Pompeo: “I cannot imagine a statement that is any more false” than that Pres. Trump is not interested in intel

For the debut of his MSNBC show this morning, Hugh Hewitt scored the first news network interview with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Debunking an assertion made by some, Pompeo said he couldn’t “imagine a statement that is anymore false” than the notion that Trump isn’t interested in intel.

Pompeo stated that he personally meets with Trump for 35-40 minutes virtually every day, that Trump is an “avid consumer” of intel, and asks great questions.

Note: Pompeo began the interviewing by unequivocally stating that “this election was meddled with by the Russians.” Pompeo added that the Russian meddling “is frankly not particularly original. They’ve been doing this for an awfully long time and we are decades into the Russians trying to undermine American democracy. In some ways, there’s no news, but it certainly puts a heightened emphasis on our ability to figure out how to stop them.”

Note segundo: On his radio show, Hewitt’s Christian catchphrase is “morning glory, evening grace.” Hewitt opened the show today with “morning glory,” surely a novel experience for many MSNBC viewers.

HUGH HEWITT: Now to the second part of my conversation with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and his answer to how he works daily with the president. MIKE POMPEO: I’m with the president nearly every day. We have 35 or 40 minutes on his schedule. That almost always runs long, which is great. Great questions. He is a serious consumer of the product that the intelligence community delivers and I appreciate that, because I think it informs how he thinks about the world. I know that my predecessor handled it differently, wasn’t there very often. President Obama consumed his intelligence in a different way. President Trump is incredibly demanding of the intelligence community, asks us incredibly difficult questions, and then counts on myself and other leaders in the IC [intelligence community] to deliver those answers for him. HEWITT: Some of his critics like to allege he is uninterested in facts on the ground. What do you think of that? POMPEO: I cannot imagine a statement that is any more false than the one that would attribute president Trump not being interested in intelligence and facts when it comes to national security. He’s an avid consumer of the products we provide, thinks about them and comes back and asks great questions, and then, perhaps most importantly, relies upon that information.



