Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Mary Louise Kelly
Ask journalists why they do the job they do, and you’ll hear a range of answers. Here’s mine: Not every day, but on the best ones, we get to put questions to powerful people and hold them to account. This is both a privilege and a responsibility.
January has been an interesting month on this front. I’ve had the opportunity to put questions, one on one, to the top diplomats of both the United States and Iran, in their respective capitals.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, spoke to me on Jan. 7 in Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to me last Friday, in Washington. Each man represents a nation in conflict with the other; speaking with them, I wondered what path either could see out of the situation. In both cases, I was allotted 10 minutes for questions.
It turns out you can cover a lot of ground in 10 minutes. When Mr. Zarif sat down with me, on the sidelines of a big think tank conference focused on security in the Persian Gulf, it was just four days after an American drone strike had killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. We started there.
How might Iran retaliate for General Suleimani’s death? “The United States has committed a grave error,” Mr. Zarif told me. “And it will pay for that grave error.” I do not know whether, at that moment, he was aware that just hours later, Iran would unleash missiles on Iraqi military bases where American troops are housed.
We moved on to whether he would travel to New York later that week, to attend Security Council meetings at the United Nations.
“No,” he told me, “because Mike Pompeo decided I was too dangerous for the United States.” The United States had denied Mr. Zarif a visa, in what some have branded a violation of the 1947 United Nations headquarters agreement, which generally requires the United States to grant access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats.
Next I asked whether we were witnessing the death of the 2015 nuclear deal. Mr. Zarif insisted no — even as he acknowledged that Iran was suspending compliance with centrifuge limits.
The foreign minister and I ended with a tense exchange on what is an uncomfortable question for him: The status of United States citizens imprisoned in Iran, and whether future prisoner exchanges were off the table. “We had proposed a universal exchange of all prisoners and we were doing that in good faith,” Mr. Zarif said. But are those channels still open? No, he conceded, saying, “Those talks are certainly suspended now.”
My interview with Secretary Pompeo came two weeks and three days later, in the East Hall of the Treaty Room, on the seventh floor of the State Department. By then an uneasy pause had taken hold; the United States and Iran appeared, for the moment, to have stepped back from the brink of war.
I kicked off with a question on diplomacy. Is there any serious initiative underway to reopen diplomacy with Iran? “We’ve been engaged in deep diplomatic efforts since the first day of the Trump administration,” Mr. Pompeo replied, underlining American efforts to build a coalition to counter and contain Iran.
But in terms of American engagement with Iran, I went on, are there any plans for talks? “The diplomatic effort on this front has been vigorous, robust and enormously successful,” Mr. Pompeo said, changing the subject back to engaging American allies to put pressure on Iran.
Another question I was curious to hear Secretary Pompeo answer was how the Trump administration plans to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, should it decide to do so, given that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapons capability than when President Trump took office.
Here’s the relevant portion of the interview:
KELLY: How do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
POMPEO: We’ll stop them.
KELLY: How? Sanctions?
POMPEO: We’ll stop them.
He did not offer specifics. Nor did he elaborate, when pressed on how to square his resolve with what Mr. Zarif had just told me — that all limits on Iran’s centrifuge program have been suspended.
“Yeah,” Mr. Pompeo said. “He’s blustering.”
Do you have evidence that he’s blustering? He did not directly answer. (In fairness, I could hardly expect him to telegraph what intelligence the United States may possess on the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.)
I write about all this now to refocus attention on the substance of the interviews, which has been overshadowed by Mr. Pompeo’s subsequently swearing at me, calling me a liar and challenging me to find Ukraine on an unmarked map.
For the record, I did. That’s not the point. The point is that recently the risk of miscalculation — of two old adversaries misreading each other and accidentally escalating into armed confrontation — has felt very real. It occurs to me that swapping insults through interviews with journalists such as me might, terrifyingly, be as close as the top diplomats of the United States and Iran came to communicating this month.
There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution. There is a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible.
