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New Delhi, Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Friday described the Oval Office showdown between American President Donald Trump and his Ukranian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “very unfortunate”.
Pompeo made the remark while responding to a question during an interactive session at the India Today Conclave.
“The fact that it happened out in the open, it is very unfortunate for Ukraine, Europe, and frankly for the US and the world, to see that and the risks associated with that, I think it just very, very unfortunate,” he said.
In the verbal exchange between the two leaders last week that played out in front of the world’s media, Trump told Zelenskyy, “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III… and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should.”
During his visit, Zelenskyy was to sign a landmark agreement with the US, aimed at financing the reconstruction of war-ravaged Ukraine. The deal was seen as a step towards ending the three-year Russia-Ukraine war.
The war began in February 2022 and efforts are being made from different quarters to resolve the conflict and achieve a lasting peace.
Pompeo who served as secretary of state and the Central Intelligence Agency director during Trump’s first term was also asked how he saw the second Trump administration and the flurry of developments since he assumed office.
“I am not sure it’s different from the first term. The first six weeks have been noisy. President Trump did come in this term with a deeper understanding, more prepared… more action, more activities. So, you are seeing all the noise that comes with that, big changes from where the Biden administration was on many things, some of them related to national security, many of them not related to domestic issues,” he said.
Pompeo said when he watched Trump, “I still see the same person in how he thinks about the world, that I knew serving him, both as CIA director and the secretary of state”.
Asked about the meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy, he said, “I think that meeting with President Zelenskyy, who I know pretty well… I think it was very unfortunate. Those of who you are in business or government… we have all had tough meetings, where we had very different views…”
Minutes after the showdown, Trump had said in a statement, “We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House. Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure.”
During the interaction, Pompeo answered a broad range of questions covering trade, tariffs, India-US ties, future areas of cooperation, Elon Musk, and the recent deportation of Indian immigrants illegally living in the US.
Asked if there was a messaging in the way the deportees were sent, in handcuffs and shackles, and the process being videotaped and put out in the public domain, Pompeo sought to defend the procedure and said if it hadn’t been recorded “then the world will wonder what was going on”.
“Most of the folks who went back initially were in our prisons, and they were not only violent, they were convicted criminals,” he argued, without mentioning the time of that deportation.
“Having said that, there is no doubt President Trump is trying to send a message, he is absolutely sending a message to anyone contemplating coming to the US illegally ‘Do not come, you will be returned to your home country’,” Pompeo said.
Asked if Trump was transactional in his approach, the former state secretary said he did “love to shake hands and cut ribbons” and say “‘we had a successful outcome'”.
“He appreciates a good outcome, a good deal, where he can tell ‘I did that’ or ‘we did that’, mostly ‘I’, but ‘we did that’. That’s certainly true,” he added.
On a query on allegations that Trump was trying to “break” multilateral institutions, Pompeo defended the US president and said the post-World War II institutions, “many of those are broken”.
“They are no longer serving their own stated purposes, walked away from their charters, and they have largely in many cases become dominated by the Chinese Communist Party,” he charged.
So, President Trump is asking to “rethink” them, Pompeo said.
He also said the Department of Government Efficiency was a “noble objective” and “our government is way to big for the size of our economy”.
“There will be all the noise on tariff over the last week and a half, and they are trying to reduce the size of the US federal workforce, they will all be out there, watch the through lines, and I am convinced that it will put America and our partners… like India, in good stead,” he said.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
