Pompeo blasts Biden, jokes about climate change in Wichita keynote

Back in his former congressional district, Mike Pompeo used his keynote address at the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association convention Monday to lambaste the Biden administration and talk up his own achievements as former secretary of state.

Pompeo, who spearheaded the Trump administration’s 2020 peace deal with the Taliban, called Biden’s approach to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan “leading with weakness.”

“It is begging. It is apologizing for America,” Pompeo told a crowd of several hundred at the Century II convention center.

“The fact that we didn’t make clear to the Taliban that if they chased us out of town, we were going to chase them back into their town. This is a horrific set of foreign policy.”

At the time of the peace deal last February, Pompeo suggested that the Taliban could become an important counterterrorism partner for the U.S.

But on Monday, he said Biden lacked “the American resolve to use our power” and recounted telling Taliban leader Mullah Baradar that “we knew exactly where his house was.”

“You can be sure that Chairman Kim, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are all watching what’s happening in Afghanistan today,” Pompeo said. “So, I pray that we get this right. I pray that the Biden administration figures this out and they begin to behave in the way that we need.”

Pompeo told the oil and gas business leaders that energy was central to much of his work at the State Department and got a laugh from the crowd by pointing out that he “never started a meeting talking about climate change.”

“We all want clean air. Sign me up for safe drinking water, but we all know that the American economy and innovation is the thing that’s going to protect the health of people all across the world,” Pompeo said.

He invoked Greta Thunberg, the outspoken 18-year-old environmental activist from Sweden, who has caught the ire of many conservatives.

“I spent very little time with that Greta woman and a lot of time with people like you, to figure out how we could make sure that we were creating the conditions for you all to do the remarkable work that you do,” Pompeo said.

He also took a swipe at Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, saying the former governor of Michigan was unqualified for the post compared to her counterpart under Trump, Ray Brouillette.

“One of them actually had been in the energy industry and the other one I’m convinced needs a dictionary to spell ‘energy,’” Pompeo said. “And I’m sure Jennifer Granholm is a really nice woman.”

During the question and answer session after the keynote, District 117 state Rep. Tatum Lee asked Pompeo about MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “cyber symposium” last week in South Dakota that was supposed to reveal new information about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

“I’m looking forward, not backwards,” Pompeo responded. “We have to make sure that some of the things that took place this last election don’t happen again, the goofiness that happened with some of these courts that changed the rules within weeks of the elections.”

As secretary of state, Pompeo championed free and fair elections around the world, but he stood by Donald Trump even as he claimed incorrectly that systemic voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.

Pompeo, who is widely considered to be a contender in the 2024 Republican primary, did not respond when an Eagle reporter asked after the keynote if he trusts the integrity of U.S. elections.

An aide got between the reporter and Pompeo before he could answer, and Pompeo then walked away without acknowledging the question.

This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 7:20 PM.