CSI: American Carnage (Thursday, May 21, 2020)
WASHINGTON – Mike looks out over the widely spaced group of reporters. He says, Under no circumstances was there anything improper about going around Congress in order to stand up to Iranian aggression, the potential attacks by Yemen, and the need for our friends in the region to protect themselves from vile behavior. It’s simply uninformed and stupid to argue otherwise and to suggest that there was some other reason to defend our oldest friends. If the press stuck to what it knows something about, the press would have a better understanding of what is happening in the world. It is simply an outrage that these repeated attacks by the media have been allowed to continue and I intend to put an end to it. Jordan needs those bombs, which should be available in a year or two. The Saudis, in a life threatening environment, will need those guided missiles within the next year or the year after. It is beyond decency, what the press is doing here, and we are going to call it as we see it, and if you don’t like it, maybe you all should find different jobs. Is there something you all don’t understand about pressing emergency? You go on and on and on about the fact that I dismissed this incompetent individual from a position he never should have held. Frankly, I should have done it a long time ago. As anyone with half a brain can see, it is patently false that the dismissal had anything to do with political retaliation. I had no sense of what investigations were taking place inside the inspector general’s office, number one, and number two, that doesn’t seem to matter to the press. You. I’ve seen the various stories that someone was walking my dog to sell arms to my dry cleaner. I mean, it’s all just crazy. It’s all crazy stuff. Completely fabricated. There is one exception, and no it has nothing to do with Sean carrying a whip in the office for use on unruly and disobedient employees. Sean is the most by-the-book boss in government. He never used his whip on any employee of the State Department for even the most offensive infraction. No. I was asked a series of questions in writing. I responded to those questions with respect to a particular investigation. That was some time earlier this year, as best I can recall. I responded to those questions. I don’t know the scope, I don’t know the nature of that investigation, other than what I would have seen from the nature of the questions that I was presented. I did what was right. I don’t know if that investigation is continuing. I don’t know if that investigation has been closed out. I don’t have any sense of that. And to be interrogated by the likes of Bob Menendez at a Senate hearing is just outrageous. I don’t get my ethics guidance from a man who was criminally prosecuted. A man for whom his Senate colleagues, bipartisan, said basically that he was taking bribes. That’s not someone who I look to for ethics guidance. I get my guidance from the President of the United States of America, who has assured me that I am doing the right thing. And so I’ll continue to do the right thing to make sure the State Department is served by every employee, including our inspector general, should the department ever fill that frivolous and partisan position at some point in the future. – Thursday, May 21, 2020