Mike Pompeo Goes Postal on NPR Reporter

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Now here’s a story. NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly interviewed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday. After asking a bunch of questions about Iran, she switched subjects to Ukraine. Pompeo got pissed off even though his staff had agreed that Ukraine could be part of the interview. Kelly asked Pompeo if he thought he owed an apology to Marie Yovanovitch, the ambassador to Ukraine who was fired last year for not being helpful enough with President Trump’s scheme to extort an investigation of Hunter Biden. Pompeo was not happy with the question. Kelly persisted: Should he have defended Yovanovitch? Pompeo said he defended everyone at the State Department. Kelly asked if he could point to remarks where he had defended Yovanovitch. Pompeo abruptly cut off the interview and stalked off.

But wait! There’s more:

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly says the following happened after the interview in which she asked some tough questions to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. pic.twitter.com/cRTb71fZvX

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 24, 2020

Pompeo took out a map and asked Kelly to point to Ukraine! With F-bombs! What a dick. But today there’s even yet more:

So Pompeo accused Kelly of lying twice: first in breaking an agreement to confine the interview to Iran, and second in breaking an agreement to allow Pompeo to have his temper tantrum off the record. Then he implies that Kelly pointed to Bangladesh and thought it was Ukraine.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Pompeo is the one lying about all this stuff. Kelly set up her interview properly. She was asked to leave behind her recording equipment for Pompeo’s tirade, but not told it was off the record. And she knows perfectly well where Ukraine is.

Welcome to Donald Trump’s Washington.