CIA Director Mike Pompeo has to quell bipartisan concerns that he’ll shrink from debates with President Trump in order to be confirmed as secretary of state, a pair of top senators signaled at the outset of his confirmation hearing Thursday.
“[M]any strong voices have been terminated or resigned,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told Pompeo Thursday morning. “That’s why I think it’s fair for our members to ask whether your relationship is rooted in a candid, healthy give and take dynamic or whether it’s based on deferential willingness to go along to get along.”
WATCH: Sen. Bob Corker asks Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state pick, whether his relationship with the president “is rooted in a candid, healthy, give-and-take dynamic” pic.twitter.com/laYLSTyElH
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 12, 2018
That was a gentle introduction to an attack that Pompeo is likely to face throughout the hearing and, if confirmed, during his tenure at State Department. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, as the nation’s top diplomat, was often in the position of commenting on thorny foreign policy matters that sometimes put him publicly at odds with Trump, while the two disagreed in private about policies such as the American commitment to the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.
“Will you enable President Trump’s worst instincts?” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the panel, said in his prepared statement. “Will you advocate for robust diplomacy or will you take America into unnecessary and costly wars? Will you stand up to President Trump and say ‘no, you are wrong in that view’? Or will you be a yes man?”
Pompeo rejected the “hawk” label applied to policy-makers regarded as having aggressive foreign policy tendencies, citing his own experience as an Army officer.
“There’s no one like someone who served in uniform who understands the value of diplomacy and the terror and tragedy that is war,” he said during his opening statement. “[A strong military] can set the stage and create leverage, but the best outcomes are always won at the diplomatic table.”
