January 24, 2023: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that he will decide whether to mount a bid for the White House in the “next handful of months” as he and his wife continue weighing his political future. (CBS News)
“Susan and I are thinking, praying, trying to figure out if this is the next place to go serve. We haven’t gotten to that conclusion. We’ll figure this out in the next handful of months,” Pompeo said in an interview with Gayle King on “CBS Mornings.”
Pompeo is out with a new book, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” that hit shelves Tuesday. The book focuses on his tenure serving as CIA director and secretary of state in the Trump administration and has been viewed as a springboard for a 2024 presidential run, though Pompeo said the goal is to “tell the story” of the Trump administration’s effort to “put the American people at the front of American foreign policy.”
If Pompeo does seek the Republican nomination in 2024, he would go up against his former boss, who announced in November that he would run for president a third time…
January 29, 2023: Mike Pompeo is prescient, at least. Back in 2016, as a congressman, he warned Kansas Republicans of the danger posed by Donald Trump. Pompeo lamented that the US had already endured more than seven years of “an authoritarian president who ignored our constitution” – meaning Barack Obama – and cautioned that a Trump presidency would be no different (The Guardian)
“It’s time to turn down the lights on the circus,” he said.
Pompeo is an ex-army captan who graduated first in his class at West Point. But in the face of Trump’s triumphs, he turned tail and sucked-up. Pompeo was CIA director then secretary of state. On the job, his sycophancy grew legendary.
“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass,” a former ambassador recalled to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker.
Never Give an Inch is Pompeo’s opening salvo in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. On cue, he puckers up to Trump, the only declared candidate so far, and thanks to Mike Pence, a likely contestant, from bringing him into the fold. But where others are concerned, Never Give an Inch doubles as a burn book.
Pompeo strafes two other possible contenders: Nikki Haley, Trump’s first United Nations ambassador, and John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser…
…How well is this working? Pompeo may well sell books but fail to move the needle. Polls show him at 1% in the notional presidential primary, tied with the likes of Paul Ryan, the former House Speaker, and Ted Cruz, the Senate’s own squeegee pest. Pompeo trails Haley and Pence…
January 31, 2023: …But seizing attention at the moment is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is currently making his push to join the 2024 conversation using that most useless of all campaign standbys – the political memoir. The good news is that Pompeo is slightly less pathetic than Pence. The bad news is that Pompeo is that he has even less of a chance of becoming president. (The New Republic)
What Pompeo brings to the table is that he is a Frankenstein’s monster of contemporary Republican politics. A creature bred in a Koch brothers lab – the best-known GOP megadonor-influencers were early investors in Pompeo’s aviation company; the Kansas native has been involved in the brothers’ political orbit for decades – Pompeo has hastily rebranded in the Trump era. Though he was reportedly alarmed by Trump’s efforts to foment a coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Pompeo has since largely sidestepped any or all talk of the Capitol riot…
April 15, 2023: Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election. (The Guardian)
The devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.
After saying he was weighing a run in January, the former Trump administration official and CIA director released a statement on the decision. “To those of you who this announcement disappoints, my apologies,” he said, calling it a personal choice…
…Where Haley and Pence have openly expressed differences with Trump, Pompeo has had no public split with the former president and hasn’t been rebuked by him, as many of his would-be rivals have. Pompeo recently referred to Trump as a “great boss.”
April 17, 2023: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he will not run for president as a Republican candidate, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is also looking unlikely to run, leaving room for the early voter favorites – former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Deseret News)
“Susan and I have concluded, after much consideration and prayer, that I will not present myself as a candidate to become President of the United States in the 2024 election,” Pompeo said in a release posted on Twitter on Friday…
…He said that his wife will continue to actively engage “as parents, Sunday school teachers, community leaders and business leaders,” adding that, “There remains much to do and the conservative cause is worthy.”…
…Pompeo, who said he was considering a 2024 presidential campaign earlier this year, was polling low among other GOP candidates as well as hopefuls. A national Quinnipiac University poll from February found that he had the support of only 4% of voters surveyed…
December 9, 2023: Back in Wichita for an event promoting his new book, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t mince words when asked if he supports Donald Trump’s 2024 bid for the presidency. (The Wichita Eagle)
“Oh, goodness, no,” Pompeo told a reporter before the event.
“Because we’re still thinking about running ourselves, and it will be interesting to see who else enters the race.”…
…Pompeo’s memoir – “Never Give An Inch” – is the latest signal that he is considering a run for president. He started a political action committee in April 2021 and has been visiting early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
On Friday, Pompeo’s tour stopped at Wichita State University, where he also answered reporters’ questions on a federal abortion ban, election integrity and spy balloons…
Pompeo said he and his wife, Susan, expect to make a decision on a presidential run by late spring or early summer…