be taking that pipeline directly into the Oval Office. And so that's one thing that's interesting, is that people might not realize how much this is actually about 2016 for Trump as well as 2020.
- [10:35]
B
That's a great point.
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D
I think that's an important. I think that Pompeo, this is not his agenda. But like all of those who serve Trump, they are forced to carry out the agenda, whether they agree with it or not. And Trump is not just a kind of angry 70 year old shouting at the TV by himself. He's not alone in this. Although sometimes his extensive public theatrics can make us forget that he's had a lot of enablers and executors. And it's hard to imagine, frankly, that Trump's first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, would have got along with some of these things. It's hard to imagine that Jim Mattis would have gone along with some of these things. So I think all these staff changes that we've seen do matter in some important way. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
Getting back to the conspiracy theories, Pompeo first came to national attention as one of the most partisan promoters of conspiracy theories about the killing of the US ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. He argued at the time that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, but covered it up. He then remained obsessed with the matter even after Clinton was cleared by this bipartisan select committee that was created to investigate it. And he described her involvement as worse in some ways than Watergate. So his allegations were discredited. But still, it was the Benghazi investigation that revealed that Clinton had deleted those 30,000 emails from her private server.
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D
Right. It's one of those incredible ironies. You know, one former intelligence official I spoke with said, you know, it's so kind of nutty. But in a way, Pompeo succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings, in the sense that Benghazi did beget the email crisis, which did beget Comey's, in effect, intervention in the 2016 election. The flip side is a lot of people are calling this Ukraine scandal Mike Pompeo's own version of Benghazi. Remember that throughout the Benghazi controversy, he was constantly on Fox News, constantly on the radio saying that the State Department and the Obama White House were obstructing, stonewalling a legitimate congressional investigation. There was a cover up. They weren't producing documents. They needed to have testimony from the secretary of State. And now the fact set is very different. But essentially, in the last few days, you've had this sort of weird echo of Benghazi, except with Mike Pompeo on the other side.
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B
What do we know so far about How Pompeo has used the State Department to help Trump in his lingering fixation on the 2016 election.
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D
That's where we still have a lot of questions about not what did Pompeo know? Because now he's very belatedly admitted that, in fact, he did know very much about this phone call because he was actually listening in to the phone call. The question is, how much was he facilitating or ordering his staff to facilitate Giuliani's adventures in Ukraine and in other countries? To what extent was he, in effect, turning the official apparatus of American diplomacy over to Trump? We don't really have a clear understanding yet of his actions. In regards to the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was there a legitimate basis for the way that she was treated? All of that seems to me to be an important subject of investigation.
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B
And as of now, she will testify on October 11th. And the other, one of the other key figures in all of this is Kurt Volker, the special envoy to Ukraine who resigned last week. And I wanted to ask you about him, too. He is testifying today.
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D
That's correct. He is testifying right now. He's someone I've known for many years. I've spoken with him throughout the administration as it's unfolded. And, you know, it's an example of how no matter what your perspective about Trump, so many people get caught up in the web surrounding him. You know, I did the first interview with Kurt in November of 2017, was the first interview he gave a US publication after he took on this job as special envoy. I asked him about Trump and of course, many Republicans very suspicious of the president and his foreign policy toward Russia in particular. And Kurt said, I don't really get too worked up about the politics around it, whether it's a Democratic administration or Republican. Let's just focus on what it is we're trying to accomplish. I do think there's a lot of consensus around that. In reality, if you don't get sucked into the domestic debates that we have in this country and focus on the foreign policy substance, there's actually a lot of consensus. You know, you get sucked in.
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B
Yeah, you do. And so why did he resign?
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D
Basically, he became part of a public debate with Rudy Giuliani over who did what when.
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B
So he actually had raised questions and objections.
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D
Well, it's not clear. Giuliani's defense right now is public defense. And as you and I are talking, Giuliani is literally tweeting screenshots of text message exchanges with Kurt Volker. And essentially he's claiming Kurt Volker is an emissary of the State Department. And he told me to meet with these Ukrainians, which is a fairly implausible defense on its face. And one imagines that at this still secret testimony, this deposition that Volcker is giving on Capitol Hill right now, he's come prepared with his own text messages and emails and documents, I believe, and I've spoken with Ukraine experts who are very familiar with Volgar's views, that his belief is that he was trying to help the Ukrainians deal with the pressure from Giuliani and Trump rather than being an agent of it.
