Foreign Secretary Mike Pompeo on Tuesday “deadly wrongly” rejected criticism by former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis about the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy approach.
“I have a lot of respect for Jim, but he was only dead wrong,” Pompeo told “Special Report” presenter Bret Bavaria. “America First was at his heart, the recognition that when America is safe at home, when America is doing good things for our own economy, for our well-being, America is becoming a good force.
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Pompeo responded to Foreign Affairs magazine “Defense in Depth,” co-authored by Mattis, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Kori Schake, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Jim Ellis, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command. and Joe Felter of the Hoover Institution.
The authors hoped that Biden would “quickly review its national security strategy to get” America first “out of its content, restoring a commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades.”
“In practice, ‘America for the first time’ meant ‘America alone,'” they wrote.
Pompeo said he would take up a “big umbrella” at the suggestion of “America First,” which means “America alone.”
“I would say that our Japanese colleagues, our South Korean colleagues, our Indian colleagues, our Australian colleagues all know that [Obama administration] Turning to Asia was a joke, but that the United States really brought them real benefits under President Trump, ”he replied.
“It was even the work we did to build a huge coalition to get after the [Venezuelan] socialist [Nicolas] Maduro, to go after the Cubans, these are real coalitions, real things – it wasn’t just America, ”Pompeo repeated.
“We did this with our friends and allies based on common interests and a reality that recognized the central facts of what is, and we don’t pretend we want things to be.”
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Pompeo also confirmed that there was no communication between his team and Secretary of State Biden, Antony Blinken, but “we will do everything the law requires. We will do this work.”
When asked about his biggest foreign policy concerns about the next administration, Pompeo made it clear, “I know some of these people, they thought quite differently, they lived in a slightly fantasy world. They drove from behind, reassured me. I hope they choose a different path.”
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Pompeo’s de-escalation of the Trump administration’s historic Abraham Accord, which normalized relations in the Middle East, their efforts in North Korea to “de-escalate the situation when we took office,” and the Chinese Communist Party’s central recognition as a real threat to jobs. all over America. “
“If these things are kept in focus and in mass,” he said, “I think America’s career will be safer, more prosperous and safer. “
Fox News Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
