Pompeo in Nashville: Secretary of State defends Ukraine phone call, blasts Democrats – Tennessean
As a political firestorm raged in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the controversial phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine that set off an impeachment inquiry as “completely common” during a visit to Nashville.
“We ask our friends and allies and and partners and, indeed, our adversaries to do things for us all the time,” Pompeo told The Tennessean. “It’s completely common to do so.”
Pompeo visited Nashville to speak at a conference of the American Association of Christian Counselors on Friday. He defended Trump, arguing that the president did not ask for the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Trump’s political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
A reconstructed transcript of the phone call released by the White House last month included Trump asking Zelensky to “do us a favor.”
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“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump said on the call.
“(Trump) was having a conversation with the new president of Ukraine to talk about our relationship broadly and how we’re going to move forward together,” Pompeo said.
“President Trump said we’d like you to make sure you take a look at corruption, at the history of corruption in your country, and ways that it may have had an impact all across not only the Ukraine, but Europe and the world.”
While defending the president, Pompeo criticized Democrats and the news media.
“I think the only ones who think Zelensky was pressured are a handful of folks in the media and a bunch of folks on Capitol Hill — the Democratic Party — who are trying to take down this president.”
Asked what he generally thought about the impeachment inquiry, Pompeo pivoted and said he was in Nashville to discuss religious freedom.
Pompeo also responded to the assertion that one of his top aides, Michael McKinley, was resigning because he had failed to protect State Department employees.
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported McKinley, a career diplomat, resigned amid increasing dissatisfaction and low morale in the State Department related to Pompeo’s handling of the Ukraine controversy.
Although he did not say anything about McKinley, the Secretary of State said, “I protect every single state department employee.”
Pompeo added, “When the state department employees are doing things right, when they’re behaving in ways that are consistent with the rule of law and working under President Trump’s … mission, I’ll always stand for them.”
Pompeo also pushed back against the notion that his office is acting differently with the impeachment inquiry than with how he handled the Congressional inquiry into Benghazi, during which he was a member of the House of Representatives.
“The Democrats here have just chosen to behave in a way that’s deeply inconsistent,” he said. “To compare the two processes is ludicrous, on its face.”
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Reach Joel Ebert at jebert@tennessean.com or 615-772-1681 and on Twitter @joelebert29.
Published 5:40 PM EDT Oct 11, 2019