Journalists don’t sit down with senior government officials in the service of scoring political points. We do it in the service of asking tough questions, on behalf of our fellow citizens. And then sharing the answers — or lack thereof — with the world.
Mary Louise Kelly is co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” and is a former NPR national security correspondent.
January has been an interesting month on this front. I’ve had the opportunity to put questions, one on one, to the top diplomats of both the United States and Iran, in their respective capitals.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, spoke to me on Jan. 7 in Tehran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to me last Friday, in Washington. Each man represents a nation in conflict with the other; speaking with them, I wondered what path either could see out of the situation. In both cases, I was allotted 10 minutes for questions.
It turns out you can cover a lot of ground in 10 minutes. When Mr. Zarif sat down with me, on the sidelines of a big think tank conference focused on security in the Persian Gulf, it was just four days after an American drone strike had killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. We started there.
How might Iran retaliate for General Suleimani’s death? “The United States has committed a grave error,” Mr. Zarif told me. “And it will pay for that grave error.” I do not know whether, at that moment, he was aware that just hours later, Iran would unleash missiles on Iraqi military bases where American troops are housed.
We moved on to whether he would travel to New York later that week, to attend Security Council meetings at the United Nations.
“No,” he told me, “because Mike Pompeo decided I was too dangerous for the United States.” The United States had denied Mr. Zarif a visa, in what some have branded a violation of the 1947 United Nations headquarters agreement, which generally requires the United States to grant access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats.
Next I asked whether we were witnessing the death of the 2015 nuclear deal. Mr. Zarif insisted no — even as he acknowledged that Iran was suspending compliance with centrifuge limits.
The foreign minister and I ended with a tense exchange on what is an uncomfortable question for him: The status of United States citizens imprisoned in Iran, and whether future prisoner exchanges were off the table. “We had proposed a universal exchange of all prisoners and we were doing that in good faith,” Mr. Zarif said. But are those channels still open? No, he conceded, saying, “Those talks are certainly suspended now.”
My interview with Secretary Pompeo came two weeks and three days later, in the East Hall of the Treaty Room, on the seventh floor of the State Department. By then an uneasy pause had taken hold; the United States and Iran appeared, for the moment, to have stepped back from the brink of war.
I kicked off with a question on diplomacy. Is there any serious initiative underway to reopen diplomacy with Iran? “We’ve been engaged in deep diplomatic efforts since the first day of the Trump administration,” Mr. Pompeo replied, underlining American efforts to build a coalition to counter and contain Iran.
But in terms of American engagement with Iran, I went on, are there any plans for talks? “The diplomatic effort on this front has been vigorous, robust and enormously successful,” Mr. Pompeo said, changing the subject back to engaging American allies to put pressure on Iran.
Another question I was curious to hear Secretary Pompeo answer was how the Trump administration plans to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, should it decide to do so, given that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapons capability than when President Trump took office.
Here’s the relevant portion of the interview:
KELLY: How do you stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
POMPEO: We’ll stop them.
KELLY: How? Sanctions?
POMPEO: We’ll stop them.
He did not offer specifics. Nor did he elaborate, when pressed on how to square his resolve with what Mr. Zarif had just told me — that all limits on Iran’s centrifuge program have been suspended.
“Yeah,” Mr. Pompeo said. “He’s blustering.”
Do you have evidence that he’s blustering? He did not directly answer. (In fairness, I could hardly expect him to telegraph what intelligence the United States may possess on the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.)
I write about all this now to refocus attention on the substance of the interviews, which has been overshadowed by Mr. Pompeo’s subsequently swearing at me, calling me a liar and challenging me to find Ukraine on an unmarked map.
For the record, I did. That’s not the point. The point is that recently the risk of miscalculation — of two old adversaries misreading each other and accidentally escalating into armed confrontation — has felt very real. It occurs to me that swapping insults through interviews with journalists such as me might, terrifyingly, be as close as the top diplomats of the United States and Iran came to communicating this month.
