“I THINK THE ADMINISTRATION MADE A MISTAKE”: Fmr. Sec of State Mike Pompeo Critiques Trump Admin on UN Russia Vote
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 his new role as a fellow at Columbia and the controversy surrounding President Trump’s decision to remove his security detail. They also covered the ongoing Ukraine-Russia negotiations, with Pompeo arguing he would have taken a firmer stance in labeling Russia the aggressor than the current Trump administration. Plus, he explained why the U.S. must remain steadfast in supporting Israel and countering Iran. Listen to the full interview below!
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GUY BENSON: Joining us now once again is Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state, former CIA director for congressman from Kansas. He’s a Fox News contributor, author of the book Never Give an Inch. Mr. Secretary, welcome back.
MIKE POMPEO: Great to be with you, Guy.
GUY BENSON: So I just saw that you have been brought on at Columbia, which kind of raised my eyebrows, given what’s been going on at that institution for the last year plus. Tell us about this role.
MIKE POMPEO: Well, I’m looking forward to it. I’m going to be at the Institute of Global Politics. Most of the graduate students at Columbia. Sharing my views, both my my policy views, the way I think about the world. And then from a practitioner’s perspective, the things one actually does and and how one actually implements the the directives from presidents of the United States. It’s it’s a campus that’s been through an awful lot. Campus it hasn’t always had it’s brought a set of perspectives amongst its professors and faculty, as I wish it had. And now I’m going to go try and and be a voice that shares a vision for America that’s different than a lot of the others on campus. I looked at Gage with students in ways that are interesting, I hope and fun and always about being candid and factual. Not not emotional.
GUY BENSON: Or the way that you describe the range of ideas at Columbia was very diplomatic, I have to say. So if you’re teaching diplomacy, that’s good. I do want to ask, but like, seriously though, when you were having conversations with the people at Columbia University in light of, I think really the disgraceful scenes that we’ve seen there recently, were you concerned about even the ability to do your job properly without harassment or picketing of your office, or even disrupting your classes? I don’t think those are things that are beyond the realm of possibility given what we’ve seen. Have you gotten assurances that they’re going to let you do your job properly?
MIKE POMPEO: Yes, guy. Look, it’s possible that there will be protest people who don’t share my views on Israel, the Middle East more broadly, or for that matter, America and its founding ideas. I think that’s definitely true. But, you know, we’re I’m peaceful protest with the rules of the universe that it all seems fine. I’m I’m confident the university will do what’s necessary to ensure that I have the chance to have the interactions, which they thought, and for the reason they reached out and asked me if I’d be willing to come be a part of this, was precisely so. Those those kinds of voices could be heard. And I’m confident that they’ll they’ll create conditions for that to happen. And I I’m counting on it. I know, I know, the senior leadership of the institute is as well.
GUY BENSON: Well, I hope that confidence is well-founded, and I hope that you will get that fair hearing, because they could learn a lot in a lot of ways from you. I want to ask you about something. I know this has come up a few times. It’s something that has continued to bother me. I think of it from time to time. I’ve gotten to know you and your wife a little bit over the years, and when President Trump made the decision to end your protection, your security detail, given what we know are threats against you and your family from the Iranian regime because of policies carried out, good policies, in my view, carried out during the first Trump administration. I was worried for your safety. And people said, well, you know, he’s made some money. He can hire private security, that sort of thing. I just wonder, how is that going? Do you feel safe? It’s something that I know people who admire and respect you are concerned about. And I just want to hear from you how it’s going.
MIKE POMPEO: We’ll go. We have I say we, Susan, I have gotten to know Susan, and I have now got protective security paid for by us privately. We have confidence in the team that we’ve assembled and how we’re thinking about that. So that part we feel good about. It’s, in my view, unfortunate that the government’s not providing the links that I wish that we can make sure we know what’s going on. I think we’ll figure our way through that as well. But look, it’s a decision the president made. I hope he’ll rethink it. That not for me, but for for anybody who served and took actions in the United States government and for whom nation state actors want want to kill them because of what they did in service to America. It seems to me appropriate that the government would share with that because because it is expensive. It’s not it’s not inexpensive. But we’ll we’ll certainly do what’s necessary to keep ourselves safe. And then, of course, we always put our faith in the Lord as well. Guy.
GUY BENSON: Well, again, I think that’s a very well, very well said good way of putting it. I personally would probably be more angry if I were in your shoes. I have really said publicly multiple times, I think this is a really bad decision and I agree. I hope that it will be revisited because it’s not just about any individual personality, it’s the principle behind it. And we can leave that there for now, because I want to talk about, my goodness, some of the biggest things happening on the world stage that we’ve seen in a long time. It feels like there are tectonic plates shifting around. Let’s start in Europe, Eastern Europe, Ukraine. Based on what you have seen in the last even few days. Mr. Secretary, what’s your reaction to how Russia’s war in Ukraine might come to an end? And what is your analysis now that you’re on the outside looking in of the new Trump administration’s handling of this so far over the first month or so in office?
