In a sign that times have changed, Mike Pompeo got the boss to help swear him in officially as the nation’s secretary of state.
Making his first trip to the State Department since his election, President Trump predicted the former CIA director will do “an incredible job” as the nation’s top diplomat. Mr. Trump and much of the Cabinet were on hand to watch Vice President Mike Pence carry out the ceremonial swearing in, a show of support that stood in stark contrasts to the embattled tenure of Rex W. Tillerson, the onetime ExxonMobil chief who was fired after barely a year on the job.
While sticking largely to his prepared remarks, Mr. Trump opened the proceedings Wednesday morning with a double-edged compliment to the reception he got from State Department officials on hand for the ceremony.
“I must say that’s more spirit than I’ve heard from the State Department in a long time, many years,” Mr. Trump remarked. “We can say many years and maybe many decades.”
With Mr. Pompeo enjoying a far closer personal rapport with Mr. Trump that Mr. Tillerson ever did, “That spirit will only be magnified, only with this person,” Mr. Trump predicted.
Mr. Pompeo, confirmed by the Senate on Thursday in a 57-42 vote, thanked the president for entrusting him with the “sobering” responsibility of addressing a variety of global threats, from Iran to North Korea.
“My team and I will be unrelenting in confronting those threats,” said the former Republican congressman from Kansas.
Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on a secret diplomatic mission for Mr. Trump last month, Mr. Pompeo observed, “We have an unprecedented opportunity to change the course of history on the Korean peninsula” by seeking that country’s denuclearization. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim are planning to meet for historic talks within the next few weeks.
“We’re in the beginning stages of the work, and the outcome is certainly yet unknown,” Mr. Pompeo said. “But one thing is certain — this administration will not repeat the mistakes of the past. Our eyes are wide open. It’s time to solve this once and for all. A bad deal is not an option.”
He said the administration is “committed to the permanent, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s weapons of mass destructions program, and to do so without delay.”
More broadly, Mr. Pompeo said he will “make sure America is always a respected and principled leader on the world stage.”
“We’ve already made outstanding progress by speaking the truth about the challenges we face,” he said. “We put a hurt on the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria. We’re confronting all types of Iranian hostility and are deciding on the next steps for the flawed [nuclear deal]. We’ve imposed real consequences on Russia for its acts of aggression. And we will soon move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem years ahead of schedule.”
He thanked the tens of thousands of career foreign service officers and other State Department employees.
“You all lay it on the line to make sure that America is safe, prosperous and free,” he said. “We need our men and women out at the front lines, executing American diplomacy with great vigor and energy, and to represent the finest nation in the history of civilization. We should be proud of that.”
Despite his closeness to Mr. Trump, Mr. Pompeo will face many of the same management challenges that helped undermine Mr. Tillerson. Many top posts at the department are still unfilled, and Mr. Trump’s early budget called for deep cuts for both the State Department and international aid programs. The department has struggled under both Democratic and Republican administrations in recent times to remain a key player with more and more foreign policy decisions being made at the White House and the Pentagon.
Mr. Pompeo earned high marks for managing the workforce and improving morale at the CIA has made some early gestures to earn goodwill among the State Department bureaucracy.
Promising to be more open and accessible, he announced this week in one of his first acts the end of a hiring freeze for family members of State Department employees serving overseas.
— David R. Sands contributed to this report.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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