President Trump praised Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his spat with a reporter last week, telling the nation’s top diplomat at a White House event, “You did a good job on her.”
Trump, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an event Trump’s Middle East peace proposal, acknowledged Pompeo in the audience. Pompeo received a round of applause.
“Very impressive, Mike,” Trump said, jovially. “That reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you yesterday. I think you did a good job on her, actually.”
Trump was referencing a confrontation Pompeo started with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly after an interview in which she asked him why he didn’t do more to defend former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch amid a smear campaign that resulted in her losing her posting.
Pompeo cut off their interview and then proceeded to curse and yell at Kelly for asking about Ukraine, the reporter later revealed. She said he used profanity when he asked her angrily, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” He then asked her to find Ukraine on a blank world map, which she says she did.
Pompeo did not apologize for his treatment of Kelly, instead issuing a statement in which he continued to attack her credibility, insisting that she’d lied to him about the interview being about Iran. He also said their conversation after the interview was off the record, which she says she never agreed to.
Emails between Kelly and Pompeo’s staff obtained by The Washington Post show that she agreed the subject of the interview was mostly Iran, but that she planned to also ask about Ukraine and any other topics “the news gods will serve up overnight.”
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