As Biden rounds out his European visit, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told The Cats Roundtable the contrasts between Trump-era foreign policy and the new administration couldn’t be made more clear. Biden’s trip to the continent included a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an encounter Pompeo said Putin already held all the cards going into.
“The nicest thing I can say is that it was pointless,” Pompeo said about the bilateral meeting, “but it’s probably worse than that.”
Worse because Biden’s bid at international likability does not stand up in an ecosystem that has increasingly shown it only respects power and prestige. Biden’s ideological rejection of Trump’s America First policies undermine the US prestige Trump and Pompeo had worked hard at reestablishing, following decades of unequal agreements and appeasement abroad.
“When we traveled to Europe to build out NATO and secure freedom for America, we preferred to be not be liked, but demand respect,” Pompeo explained.
That respect was lacking in Biden’s encounter with Putin, an encounter Pompeo was doubtless the Russian President went away from feeling like he’d got the better deal.
“This was not America’s finest moment,” the former Secretary of State told The Cats Roundtable. “It wasn’t America Strong. This didn’t help American people all across the country to be safer or more secure or more prosperous.”
Pompeo pointed to Biden’s confession he had shared a list of 16 infrastructure targets he had told Putin were to be left alone, after a string of ransomware attacks linked to Moscow. But Biden’s announcement came even as Putin accused the United States of being the greatest propagator of digital espionage around the world. Pompeo told The Cats Roundtable Putin was proving Biden was “all carrot, and no stick,” and doubted the Russian President felt the US would impose real costs.
“Not only does it tell you where the free-flyer zone is,” Pompeo said about Biden’s infrastructure list, “but it tells you the things that matter most in the places where you really ought to focus your efforts.”
Pompeo’s tenure as Secretary of State saw a reigniting of America’s First foreign policy. The election of Biden, Pompeo seemed to fear, was not only a return to the old pushover policies of Obama and beyond, but would allow US adversaries such as China to “walk all over us.”
“It took our administration, it took real hard work by President Trump and me to make sure that they understood the world had changed,” Pompeo told The Cats Roundtable, adding the same old policies “we did in the 70’s, 80’s, the 90’s wasn’t going to be sufficient.”
Trump, and Pompeo’s State Department, were not just trying to rebuild US prestige abroad. Where the tree of freedom reaches, it’s what happens at its roots that determines how much it will grow. The assault on the freedom of the mind here in the US has reached a fever pitch, as America’s institutions go partisan, and pick sides.
At the spear tip of the attempt to take the American education system back with American values, Pompeo and his wife, Susan, started the Champion American Values PAC, or CAVPAC, recalling the former Secretary of State’s service in the US 7th Calvalry.
“This is the moment, this we all have to take up this fight,” Pompeo told The Cats Roundtable. “This is important, this is something I’m committed to alongside my wife Susan, and we are dedicated to making sure we champion the American values that everyone knows are the right thing for our country.”
Listen to the interview below
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