11/12/20
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo triggered a scandal when he responded to a reporter’s question about President Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s electoral victory by saying he would work to ensure “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Because he chuckled afterward, it’s safe to assume he was joking. But it wasn’t funny. His motivations were obvious. Pompeo is pandering to Trump and his Make America Great Again officials, who are still denying the election results (often without Pompeo-style chuckles). The secretary of state knows that his future as a leader in the Trump-dominated Republican Party and his prospects for a 2024 presidential run depend on maintaining his MAGA bona fides. Less visible is the parallel game Pompeo is playing to woo the GOP foreign policy establishment — the same establishment Trump’s MAGA loyalists are trying to destroy. Few noticed the speech Pompeo gave Tuesday morning before his news-making press conference, at the launch of the Ronald Reagan Institute’s Center for Freedom and Democracy. His prepared remarks, unlike his impromptu news conference joke, were carefully crafted to make the case that the Trump administration’s foreign policy approach is rooted in Reagan’s vision of American exceptionalism and the promotion of freedom and democracy against authoritarianism worldwide.
“He, President Reagan, put his belief in freedom and the American promise at the very center of how he thought about foreign policy,” Pompeo said. “And so is the Trump administration.” It’s a tendentious argument that Pompeo and other senior Trump national security officials have made for years. By cherry-picking Reagan slogans such as “peace through strength” and “shining city on a hill,” Trump officials are asking their audiences to ignore an obvious flaw in their claims of continuity: Trump has made clear that he does not believe in American exceptionalism and disdains the idea of pushing American values in foreign countries. Pompeo is trying to play to the MAGA crowd and the GOP foreign policy establishment at the same time. But that balancing act is becoming more difficult as the GOP moves into opposition and 2024 politics begin in earnest. The MAGA crowd is not even waiting until the end of Trump’s term to attack GOP establishment foreign policy officials across the Trump administration, shattering an already shaky truce. If compelled to choose, the MAGA foreign policy platform seems more politically expedient, especially in a Republican primary contest. The problem is, Republicans like Pompeo likely believe in Reagan’s vision over Trump’s and would prefer to govern that way as well.
