Ironically, when Trump was impeached again this week for inciting a deadly riot at the US Capitol on January 6, the outgoing president issued a statement condemning illegal conduct, saying "violence and vandalism has no place in our country." Well, that's news for Pompeo who has been filling his final days in office with violence and vandalism instead of diplomacy.
It's obvious that Pompeo is on a final wrecking-ball mission to ensure that the new Biden administration will be encumbered in foreign relations. Of course, Biden's team could theoretically reverse a lot of Pompeo's final acts of madness. But because of bureaucracy in procedures that undoing could take months to achieve. Burning bridges takes time to reconstruct and rebuild confidence.
There's no doubt the nefarious aim is to damage relations with Russia and China, for example, so badly that it will be politically difficult for Biden to repair if he even wants to. For if Biden overturns Pompeo's latest moves, then the new Democrat president is open to vilification for "going soft" on Moscow or Beijing.
It is deplorable that US foreign policy is subject to the thuggish mentality and behaviour of Pompeo. Formerly, the head of the CIA, he once boasted that his operating credo was "cheating, lying and stealing."
In the final days of his reign at the State Department, we are seeing this playing out with appalling recklessness.
No wonder that Pompeo had to cancel a farewell trip to Europe this week after it emerged that European foreign ministers were refusing to meet with him. It looks like even the normally obsequious European politicians couldn't stomach the odious US diplomat any longer.
Pompeo personifies the outgoing Trump administration: cheap, criminal and utterly ignorant.
Good riddance Mike: don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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