There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution. There is a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible.
Journalists don’t sit down with senior government officials in the service of scoring political points. We do it in the service of asking tough questions, on behalf of our fellow citizens. And then sharing the answers — or lack thereof — with the world.
Mary Louise Kelly is co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” and is a former NPR national security correspondent.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Update on Pompeo
Pompeo claims
@NPRKelly
mistakenly identified Bangladesh as Ukraine. As we evaluate what may be the most breathtakingly childish official statement ever issued by a Secretary of State in over two centuries, consider the magnitude of the mistake he implausibly claims she made:
@NPRKelly
mistakenly identified Bangladesh as Ukraine. As we evaluate what may be the most breathtakingly childish official statement ever issued by a Secretary of State in over two centuries, consider the magnitude of the mistake he implausibly claims she made:
Friday, January 24, 2020
Pompeo the Douchebag
Mary Louise Kelly aired an interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday (January 24,2020). The interview started out with her asking him questions on Iran and almost every one of his answers contained the phrase "the previous administration" in typical drumpf zombie fashion.
Further along in the interview, Kelly asked him about Marie Yovanovitch and Pompeo puffed up and carried on as if "how dare she ask these questions". The interview ended shortly after that with fireworks afterward. Here is the transcript:
Further along in the interview, Kelly asked him about Marie Yovanovitch and Pompeo puffed up and carried on as if "how dare she ask these questions". The interview ended shortly after that with fireworks afterward. Here is the transcript:
Adam Schiff's Closing Argument
Adam Schiff delivered an emotional closing statement on Thursday, January 23, 2020 at the Donald Trump Impeachment trial in the Senate. He called Donald Trump “dangerous” and criticized him for listening to Rudy Giuliani over US intelligence agencies. Read the full transcript right here at Rev.com.
But even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. Even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. This brings me the last point I want to make tonight, which is, when we’re done, we believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the President’s guilt. That is, he’s done what he’s charged with. He withheld the money. He withheld the meeting. He used it to coerce Ukraine to do these political investigations. He covered it up. He obstructed us. He’s trying to obstruct you and he’s violated the Constitution. But I want to address one other thing tonight. Okay. He’s guilty. Okay. He’s guilty. Does he really need to be removed? Does he really need to be removed? We have an election coming up. Does he really need to be removed? He’s guilty. Is there really any doubt about this?
Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the President is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument, Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did. It’s a somewhat different question though to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly. We all know what we’re dealing here with this President, but does he really need to be removed? And this is why he needs to be removed. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI Director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own National Security Advisors. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda. He chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray?
Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections, but that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed. Now, you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage. Now, we just saw last week, report that Russia tried to hack or maybe did hack Burisma. Okay. I don’t know if they got in. I’m trying to find out. My colleagues on the Intel committee, House and Senate, we’re trying to find out, did the Russians get in? What are the Russian plans and intentions? Well, let’s say they got in and let’s say they start dumping documents to interfere at the next election.
Let’s say they start dumping some real things they hack from Burisma. Let’s say they start dumping some fake things they didn’t hack from Burisma, but they want you to believe they did. Let’s say they start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can. What happens if China got the message? Now you can say, he’s just joking of course. He didn’t really mean China should investigate the Bidens. You know that’s no joke.
Now maybe you could have argued three years ago when he said, “Hey Russia, if you’re listening, hack Hillary’s emails.” Maybe you could give him a freebie and say he was joking, but now we know better. Hours after he did that Russia did, in fact, try to hack Hillary’s emails. There’s no Mulligan here when it comes to our national security. So what if China does overtly or covertly start to help the Trump campaign? You think he’s going to call them out on it or you think he’s going to give them a better trade deal on it? Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interests? Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the ironclad confidence that he would do so?
You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a President they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interests first. Colonel Vindman said, “Here, right matters. Here, right matters.” Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.
If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. That’s what they do in the old country, that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Monday, January 20, 2020
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