Mike Pompeo Weighs in on the Bourbon Street Terrorist Attack: “Strategic Failures” of the Biden Admin Has Led to Spike in Radical Islamic Terrorism
Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State and CIA Director, Fox News contributor, and author of NEVER GIVE AN INCH: Fighting for the America I Love, joined The Guy Benson Show today to discuss the fallout from yesterday’s devastating terrorist attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Pompeo weighed in on the respective motivations for the attacks, which claimed at least 16 lives combined. Pompeo also outlined what the US can do to continue to secure it’s borders and prevent devastating attacks like this from occurring.
Pompeo and Benson also criticized the Biden DOJ’s plea deal for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, calling it a disservice to justice amid fresh violence on U.S. soil. Benson also asked Pompeo about his views on the national security threat posed by TikTok and if the platform should be banned. Finally, Pompeo discussed whether he had given Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio any advice before accepting the role and emphasized the importance of expanding the Abraham Accords for greater stability in the Middle East. Listen to the full interview below!
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Guy Benson: Secretary Pompeo, thanks so much for being here.
Mike Pompeo: You bet.
Guy Benson: I want to start with just your reaction to the horrible events of New Year’s Eve. Then early in the morning, New Year’s Day in New Orleans, and then this separate incident in Vegas as well. There have been ongoing concerns about the possibility of lone wolf attacks, small cell attacks within the United States. Here we have now Americans dead. Were there failures here in your mind? What does the government need to do and the new Trump administration need to do to protect Americans?
Mike Pompeo: It’s great to be with you. Clearly, anytime there is an attack like this there, it’s a failure. While we can never expect perfection, what we can expect is a set of policies and a set of actions that deliver decreased risk. Director Ray talked a few months ago about there being flashing lights and nothing was done about it. Indeed. Guy Just to converse, I think back to now, gosh, almost eight years ago in January 17th when President Trump first took office, I was the CIA director and ISIS was cutting heads off on the beaches. And now we find ourselves in January of 2025 and we’ve got ice active again. And, you know, people can talk about lone wolves. You know, we may not have had accomplices per se, but the radicalization, the threat from radical Islamic terrorism, when you have increases, when you have failures like you had in Afghanistan, when you when you don’t punish those who have engaged in the very set of behaviors that lead someone to think that they can drive their car into a crowded Bourbon Street activity and conduct the mayhem that they did, those are policy failures. Strategic failures did not understand that evil roamed the earth and that radical Islamic terrorism exists. And it has to be countered at every turn. That’s the central failure of the last four years. Guy.
Guy Benson: You know, it seems like the suspect here whose dad was radicalized in the United States and he was a member of the armed services, the reports are that the individual responsible in Las Vegas for that explosion, also a member of the armed forces. We’ve seen some other attacks from service members on bases in the last decade. Really? Is there a radicalization problem within the ranks of the U.S. military? Is that overblown? Because you just look at enough of the examples and at least questions are going to be asked.
Mike Pompeo: I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a radical radicalization problem inside. Sounds like this fellow was radicalized after he left the service. But the facts of any particular case we can all question. My sense is that what’s really taking place is that this radicalization we’re seeing it in the streets. Right. Even yesterday we saw in New York City protesters talking about intifada revolution. Right. A radicalizing all across the world. And we have on our campuses radical Islamic extremism. We can see it right. We can see the political politicized Islam in these places and an administration that has just refused to confront it because it was afraid of being accused of somehow being racist or insensitive. This isn’t about religious tolerance. This is this is about a radicalization and violence. And whether it’s in London or what happened in Neath or the attacks that we saw yesterday, we can see that it is very much here in the United States. And that will be the challenge that confronts the Trump administration. How do you deliver an FBI with the intelligence capabilities necessary to identify the problem set and a seriousness of purpose to push back against this threat?
Guy Benson: And what does that look like? Because obviously this is festered for a while. Threats have existed for forever. Right. But you are correct undoubtedly, that we have a problem. It seems like the problem has grown when you have big rallies in support of terrorist groups, including within hours of an attack that killed 15 Americans. That’s a manifestation of a problem. Some of it goes to intelligence and law enforcement. Some of it goes to our culture and maybe indoctrination in schools. It just feels like a big enough problem or crisis that it’s hard to get your arms around. What do the American people, what does the U.S. government have to do to at least start to fix it?
