(CNN) President Donald Trump took time -- in the midst of announcing his administration's long-awaited but likely-to-fail plan for Middle East peace -- to praise his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"That was very impressive," Trump told Pompeo. "That reporter couldn't have done too good a job on you yesterday. I think you did a good job on her, actually." (And, yes, people laughed.)

The moment President Trump told Sec. Pompeo he "did a good job" in his interaction with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly pic.twitter.com/s06NuXnEum — Peter Stevenson (@PeterStevenson) January 28, 2020

What Trump was referring to was the decision by Pompeo's State Department to ban an NPR reporter from an upcoming trip to the United Kingdom and Ukraine, among other countries. That ban, which State has yet to explain , came just days after a decidedly contentious interview between Pompeo and NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly in which Pompeo grew angry when Kelly asked about Ukraine and its role in the current impeachment trial of Trump. According to Kelly, Pompeo challenged her to find Ukraine on a map, which she did. In a statement from Pompeo that followed the incident, the secretary insisted that Kelly had pointed to Bangladesh.

That -- yelling at a reporter and demanding she find a foreign country on a map -- is what Trump called "very impressive" and praised Pompeo for doing "a good job on her, actually."

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