Starved for some good news? Listen to the new Secretary of State

Dick Polman on Feb 2, 2021

Tapper asked: “Do you think North Korea remains a nuclear threat?”

Pompeo: “Yes.”

Tapper: “But the president said he doesn’t.”

Pompeo: “That’s not what he said.”

Tapper: “He tweeted, ‘There’s no longer a nuclear threat from Korea.’ That’s just a direct quote.”

And how embarrassing it was, for a secretary of state, to be lectured by an interviewer in Kazakhstan.

One year ago, on the eve of a trip to that country, Pompeo had unleashed an F-bomb tirade on an NPR reporter who’d sought to ask him inconvenient questions, and had thrown another NPR reporter off his plane. His foreign interviewer brought up the NPR incidents and asked him: “What kind of message (about America) does it send to countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, whose governments routinely suppress press freedom?”

Pompeo’s answer: “It’s a perfect message.”

Suffice it so say that, on the eve of Antony Blinken’s welcome ascent, the world’s supposedly top democracy was no longer a champion of press freedom. According to the international rankings posted by Reporters Without Borders, America is currently 45th in the world - trailing nations like Botswana, Latvia, Lithuania, and Namibia.

As Blinken said, “This is a critical moment for protecting and defending democracy, including right here at home.” There’s not a moment to lose.

========

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com