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B
In a recent speech, Pompeo said that Trump's approach to the world, this was before all of the Ukrainian crisis emerged. He said that Trump's approach to the world, marked by realism, restraint, and respect. Talk a little bit about that and how Pompeo can continue to try and make that claim.
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D
Well, as we've seen recently, anybody can make any kind of claims from a foreign policy standpoint. And I think Russia and Ukraine are excellent examples of this. There are two different foreign policies. There's the foreign policy of the US Government and perhaps of Mike Pompeo, and then there's the foreign policy of Donald Trump, and they often don't match up. And that's been true from the beginning on Russia and Ukraine, where, for example, Trump continues to publicly speak about his desire for a reset and a rapprochement with Vladimir Putin. At the same time, his administration has pursued tough measures, such as increasing U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe, sending this military aid to Ukraine, and pressuring Russia by keeping the sanctions on the country. And yet you have Trump, who's holding up the military aid, publicly questioning the basis of that policy. Trump is just simply not on the same page with the official policies of his administration.
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B
And then you saw just this week, that bizarre appearance with the president of Finland. Talk to us a little bit about that. It's just becoming. He's becoming more and more untethered.
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D
Well, two observations there. I think one of the challenges as he responds to this very real threat of impeachment is that his behavior had already been escalating. He'd already dialed it up to an 11, a permanent 11. He was confronted almost out of nowhere with this new, very serious political crisis. And so how much more can Trump dial it up? He's already constantly barraging us with. Every news article about him is false. Every claim is untrue. Conspiracies are everywhere. And so he has fewer and fewer new rhetorical weapons to deploy. So I think that's one issue. And then the other issue is this emerging spectacle of the world's leaders being sucked into our own dysfunctional political circus. And, you know, it was a very awkward moment, clearly, for the Finnish president. He just visibly radiated a kind of discomfort with this. At one point, he was actually lecturing the President of the United States that, you know, essentially, please get your act together. The rest of the world needs you. American democracy is too important to fail. And, you know, so I think there's the question of if you're another world leader, you used to really want an Oval Office meeting and a photo op. I can't imagine that there are a lot of world leaders at the moment who are eager to come and visit Trump. Except for the kind of authoritarians and dictators who normally wouldn't be accorded such reception. They, I imagine, will be increasingly the kind of figures who are willing to come and shake Donald Trump's hand in the Oval Office. You know, the debasement also that's required if the leaders of other countries are required to abase themselves, as that transcript showed. President Zelensky of Ukraine, you know, having to basically suck up to Trump, follow his lead in bashing the Chancellor of Germany, because he knows that Trump doesn't like Angela Merkel. It was really a cringy moment.
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B
So you've covered diplomacy and foreign affairs under four presidents, and you've written extensively about Watergate. Nixon's Attorney General and close friend John Mitchell went to prison for his willingness to do his president's illegal bidding. And Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, wasn't subject to any serious investigation, although he was heavily criticized for what were described as his half truths and apparent lies about Watergate and about his disregard for normal governing procedures. How would you describe what we're witnessing so far in the Ukrainian scandal and the potential legal consequences for Pompeo?
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D
People are still struggling to formulate exactly the nature of the offenses here. And I think a lot of people, you know, have come around to the idea that it's, in effect, an abuse of power scandal, that Trump is, in a variety of different ways, seen to be abusing the power of his office for fundamentally personal political ends. And, you know, the question of his facilitators and their legal jeopardy, I think, is one that we haven't fully reckoned with, since we don't have the full fact set, particularly on Mike Pompeo. Many advisers in Watergate and other scandals have been forced to resign in order to protect the president, or at least delay the consequences of the president. But this scandal is unfolding in such real time, you know, it's not clear to me that we'll come to that.
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B
Thanks so much, Susan.
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D
Thank you, Dorothy.
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B
Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on Trump's Washington, and she is the co author of Kremlin, Vladimir Putin's Russia, and the End of Revolution. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Our theme music is by Russell Gillespie. This program was produced by Alex Barron and Kylie Warner. For newyorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
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