US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Photo: VCG

 Mike Pompeo, dubbed the “worst secretary of state in history” by US media, is allegedly planning to distance himself from President Donald Trump following the US Capitol riot, which shows the treacherous and opportunistic nature of this former fervent “Trumpist,” said Chinese scholars.

Pompeo and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday conferred with staff about the possibility of invoking the US 25th Amendment, which “would begin a process to remove Trump from office,” three sources familiar with the matter told CNBC. 

Pompeo’s distancing himself from Trump – if true – would not be surprising even though he has been one of Trump’s closest allies, said Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

“Pompeo is a speculator, busy with making his own political calculations,” Lü told the Global Times on Friday.

Pompeo has pushed the president’s policies to an extreme extent to win his trust, Lü said. “But now after the election loss, Pompeo is trying to distance himself from Trump, whose political life has basically come to an end.”

Pompeo’s future space in the political arena, nonetheless, will be “very limited,” Lü predicted.

Pompeo’s wily calculating can hardly help him achieve his political ambitions after leaving office, as his bad performance as secretary of state, including corruption, inaction and provoking confrontation between the US and other countries, has led to anger at home and abroad, observers commented.

With his “diplomacy of lies,” Pompeo has done more damage to the US’ reputation and relations with other countries than any of his predecessors, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said during a regular press conference on Friday.

It’s possible that countries like China and Russia, which Pompeo has slandered before, will impose sanctions on him, said Lü. The overseas business ties of Pompeo and his family may also be impacted, he estimated.

Inside the US, there have been lawsuits against Pompeo. In a recent one, non-government organization the New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs claimed that Pompeo had authorized a $23.37 billion arms sale to the UAE without proper oversight or justification.

Months earlier, two law school professors filed a separate complaint against Pompeo, saying he committed an “egregious violation” by delivering a speech from Jerusalem, the Associated Press reported in August 2020.


Pompeo may even find it hard to get a job at a big transnational company or a mainstream think tank, let alone pursuing political ambitions, Lü told the Global Times.