Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused an NPR reporter of lying about whether a conversation he initiated with her had been deemed off the record, a charge that NPR denied.
Pompeo’s statement, however, did not address NPR’s explosive account of the conversation – that he shouted at reporter Mary Louise Kelly, used expletives, indicated that she had questioned him about Ukraine under false pretenses in a just-completed interview, and asked her, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”
The exchange came as Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s longest-serving and closest senior adviser on national security, has been criticized for his conduct related to both Ukraine and Iran and his disregard for congressional and media questions about it.
In a statement, Pompeo called the NPR episode “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration.”
A major reason the president values Pompeo is because the secretary “doesn’t give an inch” in public statements and interviews, said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
(c) 2020, The Washington Post · Karen DeYoung
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