America’s top diplomat tries out a new form of diplomacy.
This reminds me of when the polite, predictable mainstream comedy of the 50s and early 60s first acquired an edge, then gradually morphed into insult comedy. Now it’s time for polite, predictable mainstream diplomacy to follow that path to insult diplomacy.
Actually, Pompeo seems to be floating a novel new defense of Trump: nobody cares if he fucks Ukraine over, which is basically accurate within Trump’s low-info base.
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Unlike many of Trump’s lickspittles, Mike Pompeo has legitimate academic credentials. He graduated first in his class at West Point and got a law degree from Harvard. He is also the Secretary of State, so you’d think, given the combination of his education and his job, that he would have some idea where the major countries lie on the globe. But he apparently does not know Bangladesh from Ukraine.
We know this because he asked an NPR reporter to find Ukraine on the map, and we know that she must have pointed to the right country, given that she has a degree in European Studies from Cambridge. It might be possible even for a scholar to mess up on an obscure country in Central Europe or the Balkans. I’m not sure I’d point to the right one for Moldova, for example. But nobody with a decent education could miss Ukraine, because (1) it is the largest country entirely in Europe, (2) it distinctively has Crimea hanging into the Black Sea beneath it. I’ll bet just about every reader of this blog could get it right because … well, because you can and do read things. Given that regular schmucks like us would get it right, Ukraine certainly would not be missed by somebody with a graduate degree in European Studies from one of the world’s leading universities. So we know she got it right.
But ol’ Pompom subsequently tweeted “Bangladesh is not Ukraine.” Therefore, the only possible conclusion we can draw is that ol’ Pompano himself actually thought she was pointing to Bangladesh, when we know she must have been pointing to Ukraine. That’s pretty crazy. It means ol’ Pomposity doesn’t know one of those from another!
Now ol’ Pompadour is probably right that the average American could not find Ukraine on a map. Hell, the average American probably can’t find Colorado on a map. But ol’ Pamplemousse, who must be a bright man, is so clueless that he thinks a serious European studies scholar would not be able to find Ukraine on a map. How could he be that ignorant, given the native intelligence necessary to gain his academic credentials? I can’t explain it. That belief is deluded enough in itself, but what’s laughably stupid is that he thinks it is remotely possible for that scholar to think Ukraine is east of India!
That’s just how out of touch ol’ Pomposity is.
And he is America’s Secretary of State.
Good luck, world.
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Pompeo also claims that his comment, “Do you think Americans care about fucking Ukraine?” was off the record. That’s the tactic of a typical guilty party with no defense. “Don’t blame me for saying it. Blame her for quoting me.” This is the non-judicial equivalent of, “Ignore those four tons of cocaine they found in my house, and those e-mails explaining how I buy and sell the cocaine. I’m innocent because they made a mistake when filling out the search warrant.”
“And I had gone over, I guess the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten confirmation from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.”
“So they said they had – they were walking out to a press conference. I said nah, I’m not going to – or we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said – I said call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well son of a bitch. He got fired.”
-Joe Biden’s confession to bribery
at Council on Foreign Relations meeting in Jan. 2018
Trump was impeached for withholding foreign aid for personal gain. Biden was trying to get rid of a prosecutor who was refusing to investigate and root out corruption in the Ukraine. What Biden did is what our leaders are supposed to do. What Trump did was self serving, sleazy, and the definition of a quid pro quo and what a “High Crime” should be. It also weakened an ally in the middle of a war. I’m not sure why republicans still defend the guy.
You know how, in the Lord of the Rings, there was a character called “The Mouth of Sauron”? Brobonk is like “The Mouth of Breitbart”, or something similar. It is very good to refute or explain his points, but actual discussion with him is pointless.
Brobonk is at risk of being the compleat idiot.
Once again.
(1) That was not Biden’s position, it was America’s (and Europe’s, and the entire financial community of the free world)
(2) Biden was communicating the action Ukraine needed to take against its corruption. Trump was asking Ukraine to engage in more corruption. That’s quite a large difference.
So let’s summarize
Biden was doing a good thing, but really he himself was neutral rather than “good,” because he was only the spokesman for America’s interests.
Trump did a bad thing, as a rogue action on his own, contrary to America’s interests.
Yeah, those are similar.
I’m sure Pompeo knows where Bangladesh is, and knows that the NPR writer pointed out Ukraine correctly. What he was doing implying that she got it wrong, knowing that the troglodytes in Trump’s gutter base will pick up the lie and run with it.
Of course.
I was ironically taking his Tweet to the only logical conclusion a thinking person can conclude: the scholar must know the difference, therefore Pompadour does not.
But you’re completely correct. He is playing to the sheer ignorance of the Trump followers, probably 95% of whom really can’t identify Ukraine on a map. Hell, probably half of them couldn’t even identify the map itself, given a choice from a table full of objects.
That’s pretty sad. Think of the modern Blanche DuBois: “I have always relied on the stupidity of strangers.”
Bingo!
Of course it follows that there being an agreement for the follow up conversation to be off the record is a lie as well.