There's been a lot of chatter about the run- in NPR's Mary Louise Kelly had during and after an interview with pig cosplayer and smug Secretary of State Mike "Pompous" Pompeo on Friday. The gist of the story is that Trump loyalist Pompeo (who you may recall was elected to the House as a Tea Party Republican in 2011 and is an evangelical who believes in the Rapture) bridled at Kelly asking questions about Ukraine, and specifically about his treatment of Ambassador Marie Yovanovich and Rudy Colludy's back channel smear safari. News reports take it from there:
According to a transcript of the interview between NPR host Mary Louise Kelly and Pompeo, he repeatedly dodged questions on Ukraine and grew increasingly irate after Kelly asked, “Do you owe Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch an apology?”
“You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran,” Pompeo said before going on to insist, “I just don’t have anything else to say about that this morning.”
When Kelly kept grilling him and noted that some within the State Department had criticized his failure to stand up for Yovanovitch after she was fired amid what she described as a smear campaign orchestrated by President Trump, Pompeo sought to dismiss the criticism as being from “unnamed sources.”
But Kelly stopped him: “These are not unnamed sources. This is your senior adviser Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer with four decades experience,” she said, reminding Pompeo that McKinley had testified on the matter under oath.
Declining to comment on McKinley, Pompeo insisted, “I have defended every State Department official,” only to end the interview when Kelly asked him to refer her to any comments he’d made in defense of Yovanovitch.Shortly after Pompeo stormed out of the interview, an aide ushered Kelly into Pompeo's inner sanctum where NPR's Ari Shapiro picks up the story:
The coda to @NPRKelly's interview with @SecPompeo is shocking. As described on @npratc: He screamed, swore at her, and said she couldn't find Ukraine on a map. He ordered staffers to bring a blank map. She pointed to Ukraine and thanked him for his time.https://t.co/8HlCDWxCU9— Ari Shapiro (@arishapiro) January 24, 2020
He seems more pigly than godly, doesn't he?
He also said, "Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?" (Pompeo is set to visit Ukraine next week. Awkward!)
But, since he's always performing for an audience of one, Pompeo issued a statement in which he just had to attack "the media" and double down (click to enlarge):
For what it's worth, Kelly said she arranged ahead of time with Pompeo's staff that Ukraine would be one of the topics she'd cover. She said she never was asked and would never agree to have the post- interview rant off the record. Also, Kelly has a Master's degree in European studies from Cambridge and has covered national security issues for NPR for years. We'd put our money on her finding Ukraine on an unmarked map before pig man could. And as far as betting which one is a liar, that wouldn't be a fair bet.
BONUS: We like Wonkette's handling of the story.
UPDATE: Crime family boss is now tweeting out not- so- veiled threats toward NPR. Thugs gotta stick together!
