Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has come out and made a massive claim about Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, stating that he “repeatedly” requested to have a job as part of former President Donald Trump’s administration.
According to TheBlaze, Pompeo offered up this admission when he responded to comments made by Kinzinger concerning the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“Do not let my colleagues pretend today that Trump and Pompeo didn’t set in motion the Afghanistan withdrawal. They did,” Kinzinger posted up on Twitter on Tuesday. “I knew Pompeo in the house. He was a hawk on Afghanistan until trump. He knew better, he owns this as well. Trump Pompeo and Biden all to blame.”
Do not let my colleagues pretend today that Trump and Pompeo didn’t set in motion the Afghanistan withdrawal. They did.
I knew Pompeo in the house. He was a hawk on Afghanistan until trump. He knew better, he owns this as well.
Trump Pompeo and Biden all to blame.
— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) August 16, 2022
Here’s more from TheBlaze:
Pompeo served as secretary of state during a portion of former President Donald Trump’s tenure in office. Prior to taking on that role, Pompeo served as CIA director. He had previously served as a lawmaker from Kansas in the U.S. House of Representatives.
On Thursday, Pompeo tweeted, “@adamkinzinger repeatedly asked me for job in Trump Admin (Air Force Sec, Amb), and for wife. Now attacks our Afghan plan that saw no US fatalities/no Taliban takeover/no Americans left behind. Adam, I enjoyed our work in Congress. What’s happened to you? YOU should know better.”
The Biden administration was widely panned last year for botching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
.@adamkinzinger repeatedly asked me for job in Trump Admin (Air Force Sec, Amb), and for wife. Now attacks our Afghan plan that saw no US fatalities/no Taliban takeover/no Americans left behind. Adam, I enjoyed our work in Congress. What’s happened to you? YOU should know better.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) August 18, 2022
In a statement that was released last year, Kinzinger was up in arms with the decision to remove American troops from Afghanistan, saying, “In a statement last year, Kinzinger took issue with the move to withdraw American troops. “I’ve said countless times that withdrawing our troops emboldens our enemies and puts our allies in grave danger. And yet, both President Trump and President Biden made their announcements anyway—broadcasting to our enemies that we were leaving and telling our allies around the world that we had given up.”
Kinzinger is one of 10 House GOP members who decided to throw their lot in with the Democrats in Congress and vote to impeach former President Trump after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol building. He’s also one of two Republican lawmakers to serve on the House select committee tasked with investigating the incident.
Could all of this be motivated by anger and resentment about being denied a job in the Trump administration? Sure. It most definitely could be.
Look, if there’s one thing the last year and a half has proven, it’s that if you want to have a serious career in the political realm, you need to have the support of Trump. Kinzinger likely knows this, which is why he was begging the Trump administration for a job. Having Trump’s seal of approval would boost Kinzinger’s chances of being reelected.
When that didn’t pan out, he turned on Trump and then sought to raise support for himself among the anti-Trump crowd. However, they are not as numerous as they would have you believe, and this has turned out to be a massive miscalculation on the part of Kinzinger.
He made his bed, now he must lie in it.