Mike Pompeo: And I think in that view, that’s precisely the correct question and the aftermath. There are tactical questions about this incident, and we grieve for the families. But the bigger strategic one longitudinal question is this is how do you how do you respond to this? And I think the answer is threefold. One is, is the tactical you’re right, intelligence collection and good, solid law enforcement work. Second, you got to get control of the folks who are coming in and out of your country and the materials that are coming out of your country. So while it sounds like this fellow wasn’t someone who crossed the border, we know that there are a couple of million people, some of whom are on the terror watch list that are permitted to come into our country. We will wake up guy for one one day. And we all have had a bad day because of that central failure. So there is a operational element to this and then there is the cultural piece of this, there is the ideological piece of this and that. That really comes down to every American business leaders, PTA chairmen, presidents of the United States, all acknowledging that the foundational ideas of our country are important. They matter. They are proper, they are right, and we should fear to speak about them. And whether it’s in academia or in politics, when we see people speaking about Islam, radical political Islam in the way that they are doing on our streets, we should make sure that we counter it in every space, whether that’s on social media or in our churches or in our political life, on city council meetings and the like. This is a broad challenge that we all must confront. And it starts with good leadership, recognizing that it is not indecent to defend American values everywhere and always.
Guy Benson: Secretary Pompeo, you juxtapose the scenes in New Orleans and in Las Vegas in just the last number of hours with a development days ago in which a Pentagon appeals panel upheld a military judge’s conclusion that plea deals forged by the Biden administration with some of these 911 suspects are, in fact, valid and binding, meaning that the guilty pleas and the deals that were put into place have to stick. This includes with the mastermind of the 911 terror attack that killed nearly 3000 innocent Americans, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I know there was a lot of criticism of the Biden administration for making this deal at the time. There was an appeals process, and it looks like, at least for now, the deal that was handed to these terrorists is being upheld. I just wonder what you make of that, especially given the timing here, where there’s been another attack that’s killed Americans.
Mike Pompeo: At some level. These are all connected, this idea. Right. So you have I guess I’m Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 911 mastermind, young folks that were born in the 90s. I barely remember 911. And I think yesterday what happened in New Orleans and in Las Vegas reminds us all that this work is not finished and we have to stay at it. The Biden administration fundamentally botched the search for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed case. He should have been prosecuted, tried, convicted, and probably executed for what he did years and years ago. But the Biden administration decided to cut a deal with him. And the victims of 911 deserve better than that. And America deserves better because when you cut a deal with a terrorist of that magnitude, who was the exemplar for radical Islamic terrorism violence inside of our country, you only encourage those who are thinking about this, contemplating it may want to even travel here to conduct terror because they think the United States has lost its will and its capacity to prosecute this evil.
Guy Benson: On another front and another threat, certainly a challenge, but I think it’s a threat. We’ve seen a number of reports in the last week or so about just seemingly endless Chinese espionage against the United States, and they’re doing it against other countries as well, but specifically against the U.S. There have been Chinese, quote unquote, students caught with drones over sensitive areas. There have been hacks, including apparently CCP, Chinese Communist Party hackers were able to access the workstations of government employees in the United States. There is a story that we highlighted a few days ago about nine telecoms communications companies that have been hacked with specific targeted individuals who work in the government space there, their phones being accessed, or at least that was the goal here, it seems. Nine different companies experiencing this threat from a Chinese based hackers. When you look at the CCP and you look at what they do, I mean across the board with their military aggression in various parts of the world, with the way that they try to coerce various governments or bribe governments around the world to do their bidding or to be beholden to them in the future. When you look at the IP theft, I mean, it’s just sort of a bill of indictment that goes on and on and on. Is this just par for the course with them? Are they accelerating? Because it just it feels like the headlines are fast and furious these days.
Mike Pompeo: It can’t be permitted to be par for the course. The Chinese Communist Party has the singular intention of global hegemony. They want to they want us to live like them. Guy. And I’ll be damned if we can let that happen. We know how to prevent it. Chinese espionage is on the increase. There’s no there’s no doubt about that. It is more dangerous today that, as you talked about, whether it’s just a risk or if it’s a real threat, it is more of a threat today than it has ever been. They’ve hacked into government entities, including to the United States Department of Treasury. They got into our banking and financial system, it appears. Who knows where else they may have latent activity. This is something the Trump administration is going to have to take on. And you have we have all the tools to do it. We have counter cyber capabilities. We have lots of tools that I can’t speak to directly, but we have the capacity to convince the Chinese Communist Party not to continue this threatening behavior. And we just have to demonstrate that will. And when we do, I’m convinced we can push back and challenge the Chinese Communist Party on every one of these fronts.
Guy Benson: It feels like there is a test on this front coming up very soon. The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing this tick tock case on First Amendment grounds. Congress passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis, effectively a ban on tick tock. The Chinese Communist Party won’t allow the severing of ties for a U.S. based separate tick tock company, which is why this this ban is moving forward. It would take effect January 20th. So just days from now or the 19th, technically the day right before the inauguration. Donald Trump was very good, in my view, on the issue of Tick Tock and Huawei and some of these other Chinese companies when he was president, he also spoke out on Tick Tock. The administration was strong. But we’ve seen recently Trump maybe wavering a little bit, saying maybe we can cut a deal on tick tock. Maybe we shouldn’t have this ban go into effect the day before I take office. I wonder what you make of that law that is scheduled to be enacted in a matter of days. Do you think it should remain in place? What sort of threat does tick tock pose in your view?
