Advertisement

Mike Pompeo Cursed Out a Reporter After She Asked Him About Ukraine

Photo credit: ODD ANDERSEN - Getty Images
Photo credit: ODD ANDERSEN - Getty Images

From Esquire

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly swore and shouted at a journalist who dared to ask him about the biggest foreign policy news story in the country—Ukraine.

After a Friday interview with National Public Radio’s Mary Louise Kelly, host of All Things Considered, Pompeo blew up at the veteran journalist, "shout[ing] his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine" and using “repeated expletives,” according to an NPR statement.

“I was taken to the Secretary's private living room where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about [the] same amount of time as the interview itself,” Kelly told her co-host Ari Shapiro. “He asked, ‘do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence and many others.”

According to the journalist, Pompeo then asked if she could identify Ukraine on a map. In a seeming attempt to humiliate her, he ordered aides to bring them a blank world map. “I pointed to Ukraine,” said Kelly, who earned a master’s degree in European studies at Cambridge. “He put the map away.”

“He said, ‘people will hear about this,’” Kelly reported.

NPR also released a transcript of her full interview with Pompeo, which found the journalist asking challenging but fair questions about ousted Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. After Kelly asked Pompeo if he owed the former ambassador an apology, the Secretary replied that he didn’t want to discuss Ukraine—though Kelly said she’d cleared the interview subject with his staff.

It’s not the first time that Pompeo has been combative with reporters. The Washington Post noted the Secretary’s tendency to “bark at people who ask the wrong questions,” including telling one reporter in 2018 not to “say silly things.”

You Might Also Like