The real reason Mike Pompeo is suddenly telling people he’s resigning
Mike Pompeo says he’s resigning as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. He’s not yet saying it publicly, but he’s saying it privately to his allies, and his allies are now suddenly leaking to the media that he’s resigning. So why now, and what’s really going on here?
According to Time Magazine, Mike Pompeo is telling his friends that he’s resigning so he can run for U.S. Senator in his home state of Kansas in 2020. Don’t worry, we’re going to pause here and give you a moment to laugh accordingly. Mike Pompeo’s life is over, at least for the next several years. He’s knee deep in Donald Trump’s Ukraine extortion plot, he’s committed felonies, he’s been caught red handed, and he’s going to prison the minute Trump has been finished off.
Pompeo is telling his friends that he’s trying to figure out the precisely correct time to resign, so as to give him the smoothest entry into the Kansas Senate race. But any man whose life has collapsed needs a pipe dream for how he’s going to escape ruin, right? But come on. Pompeo is radioactive right now. The notion of him running for Senate, while Trump is being impeached for a scandal in which Pompeo committed felonies, is nothing short of absurd. He wouldn’t stand a chance. And as we’ve seen, Trump himself has become far too unpopular to be able to put Republican candidates over the top, even in red states.
The key here is that Mike Pompeo wants out. More to the point, he’s publicly letting it be known that he wants out. Donald Trump can’t allow Pompeo to go run for Senate, because even if Trump has somehow moved past the Ukraine scandal by the 2020 election, Pompeo’s candidacy would help dredge it all back up again. So is Pompeo playing for a pardon here? After all, a pardon would all but ensure that Pompeo can’t run for Senate. It’s one thing for a toxically scandalous guy to run for Senate on his way to prison. It’s another thing for a guy who’s recently been pardoned to run for Senate; it just wouldn’t happen.
So we’ll see where this goes. You always knew Mike Pompeo was going to jump ship eventually. But now he’s making his move, and no, it has nothing to do with him somehow magically ending up in the Senate. It’s all about Pompeo trying to find a way to magically avoid ending up in the slammer, which is the only place he’s going when this is over.
