Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touted the Trump administration’s foreign policy record and contrasted it to that of the Biden administration’s first 14 months during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday.
“I wish that we were back there leading America,” he said, amid the prospect of Republicans regaining control of at least one chamber of Congress and the prospect of another Trump administration.
Pompeo recalled actions taken by former President Donald Trump and the Trump administration to maintain peace for four years, compared to current crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
“How did we prevail? It was peace through strength. It was Reagan’s model, it was the model we used for four years in the Trump administration. It was America first, and we told people around the world, you cannot tread on us,” said Pompeo.
He recalled Trump ordering a strike on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of American troops. “We took a strike that changed history,” he said.
He recalled the administration’s move of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He recalled securing three American hostages from North Korea without paying a ransom and convincing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to stop long-range missile testing.
“We simply presented American power,” he said.
He also recalled steps at home, such as building a border wall along the southern U.S. border and working on fairer trade deals with China.
“I could see that the greatest threat from abroad was the Chinese Communist Party. We worked on it abroad, we tried to make sure that the jobs that they stole from the United States could no longer be stolen, and that the hard work that Americans did here would be rewarded with a set of trade deals that actually made sense,” he said.
He recalled shuttering the Chinese consulate in Texas, which he said was the base of one of the largest spy rings inside the United States.
“They were stealing the secrets from the University of Texas medical system and our energy companies, and it was intolerable and we just said ‘no we’re not going to take it any longer,’ and we shut it down,” he said.
“You should know that did not make me any friends at the United States Department of State. You should also know that I didn’t really give a rip,” he joked.
He recalled that critics had sought to portray Trump and his administration as foreign policy novices.
“I remember we were the barbarians, we were the rubes, we didn’t know what we were doing — we look pretty competent now,” he said. “I say that not in joy but in sorrow because America demands good leadership, and the world is depending upon it.”
He criticized the Biden administration for its record over the past 14 months.
“We’ve seen governors that don’t wear masks but require 3-year-olds to do so. We’ve seen a man breaking swimming records in girls’ swimming races. We’ve seen a Russian dictator now terrorize the Ukrainian people because America did not demonstrate the resolve that we did for the four years prior,” he said.
“In the last 12 months, we’ve seen that now it’s OK to steal something as long as it’s worth less than $1000 bucks — a minor incursion if you will [go] into Walgreens. We’ve seen the number of border crossers on our southern border go up by four times, something we would have never permitted to happen, and we’ve seen a debacle in Afghanistan that had the result of 13 Americans not come home to their families,” he said.
He criticized the Biden Administration for not doing enough to prevent the Olympics from being hosted in China.
“We just had a president do nothing to prevent our young, best athletes in the world travel to Beijing and all we did was tell them to take a burner phone — like a drug dealer, be very quiet, don’t use your rights as an American to say the things you care about,” he said.
“We could have done more…we could have prevented the Olympics from being there, without the jackbooted thug Xi Jinping staring them down, taking their DNA,” he said.
“These are the things we’re for,” he said. “Republicans are prepared to do the right thing to protect the American way of life everywhere and always.”
He ended by urging that America’s greatness be taught in her schools and churches.
“We should make sure that in those schools, and in our churches, we are teaching the greatness of the United States of America,” he said.
“It is an imperative. I battled adversaries all across the world [and] there is no threat greater to the United States than that which emanates inside our republic, inside our school system,” he said.
“If we do not teach our next generation that we are not a racist nation, then surely the bad guys will become to be right about an America in decline,” he said.
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