Mike Pompeo: Guy I’ve been pretty clear since I was the Secretary of State and we were working to get the Chinese Communist Party out of our kids lives. And Tick Tock is simply an exemplar of that. It’s not it’s not about the algorithm. It’s not about the about about social media. It’s about the fact that we have a adversary, an enemy of the United States, speaking directly to our children through these devices. We call them cell phone and tick tock as a example of that. And so I, I want to make sure that we don’t have foreign adversarial ownership of any of our media outlets that can reach children. That’s really the mission side. And so the statute that was put in place accomplishes that. There is another way to achieve that and allow tick tock itself, the algorithm to continue to operate. But with U.S. control, it would be no different than a an American social media company and they’d be just fine by me. But we cannot permit we wouldn’t let the Chinese Communist Party buy a local television station. We certainly wouldn’t let them own a network inside the United States. We ought not just because it’s come in through our phone, create an exemption where an adversarial government can control American media outlets. That’s that’s never been something we’ve tolerated United States. And it is very dangerous, especially when it comes. The Chinese Communist Party.
Guy Benson: Secretary Pompeo, Tomorrow the new Congress convenes and it’s going to be a new look. In some ways, Republicans have won control of the U.S. Senate. I know you’re active in some of those races. 5347 majority for Republicans in the upper chamber, very, very tight in the lower chamber, especially with some of these vacancies. And therefore, we have this drama and question mark around Speaker Johnson and the leadership question as we head into tomorrow afternoon. What is your view on House Republicans, their leadership? What ought to happen? What makes sense?
Mike Pompeo: Go. I served in the House for six years. The most powerful moments that we had were when all Republicans were together. We were united. It didn’t mean that Mike Pompeo and the fourth District, Kansas, was going to get everything that it dreamed of or wanted. But we watched the Democrats do this. They’ve had thin margins, Guy, and they’ve been able to deliver really good outcomes. I hope tomorrow we will do that. We will deliver a really good outcome in picking a speaker tomorrow. That’ll be Mike Johnson. He everyone ought to vote for him. And then, Mike, how to go about enacting the very conservative Trump agenda, getting vice president certified next week and president certified next week. Doing all the things, the blocking and tackling to actually deliver against the mandate that the American people gave to both the House, the Senate and to the president. We’re not looking for good tweets. They are looking for actual policy that can make the lives of ordinary families better. And they should start tomorrow. I hope that it will. And I hope we’ll have a speaker identified. He’ll be firmly in control and the House can begin to enact its conservative agenda beginning just after noon tomorrow.
Guy Benson: What is your assessment of Senator Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, designate by President Trump? Do you think he’s a good pick and not betraying any sort of private conversation you guys may have had? Do you have any advice, best practices, having been in the gig for someone like Rubio or any secretary of state?
Mike Pompeo: Goodness. Look, Marco doesn’t need my wisdom, but I have shared some of it with him. I’ll continue to help any place I can. And if he needs my help. I’ve known Marco a long time. I think I was the first federal official to campaign and endorse Marco in the campaign and his presidential effort. 2016. So a while back now, Marco will do a fantastic job. I hope they confirm him on the 20th of January. We need a secretary of state in place quickly, as you can see from what’s happening all around the world, whether it be in Europe, in Ukraine or in the Middle East, in Gaza or on the streets of the United States. We need a senior American diplomat confirmed. I think he’ll do fantastic. He’s he’s got the right worldview. He shares my notion that America as a leader in the world is important to the American people. And I’ll continue to help him and anyone else in the Trump administration as best I can from my small perch.
Guy Benson: Finally and quickly, do you think it is realistic over these next four years to see perhaps an expansion of the historic Abraham Accords between Israel and some of the Arab countries in the Middle East? Do you think more nations might join that peace accord?
Mike Pompeo: Guy I do. It is both, both possible and necessary. We need to invite every nation to recognize Israel’s fundamental right, right the fundamental right to exist as a nation. And we often think about that as Middle Eastern countries, Those of us who joined in the kingdom, who I hope will find its way towards joining something like the Abraham Accords soon. But think of Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, these large Muslim countries, they too ought to recognize Israel’s fundamental right. This this kind of circles back to the radical Islamic terrorism. We were speaking about it before. If we get this right, if we create space for nations to recognize the right of Israel to exist, then the defense and security cooperation in the Middle East will increase. The capacity to take down terror around the world will increase, and the world will be a much safer place. And most importantly for us who put America first. America will be a much more prosperous and safer nation as well.
Guy Benson: Mr. Secretary, happy New Year. Thank you so much for your time.
Mike Pompeo: God bless you. Take care.
