The Horse Race: Pompeo Takes Aim at Fellow Trump Cabinet Members — and Potential 2024 Rivals

with Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Pompeo Takes Aim at Fellow Trump Cabinet Members — and Potential 2024 Rivals — in New Memoir

While former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis have largely dominated 2024-related headlines, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo captured the spotlight this week with the release of his new memoir, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love.

While making the rounds to promote his book on Tuesday, Pompeo told CBS Mornings he and his wife plan to make a decision about a potential 2024 bid "in the next handful of months." He again reiterated that Trump's decision to run would not factor into his own decision.

"All the folks who decide to run will present themselves and their ideas," he said.

In a separate interview, Pompeo responded to Trump's suggestion that it would be "disloyal" of his former cabinet members to run against him.

"When the president talks about being disloyal I think he just misunderstands," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Brian Kilmeade Show. "The loyalty is to your obligation to the country, it's your duty to the nation."

He added: "If there's a big campaign with lots of folks who get into the race, everyone should bring it, make their best arguments and let the American people sort it all out."

Trump was largely spared from Pompeo's harshest criticisms in the book, with the former CIA director instead training his fire on other members of the Trump administration, including likely 2024 contenders Nikki Haley and John Bolton.

Pompeo writes that he "worked the signal and was humbled to be part of an administration that was avoiding war and creating peace by putting America first," but argued that some people in the administration "weren't up for this" and were instead "worried that working for Trump would cause their exile from the clubby world of the foreign policy establishment."

"Their response was to put themselves ahead of the country," he wrote. "Some resigned to protect their ability to join lucrative boards. Others made a living out of leaking to the press about how much they disagreed with the president. (Memo to John Bolton: I'm talking about you.)"

He blasts Bolton throughout the book, saying the former national-security adviser was "constantly scheming to win for himself and no one else."

"I hope I can one day testify at a criminal trial as a witness for the prosecution," Pompeo wrote, suggesting Bolton should "be in jail, for spilling classified information" in his own book, The Room Where It Happened.

The former secretary of state also likens Bolton's memoir to Edward Snowden's release of classified information from the National Security Agency to reporters in 2013.

"At least Snowden had the decency not to lie about his motive," he writes. "Bolton spun his book as an act of public service to save America from Donald Trump, but he could not even be honest that he just wanted to make a buck. His self-serving stories contained classified information and deeply sensitive conversations involving a sitting commander in chief. That's the very definition of treason."

Bolton fired back against Pompeo's claims, telling CNN that his book went through a pre-publication review that found it did not contain classified information.

"If he didn't know about it, it's incompetence in writing the book for not checking out the facts before he put it down on paper," Bolton said. "And if he did know about it, that's malicious and well beyond reckless to say things like that."

Pompeo also claims in his book that Haley plotted with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to steal the vice presidency from Mike Pence.

"As best [White House chief of staff] Kelly could tell they [Kushner and Ivanka] were presenting a possible 'Haley for vice-president' option. I can't confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America," Pompeo wrote.

Haley dismissed the allegations and accused Pompeo of using "lies and gossip to sell" his memoir.

She then teased a 2024 run during an appearance on Fox News, saying: "As fun as it would be to announce right now, yes . . . we are leaning in," when Sean Hannity asked her about a run.

"It is time for a new generation. . . . It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election," she said.

Last week, Haley was asked about her comments in 2021 that she would not run for president in 2024 if Trump also ran. She said "a lot has changed," noting the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, skyrocketing inflation, and "drugs infesting all of our states."

"When you're looking at the future of America, I think it's time for new generational change," Haley said. "I don't think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C."

Haley has reportedly been making a number of behind-the-scenes moves to staff her 2024 team, as has former vice president Mike Pence. Pence's team poached Tim Chapman, a top adviser to Haley, according to Fox News. Chapman will serve as a senior adviser on Pence's Advancing American Freedom nonprofit.

AROUND NR

• Nate Hochman writes of Haley's comments this week that, while she "sure sounds like she's running for president," he is "skeptical of the ballooning field of potential also-rans":

The current mood in the GOP primary electorate suggests that this really is a two-man contest between Trump and DeSantis. Leave aside polling: Just in terms of common sense, does anyone who's been paying attention to the GOP over the course of the past few years really think Larry Hogan, Mike Pompeo, or John Bolton — let alone Chris Christie, Liz Cheney, and the variety of other Republicans who have also publicly mused about a run — are going to crack double digits in this primary?

• Dan McLaughlin predicts that Ruben Gallego's 2024 Senate run in Arizona could split the Democratic vote in the state and give Republicans a real shot at the seat currently held by Senator Kyrsten Sinema — "if they don't screw up and nominate an unelectable weirdo":

Blake Masters, Kari Lake, and Karrin Taylor Robson are all reported to be mulling runs; if Masters and Lake both run, it could split the MAGA fringe vote and create more room for a normal candidate such as Robson or, if he could be persuaded to run, Doug Ducey.

• A new University of Georgia poll, Dominic Pino notes, offers further proof that the Peach State has not attempted to suppress votes, as Democrats have charged. The poll found that 0 percent of black voters in Georgia said they had a poor voting experience. Picking up on Pino's post, Hochman writes:

We have now accumulated a mind-bogglingly large body of evidence not only that Georgia is not a voter-suppression regime, but that it's actually one of the best-run states in the country when it comes to elections.

• President Biden has made his classified documents scandal worse for himself, Charles C. W. Cooke argues, and it has put the president in a less-than-ideal position headed into 2024:

What Biden wanted was the moral high ground: "I am good," he hoped to propose, "and the guys on the other side are bad." Now? Now, he's merely less bad than his opponents. Now, he's parsing culpability. Now, it's "he took them on purpose" while "I put them in my garage at home because I have limited control of my effects." There's a gap there, sure. But it's a lot narrower than the one Biden wanted to run on in 2024.

• With all eyes on DeSantis as it pertains to 2024, the governor took aim at the Sunshine State's teachers' unions this week in a series of proposals that would "rein in their power by limiting how they can collect dues, where they can promote their union efforts, and how much they can pay their leaders," Ryan Mills reports.