DM Monitoring
BEIJING: New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman once commented that “Mike Pompeo is the worst secretary of state ever.” He is surely right about that. Moreover, Pompeo is likely the most dangerous individual to hold the post. In his recent speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Pompeo launched a fusillade of ill-founded attacks, inciting an ideological hatred against China and the Communist Party of China, and tried to coax others into forming an alliance against Beijing.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, criticized Pompeo’s speech as undiplomatic. He wrote in an opinion published by The Washington Post: “Worse was his misrepresentation of history and his failure to suggest a coherent or viable path forward for managing a relationship that more than any other will define this era.”
A secretary of state is the most senior diplomatic face of a U.S. administration, representing the United States in the world community.
A competent top U.S. diplomat should be credible and trustworthy. Pompeo is neither. He seems to be a loyal practitioner of what Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said “A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth.” Pompeo lies on almost everything, and China is one of his most frequent targets. Logic and common sense evade him at every turn.
When he was interviewed by ABC news in May, he said there is a significant amount of evidence to prove that the novel coronavirus was man-made and came from a lab in Wuhan. Yet when the interviewer pressed him with counterproof compiled by Washington’s own intelligence community, he responded by saying “That’s right. I agree with that.” Alas, it seems that Pompeo can change his mind much faster than a chameleon changes its color.