MIKE POMPEO: Okay, this is important stuff. Important for Europe, important for Ukraine, important for the United States. But importantly, it has second order implications, right? I assure you, she she being is watching whether the West is going to allow aggression to be rewarded. Chairman Kim, the Ayatollah, all the other folks who really do want to destroy the United States and our way of life are watching to see if the West still has what it takes to prevent aggression from prevailing, and that will allow land to be taken through an invasion and through war. So I hope we will get that right. We’ll get an outcome that doesn’t isn’t perceived by the world as Vladimir Putin having been successful at that, so that we can continue the very deterrence model that, frankly, Donald Trump had achieved during his first four years as well. You know, as for the actions, You know that in the end, we’ll have to see how the negotiations go. I have no problem with the administration speaking with Vladimir Putin. That’s a you got it. You got to talk to bad guys. So that part doesn’t trouble me as it has some others. The Europeans will have their say. The Ukrainians will certainly have an important decision to make at some point about how they’re prepared to proceed and what they’re prepared to do to get peace, to break out. And so so that all seems fine to me. But I did think it was a mistake. Yesterday, I think it was yesterday when the United States didn’t vote at the UN General Assembly to make this simple statement about I could have put the bad guys here.
GUY BENSON: They voted no. It wasn’t even an abstention. It was a no.
MIKE POMPEO: Yeah. Yeah. And we should have we should have acknowledged that this is about to back. If Vladimir Putin put his weapons down this afternoon, the war would end and that we we know who invaded here. We know who the bad guys. And so for that, I think the administration made a mistake. And I wish they’d voted yes to support with a with a simple statement about who the aggressor was.
GUY BENSON: So the implications from that, because it seems to me I agree with you. I think that was another wrong call. Maybe they justify it as saying we were doing it for the right reasons, because they’re trying to pressure Zelensky into signing this minerals deal, which would be very beneficial to the United States taxpayers, etc. get Zelensky onside and then begin in earnest. You know, the tough work of resolving the conflict in a way that you describe that is acceptable to the Ukrainians, where they get a lasting peace that’s enforceable security guarantees, sovereignty guarantees, etc. if that is the overall goal, which I think and still hope it is, maybe they feel like they’ve got to be, you know, tough and maybe even ruffle some feathers on the other side of the Atlantic and in Europe and certainly in Ukraine. Getting to that point, if they’re able to achieve that, will it have been worth it or are you still giving something up. Are you still sacrificing something by not simply stating the truth about the basic dynamic of who caused the war?
MIKE POMPEO: Your guy? If you could get to the outcome that you describe, I’d be worth it. Right? Because you can. History will reflect that. You were you were being pragmatic and thoughtful in the way that you made that decision. So it’d be worth it. Seems to me. And only time will tell. I happen to think that speaking the truth actually assist you in getting to the outcome that I think everyone really does want, but that’s, you know, that’s a judgment call, I suppose, that the administration made differently than the one that that I likely would have made. But yeah, we want the right goal. And if it said like, you got it, you got to sacrifice something to do it. And the sacrifice is a simply a vote at the UN, it will have proven to be well worth it.
GUY BENSON: We are starting to see Europe almost out of independence and, you know, indignation stepping up to the plate saying, oh yeah, well, now we’re going to spend more on our military, and we’re going to really start to get more serious about our collective self-defense. You know, if that’s a start, the UK just came out and said it today, Secretary Hex at the head with some warm words about that. We’re seeing these announcements, at least from some of them, maybe not the UK, but we’re seeing some of the announcements out of almost a fit of pique.
MIKE POMPEO: Yeah, okay. I agree with that. Whatever the motivation, the Europeans have an obligation to do more. They have failed, really, for the last call it 25 years since the early 90s to do the things that are indeed very, very necessary for themselves to benefit the United States greatly, too. But they need to do it for themselves. And if they’re going to do it because someone made the matter, they feel like they have no other option, then, you know, President Trump will have negotiated a good outcome and indeed not just a good outcome for the United States, but a good outcome for each of those countries as well.
GUY BENSON: Yeah, I totally agree with that. Finally, Mr. Secretary, on Israel, the Palestinians, it really feels like a lot of the old paradigms where we were sort of stuck in these cycles are just gone, obliterated by October 7th. And then the aftermath of that, the killing of those babies and the terrible, disgusting ceremony that we just saw a few days ago from Hamas. Now that there’s almost like a blank slate in some ways, yes, some things are still there and a lot of challenges, but with a new paradigm ahead. How would you advise, for example, the Israelis and the current U.S. government to think about this problem moving forward, because things are very different now than they were when you were Secretary of State not that long ago.
MIKE POMPEO: Things are indeed very different. Israelis have done remarkable work of taking down the terror network in not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the south part of Lebanon. They’re not done. There’s still more work to do, but they’ve done remarkable work where we saw Assad fall in Syria. The Iranians are at their their weakest point militarily, not not because of President Biden in his decisions, but in fact, in spite of them. And this is the moment to actually coalesce the Middle East in ways that we began with the Abraham Accords, right where we got a handful of nations to recognize Israel’s right to exist. I say put enormous pressure on Iran, continue to support Israel in its efforts to eliminate every single terrorist that you can identify and take out, and then get the Gulf Arab states, much as we want the Europeans to do the hard and heavy lifting in Europe. The Gulf Arab states have an enormous interest in getting that right. It’s supporting Israel, supporting the United States and defending themselves against Iran. And if collectively Israel, the Gulf Arab states, the United States work to achieve that. I think we could push on Iran in ways that were that we did some of in the first four years, but we’ll get a victory today.
GUY BENSON: Mike Pompeo is former secretary of state, CIA director, congressman from the state of Kansas. He’s now a Fox News contributor, author of the book Never Give an Inch. And now he’ll be joining the faculty at Columbia, as we discussed. Mr. Secretary, good luck in New York City there. We really appreciate your time. And please stay safe.
MIKE POMPEO: Thank you. God bless you. Have a good day.
