Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is testing the waters for a 2024 presidential bid by highlighting his foreign policy credentials and criticizing President Biden’s handling of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The slimmed-down Mr. Pompeo joined former Trump National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien as keynote guests Thursday at the Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, Mr. Pompeo will travel to Iowa to raise money for the state Republican Party.
At a foreign policy forum last month in Des Moines, Iowa, Mr. Pompeo said Russia’s invasion is partly the result of “failed American leadership.”
The former CIA director said people frequently ask him whether Mr. Putin would have invaded Ukraine if he and Donald Trump were still in office.
“I obviously can’t prove that,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It didn’t happen. I can tell you this much: Vladimir Putin didn’t change. He is the same guy. He’s evil. He’s an autocrat. He’s wanted to re-create this notion of the greater Russia or the Soviet Union for a long time. What changed was America’s failure to demonstrate resolve, and American weakness. And that’s really unfortunate for the Ukrainian people.”
Critics have reminded Mr. Pompeo that he confronted an NPR reporter as secretary of state in 2020 and asked her amid expletives, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”
Russian state TV aired comments by Mr. Pompeo before the invasion in which he called Mr. Putin “very shrewd. very capable” and said he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Putin.
Mr. Pompeo later defended those remarks by saying, “I have been fighting communism since I was a teenager. I’m going to keep fighting communism.”
Mr. Pompeo also said at the Des Moines forum that European allies of the U.S. are primarily responsible for confronting Russia.
“This challenge presented by Vladimir Putin is in the first instance a European challenge,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It’s their backyard. It is theirs to take. Europe needs to do the right thing to defend itself.”
Mr. Pompeo’s trip Friday to Davenport, Iowa, is at least his fourth visit to the key presidential caucus state in the past year. He will stop at a dairy farm for an event billed as a “timely conversation on what a conservative path forward looks like.”
Mr. Pompeo is endorsing Republican candidates across the country, down to local school board races. He also is raising money for his Champion American Values PAC, which collected a reported $3.2 million last year and donated to some candidates not favored by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s sought-after endorsements have the unrivaled ability to influence Republican primaries, and his PACs had a total of $122 million heading into this year. Although Mr. Trump is the heavy favorite to capture the presidential nomination in two years if he runs, Republicans such as Mr. Pompeo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are positioning themselves for campaigns if Mr. Trump opts out, party strategist Ford O’Connell said.
President Biden’s unpopularity is encouraging the Republican jockeying, he said.
“There’s no question that [Mr. Pompeo] is doing what everyone in the Republican Party is doing,” Mr. O’Connell said. “They really see 2024 as a chance to be president if you’re the Republican nominee, just because of where Biden is. Right now, Biden is a lame-duck president.”
Mr. Pompeo, 58, reportedly has lost 90 pounds since 2020.
Asked earlier this month whether he would run for president, he didn’t rule it out. “Only the Lord knows,” he told reporters.
A member of Mr. Pompeo’s team said his immediate focus is on raising money to help Republican candidates in Iowa during a joint appearance with former Gov. Terry Branstad.
“First and foremost, it’s to go help the Iowa Republican Party and help candidates in Iowa get reelected,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Right now, we’re focused on 2022. And we’re focused on ensuring that we take back the House and we take back the Senate and that Republican governors win and that we win all the way down to school boards and town councils.”
Mr. Pompeo said in a social media post, “I think 2022 is going to be a really good year all across the country for CAVPAC-endorsed candidates. We are going to win races from school board to the United States Senate.”
Some Republican operatives think Mr. Pompeo is positioning himself for a possible vice presidential nomination, given Mr. Trump’s overwhelming popularity in the party. In the annual Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll last month, Mr. Pompeo came in a distant third with 2%, far behind Mr. Trump at 59% and Mr. DeSantis at 24%.
“He could be back in a [Republican] administration, most likely if that were to be in a VP setting,” Mr. O’Connell said. “This is sort of his time to feel things out, and everyone’s going to do it until Trump pulls the trigger.”
In his public appearances, Mr. Pompeo is sharpening his attacks on Mr. Biden’s foreign policy. On a trip to Taiwan this month, Mr. Pompeo called on the administration to formally recognize Taiwan as a country, a step the Trump administration didn’t take.
“The United States government should immediately take necessary and long-overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing: That is to offer the Republic of China, Taiwan, America’s diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country,” Mr. Pompeo said in a speech. “While the United States should continue to engage with the People’s Republic of China as a sovereign government, America’s diplomatic recognition of the 23 million freedom-loving Taiwanese people and its legal, democratically elected government can no longer be ignored, avoided or treated as secondary.”
The Biden administration said it wouldn’t comment on the actions of a private citizen. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry called Mr. Pompeo “a former politician whose credibility has long gone bankrupt.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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